1 Week in Buenos Aires

Howdy Folks-

So, I last updated you all when I was just getting back from Oktoberfest in Villa General Belgrano, in the province of Córdoba. That was about a week and a half ago, so I'll try to fill in all of the details. Let's just throw it out there that I haven't had a solid 8 hours of sleep any single night since before Oktoberfest, so my life has been pretty chalk-full of great things to do and it's likely I'll accidentally leave a few out.

The 12th-15th of October I spent writing two papers and doing all of the work that I did NOT do while I was drinking beer in Córdoba (understandable, right?) It was mostly school work and staying up late to get things done at the very last minute but it all turned out just fine. A few weeks ago I started volunteering in a place called Hogar de abuelos, which translates to Grandparents Home, and its been pretty fun going there.

The weekend after getting back from Córdoba we did another dinner with our friends from Germany on the Friday night and then I went home rather than going out because I had an early morning obligation. Saturday morning I had an inauguration at 930AM for AIESEC, a student run organization that sets up and sends young adults on paid international internships that can last 6 weeks-18 months. I recently joined the Buenos Aires chapter and everyone in the group is amazing. I spent all Saturday morning with them and then from 2-4PM we had our local committee meeting, so everyone in AIESEC Buenos AIres was there. Afterwards I went to La Plata to hang out with my friends that I had made the weekend before when we were camping in Córdoba. We all met up at Manu, one of the Argentine girl's houses and then we cooked an asado (the BBQ thing) and I learned the basics. Afterwards we headed to a house party that was different from anything I had ever been to before and around 6AM we got back to Marcos's house and the roosters were crowing us to sleep. The first of the two pictures that I've included are of my with Seba, an Argentine friend, the one who taught me how to grill a proper Argentine asado. The second picture is also from Manu's house and its just the majority of the group sitting around the dinner table.




(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=1280460131&aid=2064289) here is the album of photos from the night.

Sunday of that same weekend was Mother's Day in Argentina so we had brunch with Marcos's Mom and Dad and bought her some lovely lillies and then I had to head back to Buenos Aires becaues I had another AIESEC meeting at 6PM. I did get there just about on time, but it made for a long weekend. Monday morning I went kayaking in El Tigre, a city about 40 minutes north of Buenos Aires whereas La Plata is about 45 minutes south of Buenos Aires. Then commenced my finals weel. Tuesday I had an oral final and Wednesday I had some work to turn in and then Thursday I was scheduled to have a final. It ended up getting cancelled due to a demonstration that was happening outside the school and it being a night class so the other Americans and I went to an American bar and met some crazy English people.

Friday was my friend Rachael's birthday (22, on the 22nd = her GOLDEN birthday) so we went out to lunch in the afternoon, headed to a salon where we paid for her to get her nails done, I got my hair cut, and Julie dyed her hair. We then went back to my apartment, cooked a delicious frozen pizza for dinner, and then started our night. The last picture I posted is from about 6AM when we left the club this morning and the sun had already risen and it was broad daylight.


I clearly started writing this and left it for two days before I decided to finish it, so I'll polish it off now that it's Monday and not Saturday anymore. Saturday was a day for relaxing and then I had a meeting at 8PM followed by a dinner at 10PM with everyone in AIESEC, the organization I joined. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met, and they come from all over the world. For example I have already been offered housing in Ecuador and Colombia when I go there, even though I probably won't need it in either place. Sunday I went to the rose garden where they have a least a hundred varieties of roses. It is amazing and I will put up an album of photos from all of this in a few days. Have a great day folks!

Córdoba = Oktoberfest

This past weekend I had another vacation within my year long vacation and let me tell you, it was GREAT. On Thursday night Julie and I hopped on a bus to Villa General Belgrano, a city in the province of Córdoba. The main attraction of the weekend was the conclusion of Oktoberfest 2010. The one in Argentina claims to be the second largest in the world, and there were definitely a lot of people there, but not an insanely large amount of people like I had expected. The bus ride was about 10 hours so we got in around 9AM on Friday morning and headed over to the campsite to meet up with Marcos, an Argentine friend. Marcos and Rachael, another girl from Madison, did a study abroad together in Germany during high school and he was the one who organized our whole trip and had the tent all set up for us when we arrived.

