A+

In Argentina, it's normal to post everybody's grades online in a big list. There isn't any privacy for grades. I've been waiting for results from the midterm I took in my modern history class, and they posted grades during our spring break. At first when I saw this, I was shocked I got an A. I left 20% of the test blank...  But whatever, I got an A!! And so did almost everybody in the class... with a couple D's. The professor must have graded really easy if I did better than some of the local students. But wait... Argentina doesn't use the same grading scale as the US; here they use a 1 to 10 scale, and I needed a 6 to pass. "A" stands for "Aprobar" or "to pass" and "D" stands for "Desprobar" or  "to fail."  I was really excited for a minute there thinking I got an A. Oh well, at least I still passed!

Back to Civilization

    The shower at our hostel in Salta felt so refreshing after plastering ourselves in bug spray the day before. Although I love nature, we needed to get out of that camp site. I didn't realize how bad our bug bites were until the next day. I had a grapefruit sized welt on my leg from one bite, and Audrey had about 200 bites on her legs (mistake of wearing shorts). We all chugged water right after getting back to the town of San Martin to make up for our dehydration earlier.
    Saturday was the first day in a while we didn't have to hop on a bus to get somewhere else, so we spent the day exploring the city. It was a nice change from the rest of the trip to wear real clothes and sandals and feel clean. We visited some old churches in the city, and found where the artisan markets are to go gift shopping. We'd seen exactly what we wanted in the markets in Jujoy, but didn't buy them yet because we didn't want to carry our purchases through our camping trip. At first we couldn't find the same kind of stuff we wanted in Salta, but learned there were more artisan markets all the way across town, so we walked 20 blocks to a big warehouse full of artisan stalls. The only unfortunate aspect was that they were more expensive in Salta than in Jujoy. I bought so much lana (wool), I'm going to be so prepared for winter in Colorado when I get back in December. The artisan  markets are the kind of places where I think you can barter for price, but I'm not very good at it in Spanish, so I mainly paid what they were asking with a couple discounts here and there.
    We also went to the Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña in Salta, where they have an exhibit of mummified Incan children that were discovered on top of Llullaillco Volcano, dividing Chile and Argentina. The children were part of an Incan sacrificial ritual where their tribe got them drunk and buried them alive in the ground on the volcano. They were naturally mummified in the ground, and one of them was even hit by lightening in the ground and half of her face is burned. They only had one of the three child mummies on display. It was eerie to see the 6 year old child frozen in time. 
     Our 19 hour bus ride back to Mendoza on Sunday went by really fast. We watched movies, played bingo again, and had excellent service getting served wine and meals. I was a little worried before this trip about getting sick from so much time on the buses. But we've actually had a ton of fun on the buses bonding and seeing amazing views during the drive. Last night we were driving through the middle of nowhere and we could see so many stars from the bus windows. The entire sky was covered; I haven't seen a night sky like that in a long time. I was actually a little sad to pull into Mendoza and have to get off the bus. I just wanted to keep traveling. But I guess I have to go to classes at some point.

Acampar agreste

    Camping has been an adventure. After our scare in San Martin, we were happy to be far away from the town, but weren't quite prepared for two days of camping because we were in a rush at both bus stops the day before and while trying to speed grocery shop with Rodrigo waiting. We didn't really realize that everyone was already empty on water, and the 6 liters we bought did not last long. We bought sandwich materials to last us through Friday, in hopes we could buy some in another town during the day or within the park, which wasn't possible. So essentially we didn't have enough food or water, pitched our tents and searched for fire wood in the dark, had five sleeping bags for 6 people, and had no idea we would be attacked by so many bugs in the morning.
   The camp spot was a predetermined camp site with bathrooms and grills, and only a couple other groups were camping. We stole fire from the group next to us, so Thursday night we were able to sit around the camp fire and relax for a night. It was a rough night of sleep; I didn't have a sleeping pad, and we did not fit well inside the tent with all of our gear in the tent too. We were warned about parasites on the ground that stick to your shoes or backpacks that bite, so we avoided bringing those bugs into the tent. Also there were bugs similar to mosquitoes that bite and leave a little blood in the middle of the bite and itch later. My head and feet were resting on backpacks all night and I could feel every rock beneath me.
    I wore full length clothing all day today to avoid getting bit. All of our exposed necks got attacked though, and they itch so bad. It got really hot during the day, and that lack of water was really affecting us. We hiked throughout the national park for a few hours, but everyone was dehydrated, tired, and we realized it was going to be pretty hard to obtain more food and water for the evening and next day, so we made another group decision to head back to Salta for the last two nights of the trip instead of camp another night.
    Despite our fatigue and the bugs, Calilegua National Park turned out to be a really neat place. It's technically a rain forest, but it's been in a drought for 5 years, so a lot of the plants are dead and the river is almost dried up. But we saw some of the same birds we saw in the jungles of Iguazu, so we know it's normally a natural jungle. It was sad to see all the dead trees because it would be a beautiful jungle if it wasn't in a drought; it would probably look just like Iguazu National Park. 
   We walked along the river, and saw huge paw prints that must have been from a puma or jaguar, they are both mentioned in the guide books, but unfortunately (or fortunately) didn't see the actual animal.
    At the end of our hike we were completely out of water (this is when we decided to head back to town for the night). The park rangers there were super helpful towards us and gave us some of their clean drinking water to refill our bottles, offered us mate, and even drove us back to town in the back of their pick up truck.
      This trend of meeting great people like the rangers and Rodrigo has followed us throughout this trip. At our last hostel in Salta, the lady who worked there lent us her personal tent so we didn't have to rent one, and even called multiple friends to ask to borrow a sleeping bag for one girl in our group. Today, when we packed up our camp gear to leave, there was a group of high school students on a class field trip to hike in the park. At first, we asked if we could get on their bus to Salta, and they didn't have room, but instead, they brought us a very generous serving of the rice meal they were eating for lunch. We must have looked desperate, and we attacked the rice like scavengers,  joking about our food and water situation with them. So then they gave us some of their water and all of us an orange. After all the problems we had camping, somehow it all worked out and we made it out alive, due to the amazingly generous Argentinians we've met.
   Riding back to the bus terminal in the bed of the ranger's truck, we realized how much fun our camping adventure really was, of course, once it was over and we were heading back to civilization.

