Córdoba

Hey, my ches!

I júst figured óut how to do açcents añd all that fun stuff... so that will make my posts a little more authentic, if not more ínteresting.

So. Now that I've shown off my new skills, I'll try to begin compensating for being so M.I.A. lately. Brace yourself. Last weekend, my program took all 20 students -- enormous, right? -- to Córdoba, a fairly large city to the west of Buenos Aires. We left on an absurdly early flight Friday morning and returned Sunday night. A surprising amount of activities were accomplished in that time period! We visited some seriously beautiful lakes, some really unspectacular 'lakes' (which turned out to be the dried-out river beds that hung out just around the corner from the lake we took a bus to go see, but never did...), climbed a pretty lovely mountain, lunched at the top, fell down many times on the way back, etc. The mountain, Cumbrecita, is in a region outside Córdoba that has a strong German influence and basically looked liked a casual little alpine town... minus the fact that the terrain was nearly identical to that of California. I won't lie, it made me a little homesick. Truly nice and refreshing, though, to hang out where the air is fresh and the only sound was my friends laughing, the wind, and birds. Sounds cheesy, but it was exactly what I needed. That, and the exercise of climbing the damn mountain.

We also got to spend a considerable amount of time in Córdoba, which was a clean, safe (feeling) city that is 10% students... I loved running around the beautiful poop-free streets clutching my obnoxious camera, surrounded by young people who all seemed happy and more interested in enjoying the stunning weather than eyeballing the foreign kids. Anyway, I think it's obvious that I needed a break from Buenos Aires, and I got it, not a moment too soon. All in all, a lovely weekend. I genuinely like all the other kids on my program, so traveling with them to a place like Córdoba was a real treat.

On to the next post. I won´t even say goodbye....