reflexiones

here's something that i posted on my program's website in a discussion about leadership.

I’ve been trying to think of a specific time in Argentina when I felt like I was being a leader. The problem is so far I’m very unimpressed with what I’ve come up with. I think that I’m having trouble because what I define as leadership is culturally derived from middle-upper class America and therefore unbelievably narrow. I have grown up with a leader being a man, usually, who works alone and beats all the competition to become a rich, successful and famous person. Hopefully they can help someone when they’re rich, or rarely while becoming rich and famous. I knew before that this was a limited way of recognizing leaders, but I didn’t understand just how capitalist or individualistic it was until this summer.

Not only did we go to Argentina, home of Che Guevara, we went as a group. I’m sure that my summer experience would have been very different had I been by myself the whole time. But, I’m so glad I wasn’t. Even when I wasn’t with the other Robertsons, I was with my home stay families or at a job with coworkers. The one time that I wasn’t with anyone that I knew was the last three days when I traveled to Iguazú Falls in northeast Argentina. I stayed in a hostel, went through the national park by myself and got around in taxis and buses on my own. In the hostel, I met plenty of people that were traveling all around South America for months on end, but couldn’t speak any Spanish, didn’t know much past what the guidebook said and had no relationships with Argentines. This made me so grateful for my experience in our group and with my Argentine families.

In fact, I think whether or not we appreciated the way that the group was, our families or the planned activities, our summer was a great experience of the Argentine culture. Argentines believe in the power of the group, of people coming together for a cause. As confusing as Argentine politics is, one thing that stands out to me is the persistence of the popular movement for better government through the years. Family is essential, so much more so than here in the States. And leadership, or success, or riches, are nothing unless experienced with others. I actually wish that I had grown up in Argentina because of the way that they view success there. It’s not being better than everyone else. Rather it’s finding how you can use your passions and talents to serve your people. Now I feel like a kid again in learning this lesson.

volver

so i'm back and sad to not be exploring and adventuring any longer. i'm going to keep writing some brief reflections and putting up pictures on here, so don't go away. if you want to be absolutely overloaded by pictures, check out my picasa website which has two albums from my trip, both argentina and iguazu.


picasaweb.google.com/emily.j.matthews

and here's a call out to carlos gardel.

Yo adivino el parpadeo
de las luces que a lo lejos van
marcando mi retorno
son las mismas que alumbraron
con sus palidos reflejos
hondas horas de dolor
y aunque no quize el regreso
siempre se vuelve a su primer amor
la quieta calle, donde el eco dijo
tuya es mi vida, tuyo es mi querer
bajo el burlon, mirar de las estrellas
que con indiferencia, hoy me ven volver

Volver con la frente marchita
las nieves del tiempo, platearon mi sien
Sentir que es un soplo la vida,
que 20 años no es nada
que febril la mirada
errante en la sombras te busca y te nombra
Vivir con el alma aferrada a un dulce recuerdo
que no ha de volver.

Tengo miedo el encuentro con el pasado
que vuelve a enfrentarse con mi vida
tengo miedo de las noches que pobladas
de recuerdos encadenan mi sufrir
pero el viajero que huye,
tarde o temprano detiene su andar
mas el olvido que todo destruye
haya matado mi vieja ilusion
Cual escondida la esperanza humilde
es toda la fortuna de mi corazon.

Volver con la frente marchita...

iguazu dia uno

alright people, this is the story of the week. i flew up to puerto iguazu, argentina yesterday after my flight was delayed for a couple of hours and i was forced to buy a sudoku book.

i headed on my way to brazil this morning, got lost and rejected around the customs and turned around just in time to get really ripped off by my taxi driver. nevertheless, the day was a complete success considering that i got to see the biggest waterfalls ever. (don´t quote me on that.) this is the first time i´ve ever done anything like this by myself so i´d like to think that it was a good experience whether or not i made good decisions, right? like this for example, i thought it´d be really really cool to get up right next to the falls so i shelled out 50 pesos to go on the boat tour. something that i didn´t know about this boat tour is that the point of it is less to see the waterfalls and more to get you wet. so, i emerged, wet and cold and surprised from this adventure. the next adventure was the general hiking around in the mist with my camera while sogging wet and trying to see everything at once. that worked out.

