Cordoba Countryside

Cordoba

Hope everyone is doing well. We have begun taking intensive Spanish classes. We are meeting for 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week. We will do this type of class for 1 month, take a break and then get back to it for another month. We laugh because we have been here for 6 weeks and been in class with homework for 5 weeks already. I suppose that we are students for life. This past weekend, 3 days because of San Martin (Libertador), we took a bus trip to the 2^nd largest city, Cordoba. The busses are the way to travel in South America. They are large double-decker busses with semi-cama, cama (bed), and suite options. We were in the front of the 2^nd level, so we had large panoramic windows to look out. The bus stations are insane, people shoving and pushing, and also about 10,000 other people who just seem to be standing around eternally. We enjoyed the city of Cordoba a great deal. We also rented a car for a day and traveled down to Villa General Belgrano, a German city in Argentina. The town looked very German. We ate fondue and had a Warsteiner while communicating in Spanish, it was a surreal experience. It was great to get out on the open road and away from the craziness of BA for a while. We are still loving it here. It is amazing that school and sports are already starting up and we are not there! You all are missed. Thanks for keeping up with us, and we would love to hear from you all.

More of San Telmo

San Telmo Market

Our neighborhood, San Telmo, is one of the oldest in the city. It has a lot of character. One of the things that is the most unique is the market every Sunday. Thousands of people come to walk the street to Dorrego Plaza. The market is about a mile long and filled with vendors of all types, Tango dancers, and other performers.

Plaza de Mayo

Very close to where we live in San Telmo is the Microcentre, where the Casa Rosada and the Cathedral are located. The president and his wife (who is now running for president) live in the "pink house". Plaza de Mayo is the large plaza outside of the Casa Rosada and the center of the city where the SubTe-subway system begins.

La Plata

We visited a new city last weekend, La Plata. It is about an hour south of Buenos Aires. We rode the train down to the city and toured around the center region. There is a beautiful cathedral and large park. We went to a festival outside of the large cathedral, lots of games and kids playing. We continued on to the park where there is a zoo, a lake, and a beautiful Natural History Museum, which we visited on Sunday. The city is designed on a perfect grid with 4 diagonal streets coming from the center. All the street names are numbers either Avenues or Streets depending on north and south orientation. It has a lot of very old, beautiful buildings, because it is actually the capital of the province of Buenos Aires. We rode the bus back to Buenos Aires. They are really comfortable and clean with reclining seats. It was nice to get our of the big city and see a little of the countryside of Argentina. We began teaching the advanced level of English learners this week in our TEFL program. We have one more week of training.