And so it starts again...

I will blog more often!! This last month or so I found a great group of people in Cordoba and a great music scene and there never seemed to be time to write. So basically I'm doing really great. I finished up my classes and finals on Thursday and came out here to Salta on Friday night to meet up with Noah and Mary Alice who had arrived in Salta a few days before from Talampaya. It's a beautiful city with gorgeous old buildings, orange trees, and cobblestone streets in the area around the central plaza. Today we watched the England/Germany game at our favorite empanada place and then met up with my friend Patricia from Cordoba who's doing some work up here in Salta for a few days. (And Noah's spanish is getting so much better!) After spending some time trying to tackle Noah's college stuff, we went out to a cafe on the plaza to watch the Argentina/Mexico game. Absolutely nuts. I hope you guys were all watching because it was a really intense game and Argentina totally kicked some butt. And how weird, a guy from Wales who was living one block away from me in Cordoba had just arrived in Salta today and happened to be watching the game in the same cafe as us! It gets better, we randomly ran into my friends Lola, Alex, and Sebastian from France and Belgium on the plaza! I had left them about a month ago when we all went to Talampaya and they had just taken a really long time traveling northward, only arriving today in Salta. Then we went to the feria artesenal and I bought myself some really nice nice silver earings with turquoise stones and now we´re about to go with Mary Alice to the bus terminal. Later tonight I think we're going to meet up with Lola, Alex, and Sabastian to go out to a Peña. And then tomorrow Noah and I'll head up north towards Bolivia! Here's our general itinerary until about the 25th of July:

Jujuy, Argentina -- las montanas coloradas (Humahuaca)

Tupiza, Bolivia -- three day horseback riding excursion

Uyuni, Bolivia -- salt flats (biggest in the world I think)

la laguna colorada

la laguna verde

La Paz, Bolivia -- capital

Tihunacu, Bolivia -- pre-incan ruins

Copacabana -- el lago Titcaca

la Isla del Sol

Cuzco, Peru -- kick of to....

Machu Picchu

Then we'll travel back down through Bolivia possibly going to the jungle depending how much time we have left. We'll get back on around July 25th and head back to the US on the 31st!!!

Talampaya

Alright so on Thursday night we took a bus out to La Rioja, six hours away, hung around the city for a couple of hours and went to a museum about life before and during colonization in La Rioja. We then took a bus to Villa Union, four hours away and were met at the terminal by el dueño del hostel donde nos quedamos. I liked the hostel a lot because it was more like a bed and breakfast but really cheap like a hostel. We were the only ones there and so always had the bathroom, kitchen, patio etc to ourselves which was really nice. This was a pretty tiny little town, much smaller than Amherst, a little bigger than Leverett but we set up a trip the next day to Talampaya National Park with a guide who was from France, had lived in Argentina for five years, and who also spoke English which was great. We headed out after breakfast and picked up three other people, a guy who lives in Villa Union, his sister and their friend visiting from Buenos Aires.

The park was beautiful and very cool. It’s the place where they’ve found the oldest dinosaur fossils firstly and secondly it’s the only place where you can see the Triassic and Jurassic periods in the rock formations. I think in other places they can tell they’re older by taking soil samples and carbon dating? Yeah? I really don't know anything about this stuff but anyway I'm pretty sure it's an impressive thing! She also explained to us what different patterns in the rock face means which I found really interesting. And then yesterday Jacob and I went to the museum of Natural Science in Cordoba which was a great review. Jacob is studying Chemical Engineering and Geology at Tufts and he basically knew everything about everything so I got to have a excellent personal tour guide. But anyway after Talampaya for six hours we headed back to make dinner, Lola taught me how to make those cool bracelets that all the traveling hippies sell on the street, we played a lot of cards and called it quits. The next day, Sunday, Rinna and I went horseback riding in Villa Union which was amazing and beautiful and really really fun. I definitely want to do more horseback riding. Our “guide” was a 15 year old who obviously didn’t care if we went galloping off. It was beautiful and I actually learned a lot! I feel comfortable galloping now, running I don’t think I’ll try... I loved it I really did but my butt hurt a whole lot afterwards. That night we got a ride back with the dueños of the hostel who, as it turns out live in Villa General Belgrano (where Cristina has, had because she just sold them, a few cottages). They have a big white van pretty really similar to Rachael’s van except with little wholes in the floor. We put down a whole lot of blankets and actually slept pretty well. It was fantastic and saved us about $30 and gained us a good night’s rest. So that was my week! It was fabulous!

