Awkward Turtle Week

Well, I told you things wouldn't be boring. In the past week I've gone to a rockin' concert (I somehow imagine Lyndsay saying rockin concert, so I'm writing it how I'm hearing her saying it), the entire Polish government died, my friend was robbed while we were walking, a volcano exploded and all of my friends in Europe are stuck without flights to Paris, I went to basically an international party with people from every corner of the world and learned some French and German, imagined myself in a scene from Passport to Paris while I talked to 4 Frenchmen who sounded EXACTLY like the actor with the accent that I originally thought was fake ("when the rain comes, I am sad"), and I got homesick. Now I will go into detail on several of those occurrences.

The Polish government and Iceland's volcano you probably already know about. My only comment on both of those incidences is this: Sorry guys, that sucks. As far as Córdoba events, I'll start in chronological order and tell you about the rockin' show. We went to a club to see a band called Onda Vaga, which means lazy vibe, who are from BA and are REALLY popular here. The club was packed, but we got relatively close up to the stage and had at least 2 inches of dancing space each, which in Argentine terms is great. The band has like 8 members and has a super cool vibe, but what really made it a good show was that you could just tell how much fun they were all having up there. It set the tone for the whole show, and made it pretty easy to dig their music. Here's their myspace page if you'd like to listen to them:
http://www.myspace.com/ondavaga

So that was great. Moving on the to robbery. We were walking last Saturday night to a party that Olivia's host siblings were at, and we really shouldn't have been walking a.) because it was 3 am and b.) because we were in a sketch part of town. However, being Americans and not Argentines, our mindset was more along the lines of "it's only 6 blocks!" whereas it should have been "it's a whole 6 blocks in a sketchy neighborhood and we're obviously foreign." So, as we were walking some dude came up from behind us and just ripped my friend's bag off her shoulder (literally ripped off the strap) and ran away. He was FAST too. Like I kind of feel like boyfriend would make more money if he put his efforts into becoming the next Prefontaine (funnily enough, the movie Prefontaine was playing dubbed over on tv the other day. Jared Leto is just not as cute when he's not shooting up drugs and getting his arm amputated. Name that movie. The arm amputation is a dead giveaway.). Anyway, so the man ran away with my friend's cash, camera, phone, and credit card, but everyone was unhurt so we have that to be thankful for. Mostly it was just a good lesson, because while we're all super comfortable here, we need to remind ourselves that we're in Argentina and a lot of people have no money and will thus take yours if given the opportunity.

On to the international party and Passport to Paris. We went to a friend's appartment where she and her roommates were having a "fancy party." Everyone spiffed up and payed a ridiculously small amount of money for a ridiculously large quantity of alcohol, and as we mingled we realized that not only were there Americans and Cordobeses, there were also English, French, German, and maybe Spanish and Brazilian people there too. This made the night infinitely more fun, because like 80 different languages were being thrown around at one time in a room where you already couldn't hear because of the music. I found myself out on the balcony chilling with a group of French guys, and I kid you not when I tell you that I am now impressed with the kid in Passport to Paris. I totally thought his accent was super corny and fake, and it probably was fake, but that's actually how French people sound when they speak English! Low and behold. It also turns out that the French are very gentlemanly, and I had like 8 layers of coats around my shoulders when I got a little cold. I also made friends with a couple Cordobeses, which I'm very happy about because I've been lacking in the Cordobes contact for a while (friend wise anyway).

I've also been homesick this past week, probably just because things were weird with the robbery and stuff. I'm getting over it, but I think it's definitely normal to feel this way when you can't just pick up the phone and tell someone you miss them. So on that note, I'd love to skype with as many of you as possible this week. Let me know what works for you.

Basically this is an entirely random blog, but it's been a random couple of weeks. Next weekend is Mendoza with white water rafting and wine tours, so stay tuned for something a little more interesting to read (and possibly some pictures). I'll be spending my week preparing for and taking my midterm exams, and probably watching a little classic MK and Ashley as well. Let's hope they have "Winning London" on youtube.