Rodrigo to the rescue

    Thursday evening we found ourselves in a little bit of an unexpected somewhat risky situation. Right after we returned from our excursion to the salinas grandes, we found a bus going to San Martin, a town near Calilegua National Park, the next location in our itinerary. Two hours on the bus, and then a couple kilometers from San Martin, our bus stopped in traffic, and we realized after 15 minutes or so, our bus wasn't going anywhere. The locals on the bus who live in San Martin were getting off the bus, and told us we were close enough to walk into town. So we grabbed our stuff and started walking. Outside smelled terrible, and we decided it must be from the local factory. But once we reached the town, we saw what was causing the traffic and the smell. Wage protesters from the factory were blocking both sides of the one way road with a burning tree, preventing cars from passing. We didn't quite know what to do as we arrived at this scene, and paused with a little hesitation, until a man speaking on a telephone saw us and immediately told us to keep walking and don't stop until we go into the gas station. He started walking with us away from the protest to make sure we were going the right way. The six of us American girls stick out in any crowd, with our camping packs and blonde hair, and knew immediately that this wasn't the best place to be at the moment. It was around 6 pm, too, and starting to get dark.
    We told the people in the gas station we wanted to get to Calilegua to camp, and they didn't seem to know much about it. They told us not to trust the taxi drivers, and that taxi drivers won't take us into the park anyway this late. We were too far to walk to the bus terminal in San Martin, too, where we could've found a micro into the park, but it seemed really dangerous to walk anywhere with the riot going on. Our other problem was that we were planning on buying enough food and water in town to go camp for two nights with 6 people, and the gas station had nothing.
    With all of this happening all at once, we didn't really know what to do, but then came the man who helped us earlier to the rescue. He introduced himself as Rodrigo, and apologized if his proposition freaked us out, but he offered to drive all of us to wherever we needed, including the grocery store and then all the way to the camp spot. He gave us a brief summary of himself: devoted Christian, divorced, and has a kid in Tucuman. We made the group decision that based on our options, the best choice to make was to trust Rodrigo, stay together, and to get as far away from the town and the protestors as possible.
    So although the first thing we learned as kids was to not get in cars with strangers, we did this anyway. And Rodrigo turned out to be the biggest help we ever had. He waited for us as we speed grocery shopped for our camping trip, gave us two names and numbers of people to call in town who could help us (because he was going out of town the next day), drove us to the camp site on a rocky dirt road that I'm sure his car was not meant to handle, and waited again as we talked to the camp rangers about where to camp. On our drive he was pointing out all the dangerous places for us not to go, and explained that workers from the factory protest their wages every day, twice a day during Monday through Friday. Noon to 4 pm is the best time to try to get through town without encountering the protestors. This man was our savior. I literally don't know what we would've done without his help. We tried giving him money, but he wouldn't accept it, only told us that now it's our turn to help someone else out. He told us he'd been having a bad day, and helping us out was the perfect way to distract him from his worries. We were so fortunate to find him.

7 colors and endless salt

    Thursday morning was another early one. We've all been really good about getting up early to start our adventures, and its paid off because we get so much sight seeing done by noon, and then have the whole afternoon to see more or head somewhere else on the bus.
    So we left Tilcara by bus to get to Purmamarca where we found a cheap excursion to see the salt flats in the province. In Purmamarca there was a plaza full of more street venders. And even though it's the exact same stuff as in Tilcara, everything is so fun to look at. The wall of 7 colors is there too, which is a red rock wall full of colors like blue, purple, pinks, greens. I need to go back to my geography class to understand how all these rock formations were made.
    Our excursion driver took us and a few other people in his van directly west through the Jujoy province to the salt flats. It was another beautiful drive through mountains and canyons with rivers and valleys. We gained quite a bit of altitude too going over a mountain pass, and stopping at the point where the road was 4,000 meters and the highest point in the road which was 4,170 meters. There were even street venders at this point selling little trinkets of llamas and carved rocks. Eventually we got to the salt flats, a pure white and flat landscape that we could see from miles away from up high on the mountain.
    Whats there to do at the salt flats? Run through mounds of salt, lick the salt (tasted just like salt), and take creative artsy pics, like of us jumping, dancing, or in a pyramid. Other than that, there really isn't much to do, but its fun to see, and just our drive there alone was worth the money we paid because we got to see so many different landscapes on the way.
   

Tilcara

   We changed our plans for the next part of Spring break a little, and found a bus early this morning to Tilcara in the southern part of the Jujoy province. Our plan was to go to Purmamarca, which is only a few kilometers from Tilcara, but didn't have the options we wanted for excursions to see the salt flats in Jujoy. During the four hour bus ride, we saw some of the most amazing land formations I've ever seen. The rocks in the mountains were probably 14 different colors ranging from pink to purple to green to blue and grey. We were in awe sitting in the front of the bus watching everything. Jeanette narrates her enthusiasm for everything we do, including her appreciation for land and every stay dog in Argentina. So during our entire bus ride I heard Jeanette exclaiming about how beautiful the land was through comments like "Oh! The world!" or "Guys, look!!" And the land was really amazing. And this puts us all in a very positive mood.
    Purmamarca is known for having a rock wall of 7 different colors, but we saw these kinds of rock formations all throughout our drive. When we arrived in Tilcara, we found a great lunch where I had both eggplant milanesa and llama milanesa, which were both amazing. During lunch a group of singers came and preformed for us at the restaurant, and sang really well!            
 We were planning on camping here, but when we talked to the travel agency, he told us that nobody is camping yet because it's still too cold at night. We didn't have the gear we needed for such low temperatures, so we decided to find a hostel, and it was actually only 7 pesos more to stay in the hostel than go to the camp spot. We were a bit cold even in the day, so it was a great idea to not camp. We'll still try to camp when we go to Calilegua. Also the hostel was a great help in making our plans for our time here, and saved us a bunch of money by telling us how to get to the salt flats without paying for an excursion. This is tomorrows plan.
    We spent the afternoon hiking a trail in the town that lead us to a waterfall, also called the Garganta del Diablo, but much much smaller than the Garganta in Iguazu. It was 4 km right up hill, but we saw so many cacti and mountain landscapes. Its hard to believe how the mountains around here are formed because they are so colorful and in such unique shapes.
    We sat on a cliff for a while enjoying the scenery, eating manís, and relaxing, then hiked along a river bed to the waterfall.
    Upon return we went to look at all the artisan markets in the central plaza where they sell a lot of touristy products like jewelry and textiles. Salta and Jujoy are known for cheap wool from the llamas and alpacas. On our last day in Salta I'm planning on buying a bunch of gifts for everybody to bring back to the states.

