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buenos aires

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

i left Alta Gracia on Sunday and went to Cordoba, where i took a train to Rosario. was in Rosario for 3 days, where i went running by the water and explored the city center with the Monument of the Flag and the famous street Las Oroños. today i took a bus to Buenos Aires. i am staying with a friend of a friend in Palermo, in the center of the city. this is a very young neighborhood with a lot of bars and  good restaurants, known as Viejo Palermo. i am very lucky to be able to stay here with good people. from the bus terminal i took the subway to get here, it reminded me of NYC and made me very happy. we cooked a dinner of homemade raviolis, salad, garlic bread and cabernet sauvignon. tomorrow morning is game 2 for Argentina of Mundial, the world cup. it is huge here, the streets are silent when the game is going on, and then after everyone rushes to work. i will wear my Argentina soccer jersey again, and Fred Murdock will watch with me too. i am staying with Amy and her boyfriend Bruno now. Amy is from Clarence, and her boyfriend is from Buenos Aires. they met in Costa Rica, but 8 months Amy has been living and working here. tomorrow after the game i will explore the rose garden of Palermo and the park across the way, then go to the Plaza de Mayo (where the women still protest for their missing children from the Dirty War) and Puerto Madero, maybe have time to see Avenida Florida and Galerios Pacificos. there is so much to see here, so many different neighborhoods to explore and only 4 days! on Sunday night i will catch my flight to Toronto and within a week and half i will be working again in Chautauqua. it is very hard to believe all of this. i am not looking forward to talking in English all the time, i have very much enjoyed my year of Spanish. though with Al we will talk in Spanish through emails and on skype. other than Al i have 2 friends that also speak Spanish, so i will have some opportunities to practice the language, but i will be teaching in English and with my family and most of my friends talking in English. Amy does not speak much Spanish, and her boyfriend does, so with her i am talking English and with her boyfriend Spanish, so it is good middle ground practicing for now, until the real shock of being home again after being away for 10 months. please have patience with me as i do not know how i will adjust to this big change.

¿como andan? ¿todo bien? nos vemos dentro de un rato. cuidense.

un beso,

Annie

mendoza, argentina

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

we are now in Mendoza, which is in western central Argentina, 7 hours east of Santiago, Chile. We were able to find a cheaper hostal which is noisy but has a nice kitchen and we have a dorm room to ourselves, I sleep on the top bunk and Al on the bottom. We have been relaxing, cooking excellent meals accompanied with wonderful wines. The specialty of Mendoza are their Malbec wines, a dry red that is smoother than a Cabernet Sauvignon. we have been cooking pasta dishes, bruschetta, lasagna, tonight we made chicken empanadas. we have been going running in the park San Martin which has a lake with and island inside, we had a picnic on the island with our friend Lisa (who is studying abroad here) last weekend. last friday we had our first carne asado, which is the famous grilled argentine beef. we grilled 4 kilos of beef, Al and i prepared a salad and had wonderful Malbec wine and a cookie cake for dessert. dinner is cooked around 10pm, and we started the asado at 11pm, didnt eat until after midnight and did not leave until 3am. it is typical for the youth to go out dancing after an asado from 3-6am, but we were too tired so we just came back to go to sleep. on tuesday night we made empanadas, beef and veggie, with Lisa and 5 of her friends, 2 of whom are from Mendoza. that is how we learned and decided to prepare chicken empanadas tonight. we went to a gospel scripture study at the Cathedral that when we got there was all elderly people, but very friendly and were so happy that ¨the spring has arrived, the youth are here to liven us up!¨they kept saying, were very interesed in our stories of the missions we worked with in Ecuador and Peru. Al has been souvenier shopping, his flight leaves to return home in a week and a half.

on wednesday we went wine tasting in Maipu, an hour by bus from Mendoza. we walked many kilometers between  different wineries, tasting and getting tours of the cellars. we ended up buying 3 bottles of wine even though we planned on buying 1. it is so cheap here we cannot help but take advantage.

tomorrow we will go running again. on wednesday we are taking a bus to Cordoba. my plans for after Al leaves are still undetermined though i am working on a few ideas. i have been invited to go to Valparaiso, Chile for 5 days at the end of May with some friends, i may do that and then head east to Buenos Aires and Uruguay? or stay closer to Mendoza/Cordoba and look for a piano to practice on? or go south into Patagonia a bit? hopefully soon i will figure out my plans for my final weeks here before flying home in June. i cannot believe its already May, when we arrived in South America in August. more than 8 months being away now and it has gone by so quickly. we have meet so many people, worked in such diverse settings, adjusted to living in dozons of hostals in 4 countries, learned to prepare so many new recipies.

i will be teaching music again at Chautauqua again this summer, moving in there a week after flying home.

hope you all are well. buenas noches.

un beso,

Annie 

¡ya llegamos en peru! we arrived in Peru!

Friday, January 15th, 2010
after leaving Puerto Lopez we took an all day bus to Cuenca where we spent 2 nights in this beautiful colonial city. after meeting a swiss couple and a spanish couple in the hostal and borrowing their guide books ... [Continue reading this entry]

bendita lal luz

Saturday, November 7th, 2009
we dont have much time to write because we need to eat dinner and go dancing in a little while but i thought i would write a bit. on sunday we went to the country with the Oñas and had ... [Continue reading this entry]

street outreach

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
today was our second day with CENIT doing street outreach. we take a bus to the south of the city every morning and meet up with the groups of other volunteers to go to our markets. al and i are working in ... [Continue reading this entry]

Off to the Missions

Monday, August 24th, 2009
In about 12 hours we will begin our long travel day.  We start at 8:30am in Buffalo Airport, to Charlotte, to Miami, to Bogotá, ending in Quito around 11pm.  Ecuador does not practice Day Light Savings, so they did not ... [Continue reading this entry]

20 days until we leave!

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
So i have two more weeks of teaching here at Chautauqua until i go home for the long weekend and get myself ready to leave. it feels like there is so much to do and not that much to do ... [Continue reading this entry]

mother teresa and other thoughts

Monday, July 20th, 2009
only 36 days until we leave! our flight leaves at 8am on tuesday august 25th. as it approaches, it is starting to become more real to me that we really are going for a long time. 9 months is no ... [Continue reading this entry]

info about volunteer org

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
It's July now and the countdown to our adventure has begun. Al and I are leaving in only 48 days! The first part of our journey will be spent in Quito volunteering with CENIT, located in the El Camal market ... [Continue reading this entry]

you know you’re a traveller when…

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
You know you are a traveller when: you spell traveller with two l’s. (Every other English speaker in the world uses the British spelling.) you know what a “gap year” is. (Year between uni (university) and career in Britain, Australia and New ... [Continue reading this entry]