but there´s one thing that i really can´t figure out. how wide are the falls, really? i think that i´ve seen the end of them on the argentine side, but they seem to go on forever and ì´m not really sure how. i just know they´re big. when you start walking towards the falls you pass a bunch of big waterfalls that would be impressive on their own but you just hear this distant roar while you´re tinkering through the jungle on your own, or behind a huge tour group of loud germans, as it may be. here´s a map of the park, i did the argentine side today.


i would love to show you the 1001 pictures that i took, but that may have to wait until when i am well fed at home. for now i´m going to go soo to make egginaholes in the hostel kitchen. before i do though, you have to hear about the throat of the devil. this is the second throat of the devil that i´ve encountered in argentina, apparently it´s a popular subject or well known, or something. anyhow, you walk a kilo out on catwalks over river, which appears more like a fast moving lake, until you start seeing a cloud of mist rising in front of you. then you start getting wet and you know you´re close. then all of the sudden you´re standing on the edge of the huge waterfall that is all in a horseshoe shape crashing into oblivion. if i can get into brazil tomorrow, i´m going to walk into the middle of that bad boy. anywho, that was my favorite part just watching the gallons and gallons and tons and tons of water fly out into open air and disappear into the cloud. here´s a cool pic of it i found.


last words: coatis eat plastic here, butterflies are everywhere and i want to see a rainbow tomorrow because it was too cloudy today. i´m out!

mas fotos

comida/auto

paz

just so that you all know, i`m still alive, i`m back in buenos aires, staying with my first homestay family, eating and sleeping a lot as usual. i`m not getting a lot of time to write on my blog as of now, but i`ll catch you all up later. my program ended and all my group left (almost) so now i`m going solo to the cataratas de iguazu next weekend and getting back next friday. i got some underground crunchy jif peanut-butter here and have been making grilled cheese for my fam. so all is good.

so here are the pictures that i`ve been able to download so far. ill get you all updated on what happened, but the pics will have to tell the story for now! paz

cabalgata tiempo

okay so i am about to embark on a week long trip on horse back through the argentine cuontryside. get excited. purchases made for the trip so far: big bright blue fleece gloves that say "thimeng ting, thing ting shau tou" on them for 8 pesos. 2 peso socks that are loong. a 10 peso cowboy hat called the big australian that guards from all forms of skin cancer according to its tag. 20 peso diva sunglasses. a 50 peso led headlamp that has a red led for long distance viewing and whose battery lasts 200+ hours. big trash bags to act as rain ponchos. number of expected photos: enough. very anticipated photo series: emily and lily in their avs and big aussies around argentina. other news: cafayate has wine flavored ice cream? i will give you the full scoop when i get back. oh, i crack myself up!

itinerary per fernando, our guide:
1) CABALGATA:
Lunes 2 de julio: los buscaré de San Lorenzo a las 7:00 AM, dejamos el equipaje en lo de María del Carmen y viajaremos a 100 Km. de Salta a un pequeño pueblo que se llama la Viña lugar donde empieza la cabalgata. Esa noche dormimos en un pequeño puesto de montaña llamado el Churqui.
Martes 3 de julio: cabalgamos desde el Puesto el Churqui a Amblayo.
Miércoles 4 de julio: cabalgamos desde Amblayo a Isonza.
Jueves 5 de julio: estaremos todo el día en Isonza, donde visitaremos a los pequeños y podemos continuar con las tareas solidarias.
Viernes 6 de julio: cabalgamos desde Isonza a la Viña y dormimos allí.
2) CABALGATA Y RAFTING
Sábado 7 de julio: viajamos en bus a Cafayate y hacemos un trekking. Dormimos en
Cafayate.
Domingo 8 de julio: vamos a conocer las Ruinas de Quilmes en Tucumán y dormimos en
Cafayate.
Lunes 9 de julio: Hacemos rafting y regresamos a Salta. Buscamos el equipaje en lo de María del Carmen y dormimos en Salta en un hotel.

me fijo en comida por unas dias

here´s eggs that lily made, she´s brilliant.

in addition we have here kristen, who is very committed to enjoying herlicuado de frutilla at la casa de te in san lorenzo where i ate something made of merengue and brown suger that changed my life.


today is my last day of work at casa del niño and monday we leave for a week long horse back trip. i´m preparing myself for soreness and dirtiness, among other things. i´m also trying to buy twelve pairs of cheap aviator sunglasses. this may be more difficult than i thought at first.

