Author Archives: pricemv

A Day to Relax!

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My time in Argentina has been so busy. I feel as though I have no time to stop and think. We have had so many excursions and wonderful outings to learn new things. My brain feels like it may explode at any moment. Might I add that I am learning all this new information in another language as well. So it adds on to my tiredness.

I finally had a whole day to relax and practically do nothing. Of course there was still learning involved but it was not as intensive as the previous outings. We got to attend a Gaucho Party. We rode a bus to an Estancia, in the middle of nowhere and had a relaxing day. The folks who lived their prepared lunch for us. We had carne asada, which is a type of cooked meat. It was delicious. We also had green salad and potato salad. They served us wine and soda to drink.

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After lunch we got to ride horses. I love horses and haven’t rode one since I was little. So this was treat for me. This house is surrounded by fields, but for some reason we could only ride around the yard. So there wasn’t very much room to explore. I think it’s because we had such a big group and they didn’t have enough horses for everyone plus the guides. But it was still fun anyways. My horse was ready to run once I got on him. So we made due with the small space that we had.

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Later we got to watch a Gaucho dance. It was very interesting. The movements that they do and the passion that is involved was great to watch. The guys were very protective of their girls and one guy even stabbed a knife into the ground to scare some other guys off. It was an eventful day and we even got to see the city from the outside on our way back. All the other times that we had left the city I was sleeping. So this was the first time in 4 weeks that I had actually seen the city from outside city limits!

Melissa

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Wearing My Patience Pants

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I’ve worn these particular pants quite a bit since I’ve been here. But after this week and noticing multiple times I decided it was time to mention it. I have several pairs for several occasions (which is good because laundry is one washer for 2 floors and hang dry only) that I’ll explain.

I had to roll up my pants because it was so insanely hot that day by the lake!

The first is just rehearsal venting. My fellow dancers (or other thespians/musicians/etc.) or my friends that try to make plans with me understand that rehearsals are a long, unpredictable, and can often be painful and boring times. I’m used to that. This week’s schedule was a lot of rehearsal and not a lot of class because the shows are quickly approaching. I’ve been doing my best to take advantage of the down time but sometimes it just takes a lot of positive attitude and wearing of patience pants to get through.

More interestingly, another occasion for patience pants is queues. I prefer to refer to lines as this because it seems less annoying to wait in a queue for the loo or in this case for lunch than it does to wait in line and I’m trying to incorporate others’ fun vocabulary into my own. Anyway, I’ve noticed what is perhaps a difference in cultural expectations when it comes to these situations. Without pointing fingers, there seems to a nationality pattern to which of the other students “respect” the line of people waiting for lunch and follow in an “orderly” manner around the serving table, and which “take cuts” and don’t wait their turn or “randomly” walk up to the table/goes around “backward” and other behaviors of the like. I want to clarify that the words in quotes are because I’m guessing that the adjectives I’m using to describe their behavior is subjective to my expectations when it comes to how a queue works. It has taken a lot of self control when I’m tired and hungry to not get upset with people not acting the way I think they should. I just have to remind myself that no one is trying to ruffle my feathers on purpose and they probably think it’s silly to stand and wait for slow pokes when they are hungry and could just go around.

Thirdly, I’ve realized that some sign language/miming don’t translate. Unfortunately, I can only think of one example for you right now. When I understand what my Italian roommate is trying to communicate to me and I want to show her I agree, I’ve found I point first to myself and then hold up two fingers. Silly, “two” and “too” are not synonyms in Italian. She probably thinks I don’t understand and just smiles politely to avoid my further humiliation and her confusion.

Moment of the week:
Kelsey: “Gwen, your English has really improved!”
Gwen: “What’s ‘improved’?”
Precious 🙂

Now, this is the part where my friends, family and curious strangers should skip ahead to where it says RESUME if short on time (that is to say, the next few paragraphs are just nonsense, do not follow the blog assignment and is mostly a convenient way to tell a story to my friends).

*Catchy title that my dear Marissa (WOU roommate) would help me think of if we were together*
It all began on my very first day. I walked into the previously described, interesting bathroom here and tried to open the middle stall door.

