It's hard to believe that it's been over a month since John and I have been back to the United States! We've both started our internships; John has an actuarial internship in Richmond, VA, and I'm interning with the Church of the Brethren in Illinois. Even though we've been back for a while now, Argentina is still on our minds. We regret that we never wrote full posts about our trips to see a Boca Jouniors' fútbol game, the mothers at Plaza de Mayo, and the Christina Kirchner rally. The time commitment of our internships prevents us from writing a lot about these experiences. However, we hope you enjoy these pictures:

Thanks for reading!
Jamie and John

We're back in the United States! John and I have been very busy during the past month, and we've been having a great time. Now that we're back home (and don't have anymore homework!), we're looking forward to finishing off some last blog posts that we weren't able to write earlier.

There are probably 1,000,000 things to do in Buenos Aires. We had a blast going to a couple tango shows, enjoyed exploring many of the city's museums, and loved walking around the city and seeing all of the unique architecture. However, weekend after weekend, John and I kept finding ourselves back at the artisan fair in our neighborhood. The "Recoleta Fair" is always mentioned in the tour books and websites. When we first went, we enjoyed walking to all of the stalls and seeing what the different artists make. They set up their stands along the sidewalks of the park that is located beside the famous Recoleta Cemetery (where Eva Peron and Sarmiento are buried), and as you walk along, it's pretty obvious why it's such an awesome place for tourists to go.

Since this weekend fair takes place so close to where our homestays were, John and I found ourselves going there for Saturday and/or Sunday dinners. The food stands there sold, among other delicious foods, choripán (a delicious sausage sandwich), which quickly became one of our favorite Argentine foods; we ate it more times than I can remember. Also, in the middle of the fair there's a large, grassy area where multiple musicians and other performers set up to share their talent. People sit and lay all over this lawn to enjoy the good weather and the music. As we kept going back, we realized that the majority of the people who sit in the grassy area are also locals. How did we figure this out? We noticed that almost everyone in that area was drinking "mate." Now in case you didn't already know, mate is a tea-like drink that is extremely popular in Argentina. One of the neat aspects of mate is that it is traditionally a very social drink. Once we got our own mate supplies, we were able to enjoy drinking mate with our friends in the park as well.

Basically, the Recoleta Fair is amazing. It's got wonderful stalls, talented musicians, and lots of grass to relax on (a treasure in the city!). I hope you enjoy these pictures from our favorite weekend hang-out spot.

Thanks for reading! - Jamie and John

I love rainbows…a lot. Seriously, forever I’ve loved rainbows. I could write a whole blog post about how awesome rainbows are, but this post is supposed to be about the recycled park that John and I went to during our Spring Break. Here´s the story (from A to Z): John and I were already planning on going to see the penguins, and we were looking at what other things we could do in that area. Our guidebook mentioned “Parque El Desafío.” The story behind this place is that a grandpa started building a park out of trash for his grandkids, and he worked on it so much that it became the largest “recycled park” in the world…whatever that means. We thought it sounded awesome, so we took the bus from the town we were staying in (Trelew) to the neighboring town (Gaiman). After about 30 minutes of searching, we found it. It was closed! Apparently, the gentleman passed away a couple years ago, and the park has been closed since. No worries! I honestly spent almost an hour enjoying the entrance to the park. He had taken pop cans and bottles and made them into flowers (just so you know, flowers are also one of my favorite things). He had painted them, and then put them up in rainbow(!) order. I know it sounds like a silly thing to look at/take pictures of for an hour, but I thought it was absolutely beautiful. Needless to say, I loved it…and John did too. So, we hope you enjoy these pictures:

That's it for now!
Jamie y John

John and I have had midterms and finals this week, so we're sorry that we won't be able to post any of our recent adventures. Also, we'll be leaving for Spring Break tomorrow and will not be able to post till we return. The good news is that we'll have lots of pictures and experiences to share about when we return...You can look forward to hearing about us seeing penguins in Punta Tombo and exploring the Andes around Bariloche!

On to more adventures,
Jamie and John

On a more serious note, we want to let you all know that we and all of the other program participants were not involved in the Once train crash yesterday. Even though we are not personally involved with anyone who was killed or injured, we have still witnessed how the whole city has been suffering after this accident. We hope the victims and their families will be in your thoughts and prayers. -- Jamie and John

John and I were able to experience something new for us this past weekend: Carnival in Buenos Aires!