and these kids

and this

i miss this

todo que es isonza

i have no idea where to begin on this one folks. this was quite a weekend and im pretty sure that everyone in my group has lots of positive and negative feelings about it. i think that im going to have to learn with having such seemingly contradictory feelings or my head might explode. the good part for you is i get to tell you all the great parts and leave out the boring, freezing and annoying parts!

we left later than expected on friday morning, changed cars, made a few extra side trips and finally were on our way. the road up to the school is mostly the same road that we took to get to cachi a couple of weeks ago. hence, it was gorgeous. but, right when we were about to go into the national park, we took a turn to the left skipped through a couple of mountain chains and took zic-zics, as they call them here, all the way down into the valley in which sits isonza, el capital de queso, home of a school for 26 children, a tiny church, a house for travelers and teachers and well, not much else. the school sits in front of what might be the coolest mountain range of all time. it simply looks like the crust of the earth separated and lifted up a bit, exposing layer upon layer of different rocks for miles upon miles. it is incredible. and, we were lucky enough to be there on a day that a rogue cloud made its way through the valley quickly. my friend john, who has been working at isonza for two weeks now told me that when youre inside the cloud it feels like its raining but there are no drops.




on the way up

the school itself is very modest. it has a large room for eating and gatherings, a tiny kitchen equipped with eva, the greatest cook ever, and a room for boys and girls at the end of a large hallway. other than that there are indoor and outdoor bathrooms (holes, no flush, no paper), showers that have warm water once a week due to the solar panels recently installed at the school, and two small classrooms. Outside the school is the soccer field, full of rocks, as is all of the land in the mountains because theyre made of very weak sandstone. theres a small basket/volei court behind the school, some fields on the side for class, and a relatively new greenhouse with a chicken coop on the side. theres also another small building which houses the primary grades. the school has a directora and two teachers. it is a public school but is hurting for sufficient funding.



the children stayed at the school the whole weekend while we were there, which is rare. usually they travel home, which may be very far away. some go by foot, other horses, a few cars. all of them are more closely tied to the original people of argentina than your average salteño o potreño. they are all beautiful and most of them are sick to a certain extent. five minutes into every soccer game everybody was coughing. i had trouble getting to know very many of the kids during our short stay there which made me very sad, but their lives and experiences are very very different than mine and i was amazed and thankful just to be around them. theyre here in salta right now for the first time in most of their lives traveling out of the mountains in to the city. theyre going to see shrek 3 at the movie theatre tonight.

on our first day there we got to know the school and were welcomed officially with a big late lunch. we didnt do much the first day, until at night we started the first aid classes that nandini, toni and i prepared for the kids. my job was to teach the kids from 5 to 10 years of age what germs are, what they do, and how to kill them. basic preventative health care. i wanted to do this without saying caca-a-boca disease. this involved a lot of questions and acting silly, and fake sneezing on childrens faces, and running to wash hands together and making up plays on the spot. its was fun, i wish it could have lasted longer. after this, we headed back to eat dinner in the house about 300 meters away, where we were introduced to not flushing your toilet paper, a novel concept.




on saturday we started early. (for me everything is early, lily and kristen are convinced that i sleep 18 hours a day.) lily, gabs and i took on the painting of the girls and boys dormitories. we were using donated paint and at first it appeared that it would not work, but a couple hours and another coat (or here mano) later, we were good. we did this all day while other kids worked taking a trunk out of the ground, building a chicken coop, painting the greenhouse door, doing art with the kids, and getting rocks out the garden. this last task is definitely never-ending. we finished our task on sunday afternoon. the whole time we worked we may have been the most stylish people on the planet- i personally had my old soccer warmups on inside out with a healthy speckling of paint on my face, hair and hands.

