6 weeks 6 weeks

So I think I may just have weekly posts until my days are done here. This past weekend I went on a program trip (pre-paid with my $24,000 year long program fee) and went to Los Esteros de Iberá, or the Estuaries of Iberá, in the province of Corrientes, in NorthEastern Argentina. There was all sorts of interesting wildlife but it was really quite cold. We saw black caiman alligators, seat otters, there are 3 species of piranhas, we saw capybaras, many species of birds including local vulturas, 2 species of deer, howler monkeys, wild jungle cats, and I will leave it at that. A good time was had by all 13 of the year long kids who went on the trip, our program director Mario and his partner, Sergio. They are both super buena onda, or cool. (it literally translates as good wave)


The dock at our hostel

A capybara getting used as a wagon by a little yellow bird that ate his parasites

Carpincho snack time *same as the capybara, different name

Kingfisher

The birds that are named after Jesus because they seem to walk on water

One of the numerous cardinals that I saw over the weekend

Wild cat - looks like a baby ocelot. It was the Mommy, it had its husband who was all black (just due to an excess of melanin - like albinos have a deficit) and its baby who was inbetween being almost black and having distinguishable patterns equivalent to its mother's.

Lily pads

Black caiman alligator mother keeping a stern eye on her youngins.

This week I have my last week of normal class and then on Wednesday evening I am flying to Salta, a city in the Northwest of Argentina. Its a desert, in the Andes, home of the largest salt flat in the world, and full of adobe homed towns.

I will get home Sunday evening from Salta, take my History of Pre-Colombian Art final on Wednesday and head to Uruguay on Friday, the 17th of June. I'm going there with a friend from AIESEc, Maijo, and we are staying with AIESECers from Montevideo. The trip will last from Friday morning until Monday night, as Monday is Flag Day in Argentina. *Let me just clarify that they have a RIDICULOUS amount of holidays here.

After I get back I have to turn in a final project for my Radio class on Wednesday, the 22nd and then I will only have one class left. The next weekend I will finally be staying in Buenos Aires, but I will be studying 24/7 for my Political and Social Theory final - I have so many Saints to get straight and Church nonsense to be on top of. Once those three things are out of the way though, I am DONE WITH MY JUNIOR YEAR OF UNIVERSITY!!!!!!!!!

Links to my photos from this semester on Facebook....

Mendoza
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1702145475054.2088187.1280460131

SDL - the AIESEC conference
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1740910484155.2090253.1280460131

7 weeks until...

Hey everyone, in 7 weeks I will be back in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! How sad and happy - this means I get to go camping with my whole extended family from my Dad's side, but it also means that I have to leave all of South America behind :( Two weekends ago I was at an AIESEC leadership development conference of the Southern Cone (aka Argentina, Uruguay and Chile) but with delegates from all over the world. When I had to say goodbye to all of the friends that I made over the weekend and the AIESECers that I met last November in my first AIESEC conference, I got really sad - realizing that I would probably never see the majority of them again in my life!!!! Really sad, I even shed a few tears, really not my style, but it happens sometimes. It was an amazing experience and I really learned a lot at the conference, plus AIESECers know how to party! Work hard and play hard is their motto.


The multi-cultural proof photo. This is from the AIESEC conference.
Germany (originally Kenya) - United States - Colombia - Argentina - Costa Rica - Belgium


My local committee in Buenos Aires, at the conference :)


The second party at the AIESEC conference I went to - dress as a famous person (I was goign to dress as Britney Spears and put a nylon on my head to simulate when she chopped all her hair off but I couldn't find to baby dolls to carry around by their ankles, so I nixed the plan and dressed as a generic soccer player.)


Punk costumes the first night


Again punk night

Since my last post I've turned 21, and survived the experience.

Doing a shot of tequila with my Mom over Skype to celebrate my 21st birthday.

Mendoza was a really fun Easter Week trip, I learned a little about wine, got to drink a lot of wine, and spent lots of time outdoors, which was really nice! Since then I've mostly been staying in the City, no big trips have been taken.


Horseback riding in Mendoza in the mountains!


wine and vineyards



School-wise I am hating life right about now. I put off all of my readings for my History of Art class, well, since it started..... so I will be doing all of those this week. (Seeing as our final exam is June 15th). Also, my Political and Social Theory class has been getting ahead of me as well, so I spent all day today doing the readings I had missed. I am still behind but at least I made up 1.5 weeks of the readings that I missed. I will also be keeping on top of those readings from now on! The real debbie-downer of the situation isn't the readings, because those don't make for a desperate situation, but the 10-15 page paper my Professor of ARt History just assigned me out of nowhere IS A DEBBIE-DOWNER!