Caballos, vaca y tarántulas

    Today was our first day in Salta, and after allowing ourselves to recover from our long day of traveling, we spontaneously hopped on a bus to a place we'd heard about called San Lorenzo where we thought we could hike. The micro we got on took us through Salta, so we got to see a lot of the city on our way to hike. Salta seems a little cleaner than Mendoza because there are no acequias full of trash. The buildings and homes were very pretty too, some of them had great big plots of land, and were surrounded by beautiful fences.
    San Lorenzo is a city, but we went to the quebrada (canyon) of San  Lorenzo, where we found a picnic spot complete with tables and grills, next to a river. So we hiked up a trail we found by the river, seeing lots of cows and a few pheasants. The trail along the river was so green, and actually surrounded by trees, which is so nice compared to the desert of Mendoza. Since its Spring, all the trees are starting to bloom and the sun was shining. Hanging from a lot of the trees, you could see a bunch of nests made from dead leaves, which Jeanette informed me are tarantula nests. They had spider webs all over them. I was glad none feel on top of me. Our hike was great until we ran into a group of horse back riders that told us to turn around because we were on private property. So instead of getting discouraged, we decided to go on the horse excursion too. It was pretty cheap, and our guide took us for an extra hour than we paid for.
    We took the horses up some really steep trails full of rocks and tree roots. I had no idea horses were such good climbers. I was ducking under trees, and leaning forward and back to help the horse up and down the hills. We ended up in a few open meadows during the sunset. So beautiful!
    Our horses were really sassy, and the whole time we had to keep encouraging them to keep going, and eventually they listened to us. But it got kind of scary at one point when we got off the horses because we went to take a picture with the horses, and the one I had been riding turned around and kicked back his legs and hit Jeanette in the butt and me in the back of my calf! It actually hurt quite a bit but wasn't strong enough to cause any damage. I think Jeanette is going to have a nice bruise on her butt though. So for the second half of our excursion I rode the guide's horse, which was much more docile.
   After the horse ride, we were freezing so we found some pizza and hot drinks, and prepared to get up at 6 am for our next adventure.

30 hours later...

    This is the longest amount of time I've ever spent in a bus or airplane. The first half was easy because I slept. But the second half was harder because I was awake!
    I upgraded from a semi-cama to a cama (bed) type of chair for this ride, and it was definitely worth the extra 12 dollars. The chairs are much bigger, and recline farther, and the service is great too. We got a pillow, blanket, and magazine. The bus left around 9 pm Sunday night, and dinner was served around midnight. I actually really liked the food we got. The bus pulled over at a gas station to meet a van that supplied the bus with food. We had two trays of food for dinner. The first was a tray of meat and cheese cold cuts, crackers, a roll, half a canned peach, and a mini tarta. Then we got hot food, which was milanesa and mashed potatoes. With dinner they offered us wine multiple times, which helped me fall right asleep until 8 am when they came around with breakfast: a muffin and crackers.
    The cama is pretty comfortable. I've had to rearrange quite a bit, but that's normal for not sleeping in an actual bed. They played multiple movies, switching off between Spanish and English, and we even got two breaks to get off the bus around 11 am and 4 pm to stretch our legs for a little.
   There are six girls in my travel group for the rest of break, and we all decided to buy a secret snack for the bus, then surprise each other with it when the bus ride gets really bad. So every couple hours one of us has pulled out a treat to share with everyone in the group, including alfajores, cookies, and candies.
    We got served lunch, which I wasn't expecting, nor was I really hungry because all I've been doing is sitting. Then we also got a snack before the bus ended. So much food I wasn't expecting.
    We also played Bingo on the bus. We got little bingo cards and had to fill the whole card to win. Audrey won a bottle of wine! I passed a lot of the time that I wasn't asleep watching the DVD player's screen saver on the tv. I felt like I was in that episode of the office where they all watch the screen saver behind Michael Scott to see when the moving square bumps into the exact corner of the screen instead of the sides.
    We had to transfer buses in Tucuman and get on a new bus there to get to Salta. So after 22 hours to Tucuman, our bus to Salta was over 2 hours late. Then half way between that Tucuman and Salta, we were told to get off the bus and transfer to a new one, which we had no idea we needed to do. That's makes 30 hours traveling. What a relief to finally arrive.
    

