Carlos Paz & starting at the Orphanage :)

So the longer I’ve been here the busier I am and the less motivated I am to write because of how tired I am all the time… so here goes nothin…

I’m now taking espanol for 4 ½ hours per day and it’s very hard for me to sit still for that long…I’m learning a lot but anytime I space out for one second my teacher is in my face saying “ENTENDES?!” which means “you understand?” I like having the one-on-one tutoring but I’m used to spacing out in class in Boston, so I’m workin on that… it’s kind of cool that I’m starting to be able to express myself (slowly) and have conversation with my teacher (who doesn’t speak any English… it feels like an accomplishment haha). Although I’m struggling to find the words it’s nice to be able to get my ideas across and we can actually discuss different things besides what I did the day before.

Last Saturday I went to Carlos Paz with some friends… Carlos Paz is a beautiful city about an hour away from Cordoba by bus. It’s got a huge lake and a river…most people go there on the weekends to escape the city, to swim & get some sun. We showed up at Carlos Paz on Saturday and a half hour later there was a HUGE storm. Of course it’s the 2nd time it’s rained in the 3 weeks I’ve been here (the other time was when we were on our other trip…go figure) So we spent 2 hours drinking beers and having lunch because there was nothing else to do… It rained all day so we barely even saw the river. Guess we’ll have to make another trip… we had hours (seriously, like 8 hours) to kill before going to the club so we saw Avatar in Spanish… that was interesting. We finally got to the club at 2am and just as the german boys were complaining about the music, the whole club lost electricity from the thunderstorm. FANTASTIC. We didn’t bring anything to stay over in a hostel because we had planned to stay out and party all night so we waited for an hour and a half for the electricity to come back on… finally around 3:30am the electricity came back, and we stayed until 6:30am. The boys were exhausted and dragged Helena and I out (I would have never guessed how late it was, the club was packed until 8am apparently..) We walked to the bus stop about 20 minutes away and of course it was still pouring outside so we got completely soaked. We caught the next bus back to Cordoba and with our luck the bus actually had AC (I had NEVER been on a bus in Argentina that has AC before…) By the time we got back to Cordoba we were all shivering and I was sure I was going to have pneumonia… haha by the time I arrived back at my doorstep it was 9am. My host parents were eating breakfast and saw me, dressed and hair soaked completely, and they responded with “todo bien in Carlos Paz? no tenemos suerte..." I sleptmost of Valentines Day away which was absolutely fine with me :) Unfortunately they celebrate it here just as much as in the States...

This week I started at the orphanage in Villa Allende. I love it, but there are definitely going to be some (many) challenges. The kids are great, but the language barrier is very tough. The kids speak even faster than the adults around here, and they most of them think it’s really comical when you can’t understand them. The location of the orphanage is really beautiful, but dirty. There are a couple of volunteers from Germany there, but it’s hard to know who works where because most of the volunteers split their time between the boys house, girls house, house for disabled, elderly house, and other locations in the vicinity. It seems like I’m going to be the only one working in the afternoons at the girls’ house. There are over 50 girls in my house, along with the young boys (under 5 years old). In the past I’ve had experience working with boys in Jumpstart (ages 5-6) and I thought that if I could handle young boys and their energy that girls would be a piece of cake. I was SO WRONG. Girls are much harder to handle and harder to entertain. And they are constantly fighting and teasing each other. There are other Argentine volunteers (I think they are volunteers? They are older and I see them everyday…maybe they live there… no one tells me anything so…) but they pretty much just sit there, smoke cigarettes, and yell at the kids occasionally to shut up, sit down, eat, listen, etc. It’s tough to watch the way the younger kids are treated sometimes because they are pushed, hit, or their hair is pulled by the older women even when it seems like they aren’t doing anything wrong (and those that are doing something wrong, aka pulling others hair or kicking the other girls, don’t get in trouble of course)… but it’s not my place to do anything.

Today I brought the kids Oreos (they were selling 10 cookies for 2 pesos on the bus… 50 cents… I couldn’t resist) The kids had a hayday! Well the kids that were lucky enough to get one. It’s crazy to see the smallest things that make these kids happy. On a different note, I feel so bad for these girls because they all have lice… they are constantly itching and asking their friends to pick the lice out… it’s awful. Today I was brushing one girls hair and there were eggs and lice crawling everywhere…I can’t imagine what that must feel like. I’m so paranoid I’m going to get it but I’ve been super precautious keeping my hair up while I’m at the orphanage...

So far, I have been working from 3pm-7 or 8pm depending on the night. The other night I helped take the kids to the Ash Wednesday service (they have a room where they hold services every Sunday and for holidays for the kids) which was cool. The kids sang beautiful Spanish hymns and were the most behaved I ever saw them. Anyways, for regular days, there isn’t really a routine for the kids, but depending on the weather the kids are allowed to play outside by the pool (I know, they are really lucky to have a pool), or they have to sit inside in the “TV room”. The entire house is made of rock and it’s a really cool set up…it’s kind of like a maze. At 5pm we round up the kids in the garden and hand out plastic cups with hot milk in them (I don’t know why the milk is hot, even on hot days…) the kids also get this Argentine bread. The kids love teaching me clapping games, and I’m slowly learning terms and how to play cards (similar to Unos, but it’s called Lolamentos) with them. The kids also love counting my freckles…since I have about a million of them. They think it’s hysterical for some reason… The kids that are fighting for my attention are the 2 year olds – 10 year olds usually. The older the girls are, the more of an attitude they have. The older ones LOVE to lure the younger girls away by saying “la chica no habla espanol…no entenda NADA” It’s discouraging but I know that it’s just the age. It’s just tough because I don’t want to practice my Spanish when I know I’m going to get made fun of when I pronounce something wrong…ughh I guess it can only get better from here.

That’s pretty much all that’s new, the kids have been taking a lot out of me… my daily routine is now class from 9:30-2pm (leaving for the bus at 8am), then taking the bus straight to Villa Allende to work and getting home around 8:30pm on a good day. I can’t believe that this weekend will mark exactly a month since I arrived. The time needs to slow down… part of me is wishing that I had only chosen to stay in one place for 6 months instead of switching it up but it’s too late to go back now…

Besos de Córdoba <3