First impressions

So in the interest of not boring everyone reading this (because there are literally thousands, if not millions of you), I`ll skip the boring parts of the fist leg of my adventure and focus on the goodies. So, the highlights of my trip so far, chronologically:

Discovering that TAM airlines is actually fantastic...huge range of movie selections and two meals on a 9 hour flight! And free booz! In which I didn´t partake, but apparently they don`t cut you off because the 90 lb girl (estimation) next to me had about 9 cups of white wine, along with 5 sleeping pills, then proceded to talk my ear off for 5 hours.

Sleeping on a cold marble floor in Sao Paulo during my 10 hour overnight layover, drawstring pack tied firmly to my arms, then discovering couches on the other side of the terminal 30 minutes before the flight.

Getting tricked into taking a $65 cab ride to Cañuelas from the airport, then discovering that I could have made the trip for $5.

Getting in an old beat up VW with a nice looking guy who said he knew my host and that he had free candy, then driving down dirt roads for 10 minutes into the middle of nowhere. Kidding about the guy by the way. He knew my name and my host`s name. And no candy, unfortunately.

Arriving at a fence that was basically just some wire with a few rotting sticks wrapped into it, and wondering if  it was about to go all Taken/Saw on me (it didn`t).

Catching up on sleep, after going about 50 hours on 4 hrs of it.

Okay so story time: my first night of sleep, although generally wonderful, was interrupted at 2:30 am by a bull chewing at my tent flap. After shooing him away (but not before he left a dump right in front of the entrance), I was again awoken by the dog, Lashka, clawing at the tent netting and puncturing it a bit, which was lovely. The next day started out as I had expected: a light breakfast of bread and jam with coffee, feeding the rabbits, getting a tour of the farm, ect. Then the milk man came. We poured the milk into a vat to make cheese, sipped some tea, then tied down the bull and castrated it. So that was graphic. My job was to keep the dogs from biting at the testicles as they were being squeezed out. Then for lunch we had pea soup, with an onion and bull ball stirfry. They were soft. Kinda gross, but not terrible.

Since that rather startling introduction into farm life in Argentina, it`s been nice small meals, interesting conversation, mostly centering around cultural comparisons, and plesant work on the farm. I was supposed to go into BA to hang out with my probably alchoholic single serving friend, but the number she drunkenly gave me didn`t go through, so it`s a one hour walk back to the farm for me. I`d better get off the computer, because I`ve been on for an hour and it`s tallied up to almost an 80 cent charge!