Arrecifes

29/9/2012

So, I'll need to backtrack at some point and talk about some of the other cool things I've done and seen while I've been here, but for this post I want to write about my recent visit to Arrecifes while it's still fresh in my mind. Warning: this post is long and contains a LOT of pictures. If you hate that kind of thing, ESCAPE WHILE YOU STILL CAN. Anyway: Arrecifes is a town of about 30,000 people located about two hours west of the city of Buenos Aires, but it's still in the province of Buenos Aires. Typically our program visits an area in the province of Santa Fe for several days of a rural homestay, but this time we ended up going to Arrecifes instead for a variety of reasons. The point of telling you that there was a change is that Arrecifes has never hosted a group of students from the US (and our token Austrian) before, so we were basically treated like rock stars. 

Tuesday morning, after the holiday on Monday (no one knows WHY there was a holiday, nor do they really care, people just hung out and went to the park and had asados (barbeqes)) we left from our school in BA at 8:30am and took the bus to Arrecifes. I spent the bus ride hanging out with our homestay coordinator Julieta, who's only 2 years older than me (most of the students in my group are 20, the oldest other than me is 22. Sigh.) talking about development and rural provinces of Argentina. We chatted about the northern provinces and how they are very poor and still have a large indigenous community, and how the large farms and businesses that employ children are the same ones that fund educational programs for children and teach them that child labor isn't a problem.

Eh?

We arrived in Arrecifes at a little after 11, at an Escuela Agropecuaria, which basically means a farm school. If you're familiar with Hawthorne Valley you have kind of an idea, except this school is more into the technical aspects of farming and they have a lot of shop classes and stuff, and if you stay two years longer than the required length of high school you get a technical degree. It was COLD this week, and I'm pretty sure all of us were basically asleep in our cold, cold chairs for the first lesson which was about the history of Arrecifes, so I'm sorry I can't really tell you a whole lot about that, though I do know they're kinda famous for car racing. After that lesson (ish) we were fed a few boxes of empanadas and we went on a tour of the school. Have you ever had a few hundred kids go crazy if you wave to them? I have! These kids were SO immensely excited to meet us. I've never been kissed on the cheek so many times in my life, and I've never had to so rapidly learn so many names. After we went on a tour of the farm and saw all of the animals (see below for details), we were accosted (in the friendliest way possible) with requests for our email addresses and facebook pages, and asked about ten million questions by the students.

BABY COW

MORE BABY COW

BABY PIG

MEG AND BABY PIG

BABY BUNNY

AUDREY AND BABY BUNNY

This ridiculous bunny is inside of its feed container.

Rockstar Jose giving out his facebook deets

The milking shed

After our experience at the school, it was time to go hang out with our homestay families. Meg and I were rooming together, cause we don't really do that whole eating adorable pigs or cows thing, and our host-mom Sandra was one of the teachers at the school, so she introduced us to her daughters Fiama and Asstrid and sent us home in the car with them, where Meg and I were promptly mocked for using our seatbelts. Fiama is 22 (almost 23, as she assured me several times) and Asstrid is 17, so I was pretty surprised when we picked up Asstrid's 9 month old son (Theo) from the daycare that her cousin runs. Asstrid is soooo 17, she acts like basically every other 17 year old girl in the world, except occasionally while she's in the middle of singing along to a cumbia remix of Adele, she breastfeeds her kid.

On a wall outside of Asstrid and Fiama's house

We also had a homestay brother and homestay dad, but honestly I never really caught either of their names, which I still feel super bad about. On our way back to the house, we went past a panaderia (bakery) called La Espiga de Oro which Fiama told me had the best pastries in town, and when I expressed a little interest we did a u-turn she brought us in and purchased a GIANT bag of all different kids of pastries. I had 4 of them, despite not being hungry. No regrets. We hung out in the house for a while and drank mate with Asstrid and Fiama and Fiama's bff Anita, and then we walked the three blocks over to the house where Kaitlyn and Audrey were staying. They had FIVE DOGS. Also there was a glow-in-the-dark rosary on Audrey's bed, which is kind of amazing.

Fiama and Asstrid invited us over to Asstrid's friend's house for dinner, which took Meg and I about 20 minutes to understand for some reason, so after we went back and hung out with the rest of the host family for a bit we headed over to their friend's place at about 9pm. We stopped on the way to buy pizza for Meg and I, because they were all grilling meat, and when we got there it turned out that four of the guys from our program were there as well. We all agreed that we were only going to speak Spanish the rest of the time in Arrecifes, because no one there really understands English, with a few exceptions. The kids do take English classes in school, but it's two hours or less a week, so they know a few basics but most of them really can't have a functional conversation or follow what we're saying if we speak English, so it's really rude to do it. Our catch-phrase of the rest of the trip was CASTELLANO, POR FAVOR if we busted anyone for speaking English. This was especially funny to yell at the kids from Arrecifes if they said anything to us in English, obviously.

