From the plane, what the sky and what's water??

Smallest Airport Ever

That night we went into town to buy some food for lunch, since the hostel made a minor boo boo and confirmed our date for the Big Ice excursion for Saturday instead of Sunday, and it didn’t include lunch. After that we went to dinner at a really cute cafe out on the edge of the main street. We shared a calabaza (squash) soup and a stir fry rice thing with veggies. They were both really really yummy, but then we had to walk all the way back to our hostel. Before leaving we definitely didn’t realize how cold it would actually be in El Calafate, so we didn’t always dress in the most appropriate ways. (AKA theme of the trip, we were always freezing)

The next morning we woke up at 6 since we had to be ready for the bus at 7. We ate breakfast, made our lunch and got on the hour or so long bus ride that took us out to the glacier. We stopped at an outlook and took some pictures. Then we were assigned to group number 1 so we got off the bus first, got on a boat that took us to the starting place, got some gloves and put on pretty much every layer of clothing we had and head out on the trek. It started with a about 15 minute walk to where we were fitted for our crampons, the ice shoes that hook onto your own shoes, and then you walk for about another 45 minutes, which is mostly uphill, to get to the point where you get fitted for a harness. This is in case there is a spot that is dangerous and they need to tie us all together for safety, very reassuring. The hike through the woods was beautiful. You had a view of the glacier the whole time and were covered from the wind for the most part because of the trees. At a couple points I got really hot so I decided to strip down a little bit and take off some of the layers that I had on. However, I immediately regretted that once we stepped out onto the glacier. The wind was extremely strong, so strong that it almost blew me over a couple times. It was just starting to snow and the sun was nowhere to be found. We got our crampons on and began the hike out onto the glacier.

On our way to Glacier Perito Madero

The glacier!

Emma and me in front of Perito Madero

On the boat, I think

Cold but happy

Pretty

Awkward

Cool waterfall with icicles

The only shoes I have with me here for walking are gym shoes and what they suggest for the trek are hiking boots. Because of this the crampons did not quite fit me perfectly. They were cutting off parts of my circulation and digging into my foot for a little while, then after a mild adjustment by one of our guides, my foot started slipping out of my shoes, at one point my whole foot fell out of my shoe, so it was a little more work then was needed.

We stopped to eat lunch my a little lake in the middle of the glacier. It was so pretty, but cold and wet, all at the same time. After we ate we got up and began our trek back to land. Once we got back to the mountain it started to rain. We were so incredibly wet by the end of the hour hike back to the main camp we were practically dripping. All of the dry clothes that we had in our backpacks were wet, and the pants that I was wearing were so soaked that they kept stretching. Every time they stretched more they got wetter and muddier, then finally they were so long they kept getting stuck on branches and roots and ripping at the bottom. I currently have the pants sitting in a plastic bag in my room. They are dry but dirty, I don’t know what to do with them.

On the glacier!

Crevasee river

The group hiking

Stopping for lunch

Where we ate lunch

Rio

The guides said the first drop is at least 30 meters!

I told you my pants were wet

I was not kidding

On the boat on the way back to the dock they gave us a nice glass of whiskey with some glacier ice in it. Usually I think they drink it on the glacier, but with the wind it would have been quite difficult. After the trek they took us back to a lookout to see the other side of the glacier and gave us about 30 minutes to take a look and hang out. We were supposed to “listen to natures sounds” aka the ice cracking off. We heard one, but didn’t see where it came from. It was all just so majestic and grand it was so cool to see. Glaciers = Awesome in my book.

Otro lado

Oh yeah

So cool!

I wish that rando wasn't in the background

When we got back we took nice long hot showers, then went into town to get some food to make dinner. We made salad with pasta and vegetables for dinner, it was delicious. And then at 11:30 we went to bed because we were exhausted and were waking up early the next day to ride horses. That post is coming soon. I thought it would be easier to do this in 3 posts, one per day, so that I can get the photos from the glacier up now. The glacier hike was awesome and even though its expensive I would suggest it to anyone!

Emma was cold and the floors were heated

So we left on Friday around 4:30 pm and the bus ride was pretty usual.  We couldn’t decide if we were going to get dinner or not, and then around 10 pm the driver came upstairs and said something about dinner, but we weren’t actually paying attention.  So the bus stopped and everyone started getting off and so we followed.  We went into the bus station where there was a set up dinner for us complete with tablecloths, bread baskets, and waiters.  It was so strange I have never seen this happen before, an entire Chevallier bus company stopped to have dinner together.  After that we got back on the bus and continued on to Mendoza.

