Hola Amigos!

4 and half weeks is all we have left? Wow the time is FLYING by! We didn’t get to travel anywhere this weekend, so we decided to check a few things off of our “Córdoba Bucket List” while we had some free time. Friday night, we went out to dinner at Club Milanesa, a restaurant downtown that has giant milanesas. Milanesa is a typical Argentinian dish and it basically consists of breaded meat. Club Milanesa adds a little twist to this delicious recipe by throwing toppings on the milanesa as if it were a pizza. Sounds kind of strange, but it was mighty tasty Here’s a picture of what a milanesa looks like so you can kind of get an idea of what I’m talking about: After filling our stomachs to the max with milanesa, we met up with the group and decided to try out bowling! In Patio Olmos, there’s a bar/bowling alley, Bowling Space Bar, that offers late night bowling really cheap so the group of 8 of us decided to try out our bowling skills. Surprisingly, bowling is relatively new to Córdoba, and it was definitely obvious in the various bowling styles you could see in the other lanes. I’m not a great bowler by any means, but Friday night I impressed myself with a solid 129! To make me feel even better, the next highest score I saw all night was an 84, which was one of the girls in our group haha. Needless to say, there wasn’t anyone to make you feel incompetent while bowling because they’ve got double your score in half the frames, which is what usually happens to me when I go bowling back home. Here’s a pic of our group, the Cordobés Bowling All-stars: I think the guy taking the picture thought I was just a random guy who hopped in on the photo of all girls because he gave me a weird look. He didn’t realize that I’m literally the only guy in my program, and yes I’m hanging out with a group of 7 girls haha. We ended the night with some classic karaoke, and for those of you who know my singing abilities, don’t worry I didn’t belt out any solos I thought that Argentines were naturally good singers because they sing about everything in daily life, but boy was I surprised to hear some of the people who got up for Karaoke! They made me sound like I have perfect pitch, which is unfortunately far from the truth.

Sarah and I heard about an indoor ice rink in one of the malls near our houses, so we decided to go check it out before heading to the soccer game on Saturday with Marcos. I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting for an ice rink in the middle of Argentina in a mall, but I was slightly disappointed upon seeing just how tiny it was. On top of that, I couldn’t even skate because you had to be wearing long pants to rent skates. I was tempted to tell them that I’m from the state of hockey where we play outside all winter on frozen ponds, and it’s occasionally warm enough to wear shorts while skating, but I decided against being sassy. We’ll definitely be back though, just for the fact that we can say we went ice skating in Córdoba, as well as we’ll definitely be the most advanced skaters there haha. It’s weird for me to think that people down here don’t know what a frozen lake, let alone snow, looks like because they live in the desert. I’m so excited to be back home for winter, escaping the heat After passing the afternoon in the mall, Marcos picked Sarah and I up, and we went to the Belgrano soccer game. Good news and bad news about the game. Bad news, we lost 3-1. Good news, Sarah and I finally got to experience our team scoring a goal after 4 soccer games!!! This alone was worth it because people go absolutely crazy! The atmosphere was still a lot of fun, even if we did get worked by the other team, and as always, the choripan afterwards helps to deal with the sorrow of losing.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to start my travelling as early as I would have liked because my final for my UNC class got moved to the 2nd of December. I was really looking forward to heading to Uruguay with the group next Tuesday, but now I’ll have to wait until Friday to join them. It’s crazy that the only thing that stands between me and the end of the semester is this presentation and an 8-10 page paper on my experience in my internship! 4 weeks from Friday we’ll be leaving, and I’m stilling have mixed emotions about going home because I can’t wait to see everyone and be home for Christmas, but at the same time it’s sad that I may not ever be back in Córdoba. We’ll just have to make this last month count Wow I didn’t even realize that we leave exactly one month from today! It seems like just yesterday we got here and thought that six months was a long time. I hope everyone has an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving, wherever you may be celebrating! Be sure to eat extra pumpkin pie and turkey for me

Chau Suerte!

Danny

Hola Amigos!

I’m pretty sure all Argentinian professors leave all of the work for their classes until the very end because it feels like we haven’t done anything, and now every class has a presentation! This week was jam-packed with preparing for exams/presentations and wrapping up some of my classes. I’m officially done with my history class, and next week my other classes all end and the travelling commences! Now for a little summary of my weekend, which as you can probably see, was pretty busy as well.