in between working on big projects, i tried to help out where i could. one thing that i loved about isonza is that they welcome your help. usually people wont let me help with food and serving or cleaning but there when i asked if i could help the answer was siempre! in the kitchen with eva, queen of talking super fast and doing something and remembering how long the three things that are cooking have left to go, i learned a bunch. get this mom, they even said that i was the cook of the group by the time we left. (my entire family is laughing right now because they know i used to struggle with my mac and cheese.) nonetheless, i did help! i learned to fold empanadas and got to the poiht where i could make a pretty one in a reasonable amount of time. my other big success was my baby, pan de chicharron. heres the process. i walk in the kitchen, ask if i can help. eva says yes and pulls out a big pan, a plastic bag full of what she tells me is chicharron, the fried fat cut off of previously cooked meat, and a big round smooth stone. i follow directions and grind a good four cups of fried fat into a big fat ball with the large stone. the fact that i rolled my fat into a ball gave all of the women in the kitchen a big laugh. what really got them was when i dropped my fat ball into the pan of flour, spraying flour all over my pants. at this point i had to point out that i was in fashion now that i had flour on me just like eva. they loved that. i continued the process, rolling flour and yeast in with my fat. next came the lard, loads of it, which eva poured steaming water onto for me to work into my bread. finally i was kneading a dough ball the size of a two year old. or so it seemed to me. i had to let the dough rise, so i wrapped it up into a towel and discovered that it felt just like holding a baby, especially if you patted its butt. i returned often to the kitchen asking after my baby, and it grew quite fast. i fed it well, lets say, i also kneaded it quite well. i had to leave to go sleep, but
they finished the kid off by separating it into patties and cooking them in a huge adobe oven that they heat up with a big fire, then take out of the oven and the bread is cooked on the heat retained by the walls. but if you touch the outside of the wall its still cold. amazing. my bread was quite tasty, if you like bacon-flavored bread. i mean, i like it.

we got up at 7 on saturday morning and hiked or zic-zacked up a little hill to watch the sunrise. we got to see the colors of the valley pop out of the darkness, it was quite beautiful. check out the pics. we even brought hot tea in thermosi. (i hope thats the plural of thermos.) on out way down we discovered just how cold it was because we crossed a little stream which was frozen! my layering abilities have been brought to a new level on this trip. my ability to sleep in my clothes has also increased spectacularly. for almost the entire four days in isonza i had on two pairs of wool socks, two pairs of sweatpants, a shirt, long sleeved underarmour, fleece, hoodie, huge vest, jacket, scarf, and ear-muffs.


me watching the sunrise

but sunday was the cold day, as is apparently indicated by the cloud that slid through the valley all day long. we attempted on this day to do some sort of olympics with the kids, playing basket, futbol and doing other fun activities, but i think that the combination of the cold, the unmixed teams, and the bad kids skipping out made us quit early. even so, i got a couple of shots in on the court. we finished up the day by putting on music and sort of dancing with the kids who wanted to. below is my love, carlita. shes got rhythm, and loves to spin, we had a good time. the kids had to skip out on that one towards the end to get their one shower of the week. sunday night i thought i was going to lose some appendages to frost bite. my hands were hurting the whole day. i have to be honest, i was so cold and dirty that i got really grumpy and stopped talking by the end of the day. i ended up sleeping as long as possible with my mouth as only thing showing out of my mummy sleeping bag.



monday morning we didnt have much to do but wrap up the work that we were doing for the rest of the weekend. at that point i was so tired that i didnt do much. all of the kids were getting ready to go to salta, and everyone packed their whole wardrobe. it was quite a sight. getting 50 people, half of whom are small and have never traveled before on three buses was a job. not my job, thankfully. but, it took time. on the way down the mountain, plenty of kids got sick as well. when we finally got back to san lorenzo i was pretty relieved. the hot shower was amazing and the pasta with tomato sauce, however simple, was a gift from god.

im definitely stil processing everything that i saw and felt and ate while in isonza and i may have more to say about it later, but for now this is all. if youre reading this, i probably miss you and some type of food that you cook reasonably well, or at least that youve eaten with me. although, i have been eating an unusually large amount of dulce de leche recently. :)

descansa

so i´m going to be in izonsa- una escuelita cerca de cachi- this whole weekend. we´ve organized a whole weekend of fun and games and first aid classes for the 26 students there. i´ll let you all know how it went when we get back tuesday and until then, check out the link "the language experience" which has a great page about the school and their project to help the community ...........ciao

niebla y nenas y helado

i dont have anything particular to write about today but i thought that id write down some of the funny unique things that im experiencing here that are raro o distintissimo.