We arrived in Mendoza around 9 in the morning, we went to our hostel and we ate some breakfast and changed for our biking wine tour.  We went out to Maipu which is where all of the wineries are after attempting to ride a tandem bike with Anna, we all picked out a bike and went on our way.  They give you a map of all of the different places and you go and ride to the ones you want to stop at.  The view is really pretty with the mountains in the background, but you are riding down an extremely busy road and people are flying by you in their cars and it is extremely dangerous, especially if you are getting a little more buzzed.

Bikes and Wines

Before we begin

Riding

Wine museum

View from the road- Snowy mountains

While we were riding down the main road, some car was driving too fast and there was another car coming in the opposite direction so it moved to close to the right and its side view window clipped the side of Anna’s bike, luckily she had a nice graceful fall, but the car was not very nice and just sped off.

Vinyard

Inside of fermenting barrel

jaja

Fish at dinner...yes there was a head

That evening we met up with a friend of Anna who is studying in Santiago and she was with a bunch of friends as well.  We took them to a parilla because they needed to try some good Argentinian meat, I was a little meated out at the moment, so I went for parilla’d fish.  Apparently that comes with the head.

The next day we went to a town about an hour and a half away in the mountains called Porterillos.  We wanted to go for a hike around the lake, and eventually found a nice trail up a hill.  We started going off the guided path and found a nice place to sit and have lunch.  However, the second we sat down the wind started picking up and blowing dust and rocks everywhere.  I felt like I was going to fall off the side of the mountain, I have rarely felt wind this strong.  So we were forced to end our hike early and walk back down the hill so as to not die.  We got the bottom and walked around the lake for a while.  The mountains were so beautiful and everything was so pretty in this little town.

On the drive to Porterillos. It's hard to tell but the contrast of these two types of mountains looked really cool.

Apparently we're all enthusiastic

Scenery

Note the dust storm behind me

Mountains make me happy

That night we got home and decided to try and cook out on the grill for dinner.  We ended up making burgers and chicken and after attempting to light the grill for about 2 hours, it was finally lit and we were able to cook.  That night we hung out outside with some of the people at our hostel, mostly European, and played some games with them.  It was pretty relaxing, and the next day we were headed to Santiago.

In the morning we didn’t have much time to really do anything, so we went and walked around for a little and then pretty much ran to the bus station as we realized that we were really late.  We got on the 7 or so hour bus ride to Santiago which takes you through the up and down and winding roads of the Andes Mountains.  I have never seen so many different kinds/different looking mountains at one time before.  There were green ones, brown ones, ones with snow, ones with cacti, every type possible.  We had to go through customs which moved pretty quickly and arrived in Santiago around 8 at night.  Everyone else seemed to be pretty exhausted so we just went for a quick dinner at a pizza place and went to bed.

The Andes

The Andes

Igloo!!

The Andes- At the top of the most windy/ probably most dangerous road ever

Old railroad tracks

The next day we slept in and headed out for Valparaiso and Viña del Mar. Two cities that are located on the Pacific Ocean. We basically just wondered around the two towns, ate lunch, and I sat and stared at the ocean since I have never actually seen the ocean shore really, complete with waves and whatnot so it was pretty exciting for me. At night we came home and made ourselves dinner again, this time some pasta with chicken. We hung out with a couple of people from the hostel and then went to bed.

Valparaiso

Mildly ugly shore in Valparaiso

More city

Awesome sandart in Viña

Me in the ocean, yay!

Down the beach

Sadly, I think these are the biggest waves I have ever seen in person

Cool little trolly things that take you up the hills in Valparaiso

The next day we hiked up to the top of the hill where the massive statue of the Virgin Mary is that looks out over all of Santiago. The hike up was more difficult then I had anticipated but it was fun none the less. There was so much haze over the mountains though, so it was difficult to get a great view of the city. That night we met Anna’s friend Rachel and we went to a bar that served the famous terremoto drink. It consists of white wine, a shot or two of Fernet (an Argentine liquor) and then a scoop of pineapple ice cream. You mix it up and it is delicious. After there we went to a brewery and then back home at we had an early bus the next day back through The Andes, to catch our bus to Cordoba back in Mendoza.