Socially my life has been pretty great. The AIESECers and I go out a lot/have meetings all the time so I see them often and am always talking to them to do my tasks. Now that I am 21 I feel quite old, and I don't know what to make of feeling old, considering I am still a young duck, but hey, who knows! My other Argentine friends are pretty fun, I've been eating a lot of BBQ with them. Also, I've made some American friends that I can do touristy things with, which is a plus.


At my friend Vicky's birthday party last Saturday.

Yesterday I went to the Lujan Zoo, where you can pet the tigers and lions but not the bears, oh my! Its a 2 hour bus ride to the zoo but it was definitely worth the $5 round trip and the $12.50 entrance fee. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. What else, what else - I dunno.

Feeding a baby lion milk from a bottle/my palm.


Stroking a 7 month old tiger.


Staring down a 4 month old lion cub.


Getting in on the sleeping mass of lion cubs. All 4 or 5 months old.


The cathedral in San Lujan, famous because Pope John Paul the II went there.


Having elephants eat apples out of my hands. I went first so didn't know what to expect at all, the guy just yelled at my to turn around and put my arms out.


In the pen with the big boys. These were no babies.


They had a huge stash of old tractors at the Lujan Zoo, random but most of them were John Deere and I had to represent the Midwest.

This coming weekend I am going to an ecological reserve where they have black caimans and the following weeking I am going to the NorthWest of Argentina, Salta, Jujuy, the salt flats. Should be prettttty amazing!!! Love my life, just wish I were only 100% vacation instead of 75% vacataion.

75% over

I arranged to fly home July 17th, meaning I'll get in early morning July 18th to the MSP airport (10:30am more or less for those of you who are so anxious to see me that you feel the overwhelming urge to meet me at the airport! - oh, and I'm flying Delta from Atlanta if you want to look up my flight). I am excited to get home but the longer I stay here, the closer I get to my Argentine friends and the sadder I am to only have 89 days left with them. School is still school, and I have been making an effort to keep relatively up to date with my work-load. AIESEC has been great lately, and taking up a lot of my time. This past weekend was the induction retreat/ conference for the new members. About 60 AIESECo's went to the 2 days over night event, planned by my new 3 best friends and I. (Um, this is a bad sign, I am not sure whether that should read "and I" or "and me").... hmm, losing my English skills, Mr. Ford would be appalled.



Photos form the Toga PARTY!!!

I have no new photos, because my camera battery charger got stolen, what a shame, what a shame. I am hopeful that someone will upload a few photos from the conference from Saturday night though, because we had a Toga party. My toga was beautiful and I would love to share it with the world - so professional looking. Anywhoo, the conference went swimmingly and all of the newbies loved it, the oldies had a great time, and I slept 6 hours in 2 nights. When I got home on Sunday evening around 8pm I showered, skyped my Dad for 4 minutes to say happy birthday, ate dinner, and immediately went to bed. I continued to sleep for 10 hours, go to 3 hours of my 4 hour class, leave early, sleep the whole bus ride home, wake up a few blocks from my apt, get home and take a 3 hours nap. I feel like I am a whole new person now.

Tonight at 6.30PM i have Portuguese class and then tomorrow I have my Radio class and in the evening half way through my History of art class I am heading out for MENDOZA! Wine country in the Andes Mtns, pretty much directly west of Buenos Aires. Its an overnight bus ride and I am heading there with 3 other girls who are on my program and have been in Argentine since last July, just like me. We should have a lot of fun as there is great hiking, white water rafting, etc in the region too. I'm looking to make the best of my 4 days there as we are heading home Sunday evening and getting back early Monday morning, in time for my morning class.

Other than that, I don't know what more I can update. Nothing too exciting has been happening - School, volunteering with AIESEC, going out with friends and some cute boys, drinking lots of mate.... I dunno folks. I'll try to send some pictures your way in the near future.

A hug and a kiss. I'll be seeing all your Rothes in Door County!

La GRIPE A!!

La gripe A, aka the swine flu, H1N1, whatever you want to call it - I'm just going to say I have something similar. Sick as a dog, not really that sick, but I do definitely have a mild flu (which is all the swine is/has been for most people). The world health scene got all worried about the 'epidemic' because it is more catching than your every day flu - but when I had it at Madison last year I was surprised by how mild it was. I am currently holed up with a very low fever (we're talking 99, 99.5), muscle aches, congestion, and coughing. My host mom, being the typical melodramatic Argentine woman has suggested every few hours that I go to the clinic, or the HOSPITAL. For a cold/mild flu. Hence the use of the word melodramatic.

