1 month mark

Cemetery in Humahuaca

Backbending at the salt flats in Jujuy

Jumping over the pool at the salt flats in Jujuy

Verifying the saltiness of the salt.

Next to a HUGE cactus in Purmamarca

A panoramic view of The Hill of the 7 Colors in Purmamarca.

These are photos from last week in Salta and Jujuy.

I'm back in Buenos Aires, after a fun long weekend in Uruguay. Yup, thats right, after having spent just under one full week in the Northwestern Argentine desert, I went to Uruguay. During my two full days back in Buenos Aires I finished a final project and took a final exam - grades in Wednesday (cross your fingers!). Uruguay was a Friday morning to Monday night trip, accompanied by my friend from AIESEC, Maijo (an Argentine). We took a ferry across to Colonia and immediately took a bus to Montevideo, where we were so kindly picked up by Quique (Enrique) a member of AIESEC Montevideo who ended up leaving us his apartment for the weekend. It was really awesome of him, considering we don't actually know him very well, and it worked out really nicely. We spentall day Friday and Saturday in Montevideo and went to a birthday party on Saturday night, before Sunday morning heading to the eastern coast beaches (Punta del Este, Piriápolis) and stayed in Rodrigo's family's beach house in Piriápolis for the night, watched the U17 world cup soccer game (Uruguay vs. Canada) and then had a long night sleeping.

Monday was very relaxed and we made out way back to Buenos Aires, getting home a little after midnight. This whole week will be study study study as I have my final exam of the semester a week from today at 9am. I am really nervous but confident that I have enough time to prepare well - although I do have to review over 2,500 pages of philosophy in Spanish. Hmmmmmm - could get tricky.

Next Thursday I am flying to Santiago de Chile and doing a week long trip around central and northern Chile before spending my last week in Buenos Aires. I'll get to see Santiago, Viña del Mar, Valaparíso, and San Pedro de Atacama.

I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS YEAR IS WINDING DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

five weeks and a quilombo

Currently I am marooned in Salta, the capital of the province of Salta, in the NorthWestern limits of Argentina. I was supposed to fly back to Buenos Aires last night (Sunday) at 9PM, but due to the second erruption of the volcano in Chile, the ash cloud hanging over Buenos Aires is making it impossible for flights to arrive or leave. We got switched to the 9pm flight tonight - but it turns out that we wont be flying home until Wednesday night at the earliest. I would have gotten on a bus by now, but I would then lose the $160 I spent on the return flight as well as waste about $100 on a bus ticket back. And the ride is 21 hours....... This is all overly complicated due to mutliple factors.

1. I have a final exam on Wednseday at 6pm
2. I have to finish a final group project for Wednesday at 3pm
3. I have a boat ticket to Uruguay on Friday morning at 12:30PM

hence the quilombo - which means an infernal mess in spanish from argentina.

The trip was amazing this weekend, the colors in the mountains are unbelievable!!! I cant wait to post my photos and show you all how amazing it truly was. For now, I got my hair cut and got waxed today and am just wasting away studying for my potential exam on Wednesday. We will see what happens. Maybe i WILL take a bus home tomorrow, to be back in time for my exam. We will see, we will see.......

Love and hugs to everyone and HATE for volcanos!!!!!

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.