Santiago's Haze

Virgin Mary

Nice halo

Terremoto! Yum!

The next day we took the bus back through The Andes, just as beautiful as the first time. But this time customs took forever, we were waiting for almost 3 hours since our bus first pulled into the station until we left. It also didn’t help that our bus was missing one of its passengers for a while. We got to Mendoza around 7, and our bus to Cordoba left around 10.

We arrived in Cordoba in the morning and went to our hostel. The people who owned the hostel, Ele and Willie, are the two nicest people I have ever met. They were so helpful with everything and we so sweet. We wondered around the city for a while and checked out a couple famous churches there, went to a park which was basically dirt and then went back to the hostel to rest.

That night a bunch of engineers that were staying in our hostel cooked us an asado and we ate a bunch of meat and drank some wine. We went out to a bar for a drink, but went home early because the next day was Oktoberfest in Villa General Belgrano.

Saturday was Oktoberfest and we took the about 2 hour bus ride out to Villa General Belgrano. The whole experience was ridiculous, people bought mugs what had shoulder straps so that you would not lost your mug if it were every empty. There were people everywhere, parades going on, dancers, and everything was fantastically fake German. I’m so happy we went, but it started raining so we had to leave earlier than expected so that we weren’t stranded in the rain.

Oktoberfest!

Beer Tents

Me and my green beer

I like this hat

The next day we were leaving Cordoba around 11pm. The only problem is on Sunday, nothing is open. So we decided to go to a mall and bowl, and then see a movie. It was overall a pretty lazy day. Ate dinner, picked up our stuff, and went to the bus station. Overall spring break was a lot of fun. I wish we didn’t have to travel as much and could spend more time in each place, but I’m happy I saw what I did, and saw some really amazing places.

What I’ve really realized in the past few weeks is that more than anything else this semester abroad was really a time for me to calm down, clear my head, and overall just take a break.  School back in the U.S. stresses me out like none other for some reason, but here I really just don’t worry about it.  C’s will get me the credit so as long as I get that, all my spare time can be spent on exploring and learning in the actual city.

A few weekends ago I went on a nice day trip to Tigre.  It is basically a northern suburb of Buenos Aires, but it is located right on the water and is home to of course, some great markets, but also a water street system.  Like Venice there is an area with a bunch of houses that are only accessible by using the water street system.  We took the train up to Tigre, which took about an hour, and then we walked down to the busy part of town and ate lunch outside at a parilla.  We had chorizo and a steak and it was so good.  The meat was really fatty on the steak, which ads to the flavor, but I could easily do without it.  Then we went and walked around the market and looked at all the things we wish we could have bought, but can’t because we would have no way to bring them home.  I wanted to go on a tour of the neighborhood, so we took an hour boat tour around the area with all of the cabinas and the houses along the water streets.  I would definitely go back there again, it’s always so nice to get outside of the city and just relax for a while.

Me and Katie at lunch

Looking out onto the market

Katie Anna Siri and Me on the boat tour

Delivery boat of Quillmes (Beer)

The night after we went to Tigre I decided to venture out to a bar called La Porta Pirata, basically it is a pirate themed bar.  It was awesome.  Even the waiters had to dress like pirates.  Sadly it was almost completely empty, even until around 2 when we decided to leave, but it was worth it.  Everything looked like it was part of a pirate ship, definitely worth the walk to get there.

Pirate ship on the outside

Me and my BFF

I don't even know

On Sunday I went to a polo match with IES.  It was cool, but kind of long and like most things with IES extremely unorganized.  We didn’t really know where we were supposed to sit, or even where the buses were supposed to go to drop us off.  But it ended up being fun.  Watching the horses was really cool and how the people didn’t fall off I have no idea.  Its kind of crazy.

