Monday, August 04, 2008 – Halfway Done :) :(

So I am officially half-way through my Argentine internship.  I arrived six weeks ago and have six weeks left.  I have finally settled in and gotten used to living here and have some sort of routine with my work at the comedor.  I also have finally decided the direction I will go with my FSD projects (maybe a little late) – which further outlines how I will be spending my remaining weeks here.  I am also excited to start traveling and seeing parts of the country and feel slightly crunched on time.  At the same time I am really starting to miss my family and friends….and a clothes dryer, QuikTrip, and med red (that is my car for those of you unaware – I hope you are taking good care of her Jean). 

 

The other day I finally took time to read through an Argentine Lonely Planet tourist book to see which places I want to visit while I am here.  We will see what I end up having time to see.  Places include:

• San Antonio de Acerco – area of “las pampas” fairly close to Buenos Aires, has museums of gauchos (famous Argentine cowboys) and model estancias (ranches); Parque Nacional de Ernesto Tornquist – about 10 hours from Buenos Aires, there is a big hill/mountain there, if you hike to the top you can supposedly get a good view of the pampas, it also happens to be very close to the town of Tornquist, where my host parents are from, I am hoping I get to visit it with them;
• Iguazú Falls – in Missiones province, in northeastern Argentine, partially located in Brazil as well, I believe they are the some of the largest waterfalls in the world, I would also love to cross into Paraguay and Brazil (unfortunately visa is needed for Brazil) while I am up that direction, but am not sure if that will happen, as of now I am planning on going in mid-August when there is a three day holiday weekend, I will probably take more than 3 days as its about a 20 hour bus ride;
• Mendoza – province in western Argentina along the Chile border, famous for its wineries, also about a 20 hours bus ride from Buenos Aires, I would like to cross into Chile if I am going that far, but not sure if it will be possible;
• Tierra del Fuego – I am pretty sure this will not happen as it is extremely far, but I would really like to say that I have been! 
• I would also like to go to Colonia, Uruguay, which is about a two hour boat ride from Buenos Aires.  Technically I am not supposed to leave the country while under the FSD internship, but I feel since they didn’t tell us that rule before hand I am going to disregard it – seriously if I am two hours from Uruguay I am going to want to cross the border!  I also mentioned it to my host mom who has also visited, and she suggested that maybe we go this weekend when her son comes in town from Tornquist – I hope we go! 

So that’s where I want to go.  I am fairly certain I won’t get to most of it, but we will see.

 

In the last week I have learned how to knit.  I have knitted myself a very long, fluffy blackish/purplish scarf.  I have also bought yarn to knit a baby blanket (CONGRATULATIONS JULIE!!!!)  And have made a list of several other things I would like to make while I am here.  I get a kick out of it, as does my host mom who has been basically begging to teach me.  Mary Andrews (another intern) also came over last week to learn, and Amber (another intern who already knows how to knit) also came and we had a little knitting party – it was quite amusing.

 

I also tried my first shot at cooking for my host family.  I tried my specialty, spinach artichoke dip.  It turned out subpar for my standards, but they seemed to like (though sometimes I wonder if they just say that.)  I had to be creative as I couldn’t exactly find all the ingredients – and dairy/cream products are slightly different.  Everything is called “crema” or cream and I couldn’t quite figure out what was sour cream, also couldn’t find the cream cheese I wanted, so used mayonnaise (found in abundance here – it is there favorite sauce) as a replacement that I have used before.  However, I asked Ana, with FSD and she told me that cream cheese can be found, so I might try another round.  I need to make an actual meal for them as well, unfortunately all the real typical American/Kansans type food I don’t actually know how to make, I personally prefer Mexican food, but they don’t like spicy stuff.  We will see what I can come up with that will taste good and I can find ingredients for!