Theme of the week: GAUCHOS!

Last Sunday I went to a gaucho fair in Mataderos, which is on the edge of Buenos Aires. It's basically a big market that's all about the gaucho culture in order to keep that spirit and history alive in the city.


Vendors sold traditional gaucho clothing, tons of leather goods, cheeses and meats, dulce de leche, jewelry, guitars, books, everything. I bought a pair of traditional gaucho shoes, which are actually the shoes that TOMS shoes are modeled after.


There was also a stage where they played traditional music and a blocked-off road where they showed their horsey skillz. The atmosphere at the fair was really fun, and I'm planning on going back. It's a nice Sunday afternoon event.


Yesterday IES took a day trip to an estancia in Lobos called La Candelaria. Lobos is an agricultural area 100km from Buenos Aires. I felt like I hopped on a bus and got off in Sparta... that's exactly what it looked and smelled like (minus the apple trees and plus palm trees). When we got there we were greeted with hot empanadas and gaseosas (soft drinks). Then we ventured over to a polo exhibition match that was just ending. La Candelaria has a castle which has turned into a hotel. It was pretty sweet and we got to tour a little bit of it.


After the castle tour we found a fallen tree which we played on, of course.


Then it was time for lunch (aka meal that will fill me up for a week). The parillada was delicious!! We also had apple crisp for dessert (ahem, Sparta).


After the meal the gaucho guys and girls put on a dance show for us. I loved it.


The rest of the day we spent walking around the estancia and watching the gauchos ride their horses. I talked for about a half hour to (or actually listened to, it was kind of one-sided) an older guy from Detroit. He was visiting Argentina with his wife and another couple. I learned a lot about his son being an attorney and his wife being a teacher. Cool. Ok. Then my friends and I rode horses around the estancia. My horse was the slowest one of course and I got separated from the group quite a bit. After the guy in charge came and yelled at my horse to speed up though, I was towards the front of the pack the rest of the way. I hadn't ridden a horse since Girl Scout camp! I forgot how relaxing it is.


Then after tea time we said goodbye to Sparta, I mean Lobos, and took the bus back to Buenos Aires.

My life this past week hasn't been ALL gauchos all the time. Starting on the 7th of April and ending today was an independent film festival called BAFICI (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente). You can check this link out if ya feel like it: http://www.bafici.gov.ar/home10/web/en/index.html. I saw three films, one from Peru called Paraiso, one from Argentina called Rodriguez, and another from the United States called Bummer Summer. BAFICI is a really popular event and every movie that I went to was packed, some people didn't even have seats. I enjoyed Rodriguez the best. It was a film about two girls who took a trip together, and not everything turned out how it was planned, but they learned a lot about themselves and the world. The shots in the film were really cool and it had good music too.

Rachel's Reflections

As I've been having all these new experiences in my life, I've been thinking a lot about what makes a person unique. Even though so many new things have been happening to me lately and I've been discovering so much that to me is new territory, someone has done it before. It's all been done before. So many students have studied abroad in Buenos Aires. Each one has had to go through the experiences of living in a huge city, speaking a different language that maybe they don't know so well, interacting with tons and tons of people on a daily basis, traveling around the area. Two girls have probably even taken a train to Otamendi and realized that it wasn't exactly where they wanted to be. It's like this all around the world. Nothing's new. Everything that I'm going to do today, someone has done before. So what makes me different than the other 6.7 billion people in the world? I came to a conclusion, which even in itself is not original, someone has already thought of this, but that's not important. To me, it's my own thought. Although very, very few experiences in the world are unique, it's not the specific experiences but the combination as a whole that makes the person. Each life consists of an infinite number of interactions that in no way can be repeated exactly. That is what makes each person an individual. That is how we can go to sleep at night knowing that while we have a connection with those around us in experiencing similar hardships and happinesses, we are also our own person. We have grown and been exclusively molded by the combination of seconds in our lives that is without a doubt unmatched by any other life. This is why I believe it's important for us to keep searching for those things in life that are difficult, that take us out of our comfort zone, that appear scary, that are unknown. It is these experiences that are going to shape us even more into the unique people that we are.