Trip to the Farm - Asado!

The other day I went to an estancia, which is basically a farm outside of the city. It is such a cool culture out there. Instead of renting out a fancy hotel for a business party or family reunion, the people here head out to these resort-ish farms. The scenary is beautiful out there. When we got off the bus, we all loaded onto these wagons to get to the main part of the farm. We passed pastures of sheep, horses and cows and then we were greeted by some people holding baskets of empanadas. (soooooooooooooo good). Then we cruised around the area to check out what was there. There was a table of mate and thermoses so we tried some out. You fill the cup with the mate leaves, and then pour in the hot water from the thermos. After you drink it you refill it and pass it to something else. It's important that you share it, people usually only have one cup among a group.

After snacking on some olives and cheese we were welcomed into a room FULL of BEAUTIFUL food. It was honestly a dream come true. Everything was beautifully displayed and the options were endless. I think I saw tongue somewhere, which I didn't try... But there was fruit, salad, appetizers, and endless meat and desserts. We absolutely stuffed ourselves.

During the meal, my friends and sat with the asistentes del programa. So we got to speak in Spanish a lot and after the day at the farm they invited us to go out with them. We had a really fun night teaching each other new words in english and spanish at some bar in my neighborhood.

We also went bike riding on the farm and swimming. I got ot play soccer for about an hour which was a good time. First time in a while and my entire body was sore the next day. It's amazing how many different muscles playing soccer uses.

Last night I met up with some friend of one of the asistentes of the IES program. We had a great time hanging out at a bar. Now I'm going to check out this plaza called Plaza Mafalda. Its commemorating the comic book writer Quino who wrote the comics that my host sister shared with me. I'm learning a lot of argentian culture from these comics. For example, one comic had the mom telling little Mafalda not to answer the door unless is was her mother. Mafalda responded "but what if its happiness?" I deduced from that there this is some saying such as "happiness is at your door" or something. I asked my host sister about it and she told me that's exactly true. So I'm hoping to learn more cultural things like that from reading the comic book. And what better place to read it that in Plaza Mafalda!

Luego,
Kati