We spent Friday just hanging out on the beach, getting to know Marcos a little and meeting some of the really drunk guys who had been pregmaing for Oktoberfest all morning. It was a fun day and we ended up just hanging out with some new friends we made (a group of about 10 people from the province of Buenos Aires and California) rather than heading into town with a $12.50 (US dollars) taxi ride and attending the beer festival. They were all really cool and we all have plans to get together on Saturday night for an asado (basically a BBQ with freshly butchered meats) at Marcos's house in La Plata. It's exciting to have ARgentine friends!!! The only bad thing about Friday night was that it was REALLY QUITE COLD in the tent and Julie Marcos and I all didn't really sleep too much. I woke up every hour or two and all I could think of was how nice it was going to be once the sun came out during the day and I could lay out on the beach again and take a nap, but I survived, so no harm done.

Saturday morning we did some more exploring of the river, which was gorgeous. It looked like something out of a national park and it was littered with boulders and great for clambering around. We hung out with our friends again, had an asado that one of the boys prepared for lunch and then cleaned up and headed to the beer park. It was quite an experience and I will just say that I was really glad to have an Argentine man with me when the guys got a little aggressive. Everyone had to buy their own bier steins, which are just gigantic mugs for drinking beer and then go to a stand to buy tickets to fill up your mug with fancy beer. We got back to our campsite around 4:45AM so we missed the coldest hours of the night and we spent a few good hours before we went home hanging out with a random friend we met at Oktoberfest who had graduated from MADISON!!!!

Sunday was more of the same, hanging out at the river and then having a little campground fiesta with our new friends. They all grilled up hamburgers but Rachael, Julie and I went into town to explore and to go to a German restauraunt, THe city of Villa General Belgrano is known for being like a small German city so we thought we should give the cuisine a try. It was delicious and although the Argentines and Marcos went out dancing until 6:30AM we headed back to get a few hours of sleep in before we got up to take our bus back to the city. We had a ~12 hour bus ride back into the city because of the traffic of everyone getting back from the long weekend and last night I wrote a 5 page final paper for one of my literature classes so I only got 4 hours of sleep and am currently watching a movie for my afternoon class.

Two of my classes will be over with by next Thursday so I'm pretty excited about that, even if it means more work right meow. I need to make it through next THursday and it will be smooth sailing as my 3 remaining classes trail off. Two will end in the third week of November and the final class will end on December 1st. I am back in Buenos Aires for the week but a little busy, so I hope you enjoy my photos, which I put up on Facebook and are quite silly, and are all having a great time wherever you are in the world!

(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063746&id=1280460131) the link to my photos.

Rosario

On Friday night I went to some German friends' apartment and we cooked an amazing dinner. They made homemade crepes which we stuffed like enchiladas with a homemade spinach and ricotta cheese stuffing and then we topped them off with a homemade redsauce and smothered everything in cheese and baked it in the oven. The German girls, Julia Nini and Mona cooked with me, Rachael and Julie, so there were a lot of 'Jules' around. We were joined by some German guy friends as well as some Argentine guy friends and we ended up going to a party hosted by some French girls, where there were even more international people, which was a really fun crowd to hang out with. I went home rather early, a little after 2:30 though, because I had to get up at 7 to pack to go on my trip to ROSARIO!!!! early Saturday morning.

I just got back from a vacation with my program, one of the two trips that we have already paid for with our program fees, and it was to Rosario, the second largest city in Argentina (~1 million in habitants). The city is a 4 hour bus ride outside of Buenos Aires in a neighboring province, so we met up around 8:30AM Saturday morning and headed out. Once we got there the weather was beautiful and we had a few hours of free time to walk around the city before we took a bus tour. We then had a little break before dinner so Julie, Rachael and I bought a bottle of wine and some strawberries, kiwis and pears and hung out in their room under the covers relaxing and watched Mama Mia on our flatscreen TV. It was pretty great but we did motivate ourselves to make it out to the dinner we got paid for by our program.

