My week in Victoria, AR

The next morning we walked around a bit more and then Lea and I hopped on a bus bound for her place so I could meet her two little girlies. It was a 4 hour bus ride and I wanted to see some of the landscape, however, after 15 minutes of looking pretty much the same as Sask.atchewan, I took a little nap. I was jealous of Lea would doesn't get sick while reading and driving so I listened to my i.Pod. When it got too dark for her to read, we shared my i.Pod and listened to Dane Co.ok and laughed so hard I'm sure the people around us were wondering what the heck we were laughing at. Oh well, we had fun. :)

We got to her town, Victoria, quite late so the girls were already asleep. I visited for awhile with Doug, Lea's hubby, seeing as he was leaving in the morning to go on a speaking engagement for a week.

I wasn't awake when the girls went to school (hey, I'm on vacation, ok?) so I went with Lea to pick them up from school. Salome played a bit shy at first but Cristina was my buddy right from the get go. Soon, Salome warmed up to me and we were all best friends. :)

The only thing that I had to get used to was having supper at 8 pm-ish. After the first day I remembered to snack a little around 5:30 and then I was good to go for the rest of the days. Luckily for me, meat and potatoes is a common meal here so I had no trouble with the food on this trip. :)

The next day we decided to go for a drive so they could show me around town. First, we drove up to the top of the highest hill in town to see the view of the river ... and of course so the girls could pick some flowers.

I just love these pics of the girls. What cute sisters!

Then we decided to go down to the beach at the river.

Awww, what a beautiful Mother and Daugthers picture.

We had lots of fun at the beach ... playing in the sand, looking at the gorgeous scenery ...

and watching Abby chase the birds ...

until I started getting bit by mosquitos, so it was time to head home ... but not before I got my pic taken with these beauties.

Then, it was time to go get some ice cream. That would be dulce de leche on the top and bubble gum on the bottom. Yum-my! The start of my dulce de leche feast began that day.

Next we took Salome to her tennis lesson (I love the pic first pic of her on her tippy toes - she's really working for it!). So cute.

And we took Cristina to her ballet lesson. How adorable is this?

The next day while we were waiting for the girls to finish school (they go from 8 am - 12 pm), we drove around town, picked up some groceries (ham & cheese empanadas are yummy) and Lea took me to this monument of the virgin. I was going to go stand beside it and entitle it "The Two Virgins" but I decided against it. ;)

I just LOOOOOVE the purple trees. So pretty!

This is a picture of the school the girls go to. Next year it will celebrate it's 200th birthday. Cool building, hey?

We picked up some YUMMY treats for dessert after lunch. I believe almost all of them have dulce de leche in them.

That night we went to the town square and walked around for a bit.

I just love this picture of the girls. You can see the mischievousness in Salome's face in this one. hee hee

The church in the square at night.

Lea took me to a lot of shops around the square and I did a TON of shopping. Much jewellery and souvenirs were picked up on this day. I kept saying to Lea, "Stop taking me into such great shops! Danger, danger!" :)

When I was finally done shopping, we went for scrumptious foot long hot dogs for supper.

That night after the girls had gone to bed, I got showed Leana where to find Gl.ee online and now her AND Doug are hooked! :) We're all Gleeks at hearts, aren't we?

Didn't do much the next day except that Leana made me a roast for lunch (lunch is their big meal of the day) and it was SUPER yummy! Thanks, Lea!

This picture SOOOOO emcapsulates little Salome. Funny, with some fire in her. Love this face! I could just pinch those cheeks!

The next day Leana took me into Rosario, however, I'll save that post for tomorrow.

It takes 2 to tango! :)

Final bow

What a fun evening.

And so this concludes my first 3 days in Argent.ina. More to come!

Argentina!!!

Literally the day after the U2 concert, I headed to the airport and got on a plane for Argentina! These were my first glimpses of the Argentine life I was going to live for the next 2 weeks.

My first surprise was how little English was spoken. I tried to talk to my cab driver and he just gave me a blank stare. Sooooo, that was a 45 minute silent ride to my hotel. Once I got to the hotel, their English was a little better. I went to the room and had a little rest while I waited for Leana to arrive. She was only about 1/2 an hour behind me so I didn't have too long to wait. She knocked on the door and I heard, "Helloooooo." I recognized her voice right away and we had a great reunion. Sat and chatted for awhile and then off into Bue.nos Air.es we went. We literally sat at the restaurant and talked ... then walked around looking for some place to have ice cream ... then sat there and talked some more and then went back to the hotel because I was exhausted.

