Reflections

It's been four months. Cuatro meses, y no lo se nada de nada.
I feel empty. vacio y llena, al mismo tiempo.
Where am I? Que es ese lugar en q estoy viviendo, sobreviviendo?
I have no idea how everything is all at once the same and foreign. Extrano, extrano, lo extrano, te extrano.
My thoughts are mingled. AndA, ParrA!
Mingled and tasteless. Rojas, azules, griz, transpariente.
Four months. One left. pero cuatro no es nada, no es nada aca, haciendo nada.
Sitting on my hands, rising to my feet. Me cayo. CADA dia, me cayo.
This world is no longer turning. Esta estretchiendo. I want to push it back it. Guardalo adentro.
I stopped learning four months ago. y fue todo lo q queria hacer antes. Ahora, q. se. yo.

Hardly anyone gets it. Whisper, whisper los ecos de la alma adentro. los ecos de la unica cosa q no puedo controlar. A donde voy? Por adonde vas?

My fear was that I wouldn't find "myself." Ahora, es q no la voy a poder reconizar. Y si puedo, no la voy a querrer. I am many. many mini mes. many mini meses.

I've found I have a second home...

So,
as clique as it is, the title runs true. Perhaps its my third home, perhaps it's just the beginning of a stream of places where I can feel home that will lead me to the conclusion ultimately that we are all just creatures in the same world but regardless, leaving is not easy.
I am such a mess of mixed emotion right now. I can't wait to get home and be with what was once so normal but I fear that it will all feel strange. What will I do when I can't describe my experiences in English, or worse, if no one cares? What's going to happen as I start losing contact with my friends here and I realize that I'll never ever see them again? What about the materialism that I won't be able to escape in the States but that doesn't exist here? This is all very odd. I have a feeling I'll be crying at both ends of the flights for different reasons. oh man. Te quiero Argentina-- don't cry for me!

I should have been a cowgirl.... not really.

