Roadtrip to Alta Gracia, Villa General Belgrano & Cumbricita

Okay its been awhile since I’ve written… I started writing a post last week but I got distracted (no surprise) so the first part is from a week ago…

Before I arrived to Argentina, I was warned that I would feel extremely lonely because of the language barrier between me and most of the people here. I know it hasn’t been long, but I honestly have not felt lonely since I have gotten here. In fact, sometimes I feel like I need my space because there are so many people! I think the biggest change for me so far has been learning to listen ALL the time. As you all know, I’m a talker. I’ll admit it…I love to talk about anything and everything. Heart to hearts, random conversations with strangers, small talk with acquaintances… todos (everything). In Argentina, I haven’t met one person who doesn’t love to talk (especially at the bus stop, and on the bus, back home in Boston everyone wants to be left alone with their headphones on). As a talker myself, I feel as though I have definitely came to the right country. Argentines speak with passion and persuasion, and sooo fast. One skill I have been working on immensely is my listening skills. I know it sounds stupid, but it really does take practice to listen to these people talk. It’s much easier to zone out when you don’t understand a topic of conversation, but I have been learning to try to catch onto key phrases or words to try and stay in the conversation (mentally, not really talking haha). Like I said, it’s been difficult because I want so badly to be able to express my opinions and views. Hopefully it will become easier with time as I learn a million more vocab words and verbs…man am I getting a lot of homework from my Spanish teacher!

Okay so since last week I’ve gotten a lot busier…last weekend was pretty slow because the only kids I knew in Cordoba were away for the weekend. That left me with pretty much nothing to do but hang out. I’ll admit I was alittle bored and disappointed…but eh what can ya do. This past week of class I’ve had 4 ½ hours so it’s feeling a bit long. I’m learning a lot though, so it’s good. On Wednesday, Pascal and the other boys were finally back from their trip to Iguazu, and Pascal’s friends from Germany were visiting so he was taking them on a tour of the city. I tagged along since I haven’t seen much of the city myself. It was gorgeous! There are so many old churches, cathedrals, and buildings. We got caught in a rainstorm though, which is when I realized that the city barely has ANY sewers. The city has many hills also, so all of the water rushes down the roads like rivers, and has nowhere to drain. Literally after only 5 minutes of rain, the streets were flooded, and the puddles ruined my favorite pair of shoes. Pascal, his two friends and I were all running to try and find a place to eat dinner during the downpour, and of course the electricity was out in the part of the city that we were in so we couldn’t see ANYTHING. Just imagine trying to run through a city like Boston when there is absolutely no light except for the lightning flashing. His friends said that they felt like they were in World War 3… it was nuts. We had lomitos and cerveza at a place near our school and it was soo good.

On Thursday, after class, Pascal spontaneously invited me to go visit Alta Gracia with Marco, and his two friends that were visiting. They had rented a car and had room, so I packed an overnight bag and we were on our way. We saw the museum of Che Guevara which was pretty cool, but I’m not as interested in history as the others were. We then walked around Alta Gracia and checked out the festival that was going on…almost every country was represented, and they were selling food and traditional items in the tents. Since we skipped lunch, we were all starving by around 6pm and NO restaurants were open. Most restaurants in Argentina open around 8pm because they traditionally eat dinner so late. We walked around for an hour and finally found a place. We then watched a parade of all the countries. I have to say I was pretty unimpressed with the United States. All of the other countries showed off their music, culture, dancing, or costume. The United States was announced, and they were literally just a bunch of kids walking their bikes down the street. Ummm…okay. It’s safe to say I was pretty embarrassed seeing as I was the only American among my 4 German friends… I didn’t hear the end of it for the rest of the night. I guess another American stereotype that I had never even heard of is that Americans drink their beer with ice… Pascal lived in Florida for a year and he claims that everyone does that there…I told him that I had never heard of it and now every time we drink beer he always asks me if I want ice in mine. Grrr…

