Getting Ready

I have been in Argentina for some time now. And now I'm starting to think about the rest of my time here and what im going to do. Its really scarry, because I feel like I have alot of time left here, but really I don't. When I looked at the weekends I have left in which im able to travel, I'm down to only 4 or 5 more weekends. This is not nearly enough time! I have so many things I want to see and do here in Argentina. I've been absolutely loving my time here, so it is hard to think about it ending. At the same time I am excited to get back and see everyone, but maybe they can come down and visit me, then I could stay here longer!


This week I finally got one of my trips planned. I'm going to Bariloche!!!!! I am so excited for this it is going to be absolutely amazing! Bariloche is in the southern part of the Argentina in a region called Patagonia. There is a park near Bariloche which is said to have inspired Walt Disney to create the movie Bambi. I cannot wait to tell you all about Bariloche after my trip. I leave on Thursday the 6th at 11 o'clock in the morning and arrive in Bariloche at 9:20 in the morning the next day. Now you might ask why is it going to take so long? Well Bariloche is very far from Rosario and instead of flying my group and I have opted to take a bus. Why? Well it is about 300 dollars cheaper than flying. Taking the bus is rediculously cheap. I paid 724 pesos for round trip tickets to Bariloche. This is the equivalent of about 181 USD. When you look at the distance that I'm going to travel this is very very cheap. The downside im sure your seeing. Its 22 hours on a bus. Well Im looking on the brightside; I will get to see the country side, I will be able to sleep on the bus, and I will be saving a bunch of money!

I got my first care package from home this week! I have been waiting for weeks for the packages and I finally got one of them. It took my birthday cookies from Granny (Betty Becker) 5 weeks to make there way to Argentina. They are a little hard now....but they are still good! Now im just waiting for the others to arrive. I've learned to be patient with the postal service, it took 20 days for me to recieve a letter so who knows how long some of these packages will take?


This week has been pretty laid back. I havent done a whole lot, and im going to try and take this weekend pretty easy. I've gone out every weekend Ive been in Rosario so far so I want to spend one weekend just trying to get ahead on my homework so that I have less to worry about when I go to Bariloche.

While I have one of my trips planned, I have others I need to get planned out. As those of you who read my blog last week know I still need to go to Iguazu to see the waterfalls. I'm trying to figure out plans for this as well. I am thinking about going the weekend after I go to Bariloche. I dont exactly want to do them back to back but it is almost unaviodable, as I would like to go back to Buenos Aires on the weekend of the 28th-31st. Then it is almost time for finals....AHHHH Its all going so fast!

Finally I want to talk about how distant I feel from the rest of the world some times here. Like I have said I absolutely love it her! But I definitely have missed out on a lot of news. Back at home I feel like I do a fairly good job of keeping up to date on the news of the nation and the world. Here I have not been reading the paper, I dont watch the 5, 6, or 10 o'clock news, and I havent been checking things online like I do back home. Perhaps this is a result of the laid back lifestyle here or maybe I just havent been making time for it like I do at home. At any rate I do kind of miss this. It is an easy fix I just have to check the internet more, buy the paper every now and again, or find out when the national news is on here.

Well I'm going to get started on my homework. Or at least try if facebook or skype dont pull me away to long. I'm wishing you all the best.

-Nick

Fun Weekend in Rosario

Last week and weekend were very busy for me. I started my week by going to the "La Paz School." This school is in a poorer neighborhood and is very crowded. The kids however were very cheery and enjoying themselves like young kids do. All of the kids I saw were under 7 years old, but I was told that the school has older students as well. It was fun to see all of these kids laughing and playing and having a good time. Then we were takend aside by one of the school teachers, she explained the situation that most if not all of these kids come from. She described how many had parents who were without jobs and their parents parents didn't have jobs either. She told us that many of the families are disfunctional at best, many kids didn't know their fathers. The kids grow up in a neighborhood where drugs and violence are everyday occurances and some of their families probably abuse drugs as well. It is not a nice situation for these kids. Yet despite all that these kids were happy and playing with their friends. These kids lives are much more dificult than they need to be at such a young age, they did nothing but were just born into a bad situation.