Two open stalls and the locked one…

It was locked. I found this weird since I thought I was alone but just used a different one. Time passed and my roommates arrived and on the first morning we found out that both Gabi and I had heard the same weird banging noises in the middle of the night. They sounded like they were coming from the closet. This continued and it became a running joke that someone lived in our closet, or that there were body parts in there or ya know, whatever. Gabi also mentioned that she had heard footsteps several nights and had always assumed it was me coming in wearing squeaky sneakers. My sneakers do not squeak and I usually go to bed at the same time. I mostly ignored this since I hadn’t heard any squeaking.

I forget the exact order of events but as time went on and our joke progressed, it was decided that someone had moved into the mysterious middle stall and is living there which is why it’s always locked. Also, it is important to note that the idea of an alien in our closet was not completely rejected. In fact, the most likely explanation for all of this is that the middle bathroom stall and our wardrobes are actually vanishing cabinets (for those of you that are lost, that is a Harry Potter reference), this makes sense because we’ve yet to discover a more logical reason behind the noises and locked stall door. Besides, vanishing cabinets are logical.

Alright, 3 or 4 nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and heard a weird noise. The longer I listened the clearer the sound became and in a shiver, Gabi’s complaints came flooding back to me. The sneakers. Loud and clear there were footsteps in our room. I rolled over and no one was there. In a slight panic I rolled back over and tried desperately to fall asleep again, eventually the sound faded. I recounted the episode at breakfast and realized just how much it had spooked me. This wasn’t my typical it’s-dark-and-there-is-probably-a-boogie-man feeling it was a bit more of the nervous-someone-followed-me-home-at-night feeling supported by smart and sensible Gabi’s animated reaction to my finally having heard the squeaks. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, it was concluded that whoever lived in that middle stall was using the vanishing wardrobes and wandering around our room at inappropriate hours in inappropriate footwear. Two nights later I experienced the same thing and when I reported my hearings I was clarifying that the footsteps were nearer to Gabi’s bed than my own and having never discussed it before, Gabi agreed.

This has nothing to do with the story (she got her own sheets and was stuffing away the provided ones) but it shows the wardrobes and I find it interesting that some people believe the little white circle thing you see is an orb…a sign of a ghost…ooooo!

You all think I’m crazy. And paranoid. And just in case, I’d like to say this is mostly a joke causing good entertainment and making it much more interesting to be trapped inside this old, catholic, boy’s boarding school with no exposure to the outside world for many hours at a time.

One angle of the view outside the window on the boys floor. The building on the mid-right is a studio about 4 floors down.

RESUME

“Don’t blink”
The day had finally come! Our lakes and town bus tour of Austria! I’d looked forward to this since I first signed up for the program. Almost 40 people signed up for the all day excursion and we loaded a double decker bus and drove off at about 9am on 5 hours of sleep. This is the “don’t blink” part….being so tired my eye lids were heavy but the view was absolutely too spectacular to risk even blinking. I figured that the desire to glue my eye balls to the window would let up eventually and I could nap. Nope. The torturously beautiful mountains and lake was our backdrop all day long. I decided to bring the view home with me since it was pointed out that it would be hard to get one of the cute, live, ducks through customs. Scenery is obviously easier to fit in a suitcase. Anyway, the sun was shining! Our first day off when it wasn’t pouring! I even had a lovely red sun burn to prove it.
I think it will be easier to walk you through our day by pictures and captions.

This was my first glimpse of the scenery once off the bus. You can kind of see the lake and mountains and other dancers! We had about an hour here. It was incredibly hot and I bought an iced coffee and played on the swings and sat by the lake with the ducks!

Destination 2 and 3

Cont.

After a bit of a drive on the bus where our back ground started out as American pop music and slowly digressed to bad 90’s American pop music, we arrived at the second stop. I dangled my feet in the water while some friends swam and some took pictures! But the pictures simply don’t do the view justice!