So now... I like all my classes, I love going to tango, I’m feeling better about being a city girl, starting to think out our Peru Bolivia trip, and basically doing really well!! Tonight I went to a peña, which basically means anything traditionally argentinian and usually includes music, wine, and empanadas. This was a presentation of a book about the cordobese folklorico musician Chango Rodriguez who killed a man and just wrote a ton of music in jail. The other night Patricia had just taught me one of his songs and then we just happened to find out about this great free, close to home event, very cool. Also this guy Facundo Torres who is one of the big young folklorico musicians in Argentina played a bunch of his songs. Beautiful. People here play such beautiful passionate music. It’s great. Also I’ve heard a lot of songs from Brazil which I really like. Well cool. I suppose that’s all I have to say... Tomorrow, Friday I have a violin lesson and then I’m heading out to Capilla. On Saturday and Sunday, Noah and I are going to a close town called San Marco de Sierras and I’m pushing for horseback riding so lets cross our fingers its cheap!

Un Techo Para Mi Pais

It’s Monday afternoon, first day back from May break. I had quite a fantastic week. I’ll start at the beginning. Thursday kicks off the vacation (no class on friday) with a huge asado at my friend’s hostel and then night out at a club with not all tecno music! I have no idea what clubs are like in the US by the way. So the girl Nannick from Holland isn’t still there but my friend Lola was still there at that point so I’d been going there frequently. And for those who don't know, asado means 20 plus courses of meat. And some salad but not really haha. On Friday, I meet 300 other volunteers (all around 18-28 years old) at the Ciudad de las Artes (where Antonio studies cello) for “Un Techo Para Mi Pais,” a program which I didn’t know too much about before I got there other than that it was supposed to be an incredibly well done volunteer program that builds houses in Villa Miserias around South America. We were all split up into “barrios” on the outskirts of the city, the Villa Miserias. It didn’t make a difference for me to be split up because I went alone anyway, but they try to separate people who know each other so that everyone can benefit amply from the immersion part of the experience. We took collectivos which had donated their services to our barrios and then to our schools where we stayed for the weekend. Un Techo renamed our school Mafalda and put up Mafalda comic strips blown up hanging all over the school but I have no idea what the other schools were like. The 50 or so of us in Mafalda were then split into 5 families. My group was working for a mother and five children from Bolivia. There are hardly any men in the Villa Miserias either because they’re looking for work elsewhere or because they obviously found it easier to leave their children and wives than it was for the wives or the children. The other significant demographic fact is that all of the families are from Peru, Bolivia or Northern Argentina and all come to the city looking for work.

Damiana (the mother) lived in Bolivia her whole life until two years ago when she came to Argentina with her four, now five children. Here’s the crazy part, she speaks Quechua and is learning Spanish but it’s hard because there aren’t that many people who speak Quechua who can help her. Her children (ages 1 to 10) are fluent in Quechua and Spanish, I think. They're old "house" is made out of thin thin pieces of wood tied together with nails and rope and is a little bit bigger than a queen sized mattress. There’s also a sheltered space with a fire pit and another enclosed area with a hole for the bathroom. Obviously there’s no electricity.

The first day we went out there all I could think about was the incredible amount of trash everywhere. The streets were paved with broken shoes, bones, rubber, glass, and whatever other broken doodads. That first day, Saturday, we dug holes for wood pilers to raise the house off the ground. We dug three meters before we hit solid dirt, before that, we were digging through trash with some dirt mixed in, some of it disintegrating, most of it not. This is not kids playing in dirt with the animals on the farm poverty, this is kids playing in polluted, rusted, chemical traasshhh. The amount of trash was just ridiculous. These kids are playing in the dirtiest dirtiest trash without anyone to stop them and entertain them with something else because there just wasn't anything else! Trash! Anyway so that first day we put in the 12 pilers to start Damiana’s new 3 meter by 6 meter house. This doesn’t seem very big but it’s enough, enough being something the old ‘house’ didn’t even come close to. Virgenia, Damiana’s neighbor came every day to help out with everything, always coming around with juice or criollos and of course mate. Un Techo Para Mi Pais built her house last semester and as we were talking we discovered that the girl Kelsey (who lived here with Cristina last semester and who had recommended Un Techo to me so strongly) had helped build Virgenia’s house! Out of all the 300 people who could have been working with Virgenia, it was me and Kelsey. Again, Cordoba Cordoba you crazy place. So I got to send Kelsey Virgenia’s love and thanks. Cool stuff. Also Damiana's kids and all the neighbor kids were fantastic and really eager to help out digging the holes, very cute (and strong!!!). Day two we put down floor, up the walls, and started to put together the windows and the door. Day three we put up the beams, the insolation and finally the roof! Well done. It definitely wasn’t easy but it was so do-able!! They just had things done together very well, well enough so that anybody can do it and do it right without needing a million well trained volunteers to help the half million untrained volunteers. Fantastic. And so concrete, a house! A house!!

