Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's a bit hard to believe, considering that I'm looking out my window at blue sky and fluttering green leaves, in 80-some degree weather. Doesn't really feel much like Thanksgiving to me. Everyone I talk to is giddy over the amount of snow they have already. Am I jealous? Oh yes. Do I miss snow and winter? Oh yes. However, as I walk to class in my shorts and tee shirt I know I won't be feeling quite so despondent about my situation.

Speaking of hot weather, I'm discovering that the hotter it gets, the more the spiders come out. I discovered to my horror just a few minutes ago a very large very frightful spider on a ledge on the wall above my desk. Yesterday the same thing happened. While I was sitting at my desk I noticed long tentacle-y legs reaching up over the edge of the window track in front of my desk. Another huge (they just can't be small spiders here, oh no, that would never do. Spiders here feed on Miracle Grow and Wheaties every day) grotesque, FAT, nasty, all-most-disgusting-adjectives-I-can-think-of spider was trying to come into our room. I quickly notified my roommates of the situation and Rubi ran down the hall for her friend's insecticide while Karen examined the spider and announced she thought it was one of the bad spiders, which I'm assuming means poisonous. Rubi returned and gave the monstrous spider a mouthful of the insecticide several times and he finally writhed his last. But back to the spider of today: I had hoped to borrow the insecticide for this guy, so I moved everything off my desk so he wouldn't fall down among my books and die in there. Unfortunately the girl with the insecticide was gone, so I had just determined to retreat to my bed with my books and computer when my roommate Karen returned. I pointed out the spider and without hesitation she grabbed a bottle of bug spray and her shoe and climbed up on my desk, doused the spider in bug repellent and smashed him with her shoe as he tried to escape. For the record, Karen is now my hero forever! Be warned spiders! The same fate will be yours if you try to enter our room. However, I'm a bit worried about when Karen and Rubi go home for the summer...that means I'll be dealing with any more intruders on my own....

So much for hot weather. Back to Thanksgiving. They don't have Thanksgiving here in Argentina, obviously, but the cafeteria is apparently going to try to make a Thanksgiving dinner for us, the best that it can be considering half the things we eat for Thanksgiving don't exist here. Also, after classes tomorrow there's going to be a football game. So the true spirit of the day will survive, food and football ;)

Last Monday was a holiday, so we had a long weekend. Lauren and I wanted to go check out the Walmart in Parana, which is about an hour and a half bus ride away. We had heard that Walmart was in a very sketchy part of town so we felt like we should find a guy to go with us. William had wanted to go originally but when we found him, an hour before the bus left, he informed us he didn't want to go anymore. Jamel was nice enough to be convinced to come along as our escort and we headed off for Parana.We found a taxi there to get to Walmart, but we were a little unsure of how to get a taxi back. It was too far (and not safe) to walk back. We asked our taxi driver and she was nice enough to offer to come back and pick us up at a certain time.
I walked into Walmart, and the first thing I saw was Christmas decorations everywhere. I looked at Lauren and said, "I feel like I'm home!"  In reality though, Walmart here is not really the same as at home, which I knew it wouldn't be. We did find a straightener though, which was to replace Lauren's old one that my faulty converter blew up, and got to check out the merchandise.
Who knew that Walmart could be an adventure?

This week is all finals, next week we start our new classes for the second trimester, and on December 5th we head out on our trip to Peru. I am veeeery excited about that! That's pretty much a wrap on anything new happening here! Stay tuned for more updates to follow...