I'm Going Home, Come Read About It

In case you're somehow not already aware, I'm scheduled to fly out of Córdoba June 30th and arrive in Portland sometime around noon the 1st of July. This is very, very soon, so I guess this is my last post. Since no ridiculous adventures that I can tell the Rotary about are happening, I've decided to use it talking about the kind of stuff I really should have been talking about in my first couple of posts.

The city I'm stationed in is called Río Cuarto. It has between 150,000 and 200,000 inhabitants, and was originally a fort built to protect Córdoba city from the native inhabitants of the south of what is now Argentina. Its economy revolves mostly around its own infrastructure and the exportation of corn and soy grown in the surrounding area. There's nothing particularly remarkable about it; it's a small city in rural Argentina. But it's relatively safe, the people are very friendly, and they get few enough foreigners that being from another continent makes you instantly interesting. Some pictures of the city:

I've already told you guys about my family, but here's my house.

Either it's legitimately enormous (by U.S. standards), or I've forgotten how big our houses are. Either way, it is very big by Argentine standards. That little upstairs space is only one room, but it's the coolest room in the whole house because almost all of the walls are windows, and it has easy access to the roof/balcony area. Pedro sleeps up there.

I leave very early tomorrow morning for Córdoba city in the first leg of my journey home. Thanks to everyone who's read all of these, I hope you've enjoyed them.

Now with pictures

A classmate of mine pointed out that I neglected to mention a trip I took with her in my last blog post. I hadn't realized that I had missed that much time on this thing. Basically, she invited the class out to a house her family has in Río de los Sauces [River of the Willows, not Sauces (apparently)] but only four people went because there would be no alcohol, perishable foods (beef), or shower, in the order of importance to the class. So it was the girl who's house it was, a high school friend of hers, this awesome guy who's obsessed with great cats and finding his soul mate and believes that all living things are sparks of God, and myself. We had a really nice time. We played bocce ball, hiked out to a spot in the river with cool rock formations, rode horses the gaucho neighbor lent us, played a lot of truco, and watched great cats guy cook with astounding success around our limitations. We were there for two nights, and the whole thing took place roughly a month before my parents showed up. Oh, I should mention that Río de los Sauces is the name of a town in the hills, but the house was actually a decent ways outside the town.

Gaucho - South American cowboy
Truco - Beastly, complicated card game I'll probably try to teach you

Anyways, the last blog left off at the end of my parent's visit. Two relatively uneventful weeks passed, followed by the rotary trip to the north. It started with an overnight bus trip to Mendoza, the capital city of a province by the same name famous for its wine. We went to a winery/vineyard where we checked out the process of making wine and then tasted some. The lady was like, here, hold it up to the light. So we did, and our 17 year old brains noticed only that it was red. She made us swirl it, which was fun but accomplished little perceivable effect, then we smelled it, and it smelled like wine, and we drank it and it tasted like wine. Good fun. We went to an olive... orchard?, also cool, and what else.

Wooow Mendoza was where we woke up super early to drive into the Andes, which are ENORMOUS and GORGEOUS, by the way. We also hiked up a huge hill right outside the city that has a monument to San Martín on top, which is on the back of the five peso bill.

After Mendoza the next big stop was Salta capital, but in between we stopped at this place with a legend about a lady walking in the desert with a baby, and the lady dies, but the baby survives off her breast milk somehow until I THINK it's rescued by someone. There and Cafayate (not to be confused with El Calafate of the south trip), a town in the province of Salta ALSO famous for its wine. (But not nearly as much as Mendoza.) Here we spent an entire day in the plaza drinking mate, and another at a vineyard/goat cheese facility. Lots and lots of goats, many of whom had crazy Gandalfesque beards.

 

Perhaps most importantly, Cafayate was where I finally bought batteries for the camera that my host family lent me. So I actually got pictures of the rock formations along the route between Cafayate and Salta city. For example:

We got out at the one called the amphitheater, which is a nifty little nook that gets really big inside. Here's a picture I took laying on the ground:

The head is the guy from Colorado. Me laying on the ground after I took said picture:

The pretty girl is from North Carolina. After this my back was covered in red dust, which I could NOT get all off. When I was getting back on the bus the German guy behind me dusted it off a bit more and said, "You are all dirty..." and, before I could respond, added, "like a SLUT." Anyways, that's not really relevant to anything, I just love it. Mostly because of the accent. 

