Wednesday-
Day 21
I had
later class today so I got to sleep in a little bit. After class I got lunch
with Caitlyn, Nicole, and Kelsey and then I went back to the UCEL café for a
while to do my homework and then about half our group met up for helado near
the school. We stuck around for a while talking and then I walked home before
it got too dark. We had steak again for dinner and a spinach tarta. I didn’t do
anything too interesting today and I’m going to bed early knowing I have a lot
to do tomorrow.
Thursday-
Day 22
Susan
and I went to our UCEL class this morning. Last week we scoped out some seats
in the back and tried to blend in and we did the same today. The group of girls
in front of us heard us talking to each other in English and all of a sudden we
heard, “chicas, de donde son?” (Girls, where are you from?) So then we talked
to them a little before class. During class the professor put the class into
groups for a project that’s due in May and Susan and I weren’t on the list so
we weren’t in groups, the girls asked the professor about it and he said “oh
yeah, the Americans” (we talked to him after class last week so he knew that we
were foreign students) so now the entire class is in the know with that, we
were a little embarrassed with about 40 students just staring at us. Then the
girls were all over asking him to put us in their group, I think they are
excited, and Susan and I are looking forward to making friends. I headed home
for the rest of the morning after class and then met up with Maddie and Susan
at noon to hop on a bus back to the mall. We got our Mexican fix at California
Burrito Co (chicken, black beans, rice, salsa, corn- everything we’d been
missing!) and then headed to the theater to see The Hunger Games! It was
AWESOME! Best part was the movie was in English with Spanish subtitles so we
could really just watch and enjoy for a couple hours and there were literally
less than 10 people in the theater, I can only imagine how full the theaters in
Indianola and Des Moines were! After we walked around a bit we got on a bus
back to the center of Rosario and I walked home from there. I took a little
siesta and then my host parents and I had salad, fish, and mashed potatoes for
dinner. After dinner I headed back to UCEL to go to the English class again.
Before the class started, I asked some of the students a few questions for a
project for one of my classes and then they invited us to drink mate with them
tomorrow so I’m looking forward to that and hopefully making more friends so we
have more people to hang out and experience Argentinean life with. After
English, several of us were going out with some of the UCEL ambassadors for a
while before going home.
Friday-
March 23, Day 23
I had a
double dose of class this morning with Spanish and our project class. Usually
we have project class every other week (intermediate class one week, advanced
class the next), but Susan, Caitlyn, and I had to go both this week and last
week since we won’t be there next week because our bus leaves for Mar del Plata
before our class would be over. After class I just went home and got some lunch
and then took a nap and had dinner (chicken and rice) and later we met up with
other Simpson students and the UCEL ambassadors at one of their apartments to
hang out for the night.
Saturday-
Day 24
I slept
in this morning and later in the afternoon a bunch of Simpson students, an
ambassador, and a girl from Brazil who is studying at UCEL met up in the park
for mate and to chat. We were there for a while then split up to our homes for
dinner (milonesa and salad) and met back up with less Simpson students and more
ambassadors and other people for the night.
Sunday
March 25th- Day 25
Slept
in again and now I’m just sitting in an ice cream shop for the wifi and
uploading pictures to Facebook. This weekend was fun and I liked having more to
do and meeting and talking to more people. Later on I ate dinner with my host
parents. We had empanadas, I’m going to have to learn how to make them because
I love them!
Monday-
Day 26
Birthday
week! I had class in the morning and then sat with a couple girls and one of
the ambassadors in the café until the other group got done with their class.
Susan, Maddie, Caitlyn, and I went and got some empanadas and then we went our
separate ways. I walked home quick (well, as quickly as it possible), changed
clothes, and went to Maddie’s apartment to lay out on the roof of her building
with whatever sun was left. When it got too cold we went and got some coffee
and pretended to attempt to do homework. After that I went home for the night
to do homework and eat dinner with my host parents, soup and pasta!
Tuesday
March 27th- Day 27
Shoot I
am behind on blogging… writing these about a week late, guess I got busy!
Tuesdays are my longer day of classes so I had Spanish for 2 hours and then
Argentine History and Culture for a little less than 3 hours. I think our professor
for the history course is astonished by how little we remember of US history
when she asks us questions, makes me so confident to try and memorize the
Argentine stuff! (sarcasm) I really don’t recall what I did in the afternoon
after that, but after dinner I went to the English class again with the UCEL
students to help out when they’re in small groups.
Wednesday-
Day 28
Wednesdays
are quickly becoming my favorite since I get to sleep in! In between classes
Nicole, Kelsey, Caitlyn, Susan and I went and got our 6 peso ($1.50) footlong
panchos (hot dogs) for our traditional Wednesday lunch. During our reflection
class with our professor from Simpson, she told us about her trip to Ushuaia
with her husband and kids the week before and it definitely made us want to go.
Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world and is in the Tierra del Fuego
province of Argentina. After class we made plans to talk to her more about it
and Maddie and I spent a little time doing homework (see: planning trips) in
the café before meeting up with Susan to visit travel agents regarding a
different trip we are planning to take that we are thinking would be less
stressful if someone else kind of planned it for us. That was a good experience
for us, the travel agent was really nice and funny and we all understood her
and conversed with her well. After, Susan and I headed to a heladeria to meet
up with some other students and our professor to talk about Ushuaia. Caitlyn
and I ate dinner at Fellini’s on 50% off miercoles (Wednesday) and then I
finally went back home for the day. My host parents were going to be gone at a
birthday party, so it worked well that I had other plans for dinner. Caitlyn
and I both got wok, which is basically like a stir-fry and it was delicious! I
had made plans to watch a movie with Maddie and a couple of our friends so by
the time I got home from dinner I had just enough time to change and get to
Maddie’s. We never actually watched a movie, but we had a good time just
sitting and talking and practicing Spanish until entirely too late for my 8am
class.
Thursday-
Day 29
Susan
and I got up bright and early and met at our UCEL class. After class we had to
go talk to the professor because we needed the powerpoints and things emailed
to us, but we aren’t on the list so we aren’t receiving any emails. He started
asking us questions and asked if we wanted to go get a coffee a few buildings
down from UCEL so we did. Apparently this is not normal. We were not quite sure
what to think of it but we were together and we just figured he was being nice
because we’re the stupid Americans that sit in the class and don’t speak
Spanish fluently. After that Susan and I were meeting one of our ambassador
friends in the UCEL café and we asked him about it and he said that’s really
weird, and then started calling our prof the pervert professor, definitely an
interesting conversation! I wandered home very briefly to pick up my laundry
from the lavanderia and shower and then I was headed out the door to go use the
wifi at an ice cream shop to Skype my friends. Skyping ended up failing because
the Simpson internet went out (typical) just as we were trying to call each
other. I was a little disappointed because I haven’t talked to my friends a lot
since I’ve been here, but we’ll find another time. I stuck around for a while
to try to catch up on a few things and kill time before the next place I had to
go which was have a short meeting with Prof Wolf to make sure everything is
fine and dandy for me here, which it is. Then I was off to volunteer for the
first time at La Escuelita, a program for street children and poor kids where
they come to a church with a grassy area for 2 hours and just get to play and
have fun and get a snack once a week. It was a really good experience to see
how life is for some less fortunate people. After that I was finally back home
for dinner and then I left early to walk with Addi to UCEL at night for the
English class because we had to do some prep because we were teaching the class
the English alphabet that night. After English a few people and myself went to
a restaurant across the street for a drink to celebrate my birthday at
midnight! I found cheeseballs (or cheese cubes, rather) on the menu and got
some because they sounded really good, but I ate them Argentina style with
Salsa Golf, my condiment of choice since they don’t have ranch here. We think
it’s basically a blend of ketchup and mayo, which is really strange for me to
like because I despise mayo. I officially turned 21 at midnight just enjoying
watching a good soccer game on tv with my friends, definitely not the
traditional way it may have been in the US.
Friday
March 30th- Day 30
Class
was almost unbearable knowing that right after the 6 of us (Maddie, Susan,
Kelsey, Caitlyn, Nicole, and myself) would be headed to the bus terminal to
grab a bus to Mar del Plata, a city further south in Argentina that is famous
for its beaches! After class some of the group went home to grab their bags and
go, but I stayed at the school for a few minutes and used the wifi on my ipod
while I had a snack because my house is in the complete opposite direction of
the bus station from school and I didn’t have time. In other words, I had to
lug my bags around with me at school and while I grabbed a bus. A few stops
down Caitlyn happened to get on my bus so we traveled to the bus terminal
together and then waited for the rest of the group. We got on our bus around
noon and off we went to the beach! With all the stops it was a 10 hour ride, I
didn’t sleep much, but it wasn’t too bad and I got some homework done. We got
to Mar del Plata just fine and grabbed taxis and found our hostel and
everything went well. As soon as we got our bags into our room we left to go
find a restaurant because we were all starving by then since it was after 11pm
and we’d seen a Mexican restaurant down the street. Our waitress was actually
German and the restaurant had a pretty chill vibe, but it was kind of a weird
mix of Mexican meets Caribbean in Argentina. We all had pretty good food
though, and then we just went and hung out in the hostel for the night.
