Reflections on Argentina

I didn´t realize how much I liked Bsas...until I left! Porteños are pretty unpopular in other areas, and I surprised myself by how offended and defensive I would get every time someone insulted bsas. lol!

CULTURE
If  Spain and Italy had a baby, its name would be Argentina.


First off: the greeting cheek kiss. Ughhh omg I can´t handle it because I´m so gunshy ever since my first (FAIL) attempt, when I turned my head too much and accidentally kissed the other person on the lips T__T uyyy.  So imagine my terror at having to do it every day, multiple times, for a month and a half!

Sarcasm: So a stereotype of Americans is that we´re over-exuberant and too easily over-exciteable...and wow I never actually thought of myself that way, until I came here and I was the only one saying WOOOT or showing excitement. Porteños express themselves a lot more through sarcasm, and they´re really great and creative at it.

Bad service: Once a waitress was cleaning the table and brushed all the crumbs into Sarah´s lap, and didn´t apologize!

10 pm dinners

Very inviting: I can´t believe how many bday parties of people I don´t know that I´ve crashed. Moreover, almost everyone would always ask us, when are you coming back to Bsas? And they´d also tell us, Let me know when you´re back so we can hang out!

Know how to have a great time: the nightlife is really great (if not for the machisto men). It usually starts at 2am and could end at 10 am..yikes! We went to a show called Bomba del Tiempo, which was a drum show, and it was so awesome, highly recommended.

FOOD

Ok, the food isn´t that great in our opinion, because Sarah and I really like vegetables and aren´t used to that   much meat. But we looooove the ice cream, the pizza, and the chorizo. SO GOOD! They eat a lot of dulce de leche, asado, alfajores, empanadas, pasta, medialunas, milanesa...Sarah and I couldn´t believe you can order ANYTHING delivery, like ice cream and McDonalds.

Guerrin

Alfajor

empanadas

Dulce de Leche

Asado...my first time eating kidney, intestine and blood sausage!

Args also drink mate allllllll the time. It´s a tea made of super strong herbs (runs through ya like a thousand rushing waterfalls!). Even while driving, they can carry the hot thermos of water in one arm nook and the mate cup in the other. Impressive.

Sarah is craaazy about chocotorta, a really simple cake made of dulce de leche and chocolate. The owner of our last hostel taught us how to make it.

Random note...Why are these pants in style now?!

photo album link again

:)
photo album

almost robbed...TWICE

Our second last day in Bsas (buen día from Peru!) we both almost got pickpocketed.

Justina:
In the morning, we were walking in the subway, when all of a sudden I felt my bag move a little bit, so I looked down...and saw a hand in my purse! AHH!! My mind suddenly went blank with panic, and luckily some inner ninja in me took over, because my instant reaction was to grab his wrist in a vice-like grip and yell-scream ¨HEY!!!!¨ The pick-pocket was so surprised. He showed me that his hands were empty, tried to say he was actually closing my purse for me since it was unzipped, and well...there was nothing I could do so I let him go. But whew that was a super close one!

Sarah:
Later that same day, we got on the Subte and I was standing in the corner by the door. This big guy comes over to me with a large black shopping bag. He gets uncomfortably close so I move back a little. Then this other guy comes over to my other side and starts `throwing up`, trying to distract me while the first guy reaches for my bag. Luckily I felt the first guy pull on my bag and grabbed it and escaped before it was too late.



When we told our friend our stories later that night, she high-fived us and said YES, now you are truly Argentinians! haha.

Waterfalls in Iguazuuu

 new friends at the hostel :), from Buenos Aires, Holland, and Italy

 Coatie...the Iguazu equivalent of squirrels...but cuter!

hermosas!!

butterflies everywhere! and it looks like they have numbers on their wings.

  we took a boat ride that took us partially under a fall...we were SO SOAKED and COLD

wild guinea pigs?! yes please!

apparently the shoes hanging from the wires means that´s a place you can buy drugs illicitly O___O¨
haha sarah took this picture because she thought they were pretty, and then I told her what it really meant.

SEPARATED..dundundun

To be honest, I was miserable at that farm.

