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.