Playing

Again

Two weekends ago I went to Salta.  It is in the northwest part of the country and takes a painfully long 20 hour bus ride to get to.  I had been sick with the stomach flu from Tuesday night until about midday on Thursday and we were leaving Thursday night, but I was nervous about the fact that I would still be sick while I was gone.  Our bus ride on the way there left around 8:30 at night and then was supposed to arrive around 3 or 4 in the afternoon the next day.  When we got on our bus everyone was asking us if we were going to the concert, and we had no idea what they were talking about.  The weekend that we were going to Salta was apparently one of the biggest concert weekends of the year for El Indio who was the lead singer of the band Los Redonditos, but he has since separated and only holds two concerts a year in cities outside of Buenos Aires.  The bus started out fun, all of the people who were going to the concert were partying on the bus and being pretty much nuts.  For a while they came over and talked to us, but then we wanted them to go away as they began chain smoking cigarettes all night.  When we woke up in the morning the chain smoking continued and by the time we finally got off the bus I probably had over 3 packs of cigarettes sitting in my lungs, gross.

Anyways once we got to Salta we checked into our hostel and then went to go find food at the grocery store.  We came back and cooked, started taking showers, then proceeded to open up our bottles of wine and start drinking.  As the night went on we left our door open and tried to get the attention of the other people in our hostel.  They invited us into the back where there was a grill and they kept feeding us asado for the entire night.  It was great.  All the people were going to the concert so they were a lot of fun and we didn’t even feel the need to leave the hostel that night.  The next day we woke up, ate some breakfast, and went to walk around town.  There were so many people around, all wearing their Indio t-shirts and breaking out into chants every once in a while.  We ate lunch at an outdoor cafe and then walked around the city finding little markets and churches and overall in search of the tram that takes you up to the top of a hill so you can see a really nice view of the mountain.  Afterward we went down the hill, walked around another fair, and then bought some yummy empanadas.  Since that was the night that the concert was supposed to take place, we decided that we would cook our own food and grill out at the hostel.  We made a great salad, cooked some meet that tasted like skirt steak and also had chorizo and grilled vegetables.  It was so good, I ate every little bit of it.  When the people came back from the concert the tried to get us to go out with them, and while I was all for it, no one else really wanted to go, so I sadly made the safe option and stayed in and went to bed.

Church in Salta

Inside the church

Another pretty church (Salta is known for churches I guess)

Laurel and me in the tram thing

The Andes, yay for mountains

Some foothills, which to me look like mountains

At the top

I think they look bigger and cooler in person...

jerrycurl rat tail...yes

Creek on our hike

Cheeto!

They have the coolest trees in the country

Outlook

The next day we woke up early.  We were supposed to have an excursion at 730 am, but for some reason we needed to confirm our reservation and they came looking for us and we weren’t there (obviously it was like 3 in the afternoon) so we had to make our own plans.  We went to a small town right at the base of the mountains called San Lorenzo and we went and hiked a nice trail through the foothills.  Again we somehow found a dog that walked with us the whole way, we named him Cheeto, and after the trail which took you up to a really nice panoramic view, we went and ate lunch at an outdoor cafe right at the base of the foothills.

That afternoon we came back and walked around town a little more and went and found a really nice big market where I got a piece of nan randomly and then we made plans to go to the casino that night.  At the casino I won a whole 9 pesos playing slots so I was quite proud of myself (that’s a whole like $2.50) but I ended up with the most money of everyone else.  The next day we took our time, walked down and got some epanadas for the bus, and then we got on our 20 hour bus ride back to Buenos Aires.  I got in just in time to go to class, but then took the rest of the day to relax and do pretty much nothing.

On Saturday I went to Chinatown and had so much food I thought I was going to explode, spring roles, soup, and sweet and sour chicken.  It was all so good, having a taste of something different that actually has flavor is a great feeling.  Then at night I went with a few people to a malonga.  They needed to go for a class, and I thought that I would just tag along for fun.  This malonga ended up just being music, but it was a blast.  We shared a couple bottles of wine and listened to come tango/rhythm/ who knows what other kind of music.  It was nice to just relax and listen to live music.  There are also dance malongas, so I’m going to have to hit that up at some point as well.

On Friday I’m leaving for spring break, which is going to consist of 3 days in Mendoza (contains the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas), 3 days in Chile, and then come back for 2 days at Oktoberfest in Cordoba, which is supposedly the second largest outside of Germany itself.  So it will be a lot of traveling but should hopefully be a ton of fun.  I will be sure to update with pictures and what not when I get back! Adios!

Last weekend on Saturday I went to San Isidro, which is a town located about 30 minutes north of the city of Buenos Aires, it a suburb of the city.  It had a bunch of amazing/gorgeous houses.  The first place we went was a mansion where some famous author used to live, I don’t remember her name but the house was so pretty.  The grounds were amazing with flowers and extremely green grass.  (You don’t realize how much you miss grass until you don’t see it for a really long time.)