Our third destination was lunch and city. We wandered a lot though the beautiful streets and buildings looking for food. We didn’t have the time for and didn’t want to pay for some of the tourist traps. Finally, hot and tired we got some food. This picture was more for the sake of “wow, look at the architecture and natural view behind lunch” but conveniently shows Gwen and Kelsey from the conversation above!

Destination 4. We didn’t actually get to stop here…

This picture was taken from the bus window as the rain that kept us from our 4th tour stop began to let up. It was so stormy so suddenly that we saw people in bikinis rushing around and boats filling with water and our bus began to leak. Those pictures didn’t really turn out. The lighting was amazing!

As compensation, we all got free cake and hot chocolate! It was fancy. Also at the cafe there was a cat and a happy atmosphere with content people having conversation with friends! It was a good way to end the trip!

This basically concludes Saturday’s adventure. It’s late and I need to rest up to get through week 4 including 4 performances! For more pictures, see Facebook within the week.

Until next time,

Emily

Bucking, Barbequing, and Bailando

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Gaucho Party!

My journey started by crossing the Paraná River. I left the city of Rosario and crossed into the province conveniently named Entre Rios (Between Rivers) because two rivers form its borders. Swamp lands scattered with cows scrolled out the window of our private bus. We finally arrived at a ranch that sat at the top of a hill. It was so nice to get out of the city and breathe country air. I loved being able to see the horizon as my eyes stretched along the rolling hills. The horizon in Argentina is not painted by the beautiful Rocky Mountains like in the Pacific Northwest, but there was still a vast beauty the spread for miles around our peaceful spot on the hill.

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 We walked around taking pictures as we got settled. A group of us went over to two horses tied up on a fence. The dark one on the left had its ears down and seemed tense, so I left her alone and pet the pretty lady to the right.

Although we did have to sign waivers, this was to most unorganized horse riding I have ever heard of. There was only one person helping our whole group, so people that had never ridden before were on their own. I helped some people and I even adjusted someone’s stirrups. When a girl got on to that dark horse, it spun around anxiously taking her in a circle. Neither of them were comfortable and the girl asked to come down. The one worker helped her down, but then offered the horse to someone else like nothing happened. This time, a guy got on and the horse spun again, but he kept his composure as the ranch hand calmed the horse down. He continued to ride the dark horse around for a while, but you could tell who was boss (the horse). I waited for a while until all the people with jitters got worn out. The guy riding the dark horse did well, but was done quickly and asked if I wanted to relieve him. There was a taller horse I had my eye on because I am tall, but what this horse lacked in height she made up in attitude. I have only ridden horses a hand full of times and there was always someone guiding, but I remained confident from the beginning. I got the horse going with a simple kissing noise and a little nudge. Most people had to resort to kicking their horses to get them to even budge. Most of the horses were classic pony ride horses that are so calm they might as well be passed out.

ImageI was glad I got the dark diva.

For my first time riding solo, I felt like I handled everything as well as anyone could hope for. After a couple laps around the shed people were complementing me on how well I was doing. Mostly because I was actually moving I’m sure. I took my horse from guiding her walk to nudging her with a couple firm kisses up into a trot. Being at a steady brisk pace felt really nice. We couldn’t go far before we reached the small boundary we were limited to. Probably not a bad thing since they most of the horses didn’t go anyway. On the way back I opened up a little more encouraging her to “Giddy up”. We went from a trot into a steady canter before we slowed back down into a trot and then walked around a little more. I did as many laps as I could before it was finally time for lunch. I thanked the dark diva for an incredible ride. I had butterflies stirring, but I remand cool and confident.

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Our lunch cooking over hot coals.

For lunch we had amazing barbecue! We got to enjoy different cuts of meat that were all carefully prepared over the coals of an open fire. My personal favorite was the ribs. They were a little tough, but they were so flavorful I could take a small bite and work on it for a while and enjoy its rich flavor the whole time. Before we stuffed our faces with meat, our entre was a traditional food called “empanadas”. They are like mini calzones that can be filled with different kinds of food. The most common I have had are ham and cheese or beef and egg with green olives. They are very delicious and a great way to get your appetite going.

