Trip to Córdoba 8-12.7

Hola!

[warning for lots and lots of pictures!]

Thursday the 9th was Argentina's independence day ("9 de julio", a lot of streets are named after that day), which meant a day off, and since we don't have class on Fridays anyway, 8 of us exchange students plus one more friend decided to go on a trip to Córdoba. It is a "nearby" city by Argentine standards, which means a 9h bus ride away, but we took a night bus both ways so it wasn't that bad.

Exploring the guidebook

Thursday

We left from Retiro station in Buenos Aires at 11 p.m. on Wednesday. We had been upgraded from "semi-cama" (a bit more comfortable than normal bus seats, recline a lot more though) to "cama" (really wide and soft seats, recline a lot too), so that was nice. We arrived in Córdoba at 8 a.m. on Thursday. We decided to spend the first day just checking out the city, so we walked around and saw the main square, some nice churches and parks. Then me and "los suecos" (the Swedes) decided to visit the Fine Arts Museum Evita, and the others continued walking around town. The museum turned out to have very little to do with Evita Perón, but there were a lot of paintings from the Córdoba province. And the building was nice! In the evening we went to a good and affordable parrilla (grill) restaurant for dinner.

The main square in Córdoba

Los chicos on the main square trying to figure out where to go

Hannah, me, Charlotte and Vincent in front of a church by the main square

Another nice church

Lunch: locro (traditional beef and corn stew) and humita (traditional corn stew), both were kind of strange and really sweet

Found a park with these kind of rings for every year since I don't know when, and here are us '92-kids posing

Las chichas suecas y yo en el museo

We did find one Evita in the museum that was called, yes, Evita

Friday

On Friday we took a bus for 2h to a small nearby town called Capilla del Monte, which was supposed to be good for hiking. After a breakfast that consisted of coffee, juice and way more grilled ham and cheese sandwiches than we ordered, we headed to El Zapato, a local sight that consists of a shoe-shaped rock. From there we started hiking over the rocks to a big dam, and after reaching that we kept going and had a picnic on top of a hill. The weather was amazing, at some point we were even walking around in t-shirts! After the picnic we found our way back down, ended up in the middle of some old guy's farm with ducks and sheep, found the road and walked back to Capilla del Monte. There we enjoyed the last sunlight by walking around and sitting on terraces in between, and in the evening we took the bus back to Córdoba.

Take care of the nature!

The famous shoe, El Zapato, with my friend Nina.

On top of the hill in front of the lake created by the dam.

Gorgeous mountains, or "las sierras" as these ones are called.

Chilling on the dam.

Picnic on top of the hill, Charlotte and Axel are happy.

Saturday

On Saturday we did a small day trip to Alta Gracia, a small town about 45 minutes by bus from Córdoba. There we visited Che Guevara's childhood home, saw the ancient Jesuitic estancia (ranch) and went to check out Lourdes Virgin's sanctuary, a pilgrimage destination.

La casa del Che.

Little Che sitting on the porch.

La estancia jesuítica, the jesuitic ranch, in the center of Alta Gracia.

Will try to make this the cover picture of this blog.

Feels pretty cool to be in a country with orange trees.

Nice artificial lake in the center of the town.

Misja and Loek trying to figure out where to go next.

Bought a home made tortilla here, which was basically a 2 cm thick bread. It tasted pretty good, especially when hot!

Walking to the pilgrimage place with our two companion dogs, which I didn't appreciate (even thought they were harmless, they were stray dogs with lice and all and they wouldn't stop following us).

A lot of people gathered at Lourdes Virgin's sanctuary. It seemed that families were bringing their babies there to be blessed. 

The walls around the area were full of there small plaques where people had written their thanks to the Virgin for good things in their lives.

In the evening we took the night bus back to our dear home, Buenos Aires, where we arrived safely (but very tired) on Sunday morning. All in all, a great trip!

First two weeks

Hola a todos!

It's been over two weeks now since I got to Buenos Aires, and things are going pretty well. I'm still living with the family, and life here is very comfortable, but in just a couple of days I'm moving to an apartment in the same neighborhood, Palermo. My "host family" has been a great support, but it's also going to be nice to live on my own.

My room for these first two weeks.

My current home street (it has 13 lanes in one direction!).

Palermo is one of the best and safest neighborhoods in Bs As to live in, since there are a lot of restaurants, cafés and bars which means there are a lot of people even at night. Almost all of the other exchange students in my Spanish class live here too.

A beautiful park in Palermo. My new apartment will be in one of those buildings that are closest to the park.

Parque 3 de febrero in Palermo, amazing place to go for a walk or a jog

The Spanish class started on July 1st, and we have classes Monday to Thursday at 13.00-16.00. We are just 9 people in the class, and we are separated into two groups: A2 with 3 people and B1 with 6 people (my group). The other people in the class are from Sweden, Holland and Belgium, and we have already spent a lot of time together and we get along well :) Last weekend we were on a trip together, which I will tell about in the next post.

Some of los intercambios posing outside the zoo in Palermo on our Sunday walk. Here are (starting from the left) Chantal from Holland, Filippa and Axel from Sweden and Vincent and Misja from Holland.

My Spanish is improving, I'm able to manage in everyday situations such as in a supermarket, café, restaurant, pharmacy, ticket office etc (with a few "¿perdón?" of course), and hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll be able to follow my classes too. I'm already quite used to the local accent, with the "sh" sound for every "ll" and "y" (example: yo me llamo => "sho me shhamo"), and the use of "vos" instead of "tú", but it's going to take some more time before I use it fluently myself.

A cool painting from Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) that we visited with my host mom and her friend.

Self portrait by Frida Kahlo.

The weather has been quite sunny, 10-15°C, but yesterday it rained and today was freezing cold. So it varies quite a lot. But at least there seems to be many sunny days even in winter, which makes us North Europeans happy.

The "obelisco" at Plaza de la República, located at the end of the same street as ITBA, my university.

So that was all for now, will keep writing when I have more time (and something new to write about).

¡Saludos de acá, chau!