Now on to some more happy subjects. I started the weekend going to a friend of a friends house. It was alot of fun we had pizza and just hung out. This was very similar to a get together in the US and it was fun to relax and chat. So I got home around 2:30 or 3. Then got up at a decent time to get ready for my first professional soccer game. I know what your think, "nick i didnt know you played soccer." Well I dont but the team I watched play soccer did really good!


I went to a Newells Old Boys game. It was Amazing! The fans were die-hards. They were all decked out for the game and were very enthusiastic. They sing throughout the entire 90 minutes of play and when something exciting happens they get very loud. Newells won 3-0 too so that made the game even more fun. And it was really exciting everytime they scored because the crowd would just errupt! There was never really silence but it was like everyone took a breath right before the goal and used all of that breath to cheer right after the goal! It was very cool.

After the game I went home for a bit to try and rest before a big night out on the town. Saturday was my friend Devin's 21st birthday. We helped him celebrate it as it is celebrated in the US. We started the night around 11:30 at a bar/mini-market. It is an odd combination I know so let me explain a little. This store has tables, all kinds of drinks from soda to beer, water to liquor, juice to wine, so pretty much it had everything. They also had chips, and little snack foods. Really this store had just about everything. It was a nice little place, but very very busy! We had probably 15 people with us and there were alot more that were not with us. There wasn't enough seating in the store and so I stood most of the time. The shop was not only full, it was very loud as well which was a result of its size and the number of people crammed in there.

We ended up leaving the bar between 2:30 and 3:00 A.M. At this point we decided on what boliche we were going to go to. We ended up going to "Thomas's" which is a boliche that we have been to before. When we got there the place was packed, as it was the time before as well. We hung out there and did a little dancing. Of course we all had to do a tequila shot with devin for his 21st! This was probably the biggest shot in the world! Instead of having shot glasses at Thomas's they just go ahead and pour out what they think a shot is into a plastic cup. So either shot glasses are bigger in Argentina, the bar tender doesnt know how much a shot is, or the bar tender was just very generous. At any rate I had a great time at the boliche and we ended up leaving when they closed somewhere between 5:30 and 6:00 A.M.

The next day or the same day how ever you want to look at it, I got up at noon and went to the river. All the Simpson students at UCEL were invited to an Asado! It was DELICIOUS! At the Asado I tried something new. It is called morcilla and it is blood sausage. It actually had a very good flavor and I liked it. The texture of the morcilla threw me off a little bit though. It was smooth but kind of gritty at the same time, it looked kind of like refried beans and had a similar texture but with a little more grit. Thats about the best I can do to describe it. It wasn't bad though and it was something that I could have again in small quantities. I dont think its something that you eat in large amounts its more or less something to accompany the other meat.

After enjoying a relaxing asado, a couple of us headed out on a walk. We went down to a local market and shoped for a bit. It was alot of fun looking at all the neat hand made goods. Jim bought a porta-mate which is a bag to carry your mate, yerba, and water or juice in. It is a beautiful hand made leather bag with designs on it. I bought my first gift for family back home at the market as well but I wont go into alot of detail on it.

In all it was a very full and fun week in Rosario. I dont think I had any down time last week at all. It has been hard to keep up to date with emails and facebook and all those other things last week because I have been without internet since wednesday. But I am hoping that I will be getting this back soon. That being said I have to give a big thanks to Jim Palmieri also known as "Jota Pe" for letting me use the internet at his apartment! This has been a big help!

I'm very excited for this week as I hope to be wrapping up plans on a couple more trips around Argentina before my time here is through. I hope to still see Las Cataratas del Iguazu, these are some of the largest waterfalls in the entire world. The chain contains 275 falls and is 2.7 kilometers long! I also want to go to San Carlos de Bariloche also known as just Bariloche. This is one of the most famous cities in Argentina aside from Buenos Aires. It is a big resort town and is in a beautiful location against the Andes in Patagonia. The city is situated alongside a lake and is surrounded by mountains. The pictures from this city are absolutely beautiful and there is a very beautiful cathedral here as well. I encourage everyone to look at pictures of both these places as the pictures are just beautiful, and hopefully i can show you my pictures of these places when I get back!

I hope that all is well with all of my blog followers!