The appetizer was sweet bread (lymph nodes for those of you who do not know) which are a very delicious part of the cow. They were grilled to perfection and served on top of grilled tomatoes with a small salad and a delicious dressing. The second course/main dish was lomo, a really good cut of steak, to me it seems similar to a filet mignon. It was smothered in mushrooms and layed on top of a bed of cooked carrots and it was also amazing. Finally, to top it all off, we had a delicious lemon ice cream/custard/cake dessert. In fact, we ate so much that Rachael and I opted to do the 25 minute walk home rather than take a taxi, in order to work off at least a few of the calories and to let our food settle in before we went to bed. Our hotel rooms each had 2 double beds (one for each person) and were very luxurious, which was a nice change from the tiny little room I have in my host families apartment, and my tiny little twin bed. I, unlike the majority of the kids in my program, went to bed early and had a lovely nights sleep rather than heading out to the notorious Rosario nightlife.

Sunday was more of the same, exploring the city and then doing a boat tour until we headed back to Buenos Aires around 5:30PM.

Don't expect me to write for a while since I am currently swamped with school work. For next Tuesday I need to write a 5 page, 1.5 spaced final paper which I will have to orally defend the following week. I also have to study for the questions they will ask me about the entirety of my literature course during my oral defense of my paper. For next Tuesday I also need to read some Borges and watch a movie for a separate literature class at a different university. For next Wednesday I have to do 2 readings, go to the theatre to watch an assigned movie, and write a critique of a book. For next Thursday I have to make an outline of a final paper that is to be 10 pages long as well as prepare for a review for my history final the following week. Now, this would all be a normal academic week in Madison around midterms/finals time, but lets remember that I thought I was on vacation here. So I planned a trip, leaving tomorrow night after class, to Córdoba. Córdoba is a western province of Argentina, about 8 hours away from the city, and they host the second largest Oktoberfest in the world. I will be camping and attending a beer festival all weekend, not exactly conducive to hard core studying. I should be back in town Monday night around 7PM so hopefully I will have time between now and Thursday and between Monday evening and Tuesday morning to cram everything in.

Chau chau for now folks, Besos!! (kisses)

oh yeah, and here is the link to my new album of photos on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2062831&id=1280460131)

Responsibilities

I know, I know, I've been slacking on the blog keeping front. Last time I wrote on here was going on 3 weeks ago I think, so I'll just hit the highlights of what's been going on since I got back from Iguazú. I still have classes every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday although I'm almost done with two of them (my History class on Thursday nights and one of my Literature classes early Tuesday mornings end in October). I've stayed in the city since getting back from Iguazú and I have been having a jolly good time. This past week I began volunteering at a nursing home type place, but it's more of a shelter where adults 60+ can go from 8am-4pm to get free meals and be indoors as well as to have company and be treated as equals. A lot of the adults (they call them grandparents) who come in live on the street or live by themselves and are looking for companionship. All I did while I was there was meeteveryone and eat lunch with them, which was fun because one of the old guys has already startedteaching me slang.

As for filling out my light schedule, I'veadded a few more things. Volunteering will take up a few hours on Thursday mornings and soccer with my host sister and her friends will take up a few hours on Tuesday nights. In addition to both of those, I just joined a student/young adult organization called AIESEC. The whole point of the organization is to set motivated young people (like myself) up with international internships, the majority of which are paid. They can range from 6 weeks to 18 months and there are over 5,000 corporations world-wide that hold spots specifically for interns from AIESEC. My plan is to just be a member for now and help with the administrative side of things while I am here in Buenos Aires and then to stay a member when I return to Madison (Madison has a chapter) and do an internship after I graduate. Seems prettty ideal to me.

.

My friend Julie, my host mom Sara, yo, and my friend Rachael. Also the stuffed peppers.

My host nephew Salvador and his mom, my host sister Candelaria.

My host sister Florencia with her boyfriend Ale.

Hmm, lets jump to my host family. I don't know if I ever detailed before but I have three host sisters, Candelaria who has a son Salvador who is just about to turn 14, Florencia who has a daughter Catalina who is 16, and Soledad - the one I'm playing soccer with. I also have a host brother, Guillermo, the youngest of the 4 (he's 30) and he has not been home for a little over a month. He went on a 15 day vacation with his dad to Spain and decided to stay a little longer and go to England, since he had lived there for a year and a half a while ago. Worst possible situation, he got realllly sick with an intestinal bacteria and spent over a week in the hospital in England. He just got home this morning and he gave me a really cool sports watch that looks like a bracelet, but is just all around cool. Anyway, he seems to be pretty much all better, just a little skinnier.