These kids were hilarious, they were all in high school except for Fiama, and high school boys are ridiculous so we obviously learned a lot more dirty words, and we got to see high-schoolers argue about politics which was greatly amusing to me, at least. We were asked so many questions about the US (which Fiama was SO embarrassed about, but I assured her it was fine), like why do people get annoyed by the term 'Yankee', what does this or that song mean, where were we on 9/11/2001, how do you say 'dickhead' in English (sorry Mom and Nana), etc. It was really interesting hearing the stuff they were curious about, plus it made it easier for us to ask them questions. Fiama and Asstrid also told me that I should do my month-long research project in Arrecifes, so I could come back and stay with them again.

The next day was a kind of holiday/festival of sorts. Everyone went to Plaza Mitre, the main plaza in the center of “downtown” and EVERY schoolchild in the city was there, plus a band. There were all kinds of booths about different social justice issues like HIV education and animal abuse in circuses, and the kids painted a ton of different murals, each about a different topic, in the square across from the plaza.

We thought that there was going to be some kind of structured activity, but we just wandered around and hung out with everyone (still totally rock-star status) for about three hours and then had a picnic in the park. After getting our photos taken with probably every child in Arrecifes, we went to the town museum, which I really loved. It was a small building and had no really coherent theme (history of the town and stuff about the racing obviously, but also some kind of random art and a paleontology section, plus a collection of antique irons).

Nacho and the sloth

Meg and Nacho

The styrofoam and scotch tape situation is kinda ghetto, but you've gotta make the best of things!

Two-headed calf

Hats and stuff!

Why NOT antique irons?

It's fun to pretend you're in a train station when you aren't.

Kids on a field trip

Fake bar

Bionic Hombre

Once I found out there was a town song (el himno de Arrecifes) I made Asstrid and her friend to sing it to me, which was pretty great. Asstrid had a giant crush on Stephan from our group so she got me to strategically take photos of them together, which I've been instructed to email to her so that she can show them off to her friends.

Feliz Primavera!

 

Perros

Primavera!

La Iglesia

Nosotras en Plaza Mitre. I borrowed Asstrid's coat cause it was COLD.

After the museum we were supposed to have tour of the city, but since we'd already wandered around a bunch we went down to the river and to an abandoned mill to take pictures, and to see a bunch of wild horses stampede when they heard a motorcycle. Obviously that part had to be pretty carefully planned. 

The Mill

Still the mill

STAMPEDE

Stampede with Arrecifes in the background

For the evening, Meg and I hung out with Audrey and Kaitlyn at the house for a bit and then we had dinner with our host-families and had kind of an early night, we were all a little wiped after spending the entire day walking around in the sun.

The next morning (Thursday) we ostensibly had to be at school at 8am, but the bus with all the other students showed up at the house at 8:45 which I was totally ok with. Also, as a side-note, my host family in Arrecifes and my host-mom in BsAs are so amused by the fact that I have habits like an Argentinean person, in that I typically eat dinner after 10pm and don't really eat anything for breakfast except sometimes on the weekends. This is very confusing for them because they're all convinced that all Americans eat a pile of eggs and bacon and pancakes for breakfast every day and that we all eat dinner at 6pm while watching TV.

Anyway, we headed into school and had two back-to-back classes about the state of agriculture in Argentina. The government here has decided that in order to keep food prices down, farmers can't export wheat, they have to sell it within the country, so in response a lot of farmers began growing soy. Today soy is one of the biggest crops in Argentina, and more and more farmers are switching over to soy cultivation, for a variety of reasons. Argentina obviously has a history of colonialism, and until relatively recently, only 400 families owned all the land in the country (and man, it's a pretty big country). As a result, most farming was, and is, done on a sharecropping system. For a long time sharecroppers would rent the land they used for three years at a time, but under the Peron government in the 50s, all of the contracts were extended so that people could stay on the land they cultivated. Our professor Fernando's grandparents lived under this system, and when the government in the 1980s changed this system and allowed land-owners to remove the sharecroppers and have contracts of just one year at a time, they were forced off of their land. Today contracts of just one year are very common, which has led farmers to have a very short-sighted view of their farming, where they try to extract the maximum profit from their rented land each year with no thought to retaining nutrients in the soil or minimizing their use of chemicals. It's also led to a lot of deforestation in some provinces. Soy is one of the easier crops that people can grow and export, hence the soy boom.

After class we went and hung out at the Escuela Agropecuaria and had some pasta and vegetarian tarts and hung out with the kids again and then went back to the house to have mate and listen to music. After school we all went out to an Estancia owned by Ricardo, one of the teachers at the school, where he grows a variety of crops and raises cows, and talked about the history of his farm and played with a super cute kitten. 

Cat friend

Me and cat friend together!

