Patria, Puppy and Pancakes

This week was a very busy, exciting week here in La Plata. After visiting Córdoba with Maya, we decided to try to do more things in La Plata and Buenos Aires in the remaining six weeks that we have in Argentina.

Wednesday was a national holiday here—Día de la Patria (Homeland). It celebrates the first step in the independence process (Independence Day isn’t until July 9^th). For the U.S., I think it’s the equivalent as the first day of the Continental Congress. We went with Eli’s family and friends to a party to eat Locro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locro) which is an indigenous stew from the northern part of the country. It has all sorts of meat, corn, and other veggies and was super tasty. We sang the Argentine national anthem and the March of Perón and listened to a few people give little speeches (everyone is super political so they all have some opinion on La Plata/Argentine politics). It was so great to watch everyone get together to celebrate. After we had a relaxing day and called it an early night.

The next morning, we met at the bus station to go into Buenos Aires for a hearing for the cases of human rights abuses brought before the Escuela de Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) which is a military school that was used as a torture/detention center during the last military dictatorship. It was interesting to see the courthouse and watch how they were laying out the case against the leaders of ESMA. We were only able to stay for an hour or so but then we stuck around Buenos Aires for the day. We went to a new museum behind/beneath the Casa Rosada (Government House – basically the White House without the residential part). It was a great museum that walked through Argentine history since independence in 1810. It also houses a mural by Siqueiros, a Mexican artist, that involves the floor, walls and curved ceiling—very beautiful. After getting back to La Plata, I met up with Leksa for a drink at a folklore bar called Salamanca that has live music every Thursday. Another full day.

Friday we had a relaxing day checking out other things to do in La Plata and Buenos Aires. We bought tickets to a ballet/tango show and looked up some film-screenings and concerts. We came back to our house to find that hour host mom had decided to get a new puppy! We now have a month-old beagle named Bosco who is absolutely adorable. Eli also informed us that she just finalized the paperwork for buying our house. She was so excited and already has started planning things to change around the house. We got take out pizza where my friend David works and then spent the night playing with the puppy and celebrating.

Saturday, Maya and I decided to make pancakes for everyone here. They have panqueques here that are basically crepes so we were excited to show them our pancakes. We made chocolate chip and blueberry pancakes and everyone seemed to enjoy them. I LOVE making pancakes and it was great to have everyone over for the day. Later that night, Maya, Leksa and I went to a beautiful ballet/tango show in La Plata. I really enjoy tango music and it was very cool to see a ballet version of tango.

I really enjoyed doing more things around La Plata. It’s a very cultural/political city and I’m definitely going to miss all the events that a city offers when I get back home. This week we are looking at a few different shows/movies and trying to go to an international rugby game on Saturday.

As always, I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the long weekend!

Love, Caroline

The Month of May

The past couple weeks have been busy here in Argentina. I finally feel settled in my life in La Plata and I’m really enjoying living in Argentina. I can’t imagine doing a shorter program—it’s starting to weird me out that I have less than two months left before going back to the U.S.

Since my last update, my friend Shannon came to visit Buenos Aires and La Plata, we celebrated my birthday and I went to Córdoba. I’ll try to keep it short and add pictures to this post ASAP.

Shannon studied the semester in Quito, Ecuador and came to Argentina with her friends AliceAnn (who has family in Bs As) and Johnny. We met up in Palermo at AliceAnn’s cousin’s grandmother’s house and checked out Palermo that night. It’s a great area with lots of gorgeous boutiques, restaurants and street fairs. AliceAnn’s family was so welcoming and lots of fun to be around. Sunday, we went to San Telmo and checked out the street fair there before Shannon and I took the bus to La Plata to have dinner with Eli and the kids. We ran around the house playing music and joking with the kids. Monday we checked out La Plata and met up with a few people from my program to drink mate in the plaza. That evening we went to a bar for happy hour and Shannon ran into someone she had met on a vacation in Ecuador. We ended up in the middle of a group of 30+ Argentines involved in CouchSurfing. Most of us would call that a small world coincidence but for Shannon stuff like that happens all the time. The next morning Shan returned to BsAs because I had class all day. I loved seeing here and it was so interesting to hear about her study abroad experience in Ecuador. We also made a promise to travel in 2013 after Shan finishes school, so I’m looking forward to that.

