No puedo hablar ingles!

It has been a beautifully relaxing week. It's still Carnaval here (Uruguay boasts for having the longest Carnaval in South America) but this was the big week, the final week, when most natives here go out of town to escape the craziness. Some of our teachers had also gone out of town and we got a couple of classes canceled this week, which was a welcome and much-needed break. One problem, though, is that because of Carnaval week the laundry place has also been closed...so right now I'm sitting here in the last pair of clean clothes that I have, some pajamas. This afternoon it'll be open, though, so I'm more excited about the idea of clean laundry than I think anyone should be!

We've really been enjoying our relaxing week here. The other day Ashley, Sam, Ben, and I went walking around town and found a pretty little park by the beach with a small river going through it and some pedal boats for rent. So yesterday we went back with Lawson and Sara also and we spent the afternoon riding pedal boats and enjoying the sunshine. There were little islands in the river with just a ton of bunnies, chickens, and ducks running around--it was the cutest thing! People put lettuce and food on the islands for the animals, so the rabbits were huge and fat...they were actually bigger than the chickens, believe it or not! One thing I love about Montevideo is the parrots. If you go to a park in the U.S., you'll probably see lots of ugly black birds flying around, but here you can see flocks of pretty green parrots! I love the sounds they make and it makes me so happy that here they're flying free and not trapped in a pet store somewhere.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday so my classmates who are taking the Bible class put together an Ash Wednesday service for everyone in the casa. It was really beautiful, and then I got to walk around with ashes on my forehead for most of the day! The people in the Bible class (which is almost everyone except for me and a couple other people) were encouraged to give up something for Lent, and as crazy as this sounds, most of my friends decided to give up speaking English--Lawson included! So yesterday was a very difficult and at the same time very rewarding day. By Easter forty days from now, we're all going to be so much better at Spanish! My Spanish isn't quite good enough yet that I could entirely give up English, but every day from 7-9 PM I've decided to do it, as well as trying to speak it as often as possible with my friends. Until you've spent an entire day intensively learning another language, I'm pretty sure you don't know what it means to be mentally exhausted. Learning another language takes up so much brain power that by the end of the day I honestly feel like I can't think anymore. It's so much fun, though, and I feel so accomplished when I really learn a new word or when I can carry on a conversation with someone.

Last Friday I got to have dinner with the president of the central Uruguayan bank! The ACU honors program paid for Sara, Ben, and I to go to a really, really nice restaurant that served all kinds of delicious meats to have dinner and talk with this economist, Walter Cancela, and his wife, who is an artist here in Montevideo. Aside from the conversation being very interesting--I learned that Uruguay's economy is actually doing really well right now, even though the rest of the world's isn't. They have the fastest growing economy in South America and the unemployment rate is ridiculously low, something like 3% for heads of household--the food was amazing. I really don't like to eat meat very much, but the waiters kept bringing us samurai swords stacked with every kind of meat I've ever seen! There was tons of steak and asado and even cow tongue (called "sweet meat" in Spanish). So it was really fun to get all dressed up and get to talk with such an interesting person while eating steak off a sword.

Tomorrow we're leaving to go on a group trip to Rocha, which is about five hours north of Montevideo. It's a beautiful, sparsely-populated beach area and I'm really looking forward to going. One of the places that we're going to see, Cabo Polonio, is impossible to get to unless you ride monster trucks or horses because of the enormous sand dunes! Hardly any people actually live there, but there are beautiful beaches, and I'm really looking forward to going there!