We also had a really great time just because all the people were so open and patient and really wanting to be there. We talked a lot about different things, about what it means to be a student, what are our rights to knowledge and our obligations to action, what it means to be independent, and how we’re independent today (all in light of Argentina’s 200th birthday on May 25th for which there was a huge hubub all over the country). We also got to play a lot of music, on and off the site and just had a really great time. We didn’t get a whole lot of sleep though thus I was pretty sick for a few days afterward. Luckily I got home and Noah came to the city for a few days! Its fabulous to have Noah around but it does wear me out just because we don’t have our own space to just hang out because it’s not really appropriate for Noah to spend the whole day here at Cristina’s house which I think is ridiculous but there you go. He got a ride to the city with some people he met in Capilla del Monte, who I didn’t get to meet because I was much too sick to go out but next time. We spent tuesday hanging out and trying to get me better but failing; wednesday we read out loud a lot, got lunch, and then walked with Lola, Alex (from France), Sebastian (from Belgium), Rinna (who’s in CCCS and from Alaska) and Jacob (from the Bahamas who goes to Tufts) to the terminal to buy tickets to a national park to the north west of Cordoba via the city La Rioja, called Valle de la Luna/Talampaya. Later that night Noah and I went out with Patricia and her sister Caro to see the Janis Joplin movie in theaters. I think I had seen all the interviews that they did and a lot of the shows but it was really awesome on the big screen with the cinema sound system. On Thursday we went and got Noah’s package from his parents and brother which was very exciting and very delicious (thank you Eckarts!!!). Then for the rest of the day we walked around trying to find a ukelele that I could carry around with me on my travels but failed. We’ll keep trying definitely. Then Noah went back to Capilla and I went to have dinner at Patricia’s house and she drove me to the bus terminal at 12:00 at night to meet up with Lola, Alex, Sebastian, Jacob, Rinna, and we went on our way!

Ok this is going to have to be finished later tonight cause I have to run to hebrew class!!

Technology

I think maybe I just have trouble writing what I'm thinking about on the computer. It does not come easily but I wanted to quickly post about my trip to San Rafael for the weekend. We went with our "speaking partners" who are argentinian students who've volunteered to give us practice speaking spanish and so that they can practice their english a bit. We rented a bus and drove over night to San Rafael which is in the provence of Mendoza to the west of Cordoba. We went white water rafting with by far the most beautiful surroundings of the four other times I've gone rafting, really great rocky mountains that made me want to go exploring so bad! I wish I could have captured it but I wasn't about to take my camera on the boat. I'm a bit tired of structured trips like that though because for instance, I don't really like white water rafting but just by coincidence I've been so many times and I just really wanted to go walk around the beautiful mountains! I love mountains! But that's ok, I'll have other opportunities. One of these weekends I want to go to Mendoza and rent a bike so I can stop and explore the Andies a bit. Oh and I figured out that I don't need to be budgeting so much! So that leaves my options a little more open for traveling. I have nine days off in May of which four will include Iguazu falls with two friends which I'm really excited about and then I don't know for the rest! Salta? I'd like to go to desert... anyway I'll figure that out later.

So after rafting we went rappelling and zip lining which was fun but of course my favorite part was the beautiful view. (I have pictures of all of this on facebook and picasa). Then on the way to the hotel we played some music on the bus which was really fun. I gotta learn some more Beatles songs, good for all occasions. Its big but I was really glad I brought my guitar. Also it meant that I got two seats to myself and got some sleep. I should have brought it to Buenos Aires instead of my computer hands down. That night we played a lot of music. I had really missed singing and harmonizing with women's voices aka ANNA I MISS YOU!! It was great and the Band was a big hit and Olivia brought her harmonicas--hit the spot. The next day, Sunday we went to a winery and went through and saw all the grape pressers and squishers and squashers. Unfortunately on the way back the drivers got lost and we couldn't find a gas station that the bus could fit in and someone pooped in the toilet on the bus so it stopped working and the downstairs smelled really bad, and we ran out of water so we finally got back to Cordoba at 3:00 in the morning. Luckily I had the earliest class and it was only at 11 but it was still annoying. Everyone was so sick of being on that bus! And to make matters very much worse the movies were horribly terribly bad and when they ran out of horribly terribly bad movies they played music videos for at least an hour. I was very ready to hitch hike home after the music videos. It was weird, such a small thing like a hundred 25 second clips of aggressively assaulting pop culture made me feel farther away from Amherst than ever. It completely 'put me off' as they would say but I went out for churipan (really good sausages with anything and everything you do and could possibly want for 10 pesos) with my friend Alexis and we had some good conversation about the crazy consumer culture in Cordoba. She's not from Amherst and agrees that things are out of hand here in a very plastic way. I've heard people say things like, "When walk out my door and see all the beautiful things in this world like our trees and our technology, I just can't imagine that there's not a God," and also "Oh I went to New York City once, it was truly beautiful. It's just so modern." I'm still processing.