So after dinner we attempted to find a hostel to stay over in… but we were out of luck because every hostel was full from all the people visiting for the festival. All except for the dirtiest hostel I’ve ever seen in my life. We walked into this hostel and there were about 10 bird cages tacked all over the wall of this one room. They were full of parakeets… so random. And they were all chirping SO loudly. This huge guy showed us this room for us to stay in, and it was disgusting. The sheets were stained, it was so grimy… so we ended up just going back to Cordoba and staying at Pascal’s house in the city. The next day we drove to Villa General Belgrano, a Germany town in Argentina (go figure, the Germans want to go to a Germany town…of course). We walked around and got coffee and saw the sights… then we drove to Cumbricita and hiked up to this waterfall. It was beautiful! We were on a time limit to get the rental car back on time though, so we didn’t get to stay as long as we’d wanted to. The drive to Cumbricita was literally an hour on a terrible dirt road weaving through the mountains. It reminded me of Devlin’s driveway in Dunstable…only it lasted FOREVER. Oh, and we had to stop about 3 times because there were cows in the road. We only passed about 3 cars in an hour on that road…it was so isolated it was crazy!

Another thing I learned during this roadtrip was some of the crazy driving rules here. For example, in rotarys here, the people that are entering the rotary have the right of way, and the people in the rotary have to yield to those entering. It’s the weirdest thing to watch because everyone in the middle of the rotary is always slowing down for everyone else. Also, they don’t believe in having stop signs at 4 way intersections. You are supposed to yield to whoever is on your right. I can’t even tell you how many times I thought we were going to get hit while driving downtown because someone was flying down the road and not yielding to us because they were going so fast they didn’t see us.

Saturday I hung out with my argentine friend Jorge, and he took me swimming at a pool a town over. He’s teaching me phrases (unlike my professor who is pretty much only teaching me verbs…so its nice to know both) and words that are typical in Argentina and what words to not use because they are used in Spain only. It’s difficult because he really doesn’t speak much English but it’s getting easier to have a conversation (elementary level, but hey its better than nothing). I got reallyyy burnt at the pool but it was nice to not be sweltering for a day. That night I went into the city and met up with the German boys and Helena for dinner, and met another American, Brian, who just moved in with Marco and Helena. He’s from New York, and it was nice to finally meet another Americano. I also met Mike who is now my new roommate in my house with Adrianna & Pepe. He’s 20 and from South Carolina. Apparently my host family told me a week ago that he was moving in but I didn’t understand what they were saying so I was a bit surprised when he showed up at the house with suitcases in hand…haha that’s Argentina for ya. After dinner we went to our friend’s house for a couple drinks, and then went out to the club at 2am. We were there until 5am when it closed, and everyone was saying how that club is the one that closes the earliest. Normally clubs close at 6am or 7am. I couldn’t believe it! Although I have to say it didn’t feel that late because of the amount of people that were out and about… Mike and I took a taxi back to the house and we slept until the afternoon. That’s the latest night I’ve had since freshmen year of college I think…

After I woke up on Sunday I went to the city instead of doing my homework. I figured that practicing verbally beats the hand written stuff… I met up with Marco and he took me to the Mercado that they have every Saturday & Sunday. It’s a huge open market where they sell lots of hand made crafts, and pretty much anything you can think of. It kind of reminded me of a flea market type of set up. Some of the stuff was super nice, while other stuff was cheap. It was cool to see though, and a good place to practice my vocabulary words.

This week I'm supposed to be starting at the orphanage, although there has been ALOT of miscommunication with my program. They havne't given me much information as to what day I'm starting, and what time... so I keep waiting on that. Another issue that I've had is miscommunication about the food provided to me. My family is supposed to provide 1-2 meals for me a day, or at least 1 sufficient meal. All my family has been giving me is bread and tea in the morning, and that's it. They offer me dinner, but I have to pay seperately for it. Grrr...it's been so frustrating because although my advisors and coordinators from the US are trying to fix it, it's taking forever to communicate with my local advisors because no one can get ahold of them. So that would be my one frustration with being down here... other than that, I can't complain.

Thanks for reading :) hasta luegooo