This weekend I discovered that no matter how much I long to be a cowgirl, it’s just not happening. The “great” outdoors is fantastic but I’m learning rather quickly that I am a city girl at heart.
This weekend, I spent three days on top of a horse in the mountains. The first two days were just great but by day three I was longing for my bed and stable ground.
A horseback trail ride in Spanish is called a cabalgata. The company through which I take riding lessons offers weekend one-day cabalgatas frequently, and as we had a holiday on Thursday (Labor Day), they decided to offer a three-day excursion. We piled into trucks (one which carried a horse in its trailer), and headed to the mountains. We had to drive for about two hours, the last of which was on a dirt road, before we ended up in a little town called Cumbrecita. This was Wednesday night. We spent the night in an amazing hostel (there was HEATING and I only shared the bathroom with one other person! That’s better than my house!). In all, we were 17—three American students, 1 guide and his son that lived in the mountains, and 12 Argentine adults who pretty much knew what they were doing on top of a horse and had been doing these cabalgatas for years. In the morning we had breakfast (homemade bread, homemade marmalade and mate, every day), then picked our horses and we off. I realized that I had made a bad choice almost immediately. When we had to cross a little bridge less than five minutes after leaving, my horse went wild and ran directly to the river. Inevitably, I was freaking out and pulling on the reigns, which only pissed the horse off more and made him start tossing his head and probably start cussing as much as I was. Anyway, everyone was yelling at me to “Dejele tomar!” (Let him drink!), so I gave in and sat there contemplating whether I would lose my money if I turned around and walked home on my own two feet.
So eventually we were off! Little did I know, the land that we were exploring was covered with rocks and narrow passages. I learned quickly. The views were amazing, as we continued climbing, climbing up rock after rock. Luckily, steep, winding trails meant that we didn’t have to trot or gallop. One comedian in the group wore out the phrase “VAMOS TROPAS” (Let’s go troops!”) very very quickly. He continued relentlessly to belly it out for the entire three days and eventually we were all yelling “SHUT UP!” whenever he started carrying on. Anyway, approaching the tops of mountains we would occasionally hit a patch of plain grass, on which we would completely abandon the trails and take off trotting. I’m pretty sure we paved our own way without a clue for where we were heading for the majority of that first day.
Lunchtime came and we stopped at the first sign of civilization that we had encountered all weekend. A little house sat in the middle of the plains and as we tied our horses to trees, we were met with quite the pleasant surprise. Snow began to lightly fall. Then it picked up and we were basically in the middle of a mini-blizzard. For a Southern girl, I thought the world had ended and we had entered some twilight zone. We were all ecstatic, and those who had a signal were on their cell phones telling the whole world. We took refuge in the little dining room and were served an amazing asado and proceeded to drink more wine than we should have been considering we’d have to mount horses in a bit. Someone pulled out a flask of whiskey and I became confused as to whether I was in an old Western or a study abroad program. The snow tapered off right as we finished our dulce and cheese desert. We loaded up the troops again and fortunately found that the precip had not stuck much, so we were off again. We rode through the afternoon until we approached the next stop, the guide’s home. His mom was incredible and met us with hot coffee and warm homemade bread. Some of us walked to the nearby SCHOOL, which houses 70+ kids for three weeks a month between September and May. The kids weren’t there when we went but the director and some teachers were, and they gave us a little tour. The place runs on solar power. In the middle of the mountains, in the middle of nowhere Latin America, there is this progressive green movement. The school hosts local kids ages 5-18 and prepares them for technical or agricultural careers. Everything is amazingly organized and some of the adults were commenting that it was much better run than many schools in Córdoba. We said our thanks and headed back over the treacherous rocks as the sun was going down to go to the house/refuge. On the way down was a herd of sheep and a caged pig. Dinner?
It turns out that dinner was actually goat, I think, and chicken. We had another asado but the whole time in the mountains I had no idea what kind of meat I was eating. I bought a goat skin in the morning, so I think that’s maybe what we were cooking. After dinner, we continued the lunch tradition and drank some wine and Fernet, trying to reduce the weight of our saddle bags in the morning. This led to a big dance. We turned up the music and moved the dinner table to make room to dance Corteto and some other dance that is unique to Argentina but that I can never remember the name of. Corteto is by far the most fun dance I have ever experienced. It consists of a series of twirls and silly hand movements, and the music just makes you move your body. I love it. Check out the Mona if you get a chance. They are the most-famous cuarteto band from Córdoba, and they have created lyrics for each one of the neighborhoods in the city. After that, they went on to create rhythms for each region and province of Argentina. I think they might have gotten big enough to do the same for various Latin American countries. Okay, enough of the history lesson. The brother of our guide was a dance instructor and taught me this other dance that I can’t remember the name of. Cumbra I think. It was a little different but fun none-the-less. The entire night left us stripping off our layers and made us nice and warm to sleep in the non-heated home. Luckily, the family was awesome, and each bed had a ton of covers so I slept very well.
The next day was more of the same. After about three hours of riding, we had geiso of noodles for lunch (delicious!) in a tiny home in the mountains then continued riding for about five hours that afternoon until we reached the next refuge. The owner was a drunk, and we discovered that we would be sleeping 14 in one room. The beds were like bunks BUT four across for three levels. They told me I was too big to sleep on the top layer because whenever someone got on it, it noticeably sunk in. So I slept on the side nearest the window. And when I say “slept,” I mean I worked on getting frostbite. I wore two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks, a tee shirt, sweater, sweatshirt, and ski coat to bed with one single blanket and shivered the entire night. For some reason, my toes were absolutely freezing and in the morning I could barely feel them. I might have actually slept for 30 minutes total. This left me very cranky for the day. My crazy horse didn’t help matters. So I spent the last day climbing Mount Champaqui, which is known as a place for hiking and mountain biking, very unhappily. We ran into pack mules, packed with saddle bags and running much faster than our own horses, “huge four by fours” (regular Jeeps), and bikers. We rode for a ridiculous amount of time, and I wanted to kill my horse as we climbed really steep passes of rock, and he wanted to pass everyone without stopping when I pulled back. When we had to pass through a gate and I tried to lean down and open it, he kept walking through, getting us both stuck between the gate and the fence. I hit it hard enough to make the poor thing go off galloping through a pasture. You can imagine for yourselves what this must have looked like. Eventually, I traded horses with the retard little one and it was much better. We descended into some pine forest, and I thought I was in Seashore State Park in Virginia. After stopping for a bit to eat, we rode for about two more hours to the base from which we started. I wound up sleeping for twelve hours that night and then twelve again the consecutive.
So that was my weekend. Seven weeks left here. For me, it’s an odd amount of time—it’s so much and so little at the same time. About 50 more nights without heat. But only 6 or 7 more asados?!

Buenos Aires and cold weather

So I guess maybe it’s time for an update…

Things are swell down in Argentina, if a little cold. Winter’s approaching, and I’m not a fan. I went to Buenos Aires last weekend and when we got back into Cordoba and stepped off the plane, I was ready to shoot myself it was so cold. It actually got down to 3 degrees C, but what I didn’t realize or plan on was being colder inside my house than outside. Nope, we don’t have heat. So I spent a few nights this week sleeping in sweatpants, long-sleeved shirts with sweatshirts and socks. Plus two blankets. I feel ungrateful for complaining but really now. Oh well, I will survive it.