Wow I really need to go into less detail to get through all of this. What in the world did we do in Salta... RIGHT. The coolest thing we did in Salta was actually leave and go to Jujuy, the province to the north of Salta. We went to Purmamarca, a big hill with all sorts of minerals or something that make it crazy multicolored. 

Very nifty. At the base of the hill is an enormous market type deal, where I got a llama sweater and the coolest pants in the world. In fact, I'm going to take a picture of me in the pants with my computer right now because this needs to be shared with the internet. 

Wow, I said I was going to go into less detail. Well, the other thing we did in Jujuy was go to an indigenous town with a super old church, an awesome monument, cobbled streets, and a very high elevation. We were constantly told to walk slowly because of the lack of oxygen. A bunch of people I know in Río Cuarto (mostly older men) chew coca leaves, but it's not a custom of the region. Where we were is exactly the kind of place where it makes a lot of sense, because of elevation sickness.

What else what else. We went to a mall that has the only McDonalds in the province of Salta, which they were really proud of for some reason. We took a tour of Salta city, which was totally neat but just absolutely adorable after Buenos Aires and Córdoba.

You get the idea. The pink building in the second picture is, by the way, a church. We took a lift up a hill and walked back down, which was nifty. But not as nifty as 

IGUAZU FALLS. We went straight from Salta to Puerto Iguazú. The only notable thing about the town besides the falls is that it's on the triborder with Paraguay and Brazil, and each country has an obelisk with their flag colors set up on their side of the river. But the falls. Oh gracious, the falls. Besides wandering around looking at them, we got on a little boat, drove right next to some of them, then down the river to a place where we got on a truck and drove through the rainforest while someone explained the vegetation to us. But enough of that nonsense, here are the pictures:

The next day was the Brazil side of the falls, which the Americans and Canadians didn't get to see because Brazil is even more retaliatory with the visas than Argentina is, and it would have cost us almost $200 to go into Brazil for about half a day. Of course, that's exactly what we charge them, so there's something to think about. And that was it. Good trip.

Guerra de los Suegros

A few weeks after university started, I started going to circus classes with Circo en Acción (I feel silly translating cognates, but that's Circus in Action.) It's two hours three times a week of Winnarainbow style goodness like spanish web, trapeze, partner body postures, handstands, and juggling. It's tucked into the back corner upstairs of a building that starts as a kiosk, so it's a little tricky to find the first time. I had fun pictures of all the toys equipment, the space, and the people using it, but I lost my camera, which also had the pictures of the city in general that I was planning on sharing here. Oh well. Anyways, part of what makes circus class so great is that it takes place in Argentina rather than the US. For example: I didn't have to sign any sort of release, or ANYTHING, to start class. I just kind of started showing up, and after a while they were like, "Dude, you should probably give us some money." So I did. A couple times now on the free days when we're not getting instruction in anything specific we've looked around and noticed that there are no supervising adults, not that they really stop us from doing much while they're around anyways.  The group, which is mostly minors, are totally trusted to get up on whatever equipment they feel like using without needing one of the people who run the circus to help them out or breathe down their neck.

Speaking of which, in April my parents came to visit me! That was fun because I got to feel all competent and in my element while they stumbled around like blind ducklings. Also because I got to see my parents for the first time in about six months. It was really cool to see them go through the same little discoveries and mind trips that I went through when I first got here.  It reminded me of a lot of the little differences that I'm totally used to and don't even notice anymore. We spent four or five days in Río Cuarto. They got to know my host family, they came to the university and briefly met my classmates (dad of course started a hackie sack circle) came to circus, got ice cream, went shopping at a few stores that sell traditional Argentine stuff, met the other exchange students, and basically got to know my life here a little bit.

My host family lent us one of the cars so we could go check out the hills of Córdoba, which are really close and very pretty. They're a popular place for people from Córdoba capital and Río Cuarto to go during summer vacation since they're relatively cheap and easy to get to. Basically, the population centers of the province of Córdoba are in really flat, boring agricultural land, and the hills are pretty and green and have lakes and rivers and are fun. As we were trying to leave the city we were stopped by the police twice in rapid succession, not because we were doing anything particularly shady, but because they had road checks set up. The first time they told dad he needed to turn his lights on when he's outside the city, and claimed he needed some sort of international license to drive in Argentina, but then didn't follow up in any way on that. He turned his headlights on, but I guess not to the proper setting, because the second guy gave him a ticket for not having the lights on right. He didn't say a thing about the license.

