Mendoza

Yesterday Tamara, Marc and I flew to Mendoza. We decided to take a two-week vacation from the city to explore the wine country of Argentina - famous for it´s hiking trails, white water rafting, zip line tours and horseback riding excursions as well as its wine. Since COINED (my school) has an outpost here too, we figured we´d continue with our classes, but enjoy a change in location. For the first time since arriving in Argentina, I saw rain during the day time. I couldn´t believe it. I´d forgotten it existed.

I was pleasantly surprised to arrive at my homestay to find Linea, a girl from my class in Bs As, here as well. She managed to get a room in the same house, so we´re hanging out now. She´s from Seattle, but speaks decent spanish, so the two of us talk entirely in Spanish to each other, Andrew, you were right about setting up the relationship to be in one language or the other. We actually ask permission from one another to speak in English for the more complicated situations we find ourselves in.

The four of us spent most of Sunday just wandering around teh city trying to get our bearings. Since the bus and trolley lines here accept only exact change or pre-paid cards, we wandered the streets of the totally dead, sunday siesta city looking for a place that sold collectivo cards that was open. It took pretty much the whole afternoon, but we managed to walk the entire city. It´s such a huge change from Bs As. The air is crisp and clean, all the streets are lined with gigantic trees, and the stay dogs are neutered and actually quite pretty. The pace of the people here is even slower than in Bs As (suddenly, Bs As seems like NYC compared to here).

Today we went to class and were astounded by how different the school is here. In Bs As there are probably upwards of around 300 students. Here, the might not even be 30. I was put in a class that is WAY further along than I am, but only because there doesn´t exist a lower level class here - there aren´t enough teachers or students. In actuality, I loved it though. Finally I´m being pushed to my limits, and Linea and I are frantically studying to catch up. Additionally, since the common language of the whole group is spanish, we spend the entire time talking in whatever spanish we have. Hopefully this week will give me a big push in learning the language.

The afternoon was especially interesting because the entire city (and when I say entire, I mean entire) has a siesta from 3-5pm. We couldn´t eat anywhere, get a drink or an icecream, or even catch a bus. It was unbelievable. Even more surprising is that most of the businesses here actually have a siesta from 1:30-5pm. Only the restaurants stayed open until 3. So we spentwandering around the various parks and looking up excrusions we want to go on around here. I´ve already signed myself up for a wine tour for Wednesday. It includes several bodegas, a tour of an olive oil factory, a whole bunch of tastings, and a 1st class air conditioned bus all for the very expensive price of $15. Yup yup, this is Argentina!!