So I finally gathered the guts to up and leave that godforsaken place! Sarah wanted to leave too but felt too bad about possibly hurting their feelings....so she didn´t come with me, but today she changed her mind and is leaving tonight haha.

What happened was, ever since the first day, the Sra. in charge of the farm has been frigid cold toward me. She wouldn`t make eye contact with me and would only ever look at Sarah when talking (so like, if I asked a question, she would still only look at Sarah when answering it!) and she would only ever address Sarah...it was like I didn´t exist, when, um, I think I do exist! I tried to joke about it, telling Sarah it´s because my eyebrow piercing scares her or because Sarah´s face is just so beautiful the Sra can´t ever look away...but anyway, the vibe of the situation made me feel like I was some loser, unwanted third cousin they were just barely tolerating. They weren´t even that friendly to Sarah either...I´d say even the cockroaches inside the refigerator were more friendly :p

Our new friend NOA (darn you!!) posted this picture on facebook.

It made me think a lot.

So I did a stupid, crazy thing and spontaneously took a bus to Corrientes, without a place to stay or any clue if I´d make it in time for a connection bus to Iguazu or if I could walk around (at 6am!) and find a hostel..... Scary!! But everything worked out and I´m happy again!

miss you Sarah mi reina :P

beso,
Jus

Arrival in Goya

Sooo we´ve arrived in Goya on Tuesday of this week. It was a pretty uneventful trip except for the arrival in Goya at 6:30am.... Although all the taxi drivers were pestering us to take a ride with them straight out of the bus, we decided it would be best to wait a little to not wake the senora up tooo early. Anyways, so we end up taking a taxi after awkwardly waiting around for 30 minutes outside in the dark. As we are driving away from the city we were supposed to be living in I start doubting the directions I had given the taxi driver... turns out instead of giving the taxi driver the directions to the senora´s house I had the directions to the farm!!! Arg I was so sure that the reason why the senora didn´t give us additional directions to her house was because the directions on the website were the ones that we needed to get to her place.... Typical Saraism haha I guess it’s my fault for not asking. So we end up out in the middle of nowhere and the taxi driver is like ¨ok here is your stop¨. Hahaha Luckily I decide to call the senora before we let the taxi go and she helps us get to the right address. Sooo glad cause we would have been stranded!!!

 The senora´s house here in Goya is pretty sweet! She says she designed it on her own. And you can tell it’s really unique in its design. Kinda reminds me of Mediterranean houses with the white walls and blue windows. The only problem is that there is no isolation... so it’s always freeeezing inside (actually a lot of the times it’s warmer outside then inside). It’s funny though, I always thought the temperatures in this part of Argentina would be a lot colder than they actually are. It already feels like a nice warm spring day and it’s still winter here! It’s pretty sweet! Much better for farm work! Apparently, it gets really hot here in the summer: above 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day. The landscape does look pretty dry … I guess that would explain why.

 In terms of cultural differences I´ve noticed here… People here seem really open. I do feel like people are a lot more genuine here in the country compared to the city and do not think too much about acting in a culturally sensitive way …. Which can be good and bad haha. I feel like they are a little more reticent talking to strangers. It would make sense since they probably don´t interact with that many strangers in their day to day lives. I guess that makes us extra special! I also feel like I have to be careful with how I act cause it could easily be generalized to the whole American population…. Kinda funny cause I’m not even truly American!

 We are living with this family: the senora who used to be an art and theater teacher and who is now living her passion of constructing a farm based in the ideas of permaculture, her husband who is a lawyer. Their grandson who loves all types of sports especially basketball, and her son who is also passionate about permaculture. I´m still not sure what to make of them. We´ve had a very different welcome here compared to in Buenos Aires. This family is really close, really loud and really passionate about what they do. Part of me really admires the openness and love they all share between each other but at the same time Justina and I both feel weird as how we fit in with the whole family… we feel somewhat like strangers in their house.

Learning more about permaculture is fascinating! I love the ideology. It’s a whole new way of thinking and very eye opening. (Ill blog more about it later when I know more about it)

 Yay! My first official post! Sarah