3 down, 2 to go

I love spring in Buenos Aires. I also love only having classes Tuesday through Thursday now that my intensive Spanish class has ended. Other than that, not much to tell. Yesterday we hit the three month mark, and I'll be home in two more...

Weekend: Rosario, Santa Fe, and Paraná

After a harrowing week of taking parciales (midterms), Trevor and I got on a 4:3opm bus from Buenos Aires to Rosario on Thursday. Rosario, which is four hours away, is Argentina’s second biggest city. Which isn’t saying much. Compared to Buenos Aires, it’s tiny, and muy tranquilo – in a good way. Highlights include:

• beautiful Parque de la Independencia. There’s just something about well-designed urban green spaces. The park is also home to the Museo de Bellas Artes, which has an interesting collection, although it was mysteriously near-empty on a rainy Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend.
• the impressive Monumento a la Bandera (where General Belgrano raised Argentina’s flag for the first time in 1812). While we were sitting and taking in the monument, a huge, gorgeous rainbow appeared over the river.
  
  
• the Río Paraná – especially gazing at it while I ate a huge, fresh, delicious alfajor.
  
  
• boat trip to Vladimir Island, where there is a pretty beach and a few bars. It must get bustling in the summer. As it was, we were there on an absolutely beautiful Saturday and it was mysteriously empty. I just don’t know what Rosarinos do on weekends.
  
  

…then we moved on to Santa Fe, an easy 2.5 hour bus ride away. Well, if we thought Rosario was tranquilo, Santa Fe was muy muy MUY tranquilo. Not to mention refreshingly short on tourists, especially other Americans. I’ve never been asked where I’m from so many times in one day. Apparently we’re a rarity around there. My favorite was a girl who must’ve been about 14, selling wax roses in a plaza for four pesos (about $1.30 American). When we started talking to her after her adorably impassioned and super fast spiel about what the colors of roses meant what, she asked us something that essentially translates to, “Where are you two from with your tone that sounds so strange?!” Naturally, Trevor bought me a silly wax rose. We couldn’t resist.

More inviting than Santa Fe for intangible reasons was its twin city on the other side of the río (in the creatively named province of Entre Ríos), Paraná. Entrerrianos, due to the relative insularity of the province, are friendly and even more tranquilo than Santafesinos. By far the highlight of our day trip to Paraná was walking along the river. The whole waterfront was flooded with people when we got there around sunset – it was suddenly abundantly clear that the rest of the city had seemed quiet not, as we’d suspected, because people just stayed in on Sundays, but rather because EVERYONE was down by the river: walking, talking, eating ice cream, watching dancers, enjoying the day.
So that was my weekend... it was fun, somewhat relaxing, and a great way to celebrate surviving parciales.

In other news, I am now living with Juliana, a 27-year-old chica, in a little apartment about 6 blocks form the resi where I lived before. The pluses: my own room, and Argentine to hang out with and speak Spanish with, a place where my friends can come hang out. Also, seeing Calexico here was awesome.

And now... it is suddenly mid-October and I feel like for weeks I've hardly had a moment to think. My lifestyle here in general leaves me feeling like I'm always running around or catching up and never really catching my breath, but I guess that's how one makes the most of a semester. Goals for the next few weeks: sleep more, breath more, gym more, enjoy.

I have no time to tell you why I have no time.

There's a whole list of things I should blog about, including moving (successful), Calexico (awesome), counterfeit money (keeping it as a souvenir), and school stress. But seeing as the school stress continues right up until I leave for Rosario tomorrow, this will all have to wait.

So for now: I'm alive, mostly well, about to take a scary midterm, and taking off for a long weekend in Rosario and Santa Fe. To be continued...

JUJUY! and other news

I spent this past weekend on our second FLACSO-run viaje, this time to the northern province of Jujuy. The trip was a bit more structured than Córdoba, as it was a seminar on "The Present and Past of the Andean World." It was still a lot of fun, and really really beautiful. Therefore I am posting five different pictures.
Lots of cacti.
Las Salinas, the salt flats. This used to be a huge lake that over time became this vast sea of salt. Very weird.
View from the bus as we drove back from the salt flats. Pretty amazing. Also note that there are a few houses and some farmland down there, definitely a good two hours or so from any town...
Beautiful Purmamarca. The colors of the land there were just amazing.
More Purmamarca. This whole hike was breathtaking. The land barely looked real.

Overall, the trip provided an interesting link between this semester and my high school semester in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Being in the Andes again meant the culture, land, and general feeling of Jujuy were much more like what I experienced in the other Andean countries than here in Buenos Aires. This city is its own little universe, so it was cool to see that a place like Jujuy exists in Argentina, albeit close to the Bolivian border.

Other news, to be expanded upon later:
1. I am moving out of the residencia soon.
2. I am seeing Calexico on Friday!
3. I hate parciales and will not have time to breathe until after October 12.