1 Vacation Down, Many To Go

So it's Saturday night and I'm just taking a little rest, hanging out in my bedroom. On Friday morning Julie, Rachael, Brady and I all took the train to El Tigre, a city/suburb of Buenos Aires. It was a pretty expensive train ride, 2.7o pesos round trip. (We were expecting to pay at least 40 pesos each way, not realizing that people who live in El Tigre often work in Buenos Aires and take the train to work every day so it makes sense that it only costs ~75 cents US round trip.) It was awesome! We got there Friday afternoon (its a 40 minute bus ride and when I say we left in the morning I mean we let around 2PM, since we had all gone out until ~6AM the night before). We spent Friday dropping our stuff off at a gorgeous hostel, that cost $15 a night and then walking around and ending up at the Yerba Mate museum.

For those of you who are uninitiated, Yerba Mate is a type of tea that is very very popular in Argentina, in the rural country regions more so than in the capital. At the museum we saw a huge collection of historical bags for the loose tea, historical mates (the name for the cups they drink it out of) and historical straws. We also had a demonstration on how to brew and drink the tea - everyone who was on the tour (about 10 people) then got the chance to share a drink out of the same mate. (mate is pronounced as mah-tae, not may-te as in friend) The culture that surrounds mate is almost more important than the actual tea, which is really caffeinated, and a lot of people drink instead of coffee. You drink the tea by filling your small mate about 3/4 full of herbs, then tapping the side until the herbs sit at a 45 degree angle. Once you are situated, you insert your straw and then pour water over half of the leaves - avoiding the straw so it doesn't get hot and leaving some leaves dry so air can circulate. The water should be 80 degrees Celsius, no hotter, and maybe 5 degrees colder. AKA NOT BOILING, although in some places they do drink it with boiling water. There is a small amount of water in the cup because the cup is pretty small, typically, and once you finish one round of water you pass the mate on to the next person and they re-fill it and drink 1 cup. It's a very social tradition and its an acquired taste - I bought a bag of mint flavored mate for $1 US and they also gave us a free bag after we left the museum. I am convinced that I need to get accustomed while I am here.

After we left the museum we went grocery shopping and got wonderfully fresh red and green bell peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes, avocados, steak, chicken and pita bread. We then headed back to our hostel and made DELICIOUS fajitas. Never have I ever enjoyed cooking a meal so much as I did last night. It was amazing to be able to relax with friends and cook and then enjoy a meal and not have any obligations. We made guacamole, cooked the onions, peppers and meat as fajita stuff and toasted the pita bread in oil to eat all of it on. It was just a great meal - I could probably go on and on for a long time. (All of the food we bought ended up being around $5 per person, amazingly cheap)

The hostel we stayed at was great, they had bikes for rent but we spent our time walking around and on a boat tour. (The city is situated along the river and connects to a huge delta system.) The backyard at the Hostel Tigre was beautiful and had 2 cats begging for milk. We ate a breakfast of coffee (not instant), frosted flakes, and french bread with dulce de leche out there this morning. We then went to a fruit fair, where I didn't actually see any fruit for sale... and then took a boat down the river delta system for about an hour before we got dropped off at a parilla. I don't know if I explained before, but parilla is literally the word for grill, and they always have DELICIOUS grilled meat at parillas. We were all complaining about the expensive prices before we realized that we were at a fancy restaurant, outdoors, sitting along the water, eating $20 steak meals. We had to catch the boat back to the city and then we got dulce de leche ice cream and sat along the river to watch the sunset. Once that was over and done with we hopped on the train to head back to the city.

The past week:

To jump back to the things I've skipped at this point, since I know you're all going to demand a daily account - I now have a fixed class schedule. I have "Argentina in words - Literature of the 19th and 20th Centuries" on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:10-4:40PM, "Latin American Literature 2" on Tuesday mornings from 10:30AM-12:45PM, "Literature of Latin America and Argentina" on Wednesdays from 2-4:30PM, "Argentina's Cinema of Fiction" Wednesdays from 9AM-12PM, and "History of America 1" on Thursdays from 6-9:25PM.

Pretty awesome, I know. Classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I have a 4 day weekend EVERY weekend - you should ALL be jealous of that. I can't think of anything else really awesome to report, other than that I am falling in love with this city. On Thursday night I went to a bar to meet up with some girlfriends where it's pretty American and you can play beer pong - which was GREAT! Then we went with some Argentine guys these girls knew so that we could get into a dance club for free, around 1:30AM - we got VIP bracelets for free. Pretty wicked. To sum this story up, as it's getting rambly and repetitive, I had an amazing time dancing until 6 in the morning, and went home as the club was thinning out, rather than out of exhaustion - I'm becoming a PORTEÑA.

GOTTA GO OUT, now that its 12:00AM, its porteña time!