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

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