One Year, A Thousand New Experiences: Day 4

Day 4 was a special day. Not only did we arrive in Puerto Iguazu (which is a beautiful city), but it was also my friend Kenndall from Canada birthday.

In the morning, we walked we saw the river separating Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. So though I didn't get to visit these countries, I saw them from about a kilometer away haha.

In the afternoon we checked into a beautiful hotel and then got the rest of the day to explore the town and do what we wish. So naturally, seeing it was 40 degrees and humid out, the first thing we did was jump into the hotels swimming pool and then went and got ice cream.

Once we semi succeeded in cooling ourselves off, me and the girls went out shopping! We went and saw street venders and went into local stores. Kenndall bought herself the coolest pair of sandals for her birthday and my other friends bought themselves handmade purses from the street venders. I unfortunately didn't by anything (but don't worry, I made up for it later on in the trip! haha).

For lunch, I found a Chinese food restaurant which was the first one I had seen in Argentina. When I asked the birthday girl if she wanted to go there, I don't think I have ever seen a girl so ecstatic. Actually all us girls were. None of us had eaten oriental food in 5 months. The restaurant was really funky and awesome and the food was great! The walls were covered in peoples writing and the restaurant owners let us write on the walls too.

At night, we went to a forest reserve that centered around the preservation of trees. They had some 1500 year old trees which was awesome and also, they had a stand that sold Yerba Mate ice cream. It was surprisingly pretty good.

Later that night we returned to the hotel and had dinner where we sang Happy Birthday to Kenndall in every language we knew. The Rotarians bought her a cake and I ended up being the official cake cutter. I never before realized how hard it is to cut a single cake for 50 people. But I somehow managed!

After dinner we went swimming! After swimming, we went back to the hotels to find a cockroach in one of my friends rooms. It turns out she had 3 cockroaches in her room so we spent the next 45 mins jumping from bed to bed with shoes and broom sticks in hand trying to kill them. It was hilarious. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much. The girl who killed the first cockroach had her head turned away as she repeatedly hit it with a broom while screaming. After we saw blood splatter everywhere (did you know cockroaches bleed like humans? I couldn't believe suck a small body could hold so much blood...), we had to slowly coax the broom from her hand. She was from California and that was her first encounter killing a cockroach. I managed to kill the second one, with not much more grace than our California girl, and then it was a group effort (Jorge (our Rotary counselor), Nils from Germany (who basically wasn't afraid to even pick the cockroach up, yuck!) and me). We hit the third cockroach 3 dang times before the thing would finally die. By the end of our cockroach killing spree, the room was a mess, we were all on a adrenaline high, and everyone was laughing their asses off. I must say, it was a very entertaining and enjoyable night!