Day 9: August 23, 2007 In Salta
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2007
1
9
202
Trip End
Mar 01, 2008
Salta,
Argentina
Thursday, August 23, 2007
I updated my journal and let Elena sleep in while I went down to the XR office to try to put together a circular for my course at UNSa. Claudia was there and gave me a basic outline of what should be included. It was fairly easy to put together and I emailed it off to Berta within an hour. I also sent emails to Silvia Palacios and Juan Pablo Milana at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan (UNSJ) to tell them that I was in Argentina for an extended period. The email address I have for my third Sanjuanino friend, Guillermo Figueroa, was, disappointingly, no longer active.
Elena and I took a taxi into El Centro. We had a good chicken brochette at La Posta and then went over to an internet place so that she could catch up on her email. Once that was done, we took a cab over to the Shopping where we bought groceries for dinner. We wanted to make tacos but Mexican culture has eschewed a southward movement so we had to devise substitutes. For tortillas we used empanada shells; chimichuri + tomato sauce stood in for salsa; and garbonzo beans replaced frijoles. In reality, frijoles probably are available but I just don't know what they look like in their raw form. I bought a good bottle of Malbec for $4.25. We took a cab back to Grand Bourg, arriving around 5:30.
I gave Elena a fairly involved Spanish lesson, most of which was review for her. We covered the present, present perfect, and past perfect tenses, regular verb conjugations, useful irregular verbs, and hints as to which English words will have Spanish cognates. Her assignment is to collect a list of other verbs.
I started preparing dinner around 8:00. Unfortunately, Jorge was going out. Bernardo watched the process intensely, cringing at the amount of chimichuri and ají (red pepper) that I put in. I assured him that the 1/2 kg of hamburger would absorb it and it would not be too picante. The empanada shells were a little too small for real tacos but we were all hungry enough to make do. Toyo joined us for dinner. We ate heartily and everyone seemed to like the meal. It didn't taste like the stuff I make at home but like more like its Argentine cousin. After Toyo left, Bernardo and I continued what has now become a tradition and had a scotch.
It was still warm enough outside, for the first time since our arrival, that we drank it out on the balcony with its beautiful view overlooking the city. Elena played computer games while watching a fútbol match: cyberchild. I watched some of the match with her before turning in; she wanted to see it through to the end so I said good night and went to bed.
