Asado

    My friend Megan co-hosted an asado with her Argentinian friend Santiago last night and invited a bunch of his friends and our group of IFSA friends over to enjoy in some barbeque and meet more locals. Santiago's friends wanted a reason to practice some English, so we switched off between Spanish and English all night to give them some practice. It was supposed to start at 7, then kept getting pushed back an hour, so we actually started the barbeque at 9:30 or 10 at his friend's house that had a beautiful patio out back with a grill and he even had a climbing wall in his garage. Normally, every house in Mendoza has a built in grill to the outside of the house because the asados are tradition and every Argentinian loves their steak. The grills are like big stone ovens outside with a grate for cooking. This was my first time having asado in Mendoza, so I watched our new friends start the grill by burning wood next to the grill, and then slow cooking the meat on the grate on top of coals. We made pork, beef, blood sausage and regular sausage, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions and bread. He cooked it all just with salt and lemon, and it had a great flavor because we cooked it so long on the grill, giving us plenty of time to sit around and drink wine.

     The rest of the weekend was pretty chill; I needed a relaxing weekend after traveling all spring break and the weekend before, and planning a trip to Chile for this upcoming weekend. We hiked, went out to the bars, caught up on sleep. It was weird jumping back into my Mendoza routine after taking my week long tour of Northern Argentina. It feels a little monotonous going to classes and planning where to go out at night. I'm trying to do at least one thing outside of the city every weekend. I want to do more hiking, but the hikes here are actually kind of hard to find and hard to get to without cars, so we've resorted to making our own trails up all the other peaks around Cerro Arco. I still want to go to the hot springs in Mendoza, there is a volcano an hour away, and I want to see Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the western hemisphere. There is still so much to see, and my program is already half way over.
    I also went to a small craft show this weekend in a boutique restaurant in the city. There were only three artists there, but had some very original art for sale. The resto-bar I went to Saturday night was fun because they had board games to play, so we played Spanish pictionary while drinking peach margaritas. Before the asado, I went to watch the River-Boca soccer game at an Irish pub to see Buenos Aires' biggest rivals. I pretended to care about sports to fit in with the Argentinians, and kinda just cheered when other people cheered; really it was an excuse to drink beer and eat bar food. Soccer fans get really aggressive here, there is a lot of violence and pride at games. It is a family tradition here too, that kids are fans of the same team that the parents are fans of. It is considered very rebellious to pick a different team than your parents. Technically this means that I need to be a River-Plate fan because my family here are fans for River-Plate, even though they aren't very aggressive about it. The bar we were at had a good mix of fans for both teams, but Boca ended up winning.
    The corte de agua didn't end up affecting my side of town this weekend. My family was all prepared with bottles and pitchers of water, but it never got shut off so we kept using it like normal. I was told that in other parts of the city a lot of people didn't have water. So we were lucky.
    For the upcoming week, I should be doing a little more studying; I have two midterms coming up. Sometimes I forget I even go to school here because I never have homework. Classes consist of mostly lectures and tests so I don't need to do much until I realize I need to study right before a test. My music class, however, has four essays throughout the class instead of midterms. I need to write a 4 page essay about whatever music topic I want for each country we learn about. Those are due before the final in November, so I still have plenty of time.