The next weekend was my birthday weekend and we had a big party at the Bacci house. Maya and I made two cakes and Eli cooked choripan for everyone. It was great to get everyone from the program and my family here together for a night. After dinner, the people from my program and I went out super late celebrating—it was a great birthday. Thanks to everyone who sent emails, cards, and facebook posts—I miss you all! The next day was a little more relaxed, I skyped with a few friends and then tried to go to the opera with Leksa & Maya. The tickets were sold out but I think we are trying again this weekend.

This past weekend, Maya and I went to Córdoba, the second largest city in Argentina. We took an overnight bus and arrived Friday morning.

After getting settled in our hostel, we took a bus to Alta Gracia. It’s a very little town that has very good air quality and used to be a place for wealthy Argentines to relax. We checked out the Che Guevara childhood home museum and then the people convinced up to check out the other two “museums.” They were basically little homes converted to

museums for Martin Falla, a Spanish composer, and Gabriel DuBois, a French artist. Fascinating. We then had lunch and checked out the Jesuit settlement before heading back to Córdoba. We went back to the hostel before dinner and when we emerged, almost all the stores were closed and boarded up. It was definitely a little weird how the town looked so closed on a Friday night at 9pm. We walked around looking for a place to eat and found an awesome looking Arab place. We both were excited to eat something besides typical argentine cuisine and we ordered a picada (basically little bits of everything on the menu). I’m not a picky eater but it was the worst meal I have ever had. Hummus that tasted peanut-y, babaganoush that was super sweet and not resembling eggplant at all and disgusting looking unidentified sausages. We should have known better than straying from the typical Argentine meat but our desire for spices and variety got the best of us and we definitely regretted it. After dinner we looked around for ice cream to appease our unhappy taste buds but everything was closed. We returned to the hostel determined to have a better day on Saturday.

Saturday we took the bus to Villa General Belgrano, a little German town about two hours away from Córdoba. The town was created after a German war ship sank near Argentina after WWII and it now hosts an enormous Oktoberfest (supposedly third after Munich and Blumenau, Brazil). It was a beautiful drive over mountains (B&B people think that day out of Stanley, Idaho with the winding road up the mountain that seemed to never end) and lakes. We got to VGB and it was super quaint. Everything was German-looking from the restaurants to the buildings, even the sign in front of the police station. We walked around looking in shops and sampling the alfajores (basically two cookies with some sort of sweet filling covered in a thin layer of icing) native to the region. We had lunch outside, tried delicious German beer and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We headed back to Córdoba and went to a great artisan fair. It was super big with lots of very unique, handmade pottery, jewelry and other art. We went out for a drink then got some ice cream (which is oddly much cheaper in Córdoba than in Bs As) before calling it a night.

Sunday we were a little concerned as to what we were going to do all day (because things normally close down on Sunday and Córdoba seemed especially closed on Friday & Saturday night). We checked out all the churches (which were very beautiful and super old—think 1590s). We then decided to see a movie to pass some of the morning time and we saw the animated movie Rio in Spanish. It was cute and I was proud that I understood almost all of the dialogue. We then decided to walk toward this park and passed a couple museums on the way. After Friday’s museums we were a little hesitant but both the art museums were really beautiful, both in architecture and the art they housed, a very nice surprise. We then walked to a couple plazas, one for the bicentennial (2010) that had 200 large colorful rings spread around the plaza. We then returned to the artisan fair for a final look before getting our bags at the hostel and heading back to the bus station.

Overall, I had a good time in Córdoba but I don’t really get all the hype. There are lots of bars and boliches (dance clubs) and night life is supposed to be crazy but I can’t keep up with the Argentines. People go to bars around midnight and then boliches around 3am before finally heading home around 6am. Maya and I felt like grandmothers for going to bed at 2am after getting a drink at a bar. I wish that I could have visited Córdoba with a rental car—the surrounding areas are beautiful and I love the mountains.

Upon returning to La Plata, Maya and I decided to really experience as much of Argentina before we go home—we are going to the opera, soccer and rugby games, political rallies, listening to live music and planning a long trip to the northwest of the country. I’m really starting to feel the countdown of time we have left and I’m looking forward to the next two months here.

I’ll try to update the blog more regularly, but as always, I make no promises. I hope you are all doing well—congrats to the W&M Class of 2011, I’m going to miss you next year!

Love, Caroline

OOPS. It’s been a while… The end of April!

So I’ve been very negligent of this blog (sorry Dad!) but I’ve had a lot going on—this might be a long post… and I'll add more pictures later today...

