Patagonia with my Family!!

So my family is in town and it's sooo good to see them! We're in Patagonia, in Bariloche, for the majority of the week. It is beautiful. We walked around town yesterday, and went hiking today. Tomorrow we're going on a boat tour :) It is so so beautiful here!! These are pictures taken from the balcony of our hotel, rough life, I know.

YAY! No mullet for me!

Sorry for the lame photobooth picture, my camera is being retarded.

After freaking out, and downloading pictures, and talking to numerous friends, I did it. My hair is shorter and healthier, and I HAVE BANGS! Well kind of, it's more of that side sweep thing, but I like it. It's the first time I've ever done something like that. I was scared shitless, but Michelle was there to hold my hand. It's a good thing Marcus knew what he was doing :)

How do you say "I don't want a mullet" in Spanish?

I'm getting my haircut tomorrow. It's long overdue. I'm just super scared that they're going to ruin it! All the girls here have nasty haircuts, mullets, whatever. I'm bringing pictures.

Wish me luck.

Catching up...

Sorry. It has been a while (relatively.)

I love you girls!!!

Last Friday night I had an empanada and wine party. I invited all my girlfriends over, and they all brought wine and their favorite empanadas (the typical food here). We had so so so much fun! My good friend Kate came over earlier in the day and we baked. We made a yummy challah bread, a chocolate bread, and hamantashen. Yum! So there were like 10 girls here, and everyone brought wine... so 10 girls + 13 bottles of wine (plus Annie's sangria) = one DRUNK Sarah. I called it an early night. Lame.

My foot kind of got better. Well. Good enough for me to run in the race on Sunday. It was probably a really stupid thing for me to do, cause it still hurt a little bit. Well I jogged 10k, in less than an hour. NOT TOO SHABBY. It was a lot of fun and there were 25,000 people running with me. Pretty sweet. Here, you have to wear the shirts that they give you for the event. This shirt is an amazing celeste blue color (the blue in the Argentine flag). It was so cool to see a huge street, FILLED with blue shirts. I had a lot of fun.


I spent over 1/2 the day Monday in the immigration office AGAIN to get my SECOND student visa. It was ridiculous. The rest of my day was spent running around the city trying to finalize stuff for my parents.

Mom and dad came in on Tuesday. Their plane was supposed to come in at 7 am. This meant that I was going to get picked up at 5:45 in order to meet them at the airport. Well their flight was delayed 3 hours (which I found out the night before, thanks to cell phones and AIM.) I met them at the airport on a super rainy day. We ended up walking around Recoleta, having a good steak lunch, then having an awesome Merienda (late afternoon snack/tea) with my host family. It was really cute.

We went out to Cumana (my FAVORITE Argentine food restaurant) for dinner, and shared some small dishes, and 2 bottles of wine. We were all a little tipsy, which was fun. Yesterday I joined them for breakfast at their hotel, then we took the subway, and walked around Palermo. It's a completely different aspect to the city, it actually shows how real Argentines live, rather than the rich snobs in Recoleta. They left for Mendoza last night.

Christine comes in Monday morning EARLY. I"M SO EXCITED TO SEE HER! I feel like I never see my sister anymore. Anyway, I'll pick her up at the airport, then we'll get bussed to the domestic airport, and fly to Bariloche, Patagonia. This is in the Lake district of Patagonia, and it's supposed to be BEAUTIFUL. I'm imagining like Tahoe. It's in the mountains, with huge, beautiful, blue lakes everywhere. I'm stoked. We'll hike, and boat and everything. YAY!

No big running races this weekend :( Just a 10 page paper for my cine class. 37 days til I'm home though! I am not ready to leave, but I'm ready to be back home. If that makes any sense at all.

Injured

Shin splints? Collapsed arch?

I'm not sure, but my right foot fucking hurts. It was just sore yesterday, then today it got progressively worse, so much that I went out and bought sports tape for it. I was gimping around the city all afternoon. Hopefully its better by tomorrow, otherwise I'll have to go to the doctor for it.

Plus I have my 10k on Sunday!!! And mom and dad come next Tuesday!! YAY I'm so excited!

Cyclist, triathlete or runner?

Or all 3? Apparently I like to do random (pretty big) races on a whim...