first, the niebla or fog. here in salta the fog is a constant presence. even if you cant see it, you know that it was here or is coming back soon. in the evening when the sun starts to wane the fingers of fog start to climb through the valleys of the mountains on both sides of the city of salta. on our bus ride back to san lorenzo, which is just west of salta, we see a show of fog and sunsets every night. i love the mountains because theyre different every time that you see them. during the night, fog descends on all of the city so that every morning when we get up we are greeted by a soggy feeling. i get to work around 10 am when the fog fingers are beginning to make their slow journey back into hiding in the mountains. its hermosa, la niebla.

second, nenas. im working at the casa del niño, and it would better be described as a cultural exchange project rather than a volunteer job. i say that because i dont actually have all that much to do, but i get to learn a lot anyways. i just have to suppress my american urge to work work work all the time enough to enjoy the uniqueness of my situation. my old friend here in the casa is a tiny two year old girl, who tomorrow or the next day is going to have heart surgery to fix a pulmonary valve that is closed in her heart right now. this valve issue doesnt affect her spunkiness, and with me, her favorite word is NO! today another angel arrived, who is only four months old and comes to salta for a problem with her pancita, or stomach, which they tell me is really just that the poor girl cannot make cacita, at all. she has literally the biggest cheeks i have ever seen on a baby and dark dark brown eyes. she doesnt have teeth yet so when she gets excited she just opens her mouth in a big gummy smile. adorable.

tercero, helado. i may have mentioned this already, but its definitely worth talking about again. the ice cream in argentina is amazingly better than that of america. it is creamier, the flavors are more flavorful and its cheapissimo. please note that cheapissimo is not a word in english or spanish, but it gets my point across. i am going to get rich when i am old by starting a argentine ice cream business in the states. im still brainstorming on names. but just to give you an idea of the goodness ill say two things. one, ive eaten helado on average once a day during my stay in argentina with an average cost per two-flavor cone of US$0.80. two, ive eaten the following flavors that have knocked me off my feet:chocolate italiano, mantecol (peanut butter), chocolate africano, dulce de leche(un-freaking-believable), frutilla a la crema(peter wherever you are, please come and eat this youll die), ferrero rocher, frutilla a la champagne(somehow they put champaign in ice cream and it worked very very well). i have not yet tried mate ice cream, or red and white wine ice cream. these are a little out of my league for now. bueno, es todo y tengo hambre, me voy!

chicoana y atardecer y gnocchi

santa vaca, mi vida está llena. after finishing up my first couple of days at la casa del niño, we´ve had a three day weekend here in salta, full of mostly sleeping for me. (which i love) but we´ve also been doing some fun things as well, getting to know the area and spending time together as a group.

on saturday, we traveled to chicoana, a little pueblo about a 45 minute drive from our new place in san lorenzo. maria del carmen, the director of our program here in salta brought us to visit her family´s house there, which is right on the main square of town. her father came to argentina during the spanish civil war and his uncles gave him the house that they had built right around the time that chicoana was founded, before even salta was here. her father was a farmer in the north of spain and he came here to be a farmer too. now maria del carmen´s brother is carrying on the work of the family farms since their father is 86 years old (!)

maria del carmen´s brother showed us alllllllll around his two farms and brought us to see how the water channeling system works here as well. we saw all of the machinery, the fields of tobacco, wheat, corn, and beans, as well as the different methods used to dry and sort tobacco here in Argentina. they had both the new and old systems of drying tobacco going. in the old days, they would string packs of leaves across beams 50 feet high in an adobe house that they would pump heat into gradually for two days. that took a LOT of manual labor and now the process is much more automized. but still it´s not as advanced as in the u.s. they had visited a farm in virginia and ranted and raved about the systems that we have there. we lunched and explored the itty-bitty-city before heading back to salta.


mountain view from the farm.


old adobe secadores de tobacco


liberty that way.


iglesia de chicoana.


todos juntos!

then i slept twelve hours. i woke up at the same time as everyone who went out dancing, except that i hadn´t gone out so i was a little bit more chipper. sunday was a real relaxed day and we visited some of the mercados artesanales in salta where i fell in love with the following: llamas, everything you can imagine made of llama wool, little mini armadillos, mate by the ton, and everything you can imagine made of leather. here´s a shot of the sunset that night with the main cathedral in salta.