Friday night we bought tickets to go see the Nutcracker down here because I had never seen it before and Sarah told me we HAD to go. It was much better than the last ballet we went to, which was a modern twist on ballet that I couldn’t follow to save my life. The story line was pretty much the same, but they did throw in their own interpretation towards the end as the traveled around the world and showed  different dances from different regions. I’m not sure if this happens in all ballets, but they sure do like their applause down here afterwards. We probably applauded a dozen times for each dance, the main dancers, the directors, the light people, the set crew, and then of course all of them together haha. It was a really fun experience though and I’m glad we had the opportunity to see a quality ballet for a cultural experience!

Saturday morning, Sarah and I took an early bus to go visit La Falda, a city within the province of Córdoba, for a day trip. We were semi-disappointed with La Falda because we had heard it talked up so much and upon arriving, we realized it wasn’t all it was cracked-up to be. Nonetheless, it was great to get outside of the city of Córdoba for a little bit and get out in nature. We made a small hike to the 7 waterfalls, one of the things La Falda is known for, but as you can see from this picture, it’s more like 7 drops of water Some of our friends told us it was really cool to go horseback riding in La Falda, but upon seeing the condition of the horses, we decided to hold off until a different location like Chile or Uruguay. I don’t know how fun it would be to ride a sad-looking, malnutrition horse through the mountains. After the waterfalls, we took a tour of the Hotel Eden, a hotel constructed in the 1920′s that the city of La Falda was built around. Apparently in its prime, the hotel was extremely luxurious and it cost a fortune to stay there, but after years of vacancy, it looks pretty ramshackle. They renovated the front half, as you can see from this picture: , but the rest of the hotel was pretty much left in its vacant state. Now, they do tours at night as well, which are pretty much just a bunch of ghost stories as you walk through the “haunted” hotel with nothing but a flashlight that the guide carries. I have to admit, it would be pretty spooky, and probably more interesting than the three hour tour we took haha. After the hotel tour, we attended mass in a small little chapel in town, and it was probably one of the most beautiful little chapels I’ve ever seen. It looked like the tour of a castle and didn’t sit many people, but it was absolutely gorgeous! I didn’t take a picture because I felt too touristy, but I would say it was very similar to the Saint Paul Seminary chapel, only smaller.

I won free tickets to an opera and to a concert through this competition we did with our program and Sarah won a free dinner, so we decided to take advantage of two of them for a Sunday date-night! The opera wasn’t your traditional, formal opera, but it was interesting and we enjoyed everything except the message it was sending. It was our first opera and it wouldn’t say it was my favorite musical event I’d ever attended, but I did enjoy it. After the opera, we took advantage of our free dinner and went to restaurant called La Mandarina. I had a delicious filet mignon and Sarah had some pretty tasty chicken and rice. We had 200 pesos to spend and Sarah went the cheaper meal route so she could get dessert afterwards We shared some apple-crisp-like dessert with ice cream on top and it was absolutely delicious! Overall, it was a really fun night to just get out and experience different aspects of the culture.

The crazy-busy weekend made the time fly by even faster, and I cannot believe that we we’ll be home in just 5 and a half weeks! Tonight we’re going to the Manu Chao concert with the free concert tickets I won from the competition, and it should be a great concert. Everyone we’ve talked said they tried to get tickets but it sold out too quickly. I’ve listened to some of the music and I think I’d compare it most to Bob Marley, just chill, relaxing music. It should be a good time and I’ll be sure to let ya’ll know how it went when this weekend comes to an end! I hope all is well back home and everyone is enjoying the snowfall! Given the couple of 100+ days down here without A/C, I cannot wait to come home to winter

Chau Suerte!

Danny

Hola Amigos!

It has been far too long since I’ve posted on here and I apologize for the delay. Last week was nothing too terribly exciting because Sarah was sick with Gastritis and I still had work while everyone was on vacation. It wasn’t a bad week, just nothing new/exciting/blog-worthy happened. The heat finally arrived to Córdoba and let me tell you, 100 degrees without AC makes for some long nights.