Eventually we did actually get where we were going though, and had lunch in a town called Villa General Belgrano. Villa General Belgrano was theoretically at one point a german settlement, but now it's a tourist town centered around the idea that at one point it was a german settlement. They have an annual Oktoberfest and sell German foods and all sorts of gnome paraphernalia. Of course, the obsession with gnomes seems to be a broader Argentine phenomenon. After that we went to La Cumbrecita, which was slightly less kitschy but was still totally tailored to tourism and no longer has any escaped nazis living in it. The draw was less about the nazis and more about the spectacularly beautiful place that it is. We hiked up to a great view of a waterfall over the valley and drank some mate. Yum.

The next day we bussed up to Córdoba city. My parents got to meet Pablo, who's studying there, and we spent the day wandering around the city and checking out the old buildings. We spent the whole afternoon in a craft fair, which reminded me a lot of Oregon. Nothing that was being sold was remotely Oregoney, but Río Cuarto doesn't have any fun quasi hippie stuff like that. We were only in Córdoba for the day, and took the night bus to Buenos Aires.

Oh great, let me see if I can even remember what we did in Buenos Aires at this point. I know we actually crossed to river to Colonia, Uruguay pretty quickly since my visa was going to expire within the week. I know I've talked about Colonia before, when I went there with the Rolandis right before Punta del Este. But to reiterate: it's adorable, the roads are cobbled, there are old cars on the sides of the streets, many of which have been modified to have plants growing out of them or some such thing, and there's a really cool old stone wall that dad drooled over for a while. Probably the most noteworthy thing about the trip to Colonia, for me at least, was that it was where I finally found my Destiny Mate. Dammit English... by mate I mean of course the gourd for drinking yerba mate.

Something cool from the first day in Buenos Aires was that we got to see a tango band playing live in the street. They were surprisingly good. I don't choose to listen to tango music, but I was totally content to sit there and enjoy it while my parents made plans to go to the milonga that the band was playing at that night. Oh, right! We went to this bookstore that used to be a theatre. The ceiling is covered in paintings of angels, and the stage is still there. It serves as the little coffeeshop section of the bookstore. My mom, of course, went straight to the children's section to try to find good books in Spanish for school. Dad, also predictably, wanted to find a book about Argentine wildlife or horses or traditional crafts or something. Oddly, I don't know that either of them accomplished their goals. I say oddly because that place was HUGE. To get to the bookstore we used the BSAS subway system, which isn't super extensive, but definitely good enough to be functional and is remarkably cheap. I think it was a little over a peso per ride... so maybe 30 cents US?

I'm not remembering all the specifics, I just know that we spent a lot of time wandering around the city and that my parents were impressed by almost everything because they're total geeks. In the best sense of the word, of course. I also know that the last thing we did before I caught a night bus back to Río Cuarto was a walking tour of downtown Buenos Aires. We saw the biggest theatre in South America, the Argentine congress, an enormous, beautiful plaza San Martín (yes, a plaza San Martín. He's a George Washington-esque figure. Military leader in the revolution and all that business. Just about every city has one, and I can only imagine that Buenos Aires has more than one.  This plaza was impressive enough that it's probably the main one, though.) We went most of the trip without being targeted, but when we were almost to the congress building we got ripped off. Someone sprayed gross goo on us, and then someone else told us we had pidgeon poo on us. He tried to help us clean it off, and then another woman tried to get involved, and then they split and a wallet was missing. The moral we should be taking from the story is, of course, that if you're from a small town traveling you should adopt a sort of sociopathic mistrust for humankind, at least when you're in public areas.

MAPBT

Argentines live pretty exciting lives during the school year. Case in point: apparently the small, private Catholic high school I was supposed to go had the police called in to maintain order towards the end of the year because of rampant water balloon fights which I hear didn't stop even after the arrival of the authorities. So if your school year is a series of water balloon fights and weekend night clubbing, what does summer look like? How do you improve on that? Just about everyone goes on vacations to another city. I would edit that sentence, but it's a fun example of how Spanish is affecting my English. This includes people who aren't that well off, but probably does not include legitimately poor people. The better off you are the further away you can go and the choicer spots you can hit. The trip is generally about ten days. 

