A Traveler's Tale

Hello everybody! Welcome to August! Life has been busy down here in Argentina lately with a couple trips outside of the city.

GENERAL VILLA BELGRANO

My first trip, one that almost every student who comes down to Argentina does, was a day trip to Villa Belgrano with my favorite person from Kosovo, Liza. Villa Belgrano is a European town - more specifically, it's German. It's such a cute town. The architecture and decorations and very German and it did not feel like we were in Argentina still. Plus, the town was very proud of the beer it brews (in which we took a brief visit to the small brewery). 

The main attraction in Villa Belgrano for the month of July was the chocolate festival. At the chocolate festival there were many different booths filled various types of chocolate in numerous forms (bars, truffles, cakes, covering fruits, or in a fountain to dip whatever we wanted in the chocolate). It was delicious - so hard to resist! I ate various types of chocolate as Liza and I watched a children's comedian. I had no idea what the comedian was saying half of the time, but all of his exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions helped so much! Part of me thinks that spending more time with children could actually help me learn more because of the simple exaggeration of the language. 

 In addition to the chocolate festival and sight-seeing around the small, German town, I really enjoyed the views of nature. Here in Córdoba, there nature is hard to come by. There are a few trees, but it is rare to see grass, flowers, or anything green. Sometimes, that makes me feel a little sad because I love spending my time outside. The scenery around Villa Belgrano reminded me so much of home with the hills. Even though I am halfway across the world, I can feel like I have my own refuge to go to that reminds me home. 

 

 

 

 

BUENOS AIRES 

The trip to Buenos Aires was arranged by my program (CC-CS). We took a 10-hours bus ride (overnight) to the country's capital. Buenos Aires is HUGE. There were so many people and so many places to go. It made me feel insignificant. 

La Cancha, Buenos Aires

The first place that we went to once arriving in Buenos Aires was Plaza del Mayo. It is at Plaza del Mayo that the grandmothers and mothers of the people who were kidnapped by the government 30 years ago. Many women were kidnapped when they were pregnant.  It is rumored that many of them gave birth while they were being tortured and that their children were then given to the families of the government members. As much as I wanted to, I really wanted to understand the pain of the country at this place but I couldn't. It is not something that I can just insert myself into. Plaza del Mayo represented the pain of the entire nation. I was lucky enough to be able to see where history is though.

Another area that we visited was La Cancha, the fútbol (soccer) stadium. It was amazing. I have never really liked fútbol, but I loved every minute of my time in La Cancha. There was so much passion that I could feel. I could feel the excitement of the game as I walked in. I wanted so badly to be part of everything. It is one thing that I can bring from home here to Argentina: my passion for sports. I can cheer and get caught up in the fútbol fever. Even though the Olympics are on right now, those games are not as important as they are in the United States. People do not know about other sports other than fútbol. More or less the only opportunities they have had have been to play fútbol. THAT is what Argentina really cares about. That is why I was so happy to be there. CULTURE.