If God invented marathons to keep people from doing anything more stupid, the triathlon must have taken Him completely by surprise. ~P.Z. Pearce

So I was super crazy this weekend and ran 31k all together. I know. PSYCO. The 7th annual Buenos Aires Was this weekend. My friend Amanda (from CU) called me on WEDNESDAY MORNING and asked me if I wanted to do the 8k with her on Saturday morning. I agreed since I had been running pretty much everyday and it wasn't going to be an issue. So we went Wed night to register. While I was there, I got really motivated, and decided that I'd run part of the marathon as well on Sunday. Loco.. I KNOW.

Saturday was awesome. Amanda and I did the 8k. Wasn't a race or anything, so we just ran for fun. We pushed ourselves a bit, so Saturday afternoon I was second guessing myself about running 1/2 a marathon the following day. Whatever. I figured out the route, which bus I would take in the morning, made my new playlist, and went to bed.

Sunday morning I woke up and headed out for an amazing day. I got on the appropriate bus, and told the bus driver to tell me when we got to this specific point (it was way on the other side of town, so I didn't know it well at all). He told me that his route was totally different today because of the marathon, but he'd do what he could for me. Fine. So the point he told me to get off at was a little earlier than I expected. It was at the 19k mark. I wanted to start 1/2 way through, at the 21k mark. Whatever. So I got off the bus, turned on my Ipod, and started running with the mass of people already running through the streets. It's like I just pressed "go" on my body, cause it just went. And it didn't stop!!! I was impressed. I kept hydrated and took 2 gels during the run. I kept a really steady pace, and did 24k in 2:15. Not bad at all!!

I had a great time, and I got to see parts of the city that I've never seen before. I started in the far south of the city, near BOCA. This is the place you DO NOT GO at night. But we ran past the touristy part, BOCA stadium, and past some pretty shady areas, shanty towns at their finest (they call them villas here). I ran through beautiful Puerto Madero, which is the nicer and newer part of the city, and it's on the other side of the docks. Then we ran past the airport, and the back way out of the city. We finished up at parque de los niños. It was a huge park. But one problem, we weren't in the "ciudad" anymore. We had left the city. Fortunately I found a collecitvo (bus) to take me back to the city. Fun times.

The coolest part was running with all different types of people. There were mostly men, but a fair amount of women. All ages. I loved the fact that there were like 80 year old men there. Freaking awesome! I just felt like I was cheating a bit since I was doing 1/2. Whatever, I wasn't even planning on running this. I don't think a full marathon is out of the question in the near future at all.

Next weekend is the Nike 10k. There are 25,000 people registered. That should be a sight to see. Let's just hope my soreness that I'm sure I will be feeling tomorrow is gone by then!

"Cuánto más corro, más chicos se hacen los problemas"
The more I run, the smaller my problems become.

More post secret

I really do love this website

You'll see a lot more of it on here...

Roller Coaster

Sorry, this is a little rant... but I need to get it out somewhere, and there are only a few people who read my blog, so enjoy.

Living abroad, especially in a place that doesn't speak English, is really hard. Its an emotional roller coaster. All of our emotions are very exaggerated. One day we're stoked that the Rockies are in the world series, then we're bummed that they lost a game etc. But the thing is, there's no middle ground really.But all our emotions are amplified. It really feels that way. The other night I was on cloud nine after talking to one friend on the phone, 5 min later, I hung up from another phone call and was crying. It's so stupid! I'm never like this at home! Because all the news from the outside world is filtered through the phone, internet etc, we only get one perspective of it, and it's hard to live off of just that. So our minds create another reality, and take whatever news we just received and manipulates it in a strange way. I know this sounds crazy, but that's just how I feel.

I hear news from friends and don't really know how to interpret it all because I dont know the context behind it all, the stories, what's currently going on to make all that happen, etc. It kinda sucks. I just feel like I'm so left out of whats going on at home, and that when I get back, ti's going to be really hard. I'll have to re-immerse myself in social situations that I once knew, and have to recreate again.

I've been talking to my friends about this and they all feel the same way. Its kinda wierd. One friend from CU that went abroad from a year (who's not in Arg now) said it was so hard to come home because all your friends got used to you not being around, and used to not calling you, that when you get home, they're so used to that, that you feel alone and withdrawn from the social culture for a good amount of time cause they still don't call you. I also feel like I have no idea what's going on in the lives of anyone around me. I just feel like I've been completely withdrawn from everyone, and everywhere in the world.... except for the million or so people I live with in Buenos Aires.

*Sigh* Alright, that's it.

I'm not sad. I'm not depressed, sometimes I just get these thoughts, and it helps to write them all down and have others understand. I need to update soon, with Mendoza, Last weekend, elections, chinese food, and my exciting plans for this weekend!! Talk to you soon. Miss you all.