-Nick Wood

Pictures

Ok so it took me FOREVER to get these pictures up. Sorry bout that there is an excuse but i'm not even going to give it. Anyways here is some pictures from Cordoba. It takes forever to get pictures up so this is all i will put up for now. When I get back I will need to put together a slide show to show everyone all of the amazing pictures!

Cordoba and More

Hello again. I'm sure that everyone was starting to wonder if I was still ok, since I´ve taken so long to write in my blog again. Well I'm doing Great! Argentina is wonderful and I have lots to talk about. Last week I went to Cordoba. Cordoba is the second largest city in Argentina with 1.3-1.4 million people. It is also a popular tourist spot because it is located near the sierras which are a small mountain range. The city is beautiful! There are old Cathedrals that have beautiful architecture and exquisite paintings. Unfourtuanetly at this time I cannot put up pictures of all the things I saw in Cordoba. I will try and get these pictures up as soon as possible!

Back to Cordoba. I left for Cordoba on friday morning at 7:30 by bus. This is the preferred method of transportion for everything here. There are buses leaving from Rosario for many different places in the country throughout the day. Therefore it is relatively easy to find a bus to your destination. The trip to Cordoba is aproximately 400 Km which is right around 250 miles. The trip took much longer than it would have in the United States because with the bus we had to stop in almost every little town along the way to drop off and pick up passangers. The ride was long and honestly quite boring because the land between Rosario and Cordoba can be best described as flatter than Nebraska. I do not recall a single hill between the two cities. I arrived in Cordoba just shortly after 2 in the afternoon. After looking around a bit in the bus terminal I found a information booth where I was able to get a map of the city and locate the hotel.

While in Cordoba I stayed at the Hotel Interplaza. I booked the rooms ahead of time on the internet and the site I booked them from said that it was a five star hotel. It was a very nice hotel, the lobby was very plush and elegant. However, I feel like a five star hotel in the United States would be a little nicer than this hotel was. I am in no way complaining because the hotel was very nice, it was in a great location and I enjoyed it very much. I am simply making a comparison between it and what I think a five star hotel would be like in the United States. Now many of you are probably wondering, ¨geeze Nick where did you find the money to stay in a five star hotel?¨ Well I was able to stay at this hotel because it actually was not that expensive by US standards. For 3 nights one room cost 256 US Dollars. I shared my room with Devin so in the end the room only cost 125 dollars for 3 nights. This made the hotel very affordable, not to mention the hotel offered a continental breakfast every morning, leaving me with one less thing to worry about. As I said earlier the hotel was in a great location. It was only 8 blocks from the bus station, so I was able to walk to and from the bus station, and it was only a block from the main plaza in the city.

The main plaza was also the home of one of the biggest, and I think most beautiful, cathedrals in Cordoba. Saturday morning my group visited this plaza and the cathedral. After spending some time here the group split up for a little bit. Devin Linn, Jim Palmieri, and myself went to Alta Gracia while Gillian Howard and Anna Vollmer did some shopping in downtown Cordoba.

Jim, Devin and I went off looking for the secondary bus station which is home to the smaller more local buses. These buses are similar to the white buses back in Iowa that assist older people to get out of the house and go to walmart or where ever else they go. If some one knows the name of these buses back home please leave me a comment with their name as I cannot remember. So the three of us headed off to the secondary station consulting our map frequently. We finally found the station, but we weren´t sure if it was actually the station. There were buses outside the building and there were platforms for these buses. However, when we went into the building it was a meat market. There were several different butcher counters and lots of people buying and selling every kind of cut of meat imagineable. I saw cow tounges hanging from hooks, cow hearts, livers, kidneys, everything. So there we were wondering where we buy our bus tickets and all we see/smell is raw meat. After looking around a while and following multiple signs I discovered that the bus station was in the basement or underneath the meat market. Why I didnt think of this earlier I´m not really sure (sarcasm). This was probably the wierdest thing I experienced on my trip to Cordoba. I still am a little confused as to why the bus station was underneath a meat market, but oh well. So we got our tickets and headed to Alta Gracia.