As for Buenos Aires, I love it. I am ready to move there. I’m glad that I’m studying in Cordoba because it’s smaller and more culture/language immersion BUT I would love to spend a couple of weeks in BA. We went on a city tour, a province tour, saw the stadium for a big-time soccer team (BOCA JUNIOR!), went to a tango show, and shopped at a huge artisan fair.

Highlights:

-Team Paula is not fun. Our first tour guide gave us all stickers that said Team Paula and continuously made cheesy jokes about her Japanese decent. She wouldn’t let us use the bathroom on the bus nor at any of the five stops we made in the four-hour-long tour that we had to rush to immediately after getting into BsAs after 12 hours on a bus.

-We watched some movie where Ashton Kutcher gets engaged to a black girl and has to meet her family. Spanish translations and dubbings of “Oh I know you didn’t” and “I’m gonna beat yo ass” are NOT equivalent to their English counterparts.

-Picking out your own meat from a huge selection of asado straight from the grill at a restaurant is one of the most amazing ideas I’ve seen here. The guys grilling were so nice and told us all of the names of the cow parts. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet but the intestines are actually delicious, though a little chewy. We don’t ask about what’s inside of them.

-Going out in BA is an experience. First, our cabby dropped us off like 10 blocks from where we needed to go. I told him that we were German and tried to put on a German accent for the entire ride, and that was interesting. I proceeded to wear heels for 13 hours straight that night, eventually making it back to the hotel at 6:30 am for an 8:15 wake-up call. Also not a good idea when you have no time to nap the next day. My feet still hurt.

-Tango shows are incredible, even if the food served is still cold. The show we went to was so much fun. It was in this little corner restaurant and there was dancing, singing, acting, harp-playing. We loved it.

-International film festivals in BA tend to get filled up. Running late, as ALWAYS, we got to this film that my film professor had wanted us to go to that was outside but all of the seats were taken and we had to stand on the sides crammed together. Nevertheless, the movie was good. It was interesting to hear and see a mix of Spanish, English, and Italian. Somehow, I followed.

-Big artisan fairs are NEAT! Haha we have a street for selling artwork here (where my family works) but this was HUGE. There was entertainment (tango dancers, statues that came to life upon tipping them, magicians, etc) plus amazing artwork, clothing, knick-knacks, etc. The diversity on those streets was incredible—we definitely spotted some fellow Americans.

-Airports are much more lax in South America. Security wasn’t a joke but it really wasn’t all that big of a deal, and no one’s luggage got lost.

This entry suffers from lengthiness

Causes for update: Mendoza & Semana Santa.

It started on Wednesday. My increasingly routine school day began like any other—toast with homemade jam and instant coffee. I ran up to school via my super-cool rattling bike to meet with my professor from Clemson about classes, dismayed at my wasted bike-induced transpiration when she asked me to come back in the afternoon and thus turned around and rode home in time for almuerzo. I ate. My host mom made me a cake because I was leaving. I love this woman. I packed some and headed back to plan my schedule for next fall (!) and to attend my one obligation of the day—a charla (chat/panel) on human rights. It was hard to follow but interesting to note that the tour guide from the day anterior, the one who was a desaparecido, spoke. Anyway. I then headed to DINO! Dino is a “supermarket” but oh so much more than that. It is actually a shopping mall with a little baby amusement park out front, a movie theater, and fresh groceries! I should run their ad campaign because I am in love with it. Anyway, I went with the two guys I would be traveling with and we got yummy fruit and miscellaneous items and this glorious slice of heaven is walking distance from my house so I headed home where fresh-made cheese rolls were waiting. Yep. My older “sister” had made a ton of these balls that are stuffed with cheese and pretty much incredible. I hung around for a couple of hours and then it was time to head to the bus terminal downtown. I made it there with my entirely too-large bag and was pretty awed. This place is a small (relative to real) airport, essentially. Larger than GSP, there were a ton of companies with their appropriate busses and excursions all over the country. Tickets are reasonable, especially if you are going somewhere close (The next town over is $AR 5 to ride!). At 23:00 we loaded our cochecama bus. Cochecama= the company’s best attempt at putting beds in a bus. The seats leaned back pretty far and there was a platform that folded out for your feet. I felt awkward leaning into the people behind me but my guy friends in front of me had no trouble fully extending. We met some boys from San Diego on the bus and were very pleased to be re-introduced to our native tongue. What was even better were the 80s music videos we got to listen to for the beginning of the ride. They had all the classic American artists, and I’m pretty sure I kept just about everyone awake with my amazing voice. I slept on and off until we got to Mendoza (stopping first in San Luis) at around 11 a.m. We had an hour to find our hostel and check in. We saved our money for a taxi and walked through the city to our address. My bags were heavy and it was kind of far but the city was awesome.