Puerto Iguazu

    We landed in Puerto Iguazu Thursday afternoon, which is the city on the Argentine side of the falls. 100,000 people live in the city, which is a lot more than I thought. On the Brazilian side of the falls is Foz de Iguazu, accessible by a bridge across the river. The airport is about twenty minutes from the city, and the falls are another twenty minutes from the city.
   We walked around the city after arriving, which is green and beautiful and jungly, which is so much different than dry Mendoza. I didn't know how to handle the humidity all weekend when everything is wet and sticky. The streets are made of rock pieces and there are fields of kids playing soccer, and local artists selling street crafts like jewelry and woven pendents. The town is really small, so we explored the whole town and went into some tourist shops. They sell a lot of rocks and geodes because there are mines nearby, which unfortunately we didn't get to visit. We found this cafe/kiosko type of place that sold pre-made sandwiches and empenadas, so we got pretty much every meal there really cheap to bring with us for the day or eat at the hostel. I think I went there about 8 times during the three days we were there.
    Our hostel was called Hostel Sweet Hostel, and we booked it without reading many reviews, which we later found out were really bad, talking about leaking roofs, and a dirty pool and rooms. These turned out to be wrong, and our hostel was great! Everything was clean and the workers there put in a lot if effort with their cooking and service. We even had a real breakfast with eggs, rather that coffee and bread which Argentinians normally eat. We were all exhausted Thursday night after traveling, so we relaxed at the hostel and went to bed at ten to wake up early to go explore the jungle and the falls Friday.
    Friday was the most amazing and magical day. We all woke up early and got on the bus by 8 to get to the park when it opened and beat the tourist traffic.  The first thing we did was power walk to the Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat) to beat the train full of tourist groups also going there. It was a 1000 meter bridge above the river that leads to right above the waterfall. The platform at the end of the bridge lets you see the  water right as it falls over the cliff. We couldn't see the bottom because there was so much mist and vapor from the huge falls at this spot.
    We walked through the entire park and reached every perspective point to see the falls and all the other falls in the park. The waterfalls are 80 meters high and there are over 150 waterfalls in Iguazu National Park. We started on the upper trails to see the falls from above, and then were able to go to the lower trails almost beneath the waterfalls and get splashed by the water, which was so refreshing after a hot day.  We ate lunch here and passed out for an hour on the rocks we were sitting on. The island between the Argentinian and Brazilian sides of the falls was closed for high tides so we couldn't enter, but it was still a magical experience to see all of the falls surrounded by all the green plants with a rainbow being formed by the water. I felt like I was in some kind of fantasy land. Pictures just don't do it justice.
    We saw so much wildlife during the day too. The coatis, which are like raccoons with long noses, are pests in the region that hang out at all the restaurants wanting food, and they came right up to us to try to look in our bags. We saw probably 30 of them, along with fish, tropical birds, a crocodile, butterflies, and monkeys!
    During the last part of the day, we hiked the Macuco trail, a 4 km trail that lead to a smaller waterfall. When we got to the end, we saw the lagoon that the waterfall creates and all automatically decided to jump in the water. So we swam up to the waterfall and climbed up the rocks behind the waterfall. Our clothes reek now from the water, and still haven't dried because it was so humid out. We stayed there until it started raining, right as we pulled out the mate, and instead had mate on the go as we walked back in the rain to catch the bus back to our hostel. We successfully saw the whole park in one day.
    When we got back, our hostel was having a pizza party with pizza cooked on the asado grill, so we ate with the other people in our hostel and then watched a lightening storm above us until falling asleep. It was supposed to rain all day Friday, so we lucked out with beautiful weather.
    Saturday was my birthday! I'm 21! We slept in and had a relaxed morning drinking mate and chatting, and eventually heading out to find something to do that day since we didn't need to return to the falls. We went to an animal conservatory where they had exotic snakes, turtles, butterflies, and other reptiles. Then we went to this artisan village called Aripuca that was made of 500 or more year old trees that were going to be burnt down, but a group of nature conservatives saved the trees and instead used them to build this village as a symbol of conserving nature. The word aripuca is the word for the kind of animal trap that natives used, or sometimes kids try to make, where there is a propped up box, and a stick with a string to pull to collapse the box. The nature group built a giant aripuca shaped building with these old tees, in addition to many tables and chairs made of petrified wood. There were a couple craft venders there and an ice cream shop that had mate flavored ice cream paired with a creamy fruit flavored ice cream that was the most delicious combination. So we sat there for a while drinking mate and playing games.
    Afterwords, we walked to the spot along the Iguazu river where it connects with the Parana river, and the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina all meet. It's only one of two intersections in the world where three countries meet at the crossing of two rivers. At this triple frontera, you can see flag monuments from each country and the barges transporting people and products across the river. We wanted to try to go to the Brazilian or Paraguay side, but they are so strict on visas for US citizens, it wasn't worth the risk or money. Apparently there is no border control at night over the bridge to Brazil, but we didn't end up trying to go.
    At night my friends brought me a cake and champagne and other goodies to celebrate my birthday at the hostel. Seventeen IFSA kids were at Iguazu this weekend, all in different traveling groups, but we all converged at our hostel to celebrate. We thought about trying the check out the Iguazu boliches, but nobody was awake past midnight.
    That night there was a torrential thunder storm right above us. All the clothes we'd hung up to dry got soaked, and we were woken up multiple times by thunder lasting at least 20 full second. Our bathroom and a few other rooms in the hostel flooded, and the next day it continued to rain until the afternoon. We had another relaxed morning due to rain, then walked back to the triple frontera, where we found a trail leading us to another waterfall and the shore of the river. We tried tiring ourselves out by walking through the town all afternoon to prepare ourselves for 25 hours on a bus to our next location: Salta!

Spring break! We're off!