Alta Gracia is a smaller town about 35 Km outside of Cordoba. It is home to an old Jesuit Mission. We visited this however, we were unable to see more than the sanctuary because the rest of the mission was not open to the public until 5 PM. So we went in search of lunch and found a nice little resturant. We then made our way to the Ernesto ¨Che¨ Guevara house and museum. If you have never heard of ¨Che¨ you have probably heard of one of his close friends Fidel Castro. Che was born in Rosario, Argentina but his family moved to Alta Gracia due to his cronic asthma. He was a revolutionary who traveld all around Latin America on a motorcycle. There is actually a movie based on this called the ¨Motorcycle diaries.¨ He meet Castro and joined the revolution in Cuba. However, after some time in Castro´s cabinet he began to disagree with things that Castro was doing and resigned from his postion. He is viewed by some people here as a good person and some people think poorly of him. So wether he was a good guy or a bad guy I can´t really say. I can say though that his life is very interesting, like I said he traveled around Latin America on a motorcycle, and fought in revolutions in many different countries. His famous saying is ¨¡Hasta la victoria...Siempre!¨ which means Until the victory always!

When we had finished touring the museum we made our way back to Cordoba. On the way back to Cordoba I figured out how much we had spent on our day trip to Alta Gracia. It ended up being under 40 pesos for the day. This is the equivalent of 10 US dollars! And this included our transportion to and from Alta Gracia, our lunch, and our admission into the museum. On the way back to Cordoba our bus broke down and so we had to wait on the side of the road for 10 minutes or so for another bus to pick us up. When we got back to Cordoba we had just enough time to go back to the hotel drob of some stuff and head to the city bus tour. The city bus tour took us around to see the important places in Cordoba. This was well worth the 30 pesos it cost to take the bus. We sat on the second story of this double decker bus, and the second story of the bus is completely open so we could see the sites very well. The tour guide on the bus gave the tour of the city in Spanish and in English which was nice because when I didnt exactly understand something in Spanish I heard it shortly after in English. The tour took about an hour and a half and took us past large cathedrals, modern buildings with unique architecture and through the main park in Cordoba.

Later that night we went out to eat as a whole group again. And went to bed around 2 AM. Sunday we all traveled to Villa Carlos Paz. This is another town not far from Cordoba. It is situated in a valley with mountains around it and it shares the valley with a lake. It was a very beautiful city, however since it was Sunday everything was dead. We at least got to take a chair lift to the top of one of the mountains close. From there we had a great view of the city. We also took what was called the aerotren. It was a train on the top of the mountain that was supposed to be alot of fun, but it was actually quite disapointing as the train only went 200 meters before it stoped let us off at a gift shop then came back ten minutes later to take us back to the chair lift. In all I dont think the train went more than 400 meters! From the top of the mountain though I did have a very good view of the city. We spent a little more time in Carlos Paz before we returned to Cordoba. Overall I was not all that impressed with this city but I bet this city would be much more fun during the week when things are not all closed down. We went out to another nice dinner Sunday night, and left monday morning for Rosario.

It was a very good trip, and was alot of fun! This week has been kind of wierd because I only had class on tuesday and wednesday. Almost everything has been closed the last two days for the holidays. So wednesday night I went out to celebrate my 21st birthday since I did very little on my actual birthday. I was extremly supprised though on my birthday. My host mom got home and said something real quick that I didnt really understand, she then said that she would be right back and told me not to go anywhere. In a little bit she returned with 2 of her sisters and her mom. They were all carrying gifts, I was absolutely blown away! I didn´t expect anything from them! And they were very nice gifts. My host mom got me a shirt from Kevingston which is a very nice brand name here. Her mom got me a shirt from Cardon, another very nice brand name. And her sisters both got me bottles of wine. I was overwhelmed, I couldn´t believe how generous they were.

On thursday Jim, Devin, and I went to the park and drank mate (Máh-tE), and yesterday I meet up with Devin and Anna to work on our project for Spanish. Tonight my host mom is having some of her family over for dinner to celebrate my birthday. She wanted me to invite some people too so Jim and Devin will be joining us for dinner. It should be a fun and interesting night!

Well I appologize for taking so long to give you all an update on Argentina! I hope to be able to post pictures of Cordoba soon. So until then Bye, and I hope that everyone has a very nice Easter!

-Nick