Mendoza is definitely my favourite place to have visited thus far. It has a central plaza with four smaller plazas at its corners. In between there are pedestrian walk-ways with shops and restaurants and travel agents. There were people playing music in the streets and everything was very clean. When we arrived at our hostel the receptionist didn’t seem to recognize the name with which we had put down a deposit and we waited half-expectant of being rejected and sleeping on the nice park benches. However, he found beds for us. The three girls stayed in a dorm of 10 beds and the boys next door in a similar set-up (We were supposed to have two rooms of two and three beds but we didn’t let it bother us). When we walked into the room the girls that had already staked the place stared us down. Apparently they were supposed to have their own room too. They were snobby Americans but we dealt. Five of them and three of us made eight, with two extra beds. Well, two more girls showed up together. And another girl. And then a guy. The total was either 12 or 13 for the 10 beds at one point but somehow we lost some people and ended up with 10. It was a mess but each night cost us $10, and there was a pool and a kitchen! So the first day we just hung out, ate, made salad and chicken for dinner and planned a trip for the next day… to go rafting!

We decided on the all-day rafting trip rather than the dinky hour-and-a-half one. It was awesome. They picked us up at the hostel in a van and took us to the mountains where rapids were formed by water flowing from melting ice at the tops of the Andes!! We rafted for four hours, with a long break in the middle. During the break we got to stop at an abandoned train station (the trains here no longer run unfortunately due to some kind of government mess). Anyway, the guides laid out a spread of fresh fruit and sandwich bread and lunch meat (they love salami here and it is sooo much better than the states) and of course a bit of Mendozian wine. It was an incredible lunch and we all looked very funny and extraterrestrial wandering about this ghost town in black wetsuits. We got to raft with two or three Australians, a Finnish man, some guys from Buenos Aires and a girl from Germany I think. We had the Finnish in our boat so our tour guide guided us in English. It was absolutely amazing. Our guide was really fun, guiding us onto a large rock so that we did a turn thing and almost sending one of our big macho outdoorsy boys into the water. No one in our boat fell in but two people in another one did—one was the guide!!! It was soo funny to watch him run along the shore to catch up. I heard that one of the guys in the boat threw him in—they were pretty rowdy. Regardless, I was way less scared than I imagined I would be and I can’t wait to raft again.

That night, needless to say, we were exhausted. We met up with the guys from Buenos Aires for pizza (Argentine pizza often has ham and big tomatoes and eggs on it) and then hit up the ice cream shop. They had wine flavoured ice cream. I couldn’t make it up. I returned to the chaos of my room and passed out. The next morning we hit up the bodegas (wineries). We were planning on doing the bike tour for four hours but by the time everyone got up and got together and we went to buy groceries and catch a bus, it wasn’t worth it. Not to mention we couldn’t find the place to rent the bikes. It had amazing ads in the city but was hidden in a small store at the actual location. Odd. Regardless, we walked from the bus stop to the first stop of the “tour,” which was actually a wine museum. We ate an amazing lunch that we had brought—two loaves of bread, apples, pear, two packs of cheese, two packs of salami, and cookies… for only five people. We were very hungry and ate just about everything except for one slice of salami, which we attempted to feed to one of many stray dogs wandering around. The second stop that we walked to was labeled “liquors, chocolates y dulces (sweets).” We liked the sound of that. Worth noting: They blasted Norah Jones when we walked in and a guide was like “I love her!” We got to see all of the liquors that they make and then we each got to try a shot. These liquors included chocolate, dulce de leche, mandarin, and Absinth (guess which one I tried). We also got chocolate samples. I think I might move to this place.

After catching the bus home and tired once again we wound up going to a Mexican restaurant with a friend we had met from France (and who was studying in English/ currently attends school in Buenos Aires). The Buenos Aires guys met up with us afterwards and we walked around the central plaza, which was full of people and fun things like magic shows. I got ice cream again. Tiramisu flavor is amazing PS.

