El Paraiso

Well first for the rest of Wednesday: I took a walk around the park, which was incredible - it was exactly what I needed after studying all day.

Thursday we went back to the place that we rode horses two weeks ago, though instead of riding horses we learned a local dance - that starts with C, and then played a game similar to Bochee Ball that starts with B. I've learned so many new names I just cant keep up.

Friday at the visa office was, to say the least, long. So 4 of us have an 'appointment' at 7 am Friday. So we all make it on time, and there's already a line outside the door, the place opens at 7. So we wait, go in, hand them our appointment paper with the pictures, we wait, and then the pictures were all the wrong size and on the wrong type of paper. So we leave to go get another picture taken, but the first place doesn't open until 8. But no, the place actually didnt open until like 9:30. So I'm like whatever, I'm going to take a walk. So I take a long walk around the center and on my way back I found an open picture place, so I call my friends and we get our pictures taken. So back in the visa office at 9am, we give them our pictures and appointment papers again, and then we wait. There were some interesting people in the visa office, but mostly, there were a lot of missionaries, Mormon missionaries from Utah. So we had a great conversation, in English, with that group. One by one we are called back, and they took my fingerprints (again) and my parents names, and then send me to another bench to wait. Then I'm called back, they go through some more paper work and then one of the papers isnt signed and stamped correctly by the University, but they are like we can keep going though the stuff anyway, you will just need to turn the paper in another day. So then we have to pay the tax, but we dont just hand them 300 pesos, no, we have to walk 8 blocks to a bank, give them the money and get a receipt, and then walk back. And then give them the receipt and wait some more. And then sign like 10 more papers, and then they are like turn this in the front. So we go back out to the front, turn in the paper, but we arent done yet, we have one more wait until we are done for the day. So the missionaries are still there too so we talk some more with them, they were happy to have other people from the US to talk to I think, since they were used to talking in Spanish all day everyday. So its like 12:30 by now and they call us back for one last time to sign one last paper and that's it. I think I just experienced the definition of inefficient. So after that long detailed description of Migrations in Argentina, and missing dance class :( we went to school to take our first test for Spanish class. (Which I got back today, and I passed!) After school I just went home and slept, because...

Saturday, I had to be at school at 8:30 to go to the country side to a place called El Paraiso. It was amazing, I slept the whole way there, so when we got off the bus 2 hours later the beautiful view surprised me.

We started the day with breakfast. Which was great because I would not have made it until lunch without food. They even had some gluten free bread crackers that I could eat with homemade peach marmalade (I did not enjoy the plum as much). And then we went and rode horses around a little circle on traditional saddles. And then they brought the cows in, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I did not expect to watch a lot of lassoing and branding of calves. And they kind of just believe in letting the cows roam free most of the time, so it wasnt really an issue when a cow or two jumped the fence and climbed the mountain behind us. The asado for lunch was amazing. An asado is basically where they just grill lots of meats (beef, pork, chicken, sausage) over a grill outside. With the asado we were served a salad emphasis on the sal. There may have been equal parts salt and salad. I dont think anyone was quite able to eat that. They even had gluten free empanadas, so I had my first empanada there, which was really good. I think it just had cheese in it, but there may have been something else in there too. For desert apparently I was special because I got a peach and everyone else got chocolate ice cream. It was a good peach.

The cow that watched us eat lunch

After lunch we climbed the hill across the stream and the view from there was incredible. We were really in the middle of nowhere.

Then after lunch we all sat around and listened to some traditional music on the guitar and a traditional drum, and watched some of the traditional dances to that type of music. And an adorable 3-year-old demonstrated some zapateo.

And then I slept most of the bus ride back to save up some energy for the evening, which will be in the next post.