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My attempted dancing a traditional dance from Argentina.

After lunch, we enjoyed watching traditional Argentine Dance. This was not the tango born for the cities of Argentina, but the folk dance of the gauchos who were the cowboys in the country. I was under the impression the dancers were going to teach us, but right before intermission they said they were going to pick some people out of the crowd to dance. Of course, I got picked and did my best, but there was no instruction. I enjoyed trying to pick up the dance from a pretty little local girl. After the dance show, we got to eat some delicious dessert. We ate some traditional pastries like flan and another mass off yellow that looked like eggs because it was eggs mixed with sugar and lemon. After we enjoyed our dessert, we relaxed a little bit before our bus ride home.

Chau for now,

Cain

Adios, Barcelona

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Good morning – or good evening, depending on where you are. Although “morning” is a bit of a stretch, since it’s 3:45 am right now and still dark out. I woke up at 3 and couldn’t fall back asleep because I was too excited! I love Barcelona and hope to come back someday, but I’m not sad about leaving. I saw lots of places, tried new things, made friends, and used my time well. I’m ready to go home, with lots of good memories and no regrets.

Besides, there’s peanut butter at home.

And I miss my cat.

Before I left, my ideas about Barcelona weren’t inaccurate, but they were incomplete. For example, I knew that Catalan was widely spoken, but I didn’t know how proud many people here are of Catalan and their roots. I’ve learned a lot from living in Spain that I don’t think I could learn from a book.

However, I wish I could have interacted with more Spanish people. I did get to talk to people a little at work, and sometimes I made smalltalk with cashiers and waiters, but I didn’t really get to know anyone who lives here. I didn’t know how to meet people. That is, I didn’t know how to meet people safely. Plenty of people approached me, but they were almost always a) trying to pickpocket, b) asking for directions and possibly also trying to pickpocket, c) creepily hitting on me, or d) trying to sell me stuff.

There are a lot of things I love about Barcelona that I’m going to miss:

The architecture

The ancient buildings in el Gotic, which are older than any buildings in the United States

The Metro! It’s so convenient. I never had to worry about finding a parking space.

The food, the diversity, the history…Barcelona is a beautiful city and I’m glad I got the chance to live here, even if it was only for a month.

– Cicely

Vegetarian Life in France

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As I prepared for my time abroad, I was filling out a questionnaire for my home stay placement when I came to the section inquiring about an dietary needs, including specifying a need for vegetarian and vegan diets. As a vegetarian, I became slightly worried that my request would make my placement more difficult because I knew beforehand that vegetarianism is much, much less common in France than in the United States. When I arrived in my home stay, my host family did seem surprised that I was a vegetarian, but my entire time here my home and school have worked hard to provide me with meals sans viande.

At home it is common for people to have meals without meat, and finding alternatives is rarely a problem, but if it were not directly addressed, it would be nearly impossible for me to eat lunch and dinner with my school and host family as EVERY lunch has meat and nearly every dinner has meat. And even regular meat eaters might be a little frightened by the duck pate served:

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In this picture you can see my alternative of tomato and melon. The chefs at the school seemed a little lost as to what could be suitable for the vegetarians in our program and this was most apparent with our packed lunches for our excursions. While most students received a tuna, egg, and tomato sandwich for lunch, there was one day in which the main part of my meal was two tomatoes and a melon slice. Quiche and cheese filled croissants were common for lunch, but to the relief of myself and my program coordinator, they have evolved from serving a green salad every meal . My host mother is wonderful at making our food without the meat or making something specifically for me, a great relief of my initial worry of its affect on my home stay. My experience with the food here made me want to look in to the life of a vegetarian in France (without all the assistance I received!)

What I discovered researching on the internet was incredibly interesting. A large population of France does not have much choice in becoming a vegetarian as it is law that schools, hospitals, retirement homes, and prisons are required to have animals products in all meals with meat at a specific frequency. I found the blog of a woman living in France with a young son who decided he wanted to become vegetarian. When she went to the school to discuss alternative foods, she was told that vegetarianism is not a recognized diet and it was required that they serve him meat, he would have to eat around it. I cannot even imagine trying to maintain a vegan diet, as what doesn’t have meat almost always has other animal products.