Next morning: check out and back to the terminal. Our bus left at 10pm so we bought tickets to catch a bus to the mountains. Great decision. We arrived at this little town on the river that boasts a thermal spa and water park as well as amazing mountains. We ate some empanadas (yum!) and headed out to find ourselves a hiking path. (Who needs guides??) The guys we were with are very outdoorsy Southern men, so they were in Heaven. I must say I was too. We walked around some more abandoned railroad tracks then trekked up to a big Virgen figurine, from which we continued up a mountain for quite a while. It was beautiful. One of the girls in the group has arthritis so she stopped for a bit and we didn’t want to leave her so we didn’t quite get to the top but VERY close. We didn’t realize how far we had gone until we looked up and the cima was all of a sudden right there. We were all very giddy, and getting down was an adventure—you have no idea how steep something is until you try going DOWN. Haha. But we made it and spent the rest of the time checking out local artisan goods and wines until we hitched a bus back to the terminal and then another to Córdoba. I slept the entire way, even missing breakfast!! We got into Córdoba at around 8 and I walked into my house just after 9, after which I immediately showered and drank a coffee. I didn’t mean to but managed to sleep more—from 11 to 1. Pathetic. It was now Monday. We had classes off because of a national holiday of remembrance so I headed back into the central at around 5:30 to watch the historical march at 6. It was incredible. I am so glad I went. There were tons of blocks of people lined up—in the front are the grandparents of the desaparecidos, behind them the parents and behind them children—each had their signs with photos of their loved ones that they haven’t seen since the 70s and don’t know where are. After this group were independents, then political groups with their own flags and often chants, drums, etc. It was awesome. We stood and watched til the end and then walked back up to the front after which we went to eat a mereanda (the third meal, before dinner here) at an outdoor café. After this, which must have lasted about an hour, we walked back and the march was still going on! It was really moving. During the day they dropped 30,000 different poems from planes that mark the 30,000 desaparecidos. I picked up a few and took a bunch of photos.

Today marked the return to school—pretty uneventful. One thing that sticks out is how slack all the teachers are being—for me, it’s way different from the States—each professor was like “well I know that yall probably had long weekends, traveling and such, so I’m going to give you less work.” It’s just the opposite in the US, where a break often means more time to get work done. The mindset with regards to rest and free time is so distinct from our culture. My host mom takes a nap every afternoon but then we spend two hours at the dinner table. It seems as if there is never time to get work done but it’s as if the expectations aren’t as high just because we are all expected to take in our time with host families and Argentine friends—if we walk into class late because we were chatting with another professor, no worries. If we can’t get work done because we don’t understand it or don’t have time, the professor will give us an extension in class or postpone in without an email or office hour visit. When I go home on the bus at lunch time, it is packed with school children riding home to spend a couple of hours at home with their families, and my dad doesn’t leave for work until around 10 and comes back at 1 for lunch! I’m afraid I’m getting a little too used to this style of life—tonight I’m going out to a movie at 10 and who knows what afterwards. And it’s a Tuesday.

Only other news: I think I’m going trekking in Carlos Paz this weekend for a day. It’s 5 pesos to take the bus. I’ve decided that I need to travel as much as possible while I’m still here. In two weeks we head to Buenos Aires as a Clemson group. Hooray for dirty cities and pretty operas!

If anyone made it to the end of this post, I’m very proud, and I will give you a sticker when I return.

