La Stala

We made it (again)! we had a 6 or 7 hour bus ride from santiago, chile to mendoza, argentina. we had to go up through the mountains and it was snowing. so when we passed through customs, which was like a sort of a giant garage/tunnel there was a giant hole in the roof and it was snowing inside onto all of us. we got to mendoza and searched through the bus station and found a place that had a bus leaving exactly at that moment. so we bought tickets and ran to the bus, which took an hour or maybe more. but this bus had random stops on the side of the highway so we didn´t know when to get out because it´s not like there were big friendly signs. there was a huge family next to us slash behind us that was playing this song on their cell phone over and over the whole time. the words i understood were ¨eres mi chica sexy¨, which means you are my sexy girl. so an hour of that and we finally made it to tunuyan. where we were let off. on the side of the road. with no idea at all where to go. we knew we were supposed to take a taxi to the house. so we found what looked like it might be sort of the main road and walked up it. everyone- no joke- every single person that we passed stared. and stared hard. because turns out the asians don´t come here too often. so two foreigners with huge backpacks, one of them asian, walking around looking lost. finally we found a taxi man. and he drove us there. on the way i told him what we were here for and he asked me about mormons from utah. i think a lot of missionaries come here.
anyway, so we made it to the farm. there were some french kids there wwoofing too. but the family agostini has 4 kids, who are by far the best kids in the world. they are all super nice and behave and help. antonella is 14 and helps nance and i learn spanish. maurizio is 13. he is really funny and reminds me of craigy a little. nicolas is 16, doesn´t talk as much but i get the vibe that he´s a really good kid. and sofia is 18. she´s nice but i don´t know too much about her. laura is the mom and she is a teacher and luis is the dad. he works on the farm all day.
so far nance and i have cleared ground and built sort of a trench for grape vines, weeded a whole lot, fed pigs a lot of times, milked a cow, fed chickens, cleaned up rabbit poo, and i got stung on my booty crack by a wasp. no joke. not quite sure how it got there, because i was wearing pants. anyway... and we eat with the family. the food is delicious. laura is a supermom. she works, comes home, cooks lunch, works on the farm, cooks the afternoon meal, washes clothes, cooks dinner. she does everything. also, we eat four times a day: breakfast at 9, then lunch at 2 or 3, which lasts about 2 hours. then mediatarde, which is at 7 or so. then dinner at 11. then bed. and everything over again.
there´s so much more but i don´t have time. so anyway, i´m having lots of fun. learning lots. more later, dearest dear loves....