In the morning, our breakfast we included in our stay, so we went around the corner to the restaurant where our vouchers were to be used and this is what we had for breakfast.

6 croissants, orange juice and Cafe Con Leche (coffee with milk) for Lea. Very yummy.

After breakfast we took our trusty map and headed down the street in search of the Cementerio in La Recoleta. Sometime in the summer, my "1000 places to visit before you die" calendar had this place as one of the places to visit because this is where Av.a Pero.n (Ev.ita) is buried. We walked into the cemetary and it was a HUGE maze. As we searched for her grave, we found these other amazing resting places of apparently very important people.

Since these graves were so well adorned, we couldn't image what we would find when we finally found Av.a's grave. We searched and searched (oh, and by this time it had started raining - luckily Lea had thought to bring her umbrella) and even though we had a map of the maze, we had to ask quite a few people. When we finally found it, this is what we saw:

If no one had told me where it was, I would've walked right by it. I was very surprised that for one of the only people I had ever heard of from Argentina (who a movie had been made about), her resting place was nothing as special as all the other ones we had seen. It was a strange feeling walking around this place and we said we definitely wouldn't want to walk around there after dark.

After that tour, we hopped on a bus that was going to take us on a tour of the entire city. As we stopped and picked up more people, the rain picked up as well. At least it was a warm rain.

But we didn't let that dampen our spirits. Here we are at La Ca.sa Rosa.da (Spanish for "The Pink House" - the American's have The Wh.ite House and the Argentine's have The Pink House). The balcony we're standing under is where Evi.ta gave many speaches from. The Argentine government even allowed the filming of the famous “Don’t cry for me Argentina” scene in the movie Evi.ta to take place on the actual balcony. I think I'm going to have to rent that one again now that I've been there.

Our next stop (after letting off the old lady who puked in the back of the bus - poor thing) was in the area called La Bo.ca (mouth of the river). The colourful buildings in the pictures below are a street called Camin.ito. The pictures in the bottom right are of the Bo.ca Stadium which is known among sports fans for La Bombonera, the home of Bo.ca Juniors, one of the world's best known football (soccer, to us) clubs. It was raining quite hard at this time so although I did of course manage to do a bit of shopping, we didn't spend too much time here.

Leana's saying for the day (which ended up being the saying for the whole trip) was, "I think it getting brighter out there," meaning, "I think the rain's letting up." Sometimes she was right, but most of the time it was only a dream. After the tour, our bus dropped us off at a gorgeous mall and Leana got herself some Star.bucks. She was quite happy about that. :) After that we hopped on the subway and headed home.

Just thought I'd show you a couple pictures of our fun hostel. Our power went out that night for about 2 1/2 hours but we just sat in our room with my little reading lamp and chatted and chatted.

The next day we went walking again (how come walking when you're on vacation is expected and not a bother, but I never do it at home except for purposely trying to get some exercise - not just for getting from point A to point B?). Today we were in search of the market. On our way, we passed by this cute man with his dog and when I stopped to take a picture, a lady passed by and said, (in Spanish) "They are both old and good." SO cute!!!

Then, we found ... the market. I don't know if you can see it very well, but in the bottom, middle picture below, the market is along the edge. It was just a bunch of stahls set up with many fun things to look at and of course, to buy. I bought some jewellery here and a great shawl. I bought the shawl from the lady in the picture with me in the bottom right. She was very sweet. I think her name was Carmen, if I remember correctly.

Then we hopped back on the subway (because if it was too far to walk, that was our 2nd choice of transportation) and headed to another mall. Here we are in the subway.

That night we got all gussied up and headed for supper and then to a tango show.

The tango show was awesome. At first it started out with a lot of great dancing and then the owner came out and started talking ... in Spanish ... and talking ... and talking. I had been told that the show was an hour and a half, so after he'd been speaking in Spanish for half an hour, I was getting a little bored and ticked that this guy was speaking in a language I couldn't understand when I wanted to see more dancing! Leana was being great and trying to interpret as much as she could, but he just kept going on and on. Finally, when he was turning in our direction, I purposely put my head against the pillar beside me and looked away as if to look bored. I thought maybe it would click in his head that most people here would be tourists and possibly not speak Spanish. Well, it clicked in his head, but instead of getting on with the show, he STOPPED the show and started speaking DIRECTLY TO ME! He looked right at me and said, "Do you not speak Spanish?" I didn't think he was speaking to me so I just kind of stared back at him and finally said, "Me?" He went on to dim the house lights and put just a spot light on me and proceeded to chat with me for what felt like FOREVER. He asked where I was from, told me to move my chair closer, "No, even closer" and then asked if he could sing to me (which ended up just being "la, la, la" but it was pretty embarrassing none the less.