Nunca Mas

So, I’ve been here for over a month and a half. I’m going home in three. This is all very incredible to me. I have already learned so much—language, culture, politics, history—that I can’t believe I didn’t know any of this stuff before. How could I have missed the whole Menem era and the desaparecidos?? How had I never had mate before? Why am I so dependent on the Internet on the States and why don’t I walk more?? Also, how is it possible that I thought I knew any Spanish before I got here?
In other news, I went to a historical museum in Centro today and it was one of the most interesting and moving excursions of my life. This week is Human Rights Week here in Argentina—it’s a big deal. Monday is a national holiday to celebrate human rights and there will be a big march through the city by organizations as well as general public. I might try to participate or at least go check out some of the events on Monday. Anyway, back to my museum. It is directly next to the Cabildo and Catedral, which are really important historical symbols to the city. Well this museum is dedicated to human rights because it is the location of where the government detained the desaparacidos and tortured them. People were yanked from their houses in the middle of the night—our tour guide was going home from work at around 8 to his full house of 15 family members when the police captured him—and then blindfolded and taken to this building, stripped of all their belongings and tortured in various ways. These were just common people who had some affiliation with a leftist but often through a long-removed niece or something. The first wave of prisoners were leftists; they were followed by close family members—women and children included—and then by any coworkers, more distant relatives, etc. Only 5% of the population was leftist but hoy en dia everyone here can name someone they know who was imprisoned like this. It was eerie to walk the halls and try not to imagine the heinous crimes against humanity done here. We read a banned children’s book and saw a wall of photos of perfectly normal human beings who are still considered missing. No one knew where people went when they disappeared and if they never came back, where they were killed or their bodies were sent. Sometimes people would just be pulled from their homes just to show back up at work some time later. No one questioned where they went or said anything when they returned. It was just a fact of life… in the 70s. The fact that this was happening so recently—when my parents were my age—makes it seem unreal, impossible. I guess that’s how future foreign exchange students will view what’s going on in the Middle East in another few decades. I’m just floored. The number of banned books due to fear of liberty and free expression was shocking. Not to mention the fact that this happened to the precious man guiding our tour. Tomorrow he is speaking at my University at a panel that I am going to.
I digress back to my little material life.
Tomorrow at 11pm starts my Semana Santa! That means vacation! Yay. I had tried to make it to Bariloche in Patagonia or to the Iguazu Falls that border Brazil but both of those trips are 23 hours both ways in a bus and expensive, and I only have 5 days. Plus, Semana Santa is a HUGE holiday here, so these places are going to be packed full and we couldn’t find any accommodations. Nevertheless, I leave at 11pm on a bus (with beds!) to Mendoza. MMM Wine country. I hope to go rafting and do winery tours. If nothing else, we are staying in a hostel in the center of their Centro so we are going to have access to all transportation and good food and such. I’m very excited. School is becoming a drag. Last night I went out (it was St. Patty’s Day) to play pool and such but came home early—2 or 2:30 so that I could wake up and write an essay. So, I awaken at 7 and spend all morning looking up words of architectural terminology and once again visiting the theme of the damn Jesuits (we are all exhausted of them!), write this paper complete with bibliography and prepare a PowerPoint. Then go to school at 10 so that I will have time to print, do that, and spend more time revising my PP, just to go to class and have the professor tell us that she’s not collecting the assignment and instead wants us to do something different and more visual—now we have to draw or print out aspects and analyze them individually on colored paper. Ok well I don’t own colored paper or a printer and I can’t draw and everyone’s traveling this weekend and I JUST SPENT ALL MORNING ON YOUR PAPER. Oh well. I don’t follow half of what she babbles on about anyway. She’s never taught foreigners.
Anyway, this is how classes are going. Every day I crawl home with a headache from all the Spanish but it’s definitely improving. Plus, our professor from Clemson is here this week (the poor thing is spending her spring break running around trying to fix and set up every thing—I appreciate this woman so much) and so we are all very happy about that, letting her know about everything that is not working out, such as writing papers for no reason. Outside of school, things have settled into a comfortable routine—I no longer have trouble getting around, I am not afraid to talk to locals, the food is still good and I think that my body is finally beginning to get used to the eating schedule here.
Random note: last weekend I went to Mar Chiquita. I recommend the town but not the local museum—it’s four salas big with fossils and dead/stuffed animals. I walked out and went to watch the real natural science…outside. There were a bunch of flying flamingos. That was neat. Also, I don’t recommend touring abandoned Nazi hotels. They are just creepy.
I don’t really have much else to say except that I’m going to work on uploading pictures but it’s difficult due to limited Internet access. Also, GO TIGERS! Happy March Madness. I am sooo proud of my tigres for making it to the ACC finals, and I found a way to watch all tournament games online for free, so I just have to make sure that I have someplace to watch them. I don’t have much other commentary at the moment on collegiate basketball because I’m SO BEHIND! I can’t believe I just missed the second half of this entire season. When did that happen?!?! Closing note: How is it that we are a 5 seed and finished second in the ACC, beating out Duke and finishing behind a #1 seed, and we have to play Villanova in the first round?!! That’s silly. I guess we take what we can get and pull out the V regardless.

Viaje al Noroeste

Lots of news. This one includes llamas and sheep and rainforests, so you don’t want to miss it.

Yes, last week we went to the Northeast. Google Salta, Tucuman, and Tafi de Valle if you wish. We left school at 9pm and traveled all night. We stopped at a gas station for dinner for 45 minutes. Meals here are never “grab and go,” even at gas stations. Afterwards, I managed to sleep off and on a little bit for 5 hours until we stopped to eat pastries and coffee on the bus near our destination at 7:00. I had been up for about an hour watching our bus weave around these hairpin turns going up the mountains. It was still dark but still incredible to watch. When we stopped, the sun was just beginning to come up and we were in front of a lake, with a little town twinkling on the other side. After stretching, admiring the view, and eating, we boarded the bus again and headed to a little town to go trekking! We spent the rest of the morning walking up this little mountain range thing, where we saw wild horses also climbing and had a view of the whole town. I decided on the location of my future home, where I’ll live with my horses while serving at a local little restaurant.