Other than being cooped up in my bed watching and digging into my host moms stash of ripped off DVDs, I started my Portuguese class today! As you can all tell, I have been extremely bored all day so I am writing in my blog twice in two days, after not writing for a full month. The class was really fun, although it was 3 hours long and I started feeling pretty wretched by the end of it, regardless of how many mg of ibuprofen and throat lozenges I popped. It was fun, the professor spoke to us in mainly very clear, slow Portuguese, which was awesome, considering that I really understood some of it!!! It's also blowing my mind thinking of all of the material that we covered today. We started with the alphabet and the phonetics of the letters then moved onto pronunciation rules, basically the exact opposite of Spanish, where everything sounds as it looks (in Portuguese it seems to me that NOTHING sounds as it looks!). We continued on with pronouns, 3 basic irregular verbs in the present tense, as well as a smattering of vocabulary words that were throw into the mix. I would have to check my 6 pages of notes to be more precise about EVERYTHING we covered but he already had us doing a work sheet, a listening activity and learning the mandatory compound words! The professor is muy buena onda, or pretty legit in American, and I can't even imagine how much I will learn in just 16 weeks with him.



I threw in this picture just to give you an idea of where I would like to use my Portuguese in 2014, if anyone else would like to start taking classes now and be my travel companion. In the off change that I don't make it back to South American in 2014, I am going to do my best to make it to Brazil before I come back to the states - hopefully in time for Rothe Door County 2011.

Have a good night everyone - and AVOID THE SWINE FLU!

The last month (pathetic, I know)

Sorry sorry sorry - I just have not been able to motivate myself to write in my blog since getting back to Argentina. I have about 3 partially started blog posts that I never got around to finishing, so I'm throwing them all out and writing something a little more substantial and all encompassing.

I got back to Buenos Aires on March 5th, a Saturday and had a nice long 4 day weekend where everyone I knew was out of town (as the following Monday and Tuesday were both holiday days) so I basically did nothing. On Wednesday I went into my program office and registered for classes and then started class the following Monday. Its all panned out so that I have a "practice making radio" class that meets for 4 hours a week at the public university, La Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA); "political and social theory 1" class at la UBA that meets for 6 hours a week; "history of art and culture in america and argentina" at USAL where I studied last semester; "Portuguese 1" at UBA (its an optional class that I paid $100 to take).

The radio class has been a joke so far, since the major switched buildings and we don't actually have a studio to record in. So for the two hours per week when we are supposed to be recording, we just chat about whatever randomly pops into our professor's head. The other two hours per week we get lectured to in funny anecdote form by a different professor. The political and social theory class is interesting but quite intense, we meet Monday morning at 9am for FOUR hours to have what would be equivalent to "discussion" in the United States, but its really just students reading off their summaries of what happened in the book we happen to be reading at the moment. We just finished reading "The Republic" by Plato (500 pages of 2500 year old Greek political philosophy in Spanish, people) for class today and are reading 1/3 of Aristotle's "Politic" for next Monday. The 4 hours drag on and on when it is just students who are unsure of what they are saying droning on and on - and today was the first class that we actually did an interactive activity. We got a list of questions that resemble our midterm that concern Plato and his theories. The other two hours of that class are actual lecture, that has some correlation with the discussion material, but we will only be tested on the discussion material so its really hard to make myself go Tuesday mornings as well at 9am. The Art History class is still up in the air because there are currently 12 or so Americans going to the class and only 5 foreigners are allowed to take each class at USAL to keep it fair for the students paying tuition and actually studying the subject, aka the Argentines. There is a lottery this week to find out if I am still in the class with the Precolombian art and the awesome laid back professor or if I'm in the Colombian art class with the hard ass professor. On the other hand, I am really excited for my Portuguese class because it starts tomorrow night!!!!!!


Promoting AIESEC and the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE)

Other than school I have been really involved in AIESEC since getting back from summer vacation. I joined the organizing committee for the weekend-long conference for the new members that are going to enter now that our recruitment period is ending. Also, I have been doing quite a bit to help out with the recruitment: going to universities to promote AIESEC, monitoring group interviews, performing individual interviews, etc. Also, the Argentine, Catalina that I was managing last semester got an internship in Budapest, Hungary with Nokia - so she is in the final stages of preparing to start working there May1st-ish. It's fun because I've got to design a lot of flyers for our conference and the toga party that we are going to throw there, so its work but its fun. Plus I LOVE LOVE LOVE all of the AIESEC people from Buenos Aires.