The backyard view

Flowers

Fountain

After the house we went to see the famous church that is located in San Isidro that I also can not remember the name of.  It was pretty, but inside looked like pretty much every other large church I have ever seen.

Church

After that we went to another house that was a famous Argentinian artists house.  It had a cool layout, square shaped with a huge patio in the middle and a beautiful view of the Rio in the backyard.  My friends and I plotted out ways to throw the most ridiculous party at this house, with a band on the roof, bar in the patio, and dancing in the backyard…too bad we aren’t actually allowed to be there after closing.  There was also an owl in the tree in the front yard.

View from backyard

Main part of the house sorry its blurryOwl!

After the house we went to a cafe on the Rio that was beautiful and had an amazing view of the city from it.  When you are outside of the city limits and looking at Buenos Aires from far away it looks like any big city in the world or the US, it has tall buildings and flashing lights.  It’s strange that you can be so far from home, but not feel like you are anywhere different at all.  At the cafe I had a submarino which is the amazing creation of steamed milk and a chocolate bar in which you dip into the warm milk until it melts and makes you own hot chocolate.  Also included were medialunas, brownies, and mini alfajores.  Medialunas are basically sweet croissants, soo good. and Alfajores are cookies sandwiched around different things, in this case, ducle de leche of course!

View of BA

After San Isidro we went to a bar to watch the Argentina vs Brazil soccer game.  The game was unfortunately terrible and Argentina played like crap, but it was really fun to get into the game.  Everyone was cheering when the team came onto the field and yelling like ever other kind of sports game.  But since it’s futbol it was different (I don’t usually watch futbol.)

The next day we went to the Feria de Mataderos, which is a far way out into the outskirts of Buenos Aires.  It is similar to most fairs except there is a bunch of live music and acts going on and there is more food than most places.  Walking down one aisle there were samples of jams and different kinds of dulce de leche.  I ended up buying a little jar of ducle de leche with coconut…soooo good!  I also of course got some choripan and finished off the day with a crepe with ducle de leche.  Lets just say not the healthiest day that I’ve had here.  And then for dinner one of my friends wanted to go get some hot wings for his birthday, so where else would we go?  Hooters of course.  And let me tell you, the Argentinian Hooters is quite disappointing.  I ordered 3 mile island sauce and still had to use tobasco sauce just to give it a kick, so sad.  It was also actually expensive, so in the future if you are looking for something spicy, do not go get hot wings at Hooters in Buenos Aires.

I went out for someones on birthday on Tuesday to a bar called Sugar.  It is owned by a British guy and is littered with Americans, but has a 5 peso happy hour until midnight.  What country has happy hour until midnight? On Wednesday I saw the movie Inglorious Bastards, which was really good but in Quentin Tarantino’s style, extremely violent.  It was interesting since about half of the movie is in either French or German, so the subtitles during those parts were in Spanish, yet I was still able to understand every part of the movie.  It makes me feel good to think that my Spanish is actually improving, and hopefully by the time I leave here it will be better.  I’m just nervous that once I get home I’m going to lose all of my skills and have no one to practice with.  But I won’t think about that right now.

I started looking into information about next weekend, me and a couple friends are hoping to go to Salta, in the northwest part of Argentina and plans for spring break where we’re going to Mendoza and Chile!  I guess that’s it for now, hopefully this weekend and next week will be a little more crazy.  I’m well rested enough to have a big blow out week!  I’ll leave you with some extra pic’s of the week.  Ciao!

Molly y yo

Happy Hour!

Me Peter and Pierce

Me and Emma

Extremely unimpressed llama at the Feria de Mataderos

Jessalin (probably not spelled right, sorry girl) Sam and Me at Sabbia

Before going to Chic (Me, Siri, Anna, Jessalin, and Katie)

Me and Dan and Boca

My attempt at being artsy with the power lines

Yesterday me and Anna went to the zoo and it was crazy.  It was super cheap to get in, the equivalent of $3 and then you could buy food to FEED THE ANIMALS.  Some of these animals did not have cages like the creepy huge rabbits or the ugly otter type things that just roamed about free.  It was a pretty good zoo complete with lions, tigers, bears, elephants, and yes…even a cow.  Just in case you didn’t know what they looked like.  It was a nice way to spend the afternoon and feeding the animals was awesome.  Some took the food right from your hand and others like the llamas got fed down a shoot, still pretty cool overall.