Lunch was at the bottom of the mountain in a hostel. So, when in the mountains of Argentina, you might expect indigenous-themed décor, or maybe cowboy-esque motifs. Something of this sort, right? Wrong. This hostel boasted drawings of Che and tie-dye. On the ceiling someone had painted “ONE LOVE,” and they played Bob Marley and other reggae the entire time that we were there. We ate empanadas and stew with flan for desert. Reluctantly, we had to reboard the bus to head to our own hostel in another town.

We stayed in a much more “typical Argentine” hostel. Firstly, the town was tiny. The hostel was situated on one of the sides of the plaza, which contained just about all that the town had to offer, other than the Museum of Pachimama. The hostel was fine—really nothing to report there, but the museum was interesting. Outside, there were all these architectural artifacts and inside was mostly indigenous paintings and information. The tour guide spoke very few words, quickly, and with a clipped accent. I understood next to nothing, but I’m pretty sure that the Cordobeses didn’t either. That night we ate dinner at the same restaurant that we would eat at for the rest of the weekend, save one meal. It was near the hostel, and we were served locra. Locra- n.­- stew-like substance unique to rural Argentina consisting of corn, steak, potatoes, and 20 additional undistinguishable ingredients. This was the same stuff they served at Borratarán. So, it wasn’t that bad, but I couldn’t eat more than half of it. This stuff is made to fuel the back-roads workers and cowboys. “Corn fed” finally hits home—did someone say Nebraska?

Anyway, we were all exhausted and ready to sleep after our 2-hour meal. So I slept, fitfully, and woke up to board the bus once again. This time, we were headed for a winery! This place was really cool. The weather here is so perfect for wine production that the roads were lined for miles and miles with grape trees and bodegas, or production centers. We stopped at a very large one and got a tour concluding in a tasting. They produce this amazing sweet white wine that we all went ga-ga for.

From the bodega we went to the town of Salta for lunch and a visit. This place was awesome. Apparently that night was a local carnaval or festival, so there were a lot of people milling around all day. While sitting outside at a restaurant for lunch, much happened. First, across the street a truck pulled up, behind which they began unloading raw cow carcasses in front of a butcher shop. I didn’t eat my empanadas. Seriously, this was disgusting for me. One man would unload and another would sling this very fresh slab of cow back over his shoulder into the store. No one around was phased. I felt sick for the rest of the day. Secondly, on a lighter note, there was a very dark-skinned man out front on the patio playing this drum-like instrument. He was very good and the sound was almost Caribbean. Also notable, as we were eating, a handful of local venders came up to us with their products. One was selling coca leaves, like the same ones from which you make cocaine. This is the common remedy for altitude sickness—in the Andes, hikers carry it. You chew the leaves and swallow the saliva from it (SKOAL ring ring a bell?). The effect is similar to mate- it’s a stimulant. I didn’t try it.

But, after lunch, I did try a three-person bicycle! This was by-far the most amusing thing I have done in Argentina. My friend KC and I made our friend Juan drive, and as 30 min only cost 4 pesos (US $1.33) for all three of us, the bike was clearly a piece of shit. KC’s handle bars didn’t work, so she held onto me the whole time, and after a while we realized that the brakes were also broken. Thus, Juan would yell “PARE! PARE!” to stop, and the two of us would put our feet on the ground, puttering to an eventual stop. KC’s feet didn’t reach the ground, so she had to simply stop pedaling. We ran into a car once. Remember when I said there were a lot of people milling around? This was a problem when trying to navigate a three-seater through the streets. The whole endeavor was a catastrophe, but we all agree that it was well-worth the 4 pesos for the photos. The rest of the day was anti-climatic, save for one episode on the bus, which I describe later.

I bought a dulce de leche ice cream and then we headed back to the bus for the afternoon trip to the mountains. Different mountains this time. Rock formations and the Cerros de siete colores (hills of seven colors). We went via bus and made 5 stops to get out, walk around, explore, etc. The views were awesome, but all I can say is to look at the photos, because there’s not much to tell outside of them. Our tour guide did sing in this native style that is just amazing—I’ll try to upload a video.

We dropped the tour guide back off in Salta, and as we were on the bus, encountered a group of young drunk boys. It started off with some innocent heckling, but then this one guy—he couldn’t have been older than 14—started chasing our bus and dancing. At one point when we were stopped, he actually CLIMBED onto a parked truck next to our bus and pointed at one of the girls (Jessica Gentry!), for which she screamed and ran to the other side of the bus. It was hilarious, but maybe you had to be there.