A Weekend at the Zú

As most of Latin America practices Catholicism, Easter is a pretty big deal down here. Therefore, at the university we get a long weekend to celebrate or go home to see family. For study abroad kids, this means taking off to travel somewhere and "aprovechar," or take advantage of, the extra time. A wide variety of Argentine provinces were visited by the CC-CS students over the holiday weekend, but my friends and I chose the province of Misiones, home of red dirt, tropical forests, and Iguazú Falls, a very large ring of waterfalls that stretches across the border with Brasil. So, Wednesday morning we prepared ourselves mentally and physically (aka by buying lots of snacks) for the 22 hour bus ride and started the journey off to Jurassic Park incarnate.

Funnily enough, we didn't quite make it there on time because our bus "se rompió," or broke down, for two hours in what we thought was the middle of nowhere Misiones. When I woke up it was still dark outside, and I groggily thought it suspicious that the air conditioning had turned off. Before even opening my eyes, I heard the woman behind me saying, "se rompió, que bárbaro," which basically means, "It broke down, what shit!" Upon hearing this I said a few choice words in English, still without opening my eyes, and promptly rolled over and went back to sleep. Two hours later I woke up to a beautiful sunrise and the realization that we had not in fact had any type of mechanical problems, we simply ran out of gas and were waiting for a little man in a pickup truck to come manually pump some into our tank. We then proceeded to drive 5 MINUTES to another bus station. Such is Argentina.

When we finally got to Puerto Iguazú, we discovered that our hostel was basically Cancun Spring Break MTV style, so we threw on our suits and hopped in the pool for the rest of the afternoon to wash away the filth of what turned out to be a 26 hour bus ride. The hostel had a great kitchen so we cooked every day, which saved us a TON of money in the long run. Saturday, our last night, we went out for an asado to splurge, and Olivia got the waiter's email (brownie points Liv, brownie points). Darío, our friend from Buenos Aires who met us in the Zú, told the waiter that she was leaving the next day, to which he responded, "Yes, but she might come back!" Again, such is Argentina.

So back to the actual falls. We luckily used our student ID and residency cards to get ourselves some mad discounts on tickets to the parque, which also saved us a ton of money. The nice people who took our tickets told us we could get them stamped for a discount the next day, which we did, and he remembered us when we came back to him. This was the Friday before Easter, which is THE busiest day in Parque Nacional de Iguazú. That means that this man had seen over 12,000 people at the ticket line that day, a very large portion of them foreigners, and yet managed to remember who we were and where we were studying. This is one thing I love about Argentina. They're so centered around relationships that they always remember you, always greet you by name, always make you feel extra welcome. This has been a huge reason why I feel so at home here I think.

We walked in and started out our hike to the falls, and were instantly reminded of several scenes from both Jurassic Park and the Land Before Time (Janie, I was expecting Petri and Ducky to jump out at me the whole time, or on a more unfortunate level, the T-Rex who ate that dude off the toilet in Jurassic Park, which if you recall I saw for the first time on your surround-sound tv at the age of 5 and had nightmares for like a week). The contrast between the red dirt and the incredibly lush, green tropical foliage is amazing. And then there are the falls. The jungle itself is impressive, but the falls are something else entirely. You cannot fathom how much water pours down them every second, or the power they have. We walked right up to one at a lookout point and got absolutely drenched from the mist. Here's a photo of part of the falls (yes, there is more. We didn't even see the Brazilian side).



Ridiculous, right? And then there's La Garganta del Diablo, or Devil's Throat, which I'm not even going to put a picture up of because pictures just can't do it justice. It's a HUGE fall, just this complete gurgling madness, and you can't see the bottom because there's so much mist. You can see the mist that it produces from the other side of the park, and it looks like smoke coming up. For those of you who have been, these falls put Niagra to shame.

All in all, Iguazú was one of our best trips so far. The scenery alone was so completely incredible, but as always with our crew there was tons of laughter and fun times as well. I would say that I think the next few weekends will be pretty quiet, but knowing Córdoba I'll have some other grand adventure to tell you all about in roughly 3 days. As much fun as I'm having down here, know that I'm missing you all and that I'm sending more love than there is water in Iguazú Falls, Brasilian side included. <3 Besito a todos.