I decided to ask my professor how difficult it is to be a vegetarian in France, and she told me that it is nearly impossible. There is some meat (pork and poultry are very common!) in basically all foods. The school and families work hard to work with vegetarian foreign exchange students, but if they were not so vigilant, it would be very difficult to maintain a healthy and balanced diet as a vegetarian in France.

While there are a great many things I love about France, and as sad as my upcoming departure will be, I must admit that I am extremely excited to return to home where it is easy to maintain my vegetarian diet!

Maggie

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The Last Week

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Hola,

Tomorrow is my last day in Barcelona – my last chance to see new things and re-visit favorite places. It’s weird to think that this might be my last day here ever. I’d like to come back someday, but I feel like the next time I get the opportunity to travel, I’d rather to somewhere I haven’t already been.

This week has been mostly about checking as many things off my to-do list as possible. I didn’t do everything I wanted to do, but I’m okay with that because it was a really long list. I kept adding stuff to it, more than I could really do in a month. But I did get to check a lot of things off! Like going back to the Cathedral and not getting turned away.

This week I’ve been trying to visit different neighborhoods. I like seeing the similarities and differences between them. For example, Poble Sec has pretty typical buildings and layout, but it’s unique because it has an old air raid shelter and it’s really into theater. I love how every neighborhood here has its own history, traditions, and personality.

Poble Sec

I have also been doing some souvenir shopping and getting gifts for my family and friends. I’m glad I left plenty of room in my suitcase. Earlier today I went shopping on La Rambla. I’ve been there before, but I didn’t get to have a good look around. There are a ton of booths down the street, mostly flowers, which is what the section I was on is famous for. There are also lots of little side streets with all kinds of stores.

A huge market just off La Rambla. Oh, and a Dunkin Doughnuts.

I also stumbled across a cool mural while I was exploring (getting lost in) La Rambla.

It’s of the Cathedral, I believe.

My internship is finished now. As much as I would have loved to just explore Barcelona all day, I did come to enjoy working at the clinic. I was the translator, receptionist, and tech support all in one. I feel like I was doing genuinely important and useful work, not making coffee or doing busywork. My boss, who is really nice, wrote me a letter of recommendation in addition to the WOU employer evaluation form, and she also gave me a gift basket of beauty supplies. The people who work there are so nice. I wish them the best.

I’ll be posting again tomorrow night with my thoughts on returning home. Hasta luego,

Cicely

There are TWO Minke Whales!!!

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I finally got to see The Great Barrier Reef, and even better, I got to snorkel on it! I even swam with whales. I cannot tell you how amazing these last couple of days have been. The first thing we had to do was board a ship called SpoilSport, but once we were on it was well worth all of the traveling we had to do to get here. The first day was a bit rocky for some people because they spent the majority of the day sick and throwing up over the side. Yeah, it was not pretty for anyone, but the crew was absolutely amazing. Before we even got on the ship they knew our names and a little about us. We learned later that they had studied up on us before we came on. Each and every one of them took time out of their day to make sure the sick people were ok and the non sick people (5 out of 22) were entertained as well. We have been seriously pampered these last couple of days.

Once most of the throwing up was over, we got into the water for the first time and it was a life changing experience. Since I can remember I have always wanted to come to Australia and see The Great Barrier Reef. Well, I can now proudly say I have! The one complaint I have is that my camera does not do it justice. It is full of life that is so vibrant that it is hard to take it all in.