One the way home, KC and I rocked out to old American songs, which amused pretty much the whole back half of the bus. That night we ate another stew at the restaurant near our hostel. Stew and bread and mayonnaise, siempre. I stayed up that night and taught the Argentine boys Bullshit Pyramid. One was very excited because he had seen the game Bullshit in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. That amused me. I was ready to go to sleep at 2, but two of the boys went to this local boliche, reporting the next day that they were offering a free beer to anyone who danced with one of the prostitutes in the middle of the floor… with adam’s apples. Apparently when walking home one of the boys (from Morrocco) got hissed at by prostitutes on the side of the road. Who knew?!

Sunday was another long day. We spent the morning at the Ruins of Quilmes- google the story of the Quilmes tribe—it’s really pretty fascinating. These people fought off the Spanish for 130 years. They lived in little houses built into the ground so that only about a meter was above ground. When they were finally defeated, the Spanish set to moving and separating them to different locations throughout Argentina. They took 2,000 on a path to Buenos Aires. 400 made it there, and most of them were then killed off by European disease once they got to Bs As. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and passionate about teaching the right education about these tribes. He said that he went to school 20 km from the ruins, and he didn’t learn the real story of the Quilmes. I was enlightened, I must say. Not to mention, there were tons of cactus. (the word is the same in Spanish and very fun to say!)

That afternoon, after ravioli at the same restaurant as before (yum!), we departed the NE. The ride home was absolutely amazing. That morning we had traveled through the winery country to get to the ruins in the desert, then continued to “normal mountains” (grassy). Well, that afternoon we went back through a forest. I’m not sure if it’s considered a “rain” or “tropical” forest, but it has the most trees of any forest in Arg, and it was spectacular. There was a river running at the bottom of the mountains, and I was just waiting for a monkey to jump out and mount our bus. We made hairpin turns all the way down the mountain, and at one point our bus had to stop (in traffic) and reverse, because it couldn’t make it around a turn. We were fearful.

Eventually, the land flattened out and we were in the “campo” for the rest of the journey. Here, at about 8pm, is where our bus broke down. We pulled over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, for 3 hours. Something got clogged somewhere in the engine, and we had to wait for a tool to clean it. There was a big puddle of gas or water or something under the bus at the back, and our chauffer thought it was funny to smoke a round of cigarettes directly over it. All of the girls who know nothing about automobiles were scared. (I am one of them.) Thus, we eventually made it home at 4 in the morning. Some people had class in the morning, but I didn’t have one until 2, so I was able to sleep some.

Since then (last Sunday—it is now Saturday), classes have started. “CRI” (Center for International Relations) classes that is. Our “UBP” (Argentine—university—classes) start this Monday. I really like a couple of them, but this one class is insane. It is called “Culture through Artistic Manifestations.” So I think that I would like my teacher as a person, but she talks sooo fast, and to the wall. She just puts up these slides of architecture and in rapid-fire Spanish spits out facts. We have a notebook that corresponds to her lectures, but she covered 60 pages of it the other day in an hour and a half! All of us just look at each other as if to say “did you get that? Nope? Good, me neither.” That class should be interesting. On the other hand, my film class is 3.5 hours long on Fridays only, and the professor speaks really slow, stopping the film every few minutes to ask if there was a word we didn’t understand. But I really like that class- we watched Motorcycle Diaries the other day. If you haven’t seen it, rent it!

I also had horseback riding yesterday in the morning. I thought I miiight die. I had to gallop, but I had no idea what I was doing, and my horse this week was crazy. If you barely touch him, he starts flying!! I would get really scared and try to stop him but he would just slow to a trot, at which point I would get flung to the front of the saddle and almost fall over the front of the horse. I’m exaggerating, of course, but regardless, it was scary. Next time, in two weeks, we finally go into the mountains, as long as the river goes down a bit more (we have to cross a river on horseback!!)

Last note—I went to a bar last night for a concert. The band is comprised of high-school age boys and made me reminiscent of those little high school bands we had in Va. But what really got me was that these boys played…. Red Hot Chili Peppers, among other American music. It was incredible. All of the Argentines in the bar (I didn’t go with any other international kids) were singing along with the wrong lyrics!!! It was so funny for me.

So, I haven’t heard from many of yall lately, so if anyone is reading this, and you are my friend, EMAIL me! I don’t get online all that much, but I love getting email updates from home, so let me know what everyone’s up to. I miss and love yall! BESOS!