then i slept 11 hours. and i was happy. today was a very relaxed day, a national feriado, or holiday. we hung out at the house most of the day enjoying the bright salta sun and trying to figure out how to dry laundry. the highlight of the day was rolling gnocchis! gnocchi is kind of like a pasta made of potatoes, which are cooked, combined with some magic sauce. (read: i don´t cook them myself, we used store bought paste.) it´s kind of like a throw back to kindergarten playdough, you roll a snake and then cut squares off and roll them off a fork. gnocchi is a staple here in argentina, usually eaten on the official gnocchi day, or the 29th of every month. here´s some shots of us, future gnocchi models!

la casa grupal, mi proyecto cultural, y más

hola a todos, hoy voy a contarles sobre todo que ha pasado en los días recientes.y si hablas español y equivoqué en el oracion pasado, lo siento. `

bueno, so the real "work" has started here in salta. what that actually means is that everything has slowed down significantly. we recently moved out of our second homestay homes here in salta.

Me, My homestay grandma, Alicia, and my bro Dan, another Robbie.

we moved into a house in san lorenzo as a group. i´m with 5 girls in one room, thank god i got a top bunk. you get to hear all kinds of stories this way. san lorenzo is a little outside of salta and not quite a town in itself, at least where we live, meaning that we get to straddle our days between the city, the bus, and our house, which has spiders and no channels on our nice big television. it´s just another stage of the trip, i suppose. i´m actually getting tired of moving seeing as this is the fourth place we´ve stayed in four weeks.

more importantly, i started my volunteer work here at la casa del niño. it´s great, in the sense that i am learning and experiencing and just being somewhere that i never thought i´d have a chance to be. in the mornings i help out with office work and in the afternoons i play with the kids when they come back from their treatments at the hospital across the street. hospital is kind of a stretch for this place though, in american standards. today i walked through the halls of this old, crumbling building and was impressed that it is still being used. they obviously don´t have the same building standards here as they do in the u.s. i work with fani, virginia and marcia. then there´s my bud daniel, who´s in my program and works at the house with me as well.

today we had a chance to see the hospital because it was the fortieth anniversary of the escuelita, or little school, that functions there. basically how it works it while kids are here for extended periods of time, as inpatients, there are teachers that go from bed to bed, teaching and continuing the students education while they´re sick. they was singing, dancing and cake-which here comes with a mini roman candle on top instead of your basic wimpy birthday candles. (pictures below) the event was highly attended by the kids in the hospital, former students of the school and supporters of all shapes and sizes.

my afternoons with the kids in the casa are my favorite. there have been one or two kids staying at the casa each night while i´m here, so i get to spend individualized time with each kid. i´ve been chilling with an adorable two year old girl whose heart is struggling to work and is getting consulted here on the possibility of heart surgery. her fingers are always dark purple and you can see the veins on her head, but she´s the sweetest, spunkiest little thing i´ve played with in a while. she´s bossy too, veni! veni! come! come! all the time, now that we´re friends. i even got a kiss on the cheek today. my other friend is 9. we´ve been drawing together the past couple of days, everything that we can think of. yesterday i asked if he wanted to take a break, and no way he did not, drawing or die for this little trooper. the house is very calm and relaxed with tons of toys and colorful walls all around. it´s really great to see the kids smiling and having fun here for days on end.


two of the kids from casa del niño dressed up in salteño ponchos for the celebration.


the gathering


casa del niño kids singing their song


cutest thing i´ve ever seen, with her mom at the party.

salta as a whole has not really caught my fancy as a city yet. i love the big buenos aires with everything and anything. but i do love the mountains here. we´re going on another day trip tomorrow to a town outside of the city. but the people here do have more time to talk. my friend daniel and i were in a store the other day and we were hailed down by an old argentine man who learned some english 50 years ago that he still remembers today. his name was orlando and he wants to visit orlando, florida. he told us first that he does not like bush. he then proceeded to ask us all about ourselves, why we´re in salta, etc. in a cute spanglish. by the end of our conversation he had warmed up to the idea that we were americans and when we walked out the door he yelled after us in his great argentine english, "you are very nice!"