Last Saturday, or maybe the Saturday before, about two weeks ago, I cooked dinner for me whole host family (minus Guillermo who was in the hospital in London). I made baked bell peppers stuffed with wild rice that I brought from MN, ground beef, cheese, tomatoes, onions, and they were delicious! I still have a few in the freezer that I can heat up if I ever get the urge for a stuffed pepper.

Sorry guys but I don't have the motivation to write any more at the moment, I didn't sleep too much last night!

Cataratas de Iguazú

I finally took my first real vacation in Argentina (I guess you could technically classify it as a vacation within a vacation.... since my school isn't too serious here). On Thursday afternoon at 7PM I took a bus from Buenos Aires up north to Puerto de Iguazú, in the province of Misiones (the little point between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) with two girlfriends from Madison, Rachael and Julie, and Brady, also from Madison. We have formed a pretty tightly knit Madison posse. The main attraction there is the huge waterfalls, las cataratas de Iguazú, but there are a lot of other cool things to do as well. We arrived Friday around noon after an 18 hour bus ride with a dinner service and breakfast as well. The hostel that we stayed in (Marcopolo Inn) was really cool and I'll get back to that later.

We arranged an outing through our hostel on Friday afternoon so we all changed our clothes and hopped on a jungle truck. We rode into the jungle and entered into some government/ militarily controlled land through the residential area of Iguazú and up to a path where we got out of the truck and started hiking. The hike was not very strenuous but we made it to the area where they had a zip-line that was 3 segments long. We went zip-lining (my first time ever) and then we kept hiking, back to the truck and we rode to a small waterfall, which we again had to hike through the jungle a little to get to. Once we were there (we had our harnesses on still from zip-lining) we started taking turns rappelling down the waterfall. It was less nerve-racking than the zip-lining but I got 100% drenched. And then we hiked out and took the truck back to hostel and relaxed for the rest of the day.

-standing upstream from the waterfall that

we rappelled down

- just starting my descent. I ended up on that

platform below.

Back to the hostel... we decided to go to the dinner they were hosting, an asado (a grill-out/ bbq, more or less) which consisted of a really huge salad, some rolls, a glass of red wine, chorizo, chicken, and steak slices. It was all delicious but they incredibly over-salted the meat (other than the chorizo). We ended up becoming friends with about 7 germans who were staying at the same hostel and who happen to go to one of the universities in Buenos Aires as exchange students that we all take classes at. It was really fun to hang out with them, and we ended up doing things with them all weekend and seeing them all over Iguazú. We also became friends with two 30 year olds from England, one who is am American citizen but lives and works in England and the other whojust recently quit his job as a lawyer after 5 years at his firm and is doing a 1 year world tour. He is in Buenos Aires now for 1 week of touristy sight seeing with his friend and then 2 weeks of Spanish class, since he spoke absolutely no Spanish. We promised we'd hang out with him and take him out tosee the town once we got back from the falls. Rob and Paul were their names.

We hit the hay pretty early on Friday and got up at 7:30AM on Saturday, so that we could have a full day in the national park at the waterfalls. We took a shuttle there and arrived a little after 9AM, when the park opens. The biggest disappointment was that if we had brought our student ID's we could have gotten into the park for 25 pesos (about $6.25) instead of 85 pesos (about $21.25). Oh well, we now know for every other time we travel that bringing your student ID with you is ESSENTIAL for discounts. We had all left them at our respective homes in an attempt to not lose them, bummer. I can't even describe to you how amazing the waterfalls were. You will just have to look at my photos and try to imagine how much better it was in person. See facebook photo album link below, this time you should only have to click on it and log into your facebook and it will bring you straight to the page.

(http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=2060651&id=1280460131&ref=mf)

The most eventful thing that happened at the park was during lunch. We all bought over-priced sandwiches, because that's the only type of food you can get in a national park, and a koati (look the animal up online) STOLE the top half of Julie's sandwich! Right off the table, they were definitely not people shy.

a view from the isla de san martin, so great!!

-a view from the Devil's Throat,

pretty thunderous falls!