    Flying to Buenos Aires this morning on our way to Iguazu is bringing back memories of two months ago when we flew from BA to Mendoza and met our host families for the first time. It seems so long ago, but also seems like yesterday. Those first two days were a blur.
    I remember getting on the plane to start my trip and I barely understood the Spanish around me. This time, I understood what the flight attendants asked me, and was able to have an entire conversation with the man next to me in the plane, because I noticed he was reading Game of Thrones and couldn't help geeking out about that.
    Also, for our first flight back in July, I remembered Jose telling us about the great service on the Argentinian airlines and how great the snacks were. This is the first time I'd heard about an alfajore. And then I fell asleep for the entire flight and didn't get to experience the amazing snacks. I wouldn't be surprised if Phoebe and Miles sitting next to me got me the snack and then just ate it themselves.
    So today I made sure to be awake. I woke up right in time for the snack cart, and today I ate the best alfajore I've ever had. It came in a colorful snack pack with a picture of an Argentinian mountain on it, and was the kind of alfajore that's so gourmet that it needs to be refrigerated. It had the thickest dulce de leche in between two moist cake-y chocolate cookies, and covered in cold vanilla chocolate with a hint of orange. This is the kind of dessert that just has to be eaten slow and seductively like in chocolate commercials on tv. And this wasn't even the only part of my snack pack. There were also parmesan crackers and chocolate cookies. I was so happy, sitting there in my middle seat stuffing my face with desserts. And the best part is: since we had a layover in Buenos Aires, I got another snack pack on the second flight!!  I was like a child eagerly eying the snack cart as the flight attendant got closer to my row. I opted out of buying lunch during our layover because I knew something better was waiting for me.
    Airport processes in Argentina are so much easier. We don't need to remove our shoes or even jacket, there are no rules on liquids. Its a joke getting through the airport in five minutes.
    However, flying within Argentina is difficult because there are two airports, one for domestic flights and one for international flights. We are staying within Argentina for this trip so we went to the domestic airport. When I booked my flights, I learned about the difference between prices for US citizens and people from South America. US citizens have to pay twice as much for air fare. Sam and Skylar didn't know this when they booked their flights, and ended up buying the fare for Argentinians. When they went to the Lan airlines office to try to switch the details of their flight, the Lan officials told them that quite often the people at the airport don't care what kind of ticket you have, whether it's for US citizens or for South Americans. And turns out they were right. There was a chance Sam and Skylar might have had to pay the difference in the ticket price at the gate, but nobody gave them any problems, so they ended up paying half the price they should have! I'll be keeping this is mind if I travel by plane again here.
  
   

Story Time

    Today we had a midterm in my advanced Spanish class. We started with a 45 minute test on grammar and reading comprehension. This class is very disorganized. We've had multiple classes canceled, we take 3 days to give presentations that should've taken one day. We wait around for about 20 minutes everyday before class to find out what classroom we are going to use that day due to planning problems. It's supposed to be intensive Spanish practice, but I use it more as a way to make my next plans with my friends. Based on how much we've learned in the last week or two, I expected this test to be a joke with maybe some circle the right answer questions, but it was a little harder than that. The problem is that it's hard to test fluency and conversational skills on paper. That's why we also had an oral part of the exam, where we all sat around a circle and told Argentine legends to each other. Our professor provided mate, and we had a little story time. I told the legend of the lagoon that I went to this weekend, but I heard some interesting stories about the beginnings of mate, the zonda wind, and other old legends.
    My favorite was the legend of Gauchito Gil, who was a farmworker who had an illicit love affair with a wealthy window and had to join the army to escape the police who also loved the widow. He become a Robin Hood figure, but eventually was caught by the police and killed, even though he warned the police that if he died, the police officer's son would get sick. It ended up true, and now people pray to Guachito Gil for miracles.
    The legend of Mate started when the Guarani tribes worked in the fields and constantly moved across the land, but one day an older man decided to quit and stay where he was. His youngest daughter stayed with him to care for him, and she was rewarded by a shaman with the leaves to make mate, which healed the old man and gave him energy to take his daughter back to the tribe.
    Legend has it that the cacti in Argentina are tribe warriors who were ordered to watch over the desert. They were turned into cacti by Pachamama, mother nature, who also gave them thorns to protect them while they slept and waited for their commands.
   I liked this kind of exam; it's so much easier to speak out loud than try to write an essay. This way, you just say what you know, and you cant get stuck trying to find something to write on paper and you don't focus too much on the verbs and grammar, which will come with time.

Class Culture

    Going to class here isn't too much different than back home. DU's classes are normally 15 to 30 people, and my classes here are about 20 to 30 (Well, around that many show up to class- who knows how many are actually enrolled in the class). Students show up a lot later here, they roll into class 10 to 15 minutes late, and normally class is starting around that time, so it's not a big deal anyway. I have had some teachers at DU that will mark you as absent if you aren't there within the first 10 minutes. My professor for my music class is always late, and normally at DU, if a professor is more than 5 or 10 minutes late to class, the students take that as an excuse to leave and call the class canceled. On the day of my midterm in History, about twice the amount of students showed up to class than on regular days . That's because a lot of the students don't go to class, and they do all the reading right before the test. I've experienced this in Colorado too, though. If the professor puts the PowerPoints on line, a lot of students don't feel the need to go to class. I don't think we are graded on attendance either because I've only seen her take attendance on the days we have a test or homework due, and these are the days everyone comes to class anyway.
    If a professor here cancels class, they normally try to make it up by adding another day of class or an hour to another class period. I'm experiencing this with my Spanish class. We missed a bunch of days in the very beginning for Zonda wind and personal matters of the professor, and we are still making those days up by adding an hour to each class period for a month. I think this is unfair because it's after we made our schedules for other classes.
    Students don't normally bring food and drinks into class here. My professor has mentioned it many times in class because Doug keeps trying to eat in class and our professor reminds him that people don't do that here.
    I'd say that the participation level of classes is about the same as at home. Students seem tired and kind of lazy, just listening to the lecture, but there are a few kids who ask a bunch of questions all the time.
    I've heard a lot of phones go off in class, much more than normally at home. They don't answer, but one goes off every class period or so. Nobody has their phones out texting because texting and data are expensive here, which is a nice change from the US where everybody has their phone out during class.
    Professors assign "trabajos practicos" here, which are essentially either in class assignments of out of class assignments. For my history class, the dates of these are all listed online, but then we had a surprise one last week that wasn't mentioned at all beforehand. I'm not sure how hard these are graded (and I'm still awaiting grades from the partial exam I took), but these trabajos practicos seem to be busy work that make me feel like I'm in high school. Twice I've had to read a couple pages of a document and summarize it and turn in the summary. Others have been short answer questions to very vague questions. However, no matter how hard the assignment is, it's still difficult for me because it's in another language.
    The system for taking tests is strange here, and I've already talked a little about this, but students take tests a long time after their classes finish. For this semester, the students will be taking tests in late December, even though we finish the class in mid November. This means that the international kids will be taking the test early in November without the local students. The local students also have a week of testing in the middle of the semester to take tests from the last semester. So this week, I didn't have class because the students are taking tests from last semester. Spring break isn't an actual thing here, so instead, IFSA gives us a week off during this testing week. Somehow the schedule got messed up, and we are taking our spring break from IFSA the week after testing week, so we are actually going to miss our classes at Cuyo and Congresso. So essentially I'm skipping an entire week to travel, and I only have 2 classes this week. I should be using these free days productively, but instead I've laid in bed all day; I think I'm turning into a Argentinian. When its cold out, all I want to do is lay in bed.