so i´ve been here a month. i have to be honest. i really love it here- it´s unique the people are so friendly, ubertalkative and their culture is very distinctive. the food is great, the ice cream- to die for. i´m starting to eat dulce de leche daily. i´m upset when my friends don´t like mate. i don´t notice the trash everywhere, the insanely dangerous traffic or the goofy weather. i speak in spanish before english most times, although i´m still frustrated by my lack of language skills. but, i miss home too. sobre todo, the people of argentina are what have made my experience great, and what i miss most about home is my family and friends. and maybe peanut butter. (i could make a fortune bringing mateca de maní to this deprived population.) i guess what i want to tell you if you´re reading this is that for me, traveling is the bomb. it´s like life on steroids, it´s rips you open and makes you new and you love it. it´s so hard it´s worth it. as they say here, vale la pena. todavia, i´m homesick.

fotos por favor!

finally, i´ve recovered my cable for my camera and am here to give you what you want- pictures. and another heads up- i´ll be starting this week working at la casa de los niñps, a house adjacent to the children´s hospital in salta that serves families and children with chronic illnesses like cancer or blood problems that require dialysis to stay in the home as their own when they travel to salta to receive treatment. i am really excited about starting this work because up until now, this trip has felt a little too much like vacation. finally, i´ll get to get my hands dirty a little bit. i absolutely hate the idea of the program funding us to go on an eight week vacation. obviously in buenos aires, we were not your average tourists. in addition, the homestays are really the meat of the program in my opinion, but still, i´m not here just to see all of the pretty places and speak the pretty language. I´m here to learn.

today we had a presentation by a doctor who is in charge of the clinic in the public hospital in salta. it was really interesting to hear about medicine and how it works in another country. some of the most interesting things that he said were about drugs. her seemed to be pretty focused on that in general as being one of the biggest public health problems in the province. actually, the hospital is the largest and most advanced in the whole northern region of argentina. where salta borders with bolivia there is a huge transfer of cocaine through the city and on to buenos aires. my host mother here told me about an airline that used to fly in between buenos aires and spain that loaded the sides of the airplane full of coke, and had to shut down when it was found out. alcoholism is also a big problem here, according to the doctor that i met. i´m curious as to whether it is a bigger problem here than in the u.s. or if it´s emphasized more. there was also talk of malnutrition, tuberculosis and aids. argentina is an interesting country in relation to others around the world because it claims to be first world but is also clearly third world in some areas. it has problems that are chronic in poor countries but not quite to the same extent. at the same time its loaded with first world amenities, cute little boutiques, and is very internationally minded.

one thing that is not like the u.s. here is driving. salta is even worse than buenos aires. almost every corner is a grand game of chicken because for some reason they´ve neglected to use stop signs. at least in la gran ciudad they have stop lights that are followed by the majority of drivers. salta also has more bikes than the city did. although, in buenos aires you´ll often see big groups of motorcycles and motorbikes descend on a stoplight at the same time, weave their way to the front, and zoom off as soon as the light turns yellow. (i plan to be a part of one of these gangs in the future.) that´s right, here before green comes red and yellow and before red comes yellow. my other favorite tidbit about driving here is the uselessness of lanes. there may be a one way street with a double yellow line running down the middle, which apparently means nothing. lane lines are never followed, it´s more of a race to the front of the pack. taxi drivers are allows friendly and want to talk though, even at 6 am.

finally, my pictures are loaded.


boats in the harbor of la boca, a poor neighborhood on the southside of buenos aires.


el puente de la mujer in puerto madero, the new fancy upscale neighborhood on the river in bsas.


my sister luli and i. ¨)


a poster in salta for the lettuce band (directly translated).


me sticking my head out of the cable car on my way up el cerro en salta!


the view of the city of salta from the top, with a jesus statue which weighs two tons. (i don´t know if that´s metric or not, sorry folks.)


one of the cathedrals here in salta. the red in particular.


one of the mountains we saw on our way up to cachi, it´s green because of the copper inside of the rock.


at the highest point of our trip looking over all the precordilleras of the andes.


the chapel at the top.


me at the top. sharp turn to the right.


cardon, or the cactus of south america. the needles are ten centimeters long. this was inside parque nacional de cardones, where they´re trying to preserve the endangered monsters.


a long shot of nevado (translated: snowy) the huge mountain near cachi. the mountain has snow on it year round. it popped into our view after we saw the striped mountains (on the left of this pic).


a common argentine board game, titled deuda externa, or external debt in which one has to beat the international monetary fund. this is not a joke.