Now for the exciting part of my week, camping in La Quebrada de los Condoritos here in the province of Córdoba. Marcos, my speaking partner, invited Sarah and I to go camping with some of the people he works with and their friends. Sarah obviously wasn’t able to go because I weekend filled with hiking and eating random foods we packed wouldn’t have been the best for a stomach recovering from Gastritis. There was 18 of us in all, with 6 tents and loads of food! We left from Córdoba Saturday morning, only about an hour and half after we had planned on leaving. This should have really been expected seeing as it is Argentina haha! Our “guide,” Juan/King of the mountain, was delayed because he had to heat up water for maté, a tea that is unique to Argentina and absolutely delicious. Juan is a friend/coworker of Marcos, who also plays volleyball with us, and we deemed him our guide seeing as he’s climbed Aconcagua, the tallest peak in North/South America. Needless to say, we were in good hands. Here’s a pic of the group:

After we arrived, we had about a 20 minute hike to the camping location. As we began to unpack and set up the tents, it began to rain, and then proceeded to hail. The majority of the group got their tents ready and hunkered down inside to brave the storm, but Marcos and I were less fortunate: Us trying to set up a tent in the rain/hail was a joke for the rest of the weekend, but in our defense, the tent had some broken poles! Here’s a picture of the piles of hail after the storm: Everything was drenched and three of the tents flooded during the storm. Luckily we had extra sleeping bags in the vehicles because even the sunny afternoon couldn’t dry out our soaking sleeping bags. All of my extra clothes were completely drenched so we tried to spread everything out, hoping it would dry because the sun was breaking through the clouds. I was forced to spend the whole weekend in the same pair of shorts, compression shorts, t-shirt, and sweatshirt because it was the only thing that dried as we were hiking.

We decided to make the most out of the afternoon, and after removing all of the water from the tents, we decided to hike to the North Balcony of the park. The rain left this absolutely gorgeous rainbow over the valley , but we were unable to find the pot of gold at the end. There are two paths you can hike in the park, the North Balcony and the South, and we chose the North first because it’s shorter and not quite as difficult. The hike took us around an hour and a half or so, and the scenery was beautiful. Upon arriving at the North Balcony, we were able to see a few condors before a cloud moved in and blocked our view completely. Condors are impressive birds with a wingspan of up to six feet! Here’s a pic of one that came close enough to take a picture: Once the cloud moved in, we couldn’t see anything because we were literally in a cloud. For some reason, I’ve always wondered what it was like to be in a cloud for real and not in an airplane, and I have to say, it wasn’t as cool as I thought it was going to be. It’s just like fog and you can’t see anything haha. At least I can check that off my bucket list

That night, we made pasta, which tasted delicious after a long day’s hike! The temperature cooled off rather quickly, and I’d say it was probably down in the 50′s; perfect for sleeping in a tent. It was funny for me to see how the Argentinians reacted to the cooler weather because for them it was like the dead of winter. I was in shorts and a sweatshirt and only my feet were cold, which was a result of my wet socks and shoes, but everyone else was in long pants, winter jackets, hats, and mittens. They couldn’t believe that I was rather comfortable, and I proceed to tell them about winter in Minnesota. We came to the conclusion that they probably wouldn’t be able to survive a winter in Minnesota haha.  After the majority went to bed, Marcos pulled out the a little ghost that made a “spooky” noise, so we proceeded to try and scare the girls in the group as they were trying to fall asleep. Our first two attempts were complete failures, but we found success when we proceeded to scare a few people from our group who had gone out to the cars to grab some stuff before bed. We hid in the weeds along the path and jumped out with the ghost. They were terrified

Sunday, we got up, ate a quick breakfast, and headed out for the South Balcony. The hike was considerably more difficult and took around 3 hours or so to complete it. We stopped by the river to take a quick rest and refill our water on the way, and I have to say that mountain water has to be the best water you can drink. Tired and soaking wet from sweat, we arrived at the South Balcony, and here is the spectacular view: We saw some condors flying right overhead, as well as numerous other birds. The smaller birds have no fear of people and this little guy came right up next to me, looking for food: We stayed up at the South Balcony for around an hour and a half or so before prepping for the return journey.When we got back to the river, we had a little picnic lunch before scaling the horrendous mountain that lay between us and our campsite. Everyone collapsed when we made it to the campsite, feeling accomplished and definitely exhausted. We packed up camp and made our way back home after a draining but fantastic weekend. I got home with just enough time to shower before heading to mass, which I’m sure was much appreciated by the people I sat near because I didn’t change or shower all weekend

I’m so grateful I was able to go on a camping trip in the mountains down here before leaving. It was such an incredible experience and I made lots of new Argentinian friends! This will definitely one of my experiences down here that I won’t forget, and I’m hoping we can maybe organize another mini-excursion before I leave in just 7 short weeks. I still cannot believe that’s all that’s left of my semester in Argentina! Lots of events are planned for this weekend and the week to come so I’ll have plenty more stories in the near future! I hope all is well back home, and I hope you all enjoy the snow, as it should be arriving shortly I’d take snow over 100 degree heat and humidity any day haha!

Chau Suerte!

Danny