This is what my notes look like because I fall asleep every two minutes. Class is at 9 am and learning about catholic Kings in Spanish is quite draining!

Malargüe

    This weekend I planned a trip to Malargüe, which is in the southern part of the province of Mendoza. It's a small town in the middle of the mountains with not much to do there except enjoy nature because it's full of really neat rock formations, volcanoes and lakes. Bus tickets were cheap and it's only six hours away, so 5 other chicas and I left early Friday morning (6 am), and were pleasantly greeted in Malargüe by a downpour of snow. Luckily we were expecting cold weather, so we were prepared with warm clothing, but it put a damper on our plans because it made finding things to do a little harder.
    A lot of excursions had already left by the time we arrived on Friday, but we found one half day excursion to Volcán Malacara. On this excursion we met Tal, our new friend from Israel who was traveling all over south America for three months. With him, we all decided to try to rent a car for the rest of the trip, because split between the 7 of us, it would be a lot cheaper than paying for day excursions with travel agencies.  This turned out to be a great idea; we saved so much money over the next two days, and got to see so much more in the area, and on our own timing as well. Tal was the only one who knew how to drive a manual car, so he chauffeured all of us ladies around for the weekend. Turned out that the one car rental place in town only had one car to rent and it was for five people; we had 7. So we tried breaking up into groups. It was chaos making our plans the first day because some people wanted to try to ski since we were an hour from Las Lenas, the best ski resort in South America. We eventually found out that it was closed, which is expected since it is the end of the season, so we decided to cram all of us in the car for the day. It just happened to be a Fiat, which barely fits five comfortably. But we are all skinny and double buckled so it was relatively safe. The lady at the car rental place casually told us we can put 7 in the car, just don't get caught by the police or in a wreck.

How many people fit in a Fiat?

    So we found the most comfortable way to squish in the car, and headed up to the north part of Malargüe for the first day, to La Leguna Niña Encantada and el Poz de las Animas, and las Castillas de Pincheira, and to see Las Lenas.The second day we headed south to see Las Cavernas de las Brujas and La Cascada Manqui Malal. Everything was really beautiful because it had been recently dusted with snow, and we kept stopping along our routes to take pictures of the mountain sides and the herds of chivos  (goats) being herded by the gauchos.

We found a great hostel in the city of Malargüe, and had fun bonding there are night with the other hostel travelers. We made family dinners, drank boxed wine, and got creative with making different kinds of desserts with dulce de leche. The funniest part of the weekend was at the very end of our trip, as we are headed back to our hostel after 2 days of no problems with our overstuffed car, we drive past a group of police, and as we noticed them, we frantically had two people duck. This was so obvious, and the police just started laughing and didn't even care. Yay, Argentina police officers! We headed back to Mendoza late Sunday night. Three more days and I'm leaving again for Spring Break!

Volcán Malacara
  

We took a 40 minute bus ride southeast from Malargüe and entered the national park with our guide to see Volcán Malacara. Malacara translates as "bad face", and it is named this because it resembles a horse's face when the horse has a white stripe down its face, and apparently this is considered bad. When this volcano erupted millions of years ago, it erupted violently underwater, and the water formed the neat pathways within the smooth lava. Our guide took us up a dried river bed and we got to wander inside the pathways that were formed during the eruption. Each layer in the rock represents a distinct eruption. We also saw bombs of lava that had flown through the air and landed farther away and hardened. And many pieces that had broken off from erosion after the eruptions. The volcano collapsed after its last eruption when there was no more magma left underground to support it, caving in the main magma chamber. We walked through all of the pathways, finding neat caverns and cavities within the volcano, and from one of them we could see a part of the original magma chamber that had been caved in on. Our guide during the tour was hilarious, he kept telling us that the only rule was to not fall, while we climbed all over the lava. And he told us that he was taking us to a special part of the volcano not all groups got to see. Then we saw another tour group up there. We found out he was a poet too, so he recited a poem he wrote about the volcano. Audrey told him she would translate it for him if he sent it to her. Nearby the volcano is a space observatory station, one of only three of its kind. We were bummed that it was so cloudy while we were there because we thought maybe we'd be able to see some great stars in Malargüe.

La Laguna Niña Encantada

 This lagoon was even prettier with the snow surrounding it. The water is surrounded by volcanic rock, and it was home to many different kinds of fish and birds that were making the loudest and most interesting noises. 
There is a legend about the lagoon that says that Princess Elcha, from one of the local tribes, was supposed to marry someone from another tribe in the region to make peace between the two tribes, but she was in love with a young man from her own tribe. They escaped together and found the lagoon, but when the people who were perusing them caught up to them at the lagoon, Elcha and the man jumped into the freezing lagoon together. There was a witch at the front of the group chasing them, and the legend says that when they jumped into the lagoon, this produced a ray of light that froze the witch into rock. There was a shrine for the princess at the lagoon where people had left flowers and similar offerings to her.

El Pozo de Las Animas

 
We got to see these two water formations that translate as "well of souls." The sign at the site explained their formation: they were formed by limestone and gysum dissolution in underground cavers in karst topography,  and then the roofs caved in and formed these sinkholes of water.

Las Lenas

It really was disappointing that we couldn't ski this weekend. We weren't even planning on it, but then randomly decided we wanted to the night before going to Malargue. So once I had my hopes up, I was disappointed that the resort was closed. I didn't go on the trip a few students took to Penitentes to ski one of the first weeks in Argentina, and somewhat regret that I can't say I've skied the Andes. But we did drive to Las Lenas and one lift was running, but there wasn't enough snow to even go up a few hundred feet. 