Gross

Me and the polar bear

El Rey Leon

He's looking at me

Just feedin' a llama

Wrestling

What are you?

Massive Hippo

That pretty much takes me up to today.  We had one of the Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo come and talk to us in my class today which was really interesting.  Two of her kids and you son in law were kidnapped never to be seen again.  She’s been walking with the mothers on Thursdays for 32 years.  I admire her strength and the fact that she has been able to fight to find her children for such a long time, knowing that results are not likely.

I went out last night for a friends birthday so I’m planning on staying in tonight.  Do homework, study for my vocab quiz, and get some sleep so I’m ready for the weekend!  Hopefully I’ll come back with more pictures of people so I can prove that I actually do have friends here, I’m just terrible at taking pics of people.  I guess its something to work on.  That’s it for now feel free to drop some comments! Ciao

Classes here are wayyyyy easier than anything I would be taking at drake right now which is really nice.  I have maybe about an hour of homework a day and I only really do homework like 4 days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and a little bit if needed on Thursday.  Its a pretty nice deal so I’m enjoying myself.  It allows me to hang out in the afternoons and actually go places around the city on the weekends.

Two weekends ago I went to lunch with my friend Sam at Cumana which is amazing.  It does a lot of stewy type things but everything I have eaten there is amazing.  They use so many interesting ingredients like pumpkin in a lot of their recipes, so I highly recommend it if your ever headed towards Buenos Aires.  After that we walked down to Recoleta where their fair is on the weekends.  All of the stuff is so cool and it is all hand made and so difficult to make decisions about what to buy.  I ended up caving in and buying a pair of 75 peso sandals that were really pretty.  It is really only like $19 so its a pretty good deal.

My pretty shoes

The sky was beautiful, I had to take a pic

Creepy Wonka guy

Then we wondered around a little more and found a live concert going on outside of a bookstore.  The performers were actually really good and we just relaxed and hung out for the rest of the evening until we parted ways to shower change and eat dinner before we went out.  We ended up going to a bar near my house called the Shamrock, which is pretty much your typical bar with a “dance club” in the basement consisting of electronic music and no one really dancing.  We called it an early night and went home around 2.

One Sunday the sun was shinning and I decided to take my homework and sit at the park.  It felt so nice to sit outside and watch the people go by.  The park closest to my house is nice, not huge, but a lot of benches and a relatively good path for me to walk around if I want to work out except for the fact that the one day I did that everyone stared at me like I was nuts.  Most people in Buenos Aires don’t work out outside or in public unless they are at one of the big parks in Palermo or by the ecological reserve.  Most belong to gyms and go there, so I guess the site of a girl in workout clothes listening to her iPod and walking quickly was strange to them. Oh well, its going to have to be a repeat event because I’m too cheap to join a gym.  Anyways, I had a lovely Sunday just relaxing, doing homework, and exploring the area a little bit.

During the week I don’t usually do too much outside of class.  But on Wednesday we had a really interesting field trip with my Human Rights class.  They took us to one of the centers where they used to keep people during the era of the desaparecidos.  We first had an introduction to the facility by the woman who runs it.  Then we got to look around the facility which weirdly doesn’t look like much because they destroyed the building in I believe 1979 when the Human Rights Commission was coming to Argentina to inspect what was going on.  So all that was left were the outer walls and some mach ups of where survivors remembered things to be.  It was creepy in a very isolated kind of way.  But the creepiest part was that this detention center is located directly in the middle of the city meaning that people could most likely see or at least hear some of what was going on and said nothing about it.  The military put so much fear in the residents of Argentina that they could not even speak out to help others.  Our teacher explained to us how he had been kidnapped in the middle of the night, blindfolded, shoved into a trunk of a car and taken to a detention center like this.  How he is not completely crazy I don’t know, but that is an amazing and terrible experience to have.

View from entrance, what used to be a bus stop

Wall of those known to have "disappeared" at Olimpo (The detention center)

My class at the entrance of where the people were kept

Entrance where detainees were brought in

Where the cells used to be located

Overall week 3 was solid I’m having a blast with everything I do and already know I’m going to be Buenos Aires sick when I go back to the U.S.  Sad.