I definitely missed having Fasnacht Day this year, but I think I could also get to used to the Buenos Aires version of the Carnival tradition. First of all, Monday and Tuesday were federal holidays, so John and I had a really long weekend. We got to do a lot of new things over the weekend; for instance, we explored the Ecological Reserve, and we had a wonderful experience worshipping at a United Methodist Church. However, the biggest cultural experience was definitely running into a Carnival celebration. On our walk home from church, John and I started to hear loud drumming. When we got closer, we realized that there was a huge party going on in the middle of the street. There was a gated-off area where people were dancing in crazy costumes. There was a band (complete with accordion!), as well as seperate drummers that participated with the dancers. And to make the whole experience crazier, most of the people in the croud had cans of shaving cream, and they were spraying it all over the place. It was such a crazy thing that we decided that we simply had to run to my house and get the camera. Unfortunately, the internet is being slow today, so we won't be able to post all of the videos and pictures that we took. Hopefully we'll be able to do that soon. But in the meantime, we hope you enjoy this photo and video! -- Jamie and John

Hey Everyone!

We haven't had much time to write this week, but we wanted to post some pictures.

Our school is located on the third floor of Centro Cultural Borges. In one of the hallways, there are some large windows that look out to the city. Conveniently, there are also some comfortable chairs that face this wonderful view. So, here are some pictures that we've taken from those windows. As you can see, there isn't a screen on the window. We actually haven't seen any windows with screens since we've been here. Luckily, the bugs haven't been a problem! Anyways, we hope you enjoy seeing this view that have become part of our daily routine.

That's it for now. John's Aunt and Uncle arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday, so we're looking forward to spending time with them this weekend. Also, our school has a trip planned to go to an Estancia in Luján tomorrow, so we're excited to do that as well.

Hasta luego,
Jamie and John

This is a few days late, but John and I want to write about the city tour that we went on last Friday.

Since we don't have class on Fridays, la Fundación (our school) has several arranged trips for us, and this city tour was the first one.  We saw some of the big tourist places in the city.  We had seen pictures of these places before, so it was really neat to see them in person.  We also had our own tour guide, who was a wealth of information about the history and culture of Buenos Aires.  First, we went to la Plaza de Mayo.  Even though we had stumbled upon la Plaza de Mayo earlier in the week, it was great to hear all of the history from the guide.  Next, we went to the barrio of La Boca.  If you've ever seen the pictures of the really colorful buildings in Buenos Aires, you were looking at La Boca.  We learned from the tour guide that the reason that the buildings are painted so many colors is because they used leftover paint from the boats that docked there.  There were a lot of artisans, street vendors, and tango dancers in the street.  They gave us time there to walk around and explore.  Here are a couple of the pictures we took:

The other part of our tour was a trip to the cemetary. I was confused at first about why we were going to the cemetary on the city tour, but I soon found out why. This cemetary was definitely a work of art, and it didn't look anything like what I think of as a cemetary. There are rows and rows of these big and ornate mausoleums. Each mausoleum had it's own personality and style. One of the highlights of this trip was to see Eva Perón's mausoleum. The tour guide told us quite the story about how her body finally ended up there. I don't have enough time to write it now, but it's definitely worth looking up.

That's it for now!

Jamie and John

During the past few days, John and I have enjoyed exploring the area around la Fundación. The school is located in an old part of town. The actual building that the school is housed in is more than 100 years old. It is now a cultural center, so we get to walk past a lot of cool paintings and photographs on the way to class. The school is less than a block from Florida, which is a pedestrian street. This street is very upscale and touristy. We've enjoyed walking on it, but we'll probably try to avoid it in the future. Lavalle is another pedestrian street near the school, and we've enjoyed that one a lot more. Yesterday, we walked down Lavalle with our new friend Nora, and we got some empanadas for lunch. Then, we took our lunches to Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest avenue in the world. There is a wide area in the middle with el Obelisco and places for people to sit. El Obelisco is an obelisk like the Washington Monument except that it's smaller. We had a good time while we ate and talked there.

John had class in the afternoon, but when he got out we started to walk home. We happened to make a wrong turn and we ended up walking the wrong way for a bit. When we finally realized our mistake the map told us that we were only three blocks from la Plaza de Mayo and la Casa Rosada. If you've seen Evita then you'll know what those are. La Casa Rosada is the Argentine White House and la Plaza de Mayo is the large plaza in front of it. It was from the balcony of la Casa Rosada that Perón and Evita would address the masses gathered in la Plaza de Mayo. It's common for the people to hold protests in the plaza so we got to encounter one of those. We couldn´t quite figure out what they were protesting, though. Here's a picture of us in front of la Casa Rosada: 

Now it's time for some more adventures!

Jamie and John

It's crazy to think that John and I will be in Buenos Aires in less than a month! We hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, and we hope you'll enjoy reading our blog next semester.

¡Feliz Navidad!
Jamie and John