On the upside last night I went to a tango lesson with a few friends (not from argentina but from Holland, Switzerland, and Brazil) and it was great! The first couple of dances were really hard but after that I was surprised how easy it was after I stopped thinking. It was really fun and only 15 pesos so like a few dollars for 3 hours! I really liked it and had a lot of fun so we're going to go to Salsa at the same place today, Thursday and I know a bunch of people who do that so I'm excited! Oh and tomorrow I'm going out to Capilla to spend the weekend with Noah and we're going to meet my friend, Reena from Alaska and an Argentinian friend of hers there and camp out on Mount Uritorco. Ok gotta run to my bus!

I'm Alive!

Posting on my blog is like remembering to catch up with an old friend I haven't called in a year. Where to start. Well so I stayed with Noah on his farm for a weekend which was great and beautiful and relaxing and wonderful and not long enough. The farm is about a two hour bus ride away and 21 pesos which is like $5. Then I went to an Argentinian birthday party (with Cristina's cousin Patricia who I've been exchanging guitar lessons with) where they were dancing....capoeira, how frickin cool. Oh and I made some friends at the park who were playing guitar and speaking english. We have a lot in common and they're all from the south so that's cool cause I haven't really spent much time with all people from Mississippi and Tennessee before. On Sunday, me and Noah celebrated our one year anniversary :), didn't celebrate 4.20 on Tuesday :(, learned a few new songs on the guitar, both of the kids got chicken pox, I found a really good pizza place, and studied my butt off for my argentinian history and latin american history midterms which I had today and did well on. I still haven't taken any tango lessons which I want to do but I need to find someone to go with!!

Then last night I went to a party at a house a block away where a bunch of international students are living, taking spanish, and working with children in the villa miserias which are basically what they sound like, towns of misery except that I think they're more like neighborhoods. Noah and I had meet two of the girls who are living in international house at the post office cause none of us could figure out where to buy stamps. One of the girls is still here but the other girl's parents flew her home a week ago after someone broke into their house and she had a seizure. They were having a party so there were about 15 people just sitting around at the table, eating, drinking, playing cards, talking. They had the door open cause it was hot and two guys walked in with guns and tied everyone up. Tied everyone up. Guns. Yes crazy. They took four lap tops and then all the cameras and cell phones. Then apparently the girl we met had a seizure and really freaked the guys out so they left. And two weeks earlier their house was broken into while no one was home and other things were taken. Oy. I haven't been robbed at all luckily but wow. It's definitely obvious when someone isn't from Argentina and really obvious when someone isn't from Latin America so a house of international students is a pretty obvious target. It's some combination of trying to wear ethnic looking or 'outside of the box' clothes (women here generally wear white or really light really tight blue jeans with really tight tank tops and then a small scarf) nice backpacks, and sometimes skin color for instance if you see a black person they are definitely not from Argentina. I wish I could tell if I look a lot like a tourist. Probably some days more than others. Noah definitely looks like a tourist but not a tourist anyone would want to rob haha.

In terms of emotional stability I've been in and out, up and down and around. In other words there is no emotional stability haha. It's weird, when I'm feeling great I honestly believe that things are getting easier and that living in Argentina is great but then when I'm feeling down I honestly believe that things haven't gotten any easier and that I haven't learned as much as I would like to have which stinks. For example right now the latter seems ridiculous. Of course it's getting easier and of course I'm learning things! I've definitely been thinking a lot about why I'm here, why my life itinerary has me in Argentina. I don't regret anything but all the reasons I wanted to come here seem so feeble compared to what this experience is, so feeble that they hardly even relate, all because of one thing: I assumed that I would understand what I was going though, that I'd be able to feel my consciousness shift, that I'd be able to compartmentalize my new thoughts and the new things I was learning, that I'd be self aware enough to understand what I was going through! Feels like I'm stopped terrapin station ha. Well we'll see what the next three months have in store. Lista.