The next class I had was not so exciting however.  It was Native People’s from 16th-20th Century and the teacher was about as boring as you could get.  The class was so random and did not have any real structure which was really annoying.  The teacher speaks very slowly and it is going to be impossible to pay attention to her for the rest of the semester, but I need the history credit so I will try to make the best of it.  I know a lot of people in the class so we can work though it together I guess.

On Wednesday I had my Spanish Workshop class which wasn’t too bad.  It is mainly there to improve your writing and just practice as much as possible.  I like that because I have to think about the grammar and using the vocabulary that I know to make interesting stories.  The teacher seems pretty cool and there doesn’t seem to be too much work involved so it should be a good class.

Wednesday in the afternoon I had my Human Rights Movement class and the professor is about as bad ass as they come.  He grew up in Ireland, was an ordained Priest, but then he got married and had kids.  So we worked as a missionary with the Catholic Church and lived in Argentina for a while until, through his humanitarian efforts, he got arrested and detained and eventually deported back to Ireland.  He has also lived in England, the US, Venezuela and more.  One day a week we are going to have field trips and the other is going to be lecture style.  I am super excited and it should be a great class.

I go to visit IUNA tomorrow to get info. about my photography class so hopefully that goes well and it all works out!

The busses are not that bad.  The “semi-cama” gives you a lot of decent leg room and the chairs recline a good a amount.  They are not bedlike by any means but it is definitely better then a plane.  There were two Argentinian guys sitting in front of us who we made friends with.  They had us listen to some of their music and talked to us for the first few hours of the ride.  Around 630 I woke up to bright lights and realized that we were at the bus station in Cordoba.  We packed up our stuff and got off the bus and took a taxi to our hostel since at this point 2 people had told us that this part of Cordoba was not safe and that if they had a sister they would not send her to this city so we were already thinking great things.  So we get to the hostel and it doesn’t look like this part of town is too sketchy.  We get in the the lady asks us who we are and we tell her that we had a reservation for the next 2 nights and that we had said we would be coming in early in the morning.  She said that she had no idea that we had a reservation made here and that they were completely booked.  No beds until Tuesday.  We showed her the confirmation of our reservation and it didn’t seem to mean much to her at all and basically ushered us out the door with no help.  There was another hostel down the street and we asked them if they had any open beds and they also said no.  They didn’t think that there would be any open beds in all of the cities hostel because there was some conference in town that weekend.  We went on to wonder around to a couple more hostels and cheap looking hotels.  We finally gave up and just called every place we could find in the guide book and every place said that they were full until Tuesday night.  At this point its about 745 in the morning and we are in a city that we don’t know pretty much homeless for the weekend.  I was getting stressed out thinking that we were going to have to just turn around and go back to BA if we couldn’t find somewhere to stay.

We finally found a hotel that had a computer sitting in the front lobby and even though they were completely full the lady at the front desk said that we could use it to look up more information.  She took out a phonebook and started calling different hotels she knew of in the area that may have had some open rooms.  She was completely unsuccessful except for a 4 star hotel which would have been about 290 pesos a night and we would need to get two rooms at that price to accommodate the 4 of us.  In the meantime the other three people tried calling some hostels in other towns and eventually found an open place in the city of La Cumbre.  It is a smaller mountain town about 2 1/2 hours outside of Cordoba and they had space for us so after guaranteeing that they would have room for us if we were to leave now we got our minibus tickets and drove to La Cumbre.

View from a park in town

Mountains

Another view

We get to the town and it is just perfect.  There are lots of shops and restaurants and you can see a great view of the mountains on almost any street you walk down.  The mountains are more “mini mountains” but to a midwesterner like me they are mountains none the less.  The first day we went to lunch and then walked around town and soon realized that it was siesta time until about 6 so we went back to the hostel, took a nap, showered, and then went back out.  We talked around and went into some of the stores and then went to a French Restaurant for dinner.  We had some drinks and I had cheese fondue for dinner and it was amazing.  I love fondue and it was 27 pesos which is about $7 for fondue.  A pretty good deal I think.  We went to a bar after for a little but were so tired we went back to the room and went to bed.