Hanging out with the OGX (Outgoing Exchange) team of AIESEC Buenos Aires


In La Plata with Matt at my friend from Oktoberfest's house.

I have been hanging out a lot with my Argentine friends that I made last semester when I was camping at Oktoberfest, from class, and just from around town. This semester I also decided that I was going to go on more dates with more people - and I've so far been on dates with 3 guys more my age than anyone else I'd met here last semester. They are 21, 21 and 22. I TURN 21 IN 30 DAYS!!!! START THE COUNT-DOWN, not that it really matters since I have been legally drinking for the past 11 months but anyway. I've been waiting for this morning for 20 years and 11 months and it's finally coming and I am happy to say I have Sean O'Connor and Matt Roelse, two good friends from Madison currently in Buenos Aires to celebrate with.



Matt and Sean have introduced me to some of their friends from their program (they are here with the Wisconsin Business School, not with IFSA-Butler). As you can see from the above photo, I took a sassy stance on making more American friends, especially the ones who do not or will not speak Spanish instead of English. Not to say I don't speak english with Matt and Sean, but that's different.

Host family wise the Blaksley/Echegaray clan are now officially like family. We quibble and joke and tell secrets. My host mom, Sara and I have had some really great times together, some of them involving her 14 year old grandson Salvador, as you will see...... We played for about a half of an hour with the hair from my hairbrush......





Anywhoo, I will try to keep you more updated in the near future.

Pictures from Chile

Fish market in Santiago.


A picture of the Villarrica volcano from the beach in Pucón, the day before I climbed up it.


At the top of the volcano.


Coming down the volcano on small plastic sleds.


Subsistence blackberry picking. The cabins I stayed at were in the middle of nowhere and I got bedbugs there. Gross.


The lake at the base of my 8 hour hike where I soaked my feet after getting done.


A beautiful flower in Puerto Varas, the rose capitol of Chile.


Los saltos of the Petrohue river, some rapids and small waterfalls.


Penguins at Isla Magdalena, an excursion from Punta Arenas.


Hanging out in Isla Magdalena.


Seaside basketball courts in Punta Arenas.


Sheep blocking the road on the drive from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales.


Clouded out sun on day 1 in Torres del Paine.


A valley view on day 3 of the hike in Torres del Paine.


More day 3 of Torres del Paine.


The "Torres del Paine" that the park is named after at sunrise.


A view of the sun coming up the same morning that we hiked to the Torres.

Monika, I hope you can finally see some more of my pictures this way!

The first album of photos on Facebook is at this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079631&id=1280460131

The second album of photos on Facebook is at this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079648&id=1280460131

The end of an affair

So its my last night in Chile. Like I had mentioned in my last post, after I wrote I was headed to make plans for my next few days and to explore the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, close to Puerto Natales. Its the most popular park in Chile and considered by many to be the best park in South America. Hence the strong desire to check it out. I ended up talking to the owner of my hostel, a crazy guy named Alejandro and the Swede, Leon, staying in my same dormitory room at the hostel came along to get some more info on the park, although he had already chatted with Alejandro. Long story short Alejandro convinced the two of us to rent a two man tent and hike the 4 day, 3 night circuit together. It was beautiful, the park literally has a little bit of everything.

The first day of our park adventure we got up at 6:45AM to eat breakfast before the bus to the park left at 8AM. We rode in the bus with rain outside for 2 hours before we switched over to a catamaran to take us to the far side of the lake, and finally got into the park area where we would be hiking around 1PM. We quickly set up our tent in the rain (it weighed less than 2 kilos and had only 1 pole, making it quick to set up and small). Immediately we set out on the 4 hour each way hike to the Glacier Gray lookout area. It was beautiful, you really get close up to the glacier, closer than we did in El Chalten but not closer than when we were hiking on the glacier in El Calafate. It was nice because we warmed up to the full days of hiking without our heavy packs, just with my little backpack as a day pack with food for lunch and water. On the way there we had a small river crossing that got my shoes wet for the first of many times. Unfortunately I still had my blisters from my previous hike close to Puerto Varas and quickly got new ones from just wearing my Nikes, instead of buying or renting hiking boots like I really should have. The walk was amazing, alongside gem colored lakes, crossing glacial meltwater streams and with awesome wind swept trees on all sides. The park is famous for its winds and we did get to experience them the third and fourth day we were there.

