SNACK TIME (as the St. Olaf Men´s Cross Country team likes to call it...)
It happens 3 times a day. And only 3 times a day. Argentines don´t snack. Granola bars and bags of chips/ pretzels are not common. There is not ¨fast food¨or ¨grab and go food¨like in the U.S. Argentines take time out of their day for their meals. They sit down and eat for hours at a time. And, it´s taboo to eat while walking in the streets!
Foods that Argentina is known for:
-Wine (it´s cheaper than milk!)
-Steak
-Coffee
Trademark Argentine goodies:
-Empanadas (mini meat pies)
-Milenesa (breaded meat)
-Dulce de Leche (creamy caramel)
-Alfajores (chocolate covered triple layered wafer cookie with dulce de leche coating each layer)
My meals:
Breakfast and dinner are provided M-F at my homestay. Lunch is on my own.
Breakfast:
I usually eat between 8-9am and have corn flakes with yogurt and fruit. My house isn´t big on fruit juice, so I just drink the yogurt. (The yogurt comes in big bags and is really liquidy.) This breakfast is not a typical Argentine breakfast. A croissant and a cup of coffee would be typical. Look at your pinky finger. That is how tall the coffee cups here are, and they are not much wider! Oh yeah, and by ¨coffee¨-- they really mean the strongest espresso you´ll ever taste. No wonder they can stay out until 6am-- they redefine ¨caffeine.¨
Dinner:
It happens anytime after 10pm. My host mom serves a TON of one food. For example, every week we´ll have mashed potatoes for dinner--a full mountain-topped plate of mashed potatoes and nothing else. We´ll often have a ¨meat night¨which is a full plate of milenesa. The salads, as I´ve said before, are big bowls of lettuce. Nada mas. We had ¨carrot salad¨the other night-- which was, go figure, a bowl of shredded carrots. My favorite thing that we´ve had for dinner was PUMPKIN! It was sooo tasty. And yup, we only ate pumpkin that night.
Lunch:
Since it´s on my own, I usually eat lunch from 10am until 10pm. Ha! Seriously, I just kind of munch all day. I can´t understand how Argentines don´t snack. Usually I have sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, empanadas and fresh fruit... or whatever I can scrounge up.
HAIRCUT
This year I started experimenting with cutting hair. I´d cut my own and other brave souls´s hairs who trusted me with a scissors (bless them...). I asked Nathan to cut my hair about a week ago and as heard the snip, snip, I also heard, ¨Uh oh. Oh, this is NOT good. Uhh... are you sure you want me to continue??¨ So after a week of wearing a ponytail, I decided it was time to get a real haircut. Plus, it was a good way to celebrate the 29th of March. (Sidenote: I celebrate 29s-- every month, every hour, every minute, however and whenever they come up. I have fond feelings (as Jenny Kramm would say) for the number. Some say it´s an ¨obsession;¨ Nathan calls it ¨my condition.¨) Anyway, my way of celebrating the 29th was getting a professional haircut. Funny thing happened... before I could tell the lady how I wanted it cut, she was already cutting! Confidence... I like that. However, I learned that it´s easier to say, ¨I´d like it a bit shorter¨ than it is to say, ¨Can you make my hair a bit longer.¨ Conclusion= my hair is realllllly short. I´m trying to have a Caitlin Marine-attitude by thinking, ¨It´s just hair; it´ll grow back.¨ In the meantime, I look in the mirror and laugh at both my hair and that funny experience.
HIGHLIGHTS
-Polo Match
It was the last polo match of the season and a group of friends and I sat, unknowingly, in front of a big group of Argentines who were about our same age. We spent most of the match talking and they invited us to their apartment that night for a party. We went and had a grand time. Yay for new friends.
-Jazz Club
It was called ¨The Rat´s Corner¨or something and in a hip part of town. They had a huge inflated rat that hovered just below the ceiling. There was a sequence of really good performances-- one of the more tranquil places to be at 3 or 4 in the morning! :)
-Future trip to Bariloche!
Next Wednesday night, a group of 5 friends and I will hop on a 22 hour bus to Bariloche, a town tucked into the side of the Andes Mountains in Patagonia. We´ve planned to spend an entire day white-water rafting, and another couple of days hiking and exploring on our own! We´ll only have a few days in Bariloche before we have to come back, on Easter, to BsAs!
Sign-offs always feel kind of weird. I hope you are all genuinely happy and had/ are having a great spring break!
BESOS,
Mica
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