Saturday,
Sunday, & Monday March 31-April 2
We
spent Saturday and Sunday on the Playa Grande beach. We were very lucky to have
awesome weather this weekend. It was the last weekend of the “peak” season and
sometimes it’s not so warm. We had plenty of beach time to just lay out and
relax. The waters of the Atlantic were pretty chilly, so I didn’t make it in
past knee deep. Susan, Maddie, and I kicked a soccer ball around for a while
after laying out one day and after it was too cold on the beach we’d all clean
up and wander around. Monday was a lot cooler and we were all kind of burnt
anyway so it was the perfect day to walk and explore the other parts of Mar del
Plata. We went to the pedestrian street and looked in some of the shops and
went down to the fish harbors. Those smelled really awesome… We walked out on a
long pier that we could see from the beach we were on where they have a sea
lion reserve. We checked those out and walked all the way to the end. When we
walked back we planned to go out for seafood, so we went to a place recommended
by the guys that run the hostel we were at. We were definitely not talking
about the same kind of seafood. I put my big girl pants on and tried some of
everything, but we were still a little hungry when we left. Kelsey and Nicole
made the good choices since they didn’t want fish. The rest of us did want fish
(since it’s so good here, unlike Iowa!), but we did not exactly get fish. Some
of it was good, others not so great. Pictures can explain more with that. After
dinner we got some ice cream and then grabbed our bags from the hostel and
headed back for the bus station for our overnight back to Rosario. Today was a holiday
so we luckily didn’t have to miss any school.
Tuesday
April 3rd- Day 34
We woke
up on our bus and eventually got to the bus station. When I was ready to fall
asleep the night before I took a Dramamine so I could be assured that I would
sleep pretty well. I wasn’t disappointed and I slept well; when we got to the
bus station in Rosario I grabbed a bus to school since I again didn’t have time
to go home. Today was a longer than usual Tuesday unfortunately because we had
to watch a movie after our history class for a different class and I was
definitely tired by then and ready to go home, sit down, and stop lugging my
bags around. I ate the lunch special at Fellini’s with Susan and that was a
good break for the useless hour and a half they gave us between class and the
movie. After the movie I took the bus home and relaxed for the night. I was
tired and didn’t feel like going to the English class so I just stayed home and
went to bed a little early.
Wednesday
April 4- Day 35
I went
to my classes and then hung out in the UCEL café for a few hours to get caught
up on some homework and send a few things in to Simpson via e-mail that I’d
been needing to get done. I went home a little later on and had spaghetti with
my host mom and one of the grandkids while my host dad and another one of the
grandkids were out playing tennis. After dinner Susan, Nathan, and I met up
with a couple of the ambassadors to hang out for a while and get ice cream
later on before coming home for the night.
Day 36-
Thursday April 5th
We started
our Easter break today so I got to sleep in instead of get up for an 8am class.
I met up at the flag monument with Maddie, Haley, and Melissa and we paid our 3
pesos to go up in it and see the views this afternoon. I realized after I left
my house that I forgot my camera so I’ll have to check out the other girls’
pictures on Facebook and I will probably go up again sometime before we leave.
After, Maddie and I walked around for a while and went to the supermarket and
then split up to head home. Later on after dinner we met up with some of the
others in our group and a few ambassadors for the birthday of one of the
ambassadors.
Day 37-
Friday April 6th
I slept
in and met up with Maddie later on in the park to sit and chat for a little
while. When it started getting dark and we started getting eaten alive by bugs
as usual, she came over for a bit to watch some tv. Later I had dinner with my
host parents. Since it’s Friday during Lent and they’re Catholic they can’t
have meat so tonight’s meal was called tarta gallega I believe and my host dad
said it’s a typical dish for La Semana Santa (Holy week right before Easter)
because it’s made with diced up fish, some red peppers, and I don’t really know
what else. It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t feeling the greatest today so it didn’t
really hit the spot. After dinner I found August Rush on tv in Spanish and I
decided I found my plans for the night!
Saturday
April 7th- Day 38
I woke
up today and just hung around for a bit and everyone in the group that was in
Rosario this weekend had plans to meet up at the “beach” with our professor
from Simpson and her kids. I literally live about as far away from the beach as
possible along the river so it’s about an hour or a little more to get there
between the bus and walking to/from the bus stops. My host parents were out
this morning so I had to figure out what buses and things to take by myself so
I was a little nervous but I made it just fine. It was kind of windy, so the
sand blowing in our faces was a little less than pleasant, but we had some nice
hot weather again to “tomar el sol” or in English- sunbathe. After a few hours
we all started to pack up and get on the buses to take us back to the central
district where we all live. I cleaned up and got rid of all the sand and
started in on catching up on journaling for class, blogging, and uploading
pictures before dinner. Tonight we had soup, mileanesa and potatoes.
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