CLANCY INVASION OF ARGENTINA! On Satruday April 16^th my mom and four aunts arrived in Argentina and I met them at their hotel in Retiro, Buenos Aires. We had a full week of sightseeing and its was so incredible to see people from home. On Saturday, we did a tour of the city by bus to kind of get an overview of the city. Sunday morning we checked out the Plaza de Mayo and took a tour of the Casa Rosada (Pink House which is the equivalent to the white house), shopped at a street market in San Telmo, and went to a Tango Show. Monday we ventured to La Plata where I showed everyone La Comisión where I take classes, the University, the Cathedral in La Plata and a lot of the city. We then went to dinner at my host mom’s house. She made delicious chicken with potatoes and told us stories about herself and her family during the dictatorship here. It was definitely a little crazy but everyone enjoyed meeting Eli, the kids, and David.

They returned to Buenos Aires in the morning (saw Recoleta Cemetery and an art museum) and I met up with them later that day after classes. Wednesday we went to EL Tigre, a river region and took a boat tour through all the rivers. We then walked across Buenos Aires and went to the Evita Museum. Thursday we saw Teatro Colon, the state of the art opera house in the center of Buenos Aires. Then we did some leather shopping back in Palermo (we definitely contributed to the Argentine economy during our time down here…). Friday we walked to Palermo and went to the Japanese gardens and MALBA (Museum of Latin American Art in Buneos Aires). We then walked back toward the hotel and had lunch before everyone had to head to the airport to go home. Plus, throughout the week add in lots of delicious food and wine.

I loved seeing the city some more and showing everyone my life here but most importantly I loved spending so much time with my family. I learned lots of new things about my mom’s family and I feel very lucky to have so many wonderful women to look up to in my life.

Needless to say, I was a little bummed when everyone left. Plus all the other William & Mary students were away on a trip to Mendoza so I felt super lonely for the rest of the Easter weekend. But Eli had lots of family over and we ate delicious food all weekend so it was nice to be with a loving, caring family (even if it wasn’t my own).

The next couple days were super boring. I had to finish a final project for one of our Comisión classes and I could not focus to save my life. The class was about mass media and the construction of collective memory and while the material was interesting, it was all a little repetitive and theoretical for me. It was definitely a Hispanic Studies class. I’m coming to realize more and more here that I am definitely a science person. I miss taking Kinesiology classes and I’m looking forward to next year at W&M.

Anyways, the class finished up on Tuesday and it’s been a very relaxing week since then. Maya and I made a cake for Bettina’s birthday (one of our program directors at the Comisión), I went into Buenos Aires on Friday with Maya, Leksa, and Ruth Ann and we went to Chinatown and Palermo for some shopping and dinner. Then Saturday, Maya and I decided to cook an American dinner for everyone—we made chili and cornbread. The food here, while delicious, lacks any sort of spice so making chili was a little taste of home. We had about 20 people at the house between the W&M students, my host family, Eli’s sister Yamila’s family plus some friends. The Argentines all enjoyed the chili and It was definitely a success we had a great night talking politics and just hanging out together. Sunday, Eli’s mom made delicious lasagna and we had everyone over again to make tortas fritas (a very typical argentine dessert). Tortas fritas are basically pieces of fried dough like funnel cakes. Juan taught me how to make them (I’m trying to learn lots of Argentine cooking so I can make things when I go home. They were DELICIOUS and it was once again great to have everyone over at our house for the day.

This week, we are starting a new class at the Comisión on indigenous rights so I’m excited to switch subjects and start something new. I’ve narrowed it down to two classes for the University classes—one on Latin American culture and one on the U.S. and it’s foreign policy during the 19^th century. I’m also getting going on my internship down here with the police Archive at the Comisión. That’s kind of a lot to explain so I’ll leave it to another post.

This weekend, one of my best friends from gymnastics, Shannon, is coming to visit. She was studying in Ecuador this semester and is finishing up this week then coming to Argentina with a few friends before heading home. I’m super excited to see her and can only imagine the adventures I’m sure we’ll have together (Shannon is one of those people whose life is always exciting so when you are around her you never really know exactly what’s going to happen but I can assure you it will be entertaining).

Wow—this one was long. But life here is still good and I’m definitely enjoying meeting new people and learning new things. I hope you all had a very happy Easter! I miss you!

Love, Caroline