Town

Where we ate dinner

More town

Out hostel, outside view

And inside

Inside #2

The next morning we woke up and hiked up a mountain to a massive Jesus statue located on the mountain.  It was a beautiful view the statue was really cool looking as well.  Behind the statue was a smaller trail so we began hiking the trail and soon found 2 dogs on it.  They became our Sherpas and would run ahead of us, then turn around and run back to make sure that we were coming.  They were so cute and became our buddies.  We tried to follow the tail to a water thing, but eventually we just hit fences that said private property so we had to turn around and go back.  After a warm up and lunch break we set out again and just wondered down a road.  This road eventually wound uphill and we found ourselves at the top of another mountain.  There were beautiful houses on the way and the view was amazing at the top.  At night we went to a restaurant for dinner that had curry and I almost died.  It was amazing, so much flavor and it was actually spicy.  I love the exchange rate here.  We split 2 appetizers, a bottle of nice wine, each had an entree, and split 2 desserts and spent only about $18 each.  It was so good and probably the best meal I’ve had in Argentina.  The cutest part was that our dogs that had been our guides during the day found us again and walked with us to our restaurant and waited outside for almost 2 hours for us and when we didn’t come out they eventually gave up and left.  It was really sad.

Me Anna and Sam part way up

Jesus Cristo

Cross at top

View

Dog 1

Dog 2

View on second hike

And another

On Monday we tried to go paragliding.  We found the place and asked if the weather was ok and they said yes.  So we drove out with this guy to the jump off place and it had another amazing view.  You looked out over a valley with mountains all around.  We waited for some people to go, and he said we were next.  Then the wind stopped, and then once it picked up he had another group go and said we were next.  By the time he finally came back it was after 3 and our bus was leaving at 5 so we didn’t have time to go.  We had waited at the top of this mountain for almost 4 hours for nothing which was really frustrating.  In the car he finally told us that they usually operate with 8 instructors but because of a competition they only had 3 and that the people who were before us had been waiting several days to go because the weather had not been great.  Had we known that in the morning we could have found other things to do, but instead he had gotten stuck on a mountain.

View from where we were supposed to jump from

Peter and Sam looking out into the valley

At least it was pretty up here

On the bus back to Cordoba we had to stand up for almost half of the time because the bus was overbooked.  It was extremely packed, but we finally found 2 seats so the four of us sat on each others laps in order to be able to just sit down.  We finally got on our bus in Cordoba and made it back to Buenos Aires on Tuesday morning.  The whole trip was really messed up and everything we tried to plan fell through, but everything we didn’t plan seemed to work out.  We had a great time, but it was definitely an experience of a weekend.

Freaky looking animals

Anna, Sam, Molly, and Me (from far away)

Alpacas or Llamas (I don't know the difference)

Anna and Me

Baby Sheep!

Yesterday the entire IES program went to an estancia, which is a farm type thing and had the whole day to just relax, which was really nice.  We drove about and hour and a half outside of the city and arrived around lunch time.  They began with some hourderves, cheese and meat, cheeto type things, and really good empanadas.  Then after we were already full it was time for lunch.  They ushered us inside and we were first allowed to eat from a salad bar and then the waiters began to come around with huge things of meet, something from a cow, a chicken, and maybe a pig?  French fries and bread were also given and all of the food was so good, but it was difficult to eat it all.  After lunch we were given a dessert buffet, which consisted of many different types of typical Argentinian desserts.  There was flan, tarimisou, dulce de leche and more.

After lunch we went down to go try and ride some horses.  I ended up deciding against it because it was probably the most dangerous thing ever.  There was no one really telling people how to ride a horse, there were no helmets, and the horses really were not very well trained.  So instead I went on a bike ride to find the llamas or alpacas (I don´t know which they were).  Then we came back and played some volleyball and just sat around and relaxed until it was time to go back to the city. (Pictures will be updated next week, I´m not on my own computer now.)

This morning I signed up for classes.  I was placed in Spanish 250 which is the highest level I could be placed in, but of course my class has a class on Friday and so does the workshop that I wanted to take.  So as of now it looks like any traveling I´m going to want to do is going to be a bit more difficult, but I´m not too worried about it.  My bus leaves around 8:30 tonight for Cordoba and I´m really excited. We found out that there is another group of IES students going so we can probably see them while we´re there.    We´ve hopefully found where to go for a nice long full day think on Sunday which should be a bunch of fun.  I´ll be sure to update with pictures when I get back on Tuesday!