The hotel is out of commision!

well, we've decided that the Bed and Breakfast on Amado Nervo will be closed for a while for reparations and financial recovery. We're so deep in filth and economic hardship...not to mention illness (yes, I'm sick) that not having people staying with us is a welcome change!

It's been a LONG time since the last time I posted anything (I actually forgot my password for a minute). Since the quilt, we've had 2 more guests and the last one just left on Saturday. I'm going to start my English Classes again today and hopefully get back a routine that I can handle...something that doesn't involve going to money exchanges every couple of days and trying to visit every museum in the second largest city in the world....again.

I've picked up a new habit....for better or worse.....I now drink Yerba Mate. It's an herb that is used almost religiously in South America. It's not the tastiest beverage if you've never had it before, it's definitely an acquired taste....much like beer. Toño's Argentinian friend came for a visit and brought us both mates which are cups specifically used for drinking yerba mate and are generally (aka traditionally) made of gourds. In order to drink the yerba out of the mate, it first needs to be "cured" (the mate, that is, not the herb). In order to do that, one must drink yerba and put the wet, used herb into the mate until the gourd walls turn a bright green color. I'm currently in the process of doing this and I'm told that it could take up to a week before the gourd walls are cured....which means that I must drink mate everyday for at least a week. For now, I'm drinking my mate out of a regular mug and then transferring the herb to our mates .

It's quite a bitter tasting drink and as you can tell, it's not a tea at all. It's more like a big (and when I say big, I mean massively huge) pile of wet plants that you drink with a metal straw (called a bombilla....bombiiiisha if you're from Argentina) until you hear that end of the water slurping sound we Estadounidenses consider so rude. (Toño's bombilla is made of a bullet shell, he's pretty proud of that.) Actually, if you're interested in knowing the etiquette of mate drinking...click here, it's pretty interesting and these "rules" are accurate, I asked Betha!!

Anyway, that's the latest and greatest. here's a closing picture of me, Betha and Toño!