It was nasty and stormy on the top but once I stuck my head in I saw a different world. It was calm and quiet and there were so many different fish swimming around unaffected by us. Before this trip I had never snorkelled and I was a little unsure of myself but our group leader Nick took me out personally and swam me around and kept checking on me, I am truly grateful to him. Now, I am happy to say that if i get the chance I will be the first  to pull on a wet suite(no easy task!) and jump right in =)

Although my three days spent on The Great Barrier Reef was more than I could ever describe the best moment was easily getting to swim with Minke Whales. We got woken up at 6:30 AM the second day to our program director yelling, ” Goodmorning everyone, it is 6:30 and we have whales! We have two Minke Whales at the back of the boat!” Let me tell you, I have never gotten out of bed, into a swimsuit, a wetsuit and snorkel gear so fast. I was in the water by 6:36 and swimming with whales. I am actually pretty proud of myself for that. There were two whales and they kept circling us. At one point I was about 10 ft away from one that was swimming directly below me. If I could have I would have swam with them for hours. This was easily my favorite snorkel and I cannot remember ever being so happy to wake up so early.  Katherine

Volcanoes, Hot Springs, and Toilet Paper

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This last week has passed in such a blur!! The homework load here is getting larger and larger, but it is seeming to go a lot smoother. My fluency has steadily gone up, and my awkwardness around the people here is lessening :).

Before getting into a discussion of my recent adventures, I realized that I forgot to discuss one of the major differences here. They have these little bins next to the toilet instead. I want really sure why that was, so I asked my host Mom about it. Turns out, the plumbing here is very very small, so you are not supposed to put the toilet paper in the toilet. You can ruin the plumbing for the whole house!!

And now adventure time! We have gone to two different volcanoes so far (Poas and Arenal). They were so beautiful <3 Poas has one of the largest craters in the world, and Arenal is still active. Arenal also happens to be perfectly cone shaped!!

I forgot my camera when going to Poas, so unfortunately I don’t have any pictures for here. But it was so beautiful. While we were at Arenal, we did two different side trips. The first was that we went to La Fortuna. It is one of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen <3. The hike was absolutely killer, but it was worth it :). We went there to swim and in general have a good time. After words, we were all pretty tired and sore, but the second trip made it even more worth it. We went to Baldi Hot Springs. It is a very famous hotel and spa/retreat here in Costa Rica. The water is heated by the volcano and reaches temperatures of 109 F and up. It’s so awesome!!!! The people in the CIS program that I have met since getting here were fantastic. We also made friends with a Tica (Costa Rican) couple here :D. They were so nice and patient while we tried to talk to them. They also spoke pretty decent English for if we got totally lost. We found out first funny sign too. They have signs that say “Restroons” rather than “Restrooms” at the spa!! We had to giggle a little at that!

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This weekend I will be traveling to one of the bigger self-sustaining communities here to work for my Environmental Anthropology class. I am so excited.

Until next time, happy travels!!
~Megan

Hey Jude

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Once the plane landed at Heathrow, I knew I was home. There was never a difficult adjustment to be made in this new yet all so unfamiliar city. From the outside it looks exactly like any city I used to live in or travel to back home. Busy people, large shops, quaint coffee spots, angry cars, loud buses, and fast undergrounds were all too familiar to me. The large difference seemed to be the emotional perks of finally being in London after all these years of dreaming it.

When I got all settled in it seemed more real. Thankfully the rooms are single person and spacious.

I’ve noticed not only is it hard to understand the older people because their accents are much more heavy, but I feel embarrassed to speak to people with my American accents. In my mind, the British accent is the epitome of intelligence and class, and the American accent is quite the opposite.  So when I speak to people I try not to speak too much for fear of sounding, for lack of a better word, like a dumb American. Also, their juices are very different from our juices back home. It seems all their juices are carbonated, so an apple juice tastes like apple juice and a Sprite, a lemonade tastes like a Sprite and a lemon in it, and their orange juice is just Orangina. I spoke to a lady about the cultural difference between England and America and she found it incredibly odd that juice would not be carbonated. She didn’t understand because she thought that meant they would all be the same but flat, so I tried to explain that they are not flat because they were never carbonated in the first place. She found that very weird. I also very much enjoy the idea of renting a bicycle for a pound and riding it around town and dropping it off anywhere with another bike rental stop. I wish we had that in America, i plan to use those at some point.

I’m still exited to see what else I can learn and do while I’m here.
Allison