I went to Punta del Este, a city on the easternmost point of Uruguay that only exists so that people can go there during the summer. The beach is lined with giant condo buildings. Each building has its own little strip of beach and a couple of dudes sitting on chairs waiting to set up chairs and umbrellas for anybody from their specific building. Guys constantly wander around the beach yelling either, "Heeeladoooooooooooos!" or "Cafe! Cafe cafe! Dulceamargosemidulce cafe!", which has to be the worst job ever. You can't swim in the ocean and the beaches are crowded. Overall, I'm surprised that everybody was so impressed when I told them that's where I was going. I think the classy reputation comes from the fact that there's yachts EVERYWHERE, and apparently that is (or was) one of the top rich person vacation destinations. The coolest part of the trip was definitely the hotel I stayed in, Casapueblo. They didn't build patches of wall so that you could see the cliff face it's built onto. Because the lobby floor is at ground level and the floors descend, all the floors are negative numbers. The whole thing is awesome and disorganized and every place in the hotel is unique and very floop's castley. Here is a picture of it.

I'm afraid I have few exciting revelations about Argentina left. When people pass a church or religious spot like a little Mary shrine (of which there are many) devout/practicing/old/people-who-remember-to Catholics do the cross thing. Ham and cheese is kind of a big thing. There are ham and cheese empanadas, pies, pizzas, croissants, chips and, of course, sandwiches. Man I don't know, I'm seriously running out of random fun things.

The fact that I am is kind of a big thing itself, though. I'm no longer finding the differences between the US and Argentina interesting, and I'm discovering new differences on a very infrequent basis. I've learned the language to a beyond functional point, I can wander around the house in the dark or in my underwear if I feel like it, I go everywhere by bus, and I don't feel awkward grabbing food from my family's cupboards or inviting people over. Being this functional is really nice, but I also kind of miss the feeling of discovery when I first got here. It's definitely a good thing though. Living like that is hard. 

I started university a few weeks ago. I'm going to the National University of Río Cuarto. The national bit means I don't have to pay anything. Not only do most people go to public colleges, but they have higher academic reputations than the private colleges. Because they have to compete against the national universities, people claim that they let their students float through in order to keep enrollment up. Two of the most common career tracks oh jeez. Ok they don't get to pick their own classes. When they enroll in college they choose a "career" that determines every class they take every year. Most careers are for four or five years, and everybody gets a fun title when they graduate, like, "Jamie Biesanz, Social Communicator" would be mine if I were to finish what I've started here. Right so two of the most common careers are Veterinarianism or however you say that and Agricultural Studies. So the university has a lot of LAND. Not a campus, but like a practice farm kind of a situation. It's pretty neat. The students go out into the fields and talk about the different kinds of bugs and diseases that can afflict soy. Oh man. Before, when my Spanish wasn't as good, I'd just ignore people when they weren't talking to me because it was too much work to focus on stuff that had nothing to do with me. Now I'm at a point where I pick up what people are talking about whether I like it or not. And they talk about corn and soy a LOT. How much it rained on so and so's corn fields and how such's soy harvest is looking. How efficient a crop corn is.

In any event, another difference in the university is that almost no one gets student housing. There are a few small buildings off campus that low income students from other cities get to use. Other than that, people from Río Cuarto generally live with their families while they go to college, and everybody else rents apartments. When I described dorm rooms to my aunt here she said it sounded like a prison. There are stray dogs everywhere, but they don't get inside most buildings. Except, apparently, university classrooms. It was raining today and wet dogs were wandering in and out. At one point a guy came in in the middle of the professor's sentence and asked if he could have a moment of our time. He told us that he wanted to tell us a joke: a white one, a yellow one, or a light green one. Everybody wanted the light green one, so he told us the yellow one. It had to do with cutting a woman in four parts. Afterwards he sold us gum. 

Berry Drank

I was waiting to make the third blog until I had been through Christmas and New Year's, since they had told me that it was a pretty big deal here. And, in keeping with my blogging tradition, this is being written at a disgusting hour of the morning while my mind is not totally functional.