Around 9PM we got back into camp and cooked out first camp dinner and then snuggled up in our tent, getting pretty soaked during the night. At least Leon did, my sleeping bag stayed mostly dry. The second day we packed up early and headed out to Campamento Italiano, a 2.5hr hike away with the packs. We then set up our tent again and headed up the French Valley sans packs, just with the day pack again, and literally were walking up towards a HUGE mountain glacier and the thundering river that runs along it. The whole time, that is, until we got past that park and went through a beautiful forest and up to a lookout rock showing the whole surrounding valley. Pretty awesome, so lets add in another 5 hour hike for getting there and back.

The third morning, a little more dry after the second night but pretty much chilled to the bone, we set off for our longest day with the packs. We hiked 7 hours from Campamento Italiano to El Chileno through the section of the park where the winds are fiercest and a camper many years ago burnt down a large portion of the park. He was camping in a non approved campsite and his camp stove tipped over, with the famous winds accelerating the blaze and making it a huge pain in the ass to put out. The final two hours of the hike were mostly uphill and brought us to a huge river and pretty high up on the mountain side for sections. I will put up pictures in Argentina because there was too much along the way to explain in words. We slept quite well and hung out all afternoon and evening in the shelter, where they had free hot water for tea and to get your cooking done faster (otherwise you start with water from the tap that is closer to freezing than boiling) on your little camp stove. My blisters were pretty intense by this point, and although my knees had acted up on a few occasions I had really had no unbearable problems with them.

Regardless, in the morning at 4:40AM we got up and met up with a Scottish man, his Czech girlfriend, and a random German traveling the circuit with us and hiked to Las Torres, that the park is named after and are three spires of rock that are unique in a worldwide sense. Luckily for us, we got there before sunrise and it was a clear morning. However, there were some snafoos along the way. When you get to the final section of the trail to get to the lookout, after about 30 minutes of intense uphill hiking, you are led around teh base of the pile of boulder like rubble. However, if it is still dark out and the trail is as poorly marked as it was, you could for some reason think that a lookout would tend to be located at the HIGHEST ACCESIBLE POINT. And you would therefore climb UP that huge 150/200m pile of rubble. The winds were gusting at least 40kph MINUMUM and the rocks were falling out under out feet. About 2 third of the way up I was quoted saying "There is NO FUCKING WAY they send HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of TOURISTS up this way EVERY YEAR!!!!!" but we did make it all the way to the top and I don´t think it was as dangerous as it felt. Plus, I kept waiting for the panic to set in and it never did, which was a great thing. We got a spectacular view and from the top with the snot pouring from my nose we were able to see the actual lookout spot over 100m below and we climbed down the front face of the rubble pile to join them. We then headed the 2 hr hike back to camp and packed up, where the rain cover of our tent had been blown 3/4 off. Thank goodness it hadnt happened the night before, because the winds really were gusting all night long. But also thank goodness we didnt lose it, as it was a rental tent, haha.

From camp it was 1.5 hours down to the hotel and trailhead where the bus comes to pick you up around 2PM. So we were down there by 12:30, and we hung out in the rain and wind until 2 when the bus came and were back in Puerto Natales by 4:30PM. Right away I had to drop off my rental gear, pay for it (unfortunately) and then repack my stuff that I had left at the hostel and shower. Pretty necessary after 4 full days of hiking and wearing the same clothes every day. The last night I even slept in my hiking clothes to make it easier with the 4:40AM wake up. After getting business taken care of Leon and I went out for a beer and I had some chicken wings. Before I could leave the hostel Alejandro asked me for a favor, and wanted to make sure I wouldnt get mad, and then asked me to take a few photos with him because I am so beautiful. Haha it was great, pretty funny actually as he was a really sweet guy who ran the hostel with his wife and after that I hopped right on a bus back to Punta Arenas, which got in around 10:30PM. Then I headed to a hostel for a few hours of sleep before I got picked up at 6AM to go to the airport in Punta Arenas and take my awesome flight that had 2 stops on the way back to Santiago. So I got here around 1:30PM although I left Punta Arenas at 8AM. AWESOME, not. And now I can´t walk comfortably and I am exhausted, and I have to get picked up at 7:05AM tomorrow to head back to the airport and fly back to Buenos Aires, home sweet home.

After 3 full weeks in Chile I am ready to head home and get back to school. I have to enroll in classes on Wednesday so that should be exciting. Thats all for now folks.