Getting it in gear: Buenos Aires and Beyond

My Spanish (or Castellano, as they call the language here) is coming along nicely, although I am daily frustrated when I just can´t understand what someone is saying to me, and I´ve got to swallow my pride as I tell them that. Other times, I am stoked to have a conversation with someone, understand everything, and gain confidence in my abilities. I am finally starting to feel like I am understanding the peculiar dielect here as much as almost any Spanish I´ve heard. And I´ve gotten to know the city a little bit bit better, just by going about my business each day and getting around. I was very excited recently to get out of the city for a while though, and had what turned out to be kind of a wild ride.

Last Friday I and a few others, including my friend Oleana from Venezuela, decided to get out and go near the town of Cordoba in the Pampas to do a little bit of camping, hiking, and get some fresh air for a change. But it just so happened that Oktoberfest was just about to hit the college town Cordoba as well, and all the buses and trains were booked solid. So someone suggested we rent a car and drive 12 hours instead. And that´s where the adventure began...

We drove all night long (well, not me because the car turned out to be a manual shift...oops) on crazy Argentine highways through some beautiful pampas scenery (albeit in the dark). It took us about 2 hours just to get out of BsAs (oops) because the directions we printed off were difficult to understand and there seem to be about 80 million highways(called autopistas)in this gigantic city, all with similar names and hard-to-locate turn-arounds. But we made it! And in the morning we were able to take naps first thing by a scenic river just outside of Cordoba.






After our nap, we moved on to higher pastures. Someone had mentioned to Oleana that there was a lake great for camping in an area to the north where there had also been UFO sightings...so we decided we should definitely check it out. And it was gorgous! Beautiful rock formations surrounded a lake (a river dammed in the 80´s, but still a very pretty, majestic and peaceful place).



These (wild?) horses just wondered over for a drink. They were beautiful.



It was wonderful to have a fire at night, I realized how much I´ve been missing it in the city.


Astonishingly, the weather turned crazy out of nowhere after we fell asleep outside under a starry sky. I was startled as I woke up in the middle of a whipping windstorm to see my tent just about being blown sideways. We all piled in, and decided what to do from there. We weren´t sure how the weather was going to chnage, and, being on a penninsula without trees and very exposed to wind and storm, we decided to take down the tent wait it out in the car instead. We could tell that, alarmingly, the thunder and lightning were quickly getting closer. As we closed the last door, hard rain started.
Throughout the night, the wind continued, rain fell, and it hailed on us as well. In the morning, the skies were still dark and the clouds heavy with rain. It rained all the way back to the city. I felt lucky to have experienced such a wild and exciting night, even if it was a brief trip.




Coming back to my last week of TEFL was a little hectic, especially because my good friend Greg came to town for a visit on Wednesday! This is him by some crazy graffiti art in San Telmo near where he stayed.




We had a really nice visit over the next couple of days, and it felt really great to be with someone from the old crew back home. It does make me miss Portland a bit now, especially that he is gone, but I also think his being here helped me in my processing of adjusting to all this newness in Argentina and city life. It helped be to remember where I come from, and also kind words helped me to gain some confidence in who I am, here or anywhere. It feels good to be reminded that I still have a place out there, and it doesn´t necessarily have to be a geographical location for me to be ¨there¨. I can incorporate my past and my present into an integrated vision of what I want for the future. I have goals and aspirations that are very much my own and, although they are flexible to accomodate the many changes that I encounter in life, they are what truly matter to me. I am so excited to go to Patagonia, to climb, to feel the exhilaration of bicycling again and doing the things I love, while also being stoked to be in South America where I am learning Spanish, meeting so many new people, and having the experiences and adventures I crave.



Yesterday was the last day of my TEFL program, and now I am an officially-certified teacher of English as a foreign language. We had a party to celebrate.


I hope to keep in touch with some really awesome people I met in my course, and maybe even meet back up with them in Patagonia.

And now I´m off to get some things accomplished here in the city before moving west. I also have a lot to think about. Here goes... I´ll keep in touch.