Up down and in between

So after 1 lost bag, 1 night on an outside couch, and 1 awful stomach virus we decided to fold in our cards for going to Chile. We did have half a good time though. We went to Puente de Inca which was really cool, I'll post pictures. And took a beautiful bus ride through the Andies of which I'll also post pictures. Noah's still sick but I recovered pretty quickly after the night bus back to Cordoba where I threw up the worst of the virus. It sucked and now Noah doesn't have a cell phone or his journal or debit card (which has been canceled) or favorite bandana but of course, he's Noah so he almost immediately snapped back to his chipper happy self. Amazing. I've been feeling very high and low. These last few days mostly low but today turned out good. The social scene here is just so frustrating. I understand that I'm having a very different experience in Argentina than everyone else but I just can't connect with anyone! Its so weird. But today I was reading in the park and met some new people who I immediately clicked with. It was quite a relief, I was starting to believe that Amherst was really more of a bubble than I had thought. So I spent a lot of time with them and we'll definitely see each other soon. I hope that I just haven't been able to find my right circle of people. Maybe this is it. It'll have to wait though cause this weekend I'm going to visit Noah on his farm in Capilla! I'm really excited to have a relaxing weekend away from the city just reading and playing guitar with Noah in the country side. When I get back I'm going to start going to Yoga a few blocks away and look into taking some tango lessons :). So updatesss....hmm

IM GOING TO EARLHAM! Thats a big one.

Oh and I'm exchanging guitar lessons with Cristina's cousin Patricia whose's 26. I'm teaching her Jack Johnson and she's teaching me Samba. I love it.

Connections connections, a guy in my hebrew class knows a girl from my program, Rachael from church and another guy in hebrew class knows Jeremy Aronson because he's trying to start Ultimate frisbee here. Crazy things going on! (btw Jeremy is from Amherst, a member of the JCA, went to DC with me on Panim el Panim, was in my english class, and is also here living in Cordoba in his gap year coincidentally).

Of course! I did Passover at the Habad House which is one and a half blocks away on my street!! It was a great experience and I had a lot of fun. The food was pretty bad but I met a lot of interesting people (there were about 180 people there, pretty much all around 23 and pretty much all traveling Israelis). The seder was in Hebrew which I couldn't understand but that was ok because the Rabbi was really drunk and hilariously picking on random people and asking them what they thought the meaning was of his ridiculously long anecdotes. It was a seder to remember.

Sums it up, will try to check in more often. Thanks for tune'n in folks.

Noah's Last Cordoba Days!

Highlights:

-playing music with a brazilian band that was staying at Noah’s hostel and spending time with people from all over (Israel, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Brazil)

-the streets got flooded again and the river rose many feet

-saw Alice in Wonderland, enjoyed the effects, ending was lame

-discovered a pet store with puppies and kittens on my walk back from the Language School where I take Hebrew

-practiced my Hebrew with the people staying at Noah’s hostel, apparently all ton of the hostels in South America are filled with Israelis, I was talking to a guy from Mexico about it who had been traveling around, still don’t know why...

-huge soccer parade rally march thing, there were hundreds of people in the street, jumping and shouting, climbing on street signs and monuments in the big intersection in the middle of the city

-a person tried to rob me but i took their hand out of my bag and walked away

-I figured out how to take the bus back from school...it’s the same bus that I take in the morning haha

-had a really funny conversation about arm pit hair and it’s social implications with Cristina, we’ve been talking a lot recently

-meet some girls from the US, Australia, and France who are working with children here and live a block away from me

-talked all night with Noah, this guy from Mexico and three guys from Israel about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, they had very strong opinions

-today was a day dedicated to the Disappeared so I didn’t have any class, there was a huge march in the streets, lots of people carrying signs with pictures of Che and Evita Peron and also pictures of people who disappeared

-I’ve been reading a lot and loving it, I had forgotten how much I love being in thick of a good book, High School doesn’t really make room for such things

-Cristina’s sister, brother in law, and their three children are here from London for a month, bilingual kids with british accents are so ridiculously cute

-today I’m going to Villa Belgrano, the mountain town where Cristina has a few cottages that she rents out

-Noah goes to Capilla de Monte today to start work!!!! I’m going to visit him next weekend

Sentiments:

-focusing on being patient and smiling more

-still getting used to outside Amherst culture but am encouraged by Cristina and my small spanish class (everyone just seems so much more open and unreserved, genuine, fearless!)

-loving argentina!