Castillos de Pincheira 

 This rock formation looks like castles. Normally you can hike up there but it was freezing and the ground was covered in snow, so we only took pictures. There is a restaurant at the bottom where you can barbeque and eat chivo, but it wasn't open because it was so cold. 




Caverna de las Brujas

 The "witch caves."  We drove down south of Malargüe for our last day there, and took a tour of the cavernas. We had to hire a guide for this excursion, which was complicated because the tourist office wanted us to drive the guide to the caverns ourselves. We definitely couldn't squeeze another person into our Fiat, so we were struggling to be able to book a time where there would already be a guide there. After much confusion, it ended up working out, and our guide showed us around the witch caves. We crawled through really small tunnels, up ladders that had been placed in the caves, and got to see really neat formations of stalactites and stalagmites and columns within the caves. They are all limestone formations, and the guide told us about transparent spiders that live deeper within the caves. We got to explore 200 meters of the caves that extend for 6 km.
We learned the legend of the caves: Two white women were captured by the local tribe. The women escaped and hid in the caves. They were injured from being captured and their cries of pain made the local tribes believe there were witches in the caves.






Cascada de Manqui Malal

This waterfall was right outside of Malargüe on the property of a family who has a restaurant and gives tours of the cascade. The guide took us up the river towards the waterfall, and in the riverbed are all sorts of rocks covered in fossils of old sea life. There were rocks covered in snail fossils and oysters too. Malargue used to be underwater, as we discovered with the volcano too, so there are all sorts of fossils in the region.
We were able to walk up behind the waterfall too to sit in a little cave behind the waterfall. The family had two dogs who live at the restaurant and follow the groups up to the waterfall 10 times a day. They were the most energetic puppies I'd seen, play fighting each other for the entire hike, but at the top of the waterfall just passed out on the rocks in front of the beautiful view.

Bus Survival Guide

After two 12 hour bus rides to and from Cordoba a couple weeks ago, I'm pretty much a pro at riding Argentine buses. I'm going to Malargue this weekend, which is a 6 hour bus ride, and my bus rides during spring break will be 20 hours each, but based on my past experience, I know exactly what to bring this time.
1. Audio book and headphones: I can't read on buses because of my motion sickness, so instead I've been slowly conquering the Game of Thrones books on audio book. Each one is like 50 hours of audio.
2. Camera: to take pictures out the window. I snagged a seat in the very front of the bus so I can see the whole countryside.
3. Warmer clothes: the bus ride over night was actually pretty cold while trying to sleep.
4. Neck pillow: I don't have one of these, but it sure would make sleeping a lot easier.
5. Fruit: for a great mid-bus ride snack that is something healthy.
6. Trail mix: with nothing to do on the bus, all I can think about it food, and start craving something sweet, something salty, chewy, crunchy.
7. Sandwich: We didn't get fed on the bus to Cordoba. They gave us an alfajore at the end of the trip, but we needed our own lunch. At one of the stops along the way, a food vendor got on the bus selling milanesa, but who knows how risky that is to eat. Bringing food is the way to go.
8. Pen and notebook: a lot of random thoughts go through my head sitting there for 12 hours. This is a great time to organize my life into lists and maybe doodle some pictures of the desert.
9. Toilet paper: after a few hours on a bus, the toilet seat was absolutely disgusting and there was no toilet paper. 
10. Water: there is definitely a balance between wanting to keep hydrated and not wanting to have to use the bus bathroom more than once.
11. Lock for backpack: while I'm sleeping on the bus I want to make sure nobody takes any of my stuff!
12: Hand Sanitizer: I just feel gross after spending multiple hours on public transport.
13. Earplugs: during the daytime bus, they played movies out loud while I was trying to sleep and my seat was directly beneath the speaker.

And... if you're really brave and have an early morning bus ride... you can go out to the boliches the night before and just go straight to the bus stop. I didn't try this myself, but it sure made for an amusing bus ride when one of my friends showed up to the bus terminal a little tipsy at 5 am.

Visa Process

    I went through the final steps today in the process of getting my student visa for Argentina. Its been a month long process that included 2 or 3 small steps. IFSA had been babying us through the process so I don't actually know exactly how it would work if they weren't helping us, but a month ago an official government guy came into the IFSA office to help us with the first step.  We had to pay 250 pesos and give photo copies of our passport  to him and get our fingerprints scanned on our right hand. That ink lasted for a while under my finger nails. Earlier this week we got an email from IFSA saying to come to the office within the next two days to pay the other half of the visa and receive an appointment time to go to the department of transport to actually get the visa. Everyone had forgot that we still have to do this, so that email was a pleasant surprise, especially because I'd already planned a trip to Malargue this weekend which might interfere with timing. IFSA worked it out with me that I can make my appointment before my trip however, and it wasn't as big of a deal as it seemed because he said we can just go next week if need be.
     So my appointment was at 8 am today, so I left my house before it was light out to walk to a new part of town. I got there early, which I fully recommend because I waited for a little and they called my name exactly at 8. Two girls from Dickenson college went before me, and this made me really appreciate IFSA's organization skills because one of them was missing a document they needed and were told to come back another time. IFSA sent me with exactly what I need. I had to photo copy my entire passport before going, even the empty pages with nothing on them. I also had proof of being a student, professional passport sized photos, and a bunch of stuff from IFSA. Sabrina, one of the advisers from the program, showed up at 8:15, another example of IFSA guiding us through the process. Its too bad she showed up after I'd taken my turn. But I did end up having to go through another step in the process, and didn't understand the lady's question, so i was glad Sabrina was there after all. Me and three other international kids had to go to another part of the building, sign something, process more paper work, and then we were done!
     Its so interesting to see the differences between the work days in the US and here. Its so normal for employees to stop what they are doing to give the traditional kiss on the check to greet everyone they walk past, stopping to chat for a minute. It doesn't really matter if you have four clients following you or not. It takes up so much more time than our normal wave or quick hello, but is so much more personal. The other intercambio there with me told me she'd heard it took a friend four hours to get her visa there, so its not too much different than the DMV. But I'm glad it only took me an hour, I didn't even have an excuse to miss class!

