Easter Sunday I found a great little missionary Methodist Church to attend with friendly people and a bilingual service. On Monday, I finally finished my IRS tax filling extension and confirmed my reservation for the Inca Trail, removing two urgent items that had been on my to-do list for over a month. Also, I finally met up with and spent the evening with Leigh, my friend from Buenos Aires who is now studying abroad for a year in Mendoza.
Having done all of those things just supported the sensation that my I have completed my time in Argentina, a place in which I had been for 2 months. I've come to like Argentina very much and have experienced amazing hospitality and genuine friendliness there. From the platenses I met in Rio, to my marvelous host mother, to people I talked to on the street, to the workers at the hostel in Mendoza, they've been friendly, helpful, and genuinely interested in getting to know me. I hope that I can help put to rest the unfair reputation Argentineans have for being arrogant and rude, I experienced the exact opposite. Buenos Aires may be the most polite city that I've visited in my life. Argentineans are very proud people, especially when it comes to their landscape and culture, but they are no more proud of their country and its beauty than I am of California and the United States.
Crossing the Andes mountain range this morning was spectacular, we were so high and there was so little vegetation that it was as if we were driving on Mars. Once we crossed the border, however, I felt an immediate difference in the place I was in. What it is, and what it will mean, I don't know yet, but do know that I should be leaving Chile by the beginning of next week, so I won't have much time here. Thus far I have been reminded of home by what is a very California-like landscape, with dry mountain ranges and very fertile valleys and basins. This evening I will return to the Pacific Ocean and my experiences of Chile will begin.
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