Thursday night, me, Meg, Anna, Morgan, Kaitlyn and Audrey went to the “country house” (Arrecifes is pretty rural, but some wealthier folks have “quintas” outside of town where they have asados and get together with people. Some people use them as farms also, some don't) of the OTHER Fernando (there are two) and had pizza again and about a bajillion delicious little appetizers, and wine. Friday was Jose's birthday, so we planned to go out Thursday night to celebrate, after dinner. All of the girls decided they were too tired, except for Kaitlyn and I, so we went out with Fiama and Asstrid to the bar to meet the boys at about 12:30.

We were the first people at the bar, and by that I mean that we were the FIRST people at the bar, they turned on the music when they saw us approaching through the windows. Now, I don't really know what the deal is typically in Arrecifes on a Thursday night, but I'm about 85% sure that they opened the bar that night just for us. It was seriously just our group, all night. Four of the boys (including Jose) came out, plus a bunch of their host-siblings and their friends, and we all had a really good time dancing to the ridiculous mix of music that the terrible but very well-meaning DJ played for us, including a variety of birthday songs in English and Spanish. 

Brian, Jose, Me, Nigel, Vicky

I have no idea what they were doing, but it seemed like a good idea!

Stephan and Asstrid, as she requested. 

Me, Kaitlyn and Asstrid

Stephan, me, Kaitlyn, Jose, Asstrid, Vicky, my host brother and in front a girl whose name I can't remember

Same group but with Fiama on the left.

Classic Stephan face.

We ended up getting home after 3:30am and had to be up at 7:30am for school, but I didn't care because it was really amusing to have a night out in Arrecifes.

Friday we had two field trips, our first stop was a factory that produces soy oil. I can't say I was that intensely interested, but it was kind of neat seeing the operation, seeing things get made is always pretty cool unless it involves dead creatures. After the factory, we headed over to a cooperativa which exports soy and grains produced by Argentine farmers. The soy exported by this one cooperative comprises 1% of the global market of soy, which is kind of a serious amount of soy. They gave us snacks here, because apparently the rule in Arrecifes is that if you have Americans visiting, you have to feed them something every hour. Maybe if we don't eat we explode? I don't know for sure, but it's clearly not worth the risk of finding out. While we were at the cooperative, Fernando came up and asked for four volunteers to go talk on the local radio station. Jose, Nigel, Lauren and Meg headed off to do that, and we headed back to the school, and listened to them being interviewed on the radio. A lot of people call Nigel “Nacho” as a nickname, and that's seriously his only name in Arrecifes, he was introduced on the radio as Nacho as well.

When we headed back to school the rest of us were interviewed by a journalist for the local paper, and then we had pizza again (are you counting?) made with cheese that they make at the school and a giant ridiculous awesome cake for Jose, full of dulce de leche, and watched a little theater piece by some students. After school, Fiama came by and picked me up (Meg went with Kaitlyn and Audrey) and informed me that her and Asstrid intended to buy a cake for Jose and have him over to eat cake and drink mate, something that none of us had been informed about, but that was fine. We went to Jose and Stephan's place and picked them up and went back and hung out and played dominos. I'd told Fiama that I wanted to go into town to buy a little gift for my host mom in BA, so at 5pm we headed back downtown (stores are closed from 12-5, SIESTAAAAAAAA) and I got a little coin purse dealy that said Arrecifes and we ran into all the girls where they were sitting in the plaza drinking wine in front of the police station, obviously. While we were there the fire sirens went off, and as we were right in front of the fire station as well, we were able to see the volunteer firefighters come running to the station, on foot, by bike and by motorcycle, and go tearing into the station to head out. It was kind of neat to see. 

After all that excitement we headed back to the house and got our things together with great sadness because it was time to go to our final dinner before heading back to BA. Sandra, Fiama and Asstrid gave Meg and I each a little gift which was a mate (the cup that you drink yerba mate out of) and a bunch of candy, which was really cute of them. We brought wine when we showed up as a gift, though I wish we'd gotten them something else as well. For some reason we were leaving Arrecifes late on Friday night instead of Saturday morning, which we were all very upset about. The students had decided to throw a party for us Friday night, not knowing at the time that we were leaving then, so they had to change the party from being for us to being for the birthday of one of their dogs, a kind of awesome substitution. Our host-families were equally upset that we were leaving, and a number of them plus a bunch of us talked to our program coordinator about it, she referred to it during dinner as 'kind of a crisis'.

We all went to a restaurant downtown (which was fairly unusual for most of the host-families. People don't really go out to restaurants in Arrecifes, they have dinner together at home or they eat at the houses of other families, as a result every house has a GIGANTIC dinner table) where we ate pizza (seriously) and took a few hundred photos and had a lot of sad goodbyes. We didn't leave the restaurant to return until midnight, putting us back in BA after 2am. My host family keeps texting me and they really want us to come visit again, so I'm going to see about setting up a visit in November, which I'm super excited about! Seriously, Arrecifes.