Pretty sky at 7:15 in the morning

Inside the department of transport

Intercambio, IFSA cliques, and mendocinos

    Every Tuesday night a bunch of foreigners get together at a restaurant in Mendoza to practice different languages and get to know other travelers and students in the area. I have class til 9 on Tuesdays, and normally after that I just want to eat dinner and go to bed, so I hadn't been to the intercambio meeting before, but this week I decided to go because my class was canceled (found that out after I walked 45 minutes to get to class). There were probably 10 kids there from IFSA, which is becoming a normal occurrence, since there are 40 of us and we travel in packs around the city. We've actually become really cliquey and broken off into 3 or 4 groups that have become even closer. It's very obvious, too, who we've been hanging out with because it's the same group every time, and then there are a few of us who have branched off on their own and spend all their time with the Argentinians they've met and don't really hang out with all the IFSA kids. I give these guys so much credit for that; if my Spanish was better I would try to spend a lot more time away from all the IFSA kids, even though I've become really great friends with a lot of them.
    Even the Argentinians notice our cliquishness. Kathy, a local who organizes the intercambio meetings, commented on how she sees us in photos on Facebook all the time surrounded by 10 other IFSA students, and she loved asking about the drama within the group, and who had boyfriends, and if there are any weird kids in the group that nobody wants to spend time with. I admit I've spent a lot of time with other Americans here, but I have also met lots of French exchange students and people in my classes, and there was a good variety of people at the restaurant last night. I talked to some girls from Jersey who were doing a three month trip through the US, Chile, Argentina, and other places in South America. And it seems that the Argentinians love getting to know us foreigners. A lot of girls from the program have started dating Argentine men already; one friend's host mom said that every girl gets a boyfriend here. Now, they are called "amigovios" because its a combination of amigo (friend) and novio (boyfriend) to describe that awkward stage in between talking and dating and a relationship. I've sensed the vibe that a select few Mendocinian guys are trying to date the entire IFSA group of girls before we leave in December.
   

Castellano

    After 7 weeks I'm definitely starting to notice an improvement in my Spanish skills. They say "Castellano" here rather than "Espanol." I've gained more confidence when talking to my family and other locals. However,. It still pisses me off when I ask somebody something in Spanish and they respond in English. That's a major confidence downer. Like, did I really sounds that bad you had to switch languages?? Some verb tenses are starting to come naturally to me, I'm starting to remember the correct genders of certain nouns, and I have to plan less in advance for what I'm going to say.
     Its interesting to note the differences between the Spanish I learned in classes at home, and the different accents and grammar that the Argentinians use. At home we learn the 'tu' form of second person. To say 'you want,' you say 'tu quieres.' 'Querer,' to want, is an irregular verb, and you change the 'ue' to a 'uie' when you conjugate it. In Argentina, they use 'vos' instead of 'tu', and this requires some different conjugations for the second person conjugation. You don't change the stem of irregular verbs, like in querer, and instead add an accent to the last syllable, for example 'vos querés'. Its actually a lot easier to remember because you don't have to change irregular verbs. But you still have to change them for first and second person, so its actually more confusing. I'll have to remember the 'tu' format when I go back to my classes in the US, however.
     Lately I've had trouble differentiating between Spanish and English. I forget what language I'm speaking and accidentally slip in a word of the wrong language. I'm taking this as a good sign that Spanish is becoming more natural to me. When I talk online to friends at home in English and then immediately to my host family in Spanish, it takes me a second to think about what language I'm using and sometimes accidentally start talkng in the wrong one. I need to develop a mental switch in my brain to change languages more easily. I've also started saying things in English in the format they are said in Spanish. Instead of 'my friends mom' I'll say, 'the mother of my friend' or 'I have hunger' instead of 'I am hungry.'  It's always really amusing when things like this slip out because everyone in the program has been having this problem lately. Other problems: when I write words like nation and evolution, that have a 'tion' in them in English, I can never remember how to spell them because these kinds of words are very similar in Spanish, except with a 'ción" instead. I never remember if I need a t or a c. It's the same with English words with a 'ph' because in Spanish they simply use an 'f' and lately I can't remember how to spell photo and telephone. 
    I'm getting better in classes too at listening to the lectures. The real problem is that my classes are early and there is so much on my mind that I often zone out and forget to listen. But I have found that if I look directly at my notebook and block out everything else and only try to listen to my professor speaking, I can understand her much better. I tried watching her mouth for a while to help me listen, but this doesn't work as well and then I just end up awkwardly staring at her mouth all class. 
    It's a slow process for me, but I still have plenty of time to practice, even though my program is always a third of the way done!

El lago existe!

    The man made lake in the park by my house was drained before I arrived in Mendoza to be cleaned. It's been empty this whole time and there has been a lot of construction going on in the empty lake to clean it and even out the ground level; there were tractors in there plowing the dirt and smoothing it out. Apparently they took 15,000 tons of trash and dirt from the bottom of the lake in the process, because it wasn't maintained for 28 years. A lot of people walk along the bottom too and ride their bikes in there.
    This weekend they started filling it again. There was supposed to be an electronic party/rave in the empty lake on Saturday night, before they started filling the lake, with techno music and DJs, but the party was actually canceled because there was a murder in the area! We read in the newspaper that the medical chief of Mendoza Hospital was murdered somewhere in the city, and because of this they canceled the lake party. It's a terrible situation, but I don't understand the correlation between the two events. I asked my host family about it, and they said there is no connection between the medical chief and the lake, but the murder caused some paranoia and they decided to cancel the fiesta. I had heard that the lake party was going to be really dangerous anyway, and had only slightly wanted to check it out just to see what was happening, but didn't really want to go get involved. But I didn't have an option to see it in the end anyway.
    So Sunday they started filling the lake, and its nice to see water instead of more dirt. Its a slow process for filling it and will take a while, but here is the progress:

Start of the filling process

Empty lago when I arrived in July