Christmas was passed in Vedia, in the northeast of the province of Buenos Aires. About twenty eight family members got together in the big house there, but since it's summer here most of the time was passed outside and in the pool. When I say Christmas I mean the 24th, pardon me. The whole day was spent eating and swimming and sunbathing and talking about Argentine politics. Everyone got dressed up for dinner, which was eaten at about ten or ten thirty, I don't remember exactly. After dinner we sat around talking until midnight, when we all toasted and fireworks started going off everywhere. At that point everybody really started kicking up the drinking and started dancing all over the place. And I'm talking here about adults. Like 50+ adults. The old people starting winding up their party at around three, at which point the young people moved the party over to the club. Vedia is a tiny city (10,000) so it only has one club. They told me that when the kids were younger the festivities were designed better to include them, but I'm not sure I believe it. The whole thing seems to revolve around drinking and dancing, just like every other party in Argentina.

New year's went almost exactly the same way except some of the family changed and we were here in Río Cuarto. Also, unlike in Vedia, where I got a ride to the club with a cousin, here I needed to take a taxi. But because it was a holiday, they were occupied all night long and I couldn't leave the house after the family party wound down. That was a bummer.

I'm going to talk about the family, which I'm actually surprised I have yet to do. My host father is named Fabian Zanotti. He's ridiculous. His role in the family is to go to work and play golf and sit at the table and dish out disapproval about people's study habits and things like that. His job is to manage country. The way he's explained it to me is that families own chunks of land and work them and plant things in them. He connects them to people to buy what they grow and organizes transportation for the goods and payment and things like that. I've learned a lot of dirty phrases in Spanish from him. He's a huge believer in giving me a hard time about nothing.

My host mom's name is Claudia Maria Chanferoni de Zanotti. She helps Fabian out with the paperwork for his job, cooks, and makes everybody happy. That sounds silly but it seriously seems like part of her job is to make sure that everyone's happy all the time. I've had some lovely talks with her, and when I first showed up she was the one to explain a lot of how the country works to me.

The oldest brother is Emiliano Zanotti. He is Fabian's son, but not Claudia's. He is twenty six years old to the best of my knowledge. He works at his dad's office, but doesn't live in the house. He comes by time to time but I don't see him a lot.

Maria Paz Zanotti is twenty four and is studying chemical engineering in the capital of the province of Salta, in the northeast of Argentina. I hadn't met her until recently, when summer vacation started and she came down to pass it here. She's dating a guy named Diego, who seems cool. Her parents seem fine, so whatever.

Pedro Zanotti is beyond words. I'll try to get a video of him when he's excited to more accurately demonstrate who he is. He's twenty one, goes to the university here in Río Cuarto where he studies agronomic engineering, and lives in the house. He's very animated and emotive. I rarely see him just sitting neutrally. He gets very happy or angry very easily and expresses how he's feeling to the exact degree to whoever happens to be around.

Pablo Zanotti I share a room with. He's seventeen, he just finished high school here and is going to Córdoba capital in February to study architecture. Pedro used up all of the loudness that should have been alotted this kid. He's quiet and reserved, but that's ok because this is an overwhelming country and I can't have my roommate freaking me out all the time.

That's the direct family. There's also a set of cousins who live in the city and go to university here. They have an apartment to themselves, but they're in the house a lot since they have a strong connection to this branch of the family and they don't have to pay for the food that they eat here. Their names are Maria Agostina (22), Juan Martin (20), and Maria Sophia (18) Chanferoni. Agostina has the curly hair. The tiny one is Inés (12). She's never around because she lives with their parents in Serrano in southern Córdoba.

 I'm also getting asked about the music here a lot. For the convenience of the reader I will break it down by category.

Club music:
Descontrol - Daddy Yankee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpoFBlH4wMI
Pa Pan Americano - ?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC82c2bv3pg
Tonight or something equally silly - Black Eyed Peas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA

Cumbia Villera (this is the cultural equivalent of gangsta rap):
Quieren Bajarme - Damas Gratis (which translates to, "Free Ladies") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U69BrLTQ1o
Reacostada en la Cama - Damas Gratis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUTzOzfwIqw

Reggae:
Tu Sin Mi - Dread Mar I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gkTDsBjg8w
Open My Eyes - SOJA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvXmAligSnc

Rock:
Confesiones de Invierno - Charly Garcia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT_DEN8--G8
Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCvMKcNJCAY

Folk:
Preguntan de Donde Soy - Atahualpa Yupanqui http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXgHnaSPi3g

Ska:
Yo te Avisé! - Los Fabullosos Cadillacs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOJLsqhdqpo

I'm sure I'm leaving a ton out but that's a rough idea of what it seems like people listen to.