2 down, 11 to go.

• Mlbierle's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Rosario

Trip Start Sep 01, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Dec 02, 2008 Next
Entry

  Rosario, Argentina
Sunday, September 14, 2008

This week was a good one.  I can´t believe I´ve already been here for two weeks-- time´s really flying by.  And faster than I ever thought it would. 

My weeks fly by, and my weekends seem to do the same.  My weekdays are filled with school-- lots of time spent in class-- and going to the gym before heading home for dinner at 9:30.

I love love LOVE dinner time, and I´m so pleased to have been set up with a family like the one I have.  I think I´m the only one here with a mom AND a dad (most of the host ¨families¨ are basically just a widowed or divorced woman and possibly a child).  All my friends are jealous because my dad ROCKS.  He´s so funny, and he makes me laugh CONSTANTLY.  Dinner time is always my favorite time of the day, and not just because my mom cooks awesome food (with one exception-- that weird liver sausage stuff) and we watch that janitor show (which has a name now; it´s called ¨Por Amor a Vos¨ or ¨Because I Love You¨) which I´m addicted to.  Francisco comes home from work and we eat.  We eat the rucula salad with oil and salt and then we have this fabulous French bread we eat... mmmmm.  Then we eat something fabulous for our main course.  Let´s see... a couple days ago, my mom made a quiche, and then pizza, and then spaghetti, and then last night she made milanesa with chicken instead of beef.  Really good.  And Francisco talks and laughs the whole time.  I can tell they enjoy having U.S. students stay with them, and I´m the sixth one they´ve had.  Which is good, because they know the routine.  They know exactly what I should and shouldn´t be doing, and exactly what they should and shouldn´t be doing for me.  They never allow me to clean up after myself at the dinner table-- NEVER.  I continue to try, but they don´t let me.  But I´ll just continue to try every day.  Maybe one day I can clear the table on my own. 

The laundry situation here is fun-- I take my clothes to the ¨lavandería,¨ which is the laundromat located directly across the road from my apartment.  I take them in a plastic shopping bag, and I leave it with them for a day and they wash, dry, iron, and ¨perfume¨ it for me, and I pick it up the next day.  It´s so easy, and really cheap-- 10 pesos ,which is about 3.3 dollars.  I took my laundry there on Friday, and I was suppoosed to pick it up yesterday but forgot.  And they´re not open today so I have to pick it up tomorrow.  So I´m glad I took it early, so I still have some clean clothes to wear.  There´s some clothes, though, that I´ve never been able to wash yet.  My sweatshirt, I haven´t washed that yet... but probably should.  Starting to smell.  But I need it, I wear it every day.  THe days here have been pretty chillly-- except for the past few days.  Today, if you were in the sun, it was about 70 degrees, I´m sure of it.  EVerything´s getting green, and there´s these lilac-colored trees here that really liven up the city.  It´s great to see color in the city.  Maybe that´s what made Buenos Aires so terribly harsh and cold.  It was still winter there.  But we´ve seen so many changes in the flora here in the two weeks we´ve lived here.  EVerything looks great-- and today (Sunday)  we went to a ¨feria,¨ almost a market where artesans and crafters and antique collectors bring little stands and white tents and sell their goods.  Sammie, Lily, and I went to the fair today and saw a lot of cool stuff.  People really enjoy Sundays here-- no businesses are open, and all the people head to the parks (there´s so many cool parks here) and just bring lawn chairs or blankets, or maybe neither, and they just set up camp on the lawn (looks like pre-fireworks in Bay City or Saginaw, except these people are just here solely to spend time with one another.... awwww) and spend the lovely evening there.  We walked past lots of monuments and saw lots of cool things.  Very cool-- lots of leatherware, lots of silver, and lots of maté cups.  EVeryone walks around with their maté cups, their Thermoses, and their purses.  Imagine someone bringing their coffee cups and coffee pots around with them everywhere they go.  Looks weird to us, but it´s normal to them.

We went shopping down Córdoba the other day, the main shopping centre in Rosario.  Córdoba is a pedestrian street where they have a gazillion malls (or ¨shoppings¨)  and little stores.  Many people set up their music along the street, and there was some famous author doing a booksigning in a bookstore, and there were like 8,000 people lined up along the street.  There were creepy clowns and people selling flavored almonds and more leatherware and maté cups and straws.  It was fun, though.  Most of the salespeople were stuck-up and grumpy and I´d just as soon not step foot in their stores again.  But one store we went into-- there were 3 young gals working there and they were soooo excited to have us American girls shopping there-- the four of us (me, Sammie, Jillian, and Lily) found 4 zebra-print shirts, all different colors, and we tried them on and the girls took pictures of us.  It was great fun-- and the best service we´ve gotten the whole time.  Service, by the by... I miss customer service.  What fun it was to go to a restaurant in the States and have someone visit your table in the first 20 minutes after you´ve sat down.  And a smile from an Argentine waiter/waitress?  Forget about it.  I guess customer service isn´t im`portant here.  And the empanadas taste so much better after waiting for them for 30 minutes.  However, your bill (which can never be separated into 3 checks--- tooooo difficult) doesn´t get any better after you´ve been waiting for 30 minutes after finishing your meal.  Oh well... it´s just not important here.

By they by, did you know that the water actually DOES spin the other way when you flush a toilet?

We took a tour through the supermarket the other day-- talk about getting to know a culture.  Picture a Kroger with plates, silverware, computers, televisions, and washing machines... only no make-up and no nail polish (but there IS nail polish remover.  go fiure).  And wine.  Wine, wine, and more wine.  I´ve posted a picture of the wine here, but a picture doesn´t do it justice.  Yeah, there´s a lot of wine there.  But there´s like 6 aisles of it.  Yum.  I like a nice glass of wine.  And I, who´s always been a bit partial to sweeter white wine, am developing a palate for drier red wine.  Francisco likes to drink it on Fridays and Saturdays... and sometimes during the week; and he always offers me vino tinto (red wine) with or without soda.  Good stuff. 

OH!  So we watch that ice skating show during dinner, which actually turns out to be like Dancing With the Stars, only ¨Skating With the Stars¨ and the stars are actually just famous Argentinians.  And there are themes to each night of skating, and the other night (which was just a bad night for me... I wasn´t in the mood for anything and barely talked during dinner) it was disco night-- the skaters always perform to an English song, and that night they played a lot of YMCA, Celebration, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and various other favorites.  Francisco thought that was amazing, and he and Nélida began dancing around while they played a disco version of ¨Can´t Take My Eyes off of You¨.  I was very amused, and couldn´t help but laugh.  Francisco thought that I needed to dance too.  I said no, thank you.  He proceeded to pull my chair out a bit and pull me up and dance with me.  before long, we were all discoing around the dining room with the poodle and I felt much better.  Thank you, Francisco.  Actually, it was a lot of fun, and all my friends are totally jealous of my fun family.  So he knows barely any English, but was trying to sing along to the disco tunes.  Very comical.  He does know ¨1, 2, 3, open the door!¨ (i dont know)  and ¨Good asternoon¨ (yes, that´s aSternoon, not aFternoon).  He simply rocks.

Anyway, things have been great, and I´m excited for my 3rd week in Argentina.  I have to go-- I should start uploading my pics!  Write more soon!

Print this entry Share Rosario hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry