Monday, April 9, 2012

The last two weeks of Argentine life

I'm finally caught up for the most part so here is what has been going on in Rosario lately:


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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