Finally, they got back to the dancing ...

which was amazing. The pictures are pretty dark because we weren't supposed to be taking pictures so I didn't use my flash. They recreated the scene from Moulin Rouge where they danced and sang "Roxanne" and then sang, "Don't Cry For Me, Argenti.na." I'm going to try to upload that video now.

Season's Greetings! ;)

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Snowball fight!!! Michael & I will take all y'all on!!! :)

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Concert video footage

Get On Your Boots - As you can see, there were a couple of cameras in the way for part of the concert. I wasn't too thrilled about that, but what can you do?

Stand By Me

I wish I had gotten video of when Bono sang Amazing Grace, but I was too in awe and didn't even think to pull out my camera.

Awesome concert ... although I will admit that I enjoyed the Hawaii concert of 2006 much better. They were touring with my favorite album and the barrier between us and the band wasn't as big, so there was always a possibility that one of them might reach out and slap your hand. At this concert there was no chance of that, so that excitement wasn't there ... but still a great concert.

THE concert of the year!

Anticipation for this day had started back in April ... actually, no, that's not true. It started 4 years ago when their last tour ended! :) We bought our tickets back in April and have managed to somehow make it through these past 7 months. We had Floor Tickets which are General Admission (meaning no assigned seating) so we had to get there early. We didn't want to be on the floor at the back of the stadium (is this sounding reminiscent of the trip I took to Hawaii in 2006 to see them when I slept overnight outside the stadium?), so we lined up early. Now, when I saw early, you think I'm a little crazy, right? Well, let me tell you ... we got there at 7 am the morning of the concert and I was number 163 in line ... which means there were 162 people there AHEAD of us. There were some people who had been there since 8 am THE DAY BEFORE! We also met some people who could tout this as their FOURTEENTH concert of this tour alone. Yes, 14th! Ok, now that we've established that I'm not the craziest U2 fan alive, let's move on, shall we?

Here we are waiting out the day in line. It was quite chilly outside so luckily we had the casino behind us to go warm up in every once in a while ... and of course I tried to win a bit of money in the process. No luck this time. :( Unlike in Hawaii, they allowed us to come and go in line once we had our number. That was VERY nice. Brenda and I took a few walks and even got to go back to our hotel room at one point. The best thing about the day was that it didn't start raining until about 5:00 pm and we were inside by 5:30. Whoo hoo!!! Only 1/2 an hour of rain.

The wait paid off as we made it to the front of the line ... yes, FRONT ROW!!!

The Black Eyed Peas opened for them and I was looking forward to it. They have a few very fun songs and they were better than I expected. They all looked directly at us at some point. It was really quite fun. I was pretty pleased with the pics I got.

Then it was on to the main act and the real reason we were all there. U2 took the stage and it ... was ... awesome! Here are the boys.

The Edge stood in front of us for most of the concert, so my best shots are of him. LOVE this one. He has such a distinct sound. It's all about him and his guitar.

Rockin' it out.

The man, Bono, himself.

I can hardly believe I'm in a picture with Bono and The Edge. Ok, so it's not exactly like my pic with Michael Buble, but I'm still in the same frame as them!

Love, love, love them.

Another one of my favorite shots of the night.

Awesome.

So many great pics ... so little time to show you them all. :)

Thanks for another GREAT night, boys! We'll see you in Seattle in June. :)

I'll see if I can add some video in my next post.

Thanksgiving

I forgot to publish this post about Thanksgiving, so although it's a little late, maybe I'll pretend I'm American and then I'd be early! :)

Our friends, Norm and Lori invited us up to their condo in Osoyoos to spend Thanksgiving with them. We had a wonderful time.

We went for a walk one morning and saw the frozen orchards. Although strange, it was really quite beautiful.
Here they are preparing the turkey. Once it was prepared and marinating, we headed out to one of the nearby vineyards.

One night we went to the Blasted Church vineyard for live music, wine and lots of fun.

If you know me at all, you know that I've got a fear of water, but I overcame it yet again and went out kayaking. It was GREAT!

Look at me!!! :)

Deep frying the turkey.

It was a wonderful weekend away. Thanks for the invite, Norm & Lori. Can't wait until next time. Hint, hint. ;)