-another view from la isla de san

martin, probably where they filmed

Avatar/got the idea.

We literally spent all day Saturday at the park and we were all pretty wiped from hiking around the trails and everything by the time we got back to the hostel that evening. In estimation I think we were at the park for 7 or 8 hours, so if you think about the cost, a little less than $3 per hour isn't too bad in a place THAT BEAUTIFUL! Saturday night consisted of a hamburger and french fries across the street from our hostel and then just hanging out for about an hour before we all passed-out from exhaustion.

Sunday saw us up early once again, but without strenuous obligations. We paid for our hostel and our Friday excursion and then just bummed around all morning after our 10AM check out until 2PM when we went horseback riding through the jungle. We went with 2 of the German girls, Nora and Jasmine, and their New Yorker friend Joanna. We rode for 2 hours and stopped in a Guaraní village (the indigenous people of the region) where we bought jewelry made out of dried seeds (I felt pretty obligated after invading their lives in such a gringa manner) and saw a pineapple, in the flesh, still attached to the plant!!!! We also learned that for the past 3-4 year television has been severely altering the lives of the Guaraní and that they are a nomadic people who slash and burn the rain forest and move around every year or two.

We left on Sunday evening at 7PM and had a wonderful dinner which consisted of:

-a fruit roll up style jam and cheese (which I will call jamón y queso from now on) with an olive on the end of the little cocktail sword stabbed through it

-a bread roll accompanied by jamón flavored spreadable queso

-a cold slice of meatloaf with egg and olive cooked into the middle

-mashed potatoes with a breaded, very thin steak on top (known here as a milanesa) and to top that off, jamón covered with melted queso and little olive slices

-a muffin with dulce de leche and an overly merischinoed cherry on top

Now I know the Argentines LOVE their freakin' jamón y queso, but tell me that meal is not going a WEE bit overboard? It was okay though because the meal was accompanied by a tiny glass of red wine that we had to basically chug so as to not spill it all over all of our possessions and laps and was followed by a glass of champagne. We got back into Buenos Aires at 12:30PM today, after 18.5 hours on the bus, and now I'm not doing homework to tell you all about it.

Once again, (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=2060651&id=1280460131&ref=mf) is the link for my facebook photo album, if you are interested in seeing some of the most amazing photos of your LIVES!

VIVA ARGENTINA!

So folks, Argentina beat Spain 4-1 today in the friendly soccer match that they played pretty darn close to my apartment. It was awesome being there but my only regret is that some of my favorite and most anticipated Spain players WERE NOT THERE! I know that players like Messi (10 for Argentina, their best player, the man on my jersey, and the guy who scored 2 of our 4 goals today) who play for both Barcelona (a club team in the European league) and their national team (Spain or Argentina) had to travel A LOT in the past few weeks to get to all of the games [Mexico, Ireland, around Europe, Argentina] so I guess it's forgivable that they didn't make it. NOT NOT NOT!

Bitter that I didn't see Puyol in action. Mad it was such a blow out. The field was REALLY short (it was in the River stadium, an Argentine club team). Also, I just expected more out of the World Cup Winners (Spain). Oh well, it was still a great experience. I'm headed to las cataratas de Iguazú on Thursday evening. It's an 19ish hour bus ride to the province of Misiones, which borders Brazil and Uruguay. Las cataratas = the waterfalls, there are about 270 separate falls and it's right on the border of Brazil. I'll take a million photos (more or less) and then post them when I get back, but for now I have pictures for you guys from my trip to El Tigre, from around Buenos Aires when I go on walks, and from the Japanese Gardens. Not to mention the soccer game.

The link is....

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2057983&id=1280460131&ref=mf

So enjoy folks!

some photos, finally folks

Hanging out with Indiana Jones at one of the local boliches called Sahara, la Casa Rosada (the pink house - the equivalent of the white house here), some candy covered kumquats and other delicious fruit treats, an old theatre that has been converted into a massive bookstore/cafe when I discovered today that I really enjoy studying, my B-E-A-UTIFUL number 10 MESSI jersey, and the culprit wine that exploded all over my bedroom. (HINT: If you'd like to see the photos in a bigger format, just click on the individual images and they will enlarge in a new window.)