Week 3: Uruguay

I suppose I'm a bit late on this one, but it was a packed couple of days with more classes beginning. Friday through Monday, the entire IFSA program took a trip to Uruguay, a sort of last hurrah before classes began in earnest (for me, though, classes had already started). I had a great time, but quickly began to get agitated by my inability to have alone time. Being constantly surrounded by 50+ people is tiresome.

Anyway, we woke up super early Friday morning to take a ferry across Río de la Plata. I successfully had called and ordered a cab the night before, so Lauren, Sarah, Priva and I pulled up to the boat terminal with relatively little effort. The crossing took an hour, and it was a painful one at that. Michaela and I are both susceptible to motion/sea sickness, so we pounded some dramamine and attempted to not be too uncomfortable. Once the group landed in Colonia, Uruguay, we boarded a bus that took us to Mario's (the program director) lemon farm bed and breakfast. This place was incredibly picturesque, an ideal honeymoon spot.

We spent the day lounging around the pool and beach, which was a 15 minute walk away. We were served a delicious choripan snack and parilla for lunch. Altogether I had a blast, laughing more than I had in a while and enjoying my fiaca. Mario taught us that fiaca is the act of doing absolutely nothing, and that Americans are terrible at it. I think I was pretty successful.

Chorizo+Pan=Choripan!

Michaela, Caroline, and Me

Around 6, we piled into cabs and headed into Colonia for the evening. We unpacked in our respective hostels and had some downtime (as if we hadn't been having downtime all day). This is the first part of the itinerary that made no sense. At 8, we went in small groups on a walking tour of Colonia, an apparently beautiful little town with cool historical buildings and history. Unfortunately we saw very little of it, because at 8 o'clock, it's dark out. For this reason, I don't have any good pictures of Colonia. The stars were beautiful, though.

The next morning, we left at 9 am for Montevideo. We went on a short walking tour of old town Montevideo, taking a couple breaks in plazas to meander through flea markets. After, we partook in a disappointing lunch. I say disappointing because we sat at the table next to the IFSA staff, and had to witness the higher level of treatment they received. Michaela and I were particularly peeved, because our pasta (which was mediocre in itself) did not come with salad or fries, unlike the other options. Call us privileged white girls, but we were left hungry and without a diversity of nutrients.

After lunch, we hopped back on the bus to continue on to Punta del Este. We spent some downtime hanging by the pool and declining to spend time in the over-crowded jacuzzi. Dinner that night was held in the hotel, and I enjoyed a marvelous mero hojaldrada, a sort of white fish stuffed pastry, with a chocolate souffle for dessert.

Mero Hojaldrada

The next day, a bunch of us went on a Mario-led walk along the beach. Punta del Este is so named because it is the point where the Río meets the Atlantic Ocean, so we walked along the whole point and returned to the hotel area for lunch. At the recommendation of the hotel staff, Caroline, Michaela, and I went to a nearby café called Chivipizza. The food was fine, but I was left in a bad mood because I was charged over $10 for a side salad, without warning. We then went to the beach, but enjoyed it very little due to a cold breeze. After changing into warmer clothes, we walked to the other side of the peninsula to witness a beautiful (and brief) sunset.

"La Mano"

Monday, we ended up hanging around the pool instead of the beach, and ate in the mall food court... cheap, but not super adventurous. After lunch, we all piled back on the bus and headed back to Colonia to be ferried home. A long and densely packed trip, but a good break from the city.

Week 2.75: The Great Argentine Baking Challenge

This week, my classes at USAL began, and that combined with grammar workshops at IFSA prevented my friends and I from doing anything particularly noteworthy. Today, my first mostly free day this week, I decided to use my extra time to bake something. Since the program is going on a four day trip to Uruguay this weekend, I thought I'd post now and then again after the trip.

Bonus cat picture

First, a quick update on classes -- I'm planning on taking three USAL classes in their environmental science track: Control of Contaminants, Ecology, and Health and Quality of Life. For the first two, I really like the professors, and find them relatively easy to understand. Both are at night. The third is Wednesday morning, and the professor couldn't come to class this week, so I have no idea what it will be like; there are, however, three other international students considering taking it. IFSA classes start next week, but I will probably take one of their literature classes in addition to the obligatory Spanish class. Now for the food.

I really enjoy baking, and that's something I've missed in my few days here. Since dinner is eaten so late, most people have a snack around 5-6 that involves a caffeinated beverage and a pastry. The continuous presence of pastries that I shouldn't be purchasing has made me miss baking even more, and as most of my meals are simple or frozen, I miss homemade food too. Since I had a free afternoon today, I decided to attempt muffins. I knew going into this there would be many challenges, including:

1. My host family doesn't cook, so there's nothing for me to pilfer to cook with (by this I mean measuring cups or small amounts of spices). They do, however, have a six-cup muffin pan.
2. The oven is gas and old and I had no idea how to use it. It also has no thermometer or markings to signify temperature of any sort.
3. I'm about to leave for 4 days, so there's no point making anything if I can't eat it all immediately or bring it with me.

However, improvising and making it work is half the fun. For these reasons, I settled on muffins. The recipe I used is pretty simple, and only required me to buy a handful of ingredients. After grammar class today, I stopped by the supermarket to pick up flour, sugar, etc. and some snacks for the trip.

Challenge #1: The Store
There was no baking powder (levadura de polvo) to be found. I looked in every dry goods aisle. Not by the spices, not by the flour, not by the other baking materials, not by the salt. I eventually asked another shopper. She was super friendly, but said there wasn't any. I could find "levadura fresca" (yeast) around the corner from the milk, in the fridge section, she said. I ended up buying this cube because I was out of options. After much internet searching, I found no instructions on using yeast instead of baking powder and decided to just go for it.

Fresh yeast cube thing

Additionally, the flour presented a hurdle. It was easy enough to find, but there were gazillions of options and I had no idea what they meant. I ended up going for "harina leudante" because I figured "harina de trigo" (wheat flour) might mean like whole wheat flour, and this other option was cheap and fairly abundant and therefore might be all-purpose and not something obscure. There was also some sort of categorization system with zeros, which I ignored.

I did not have data/wifi in the store with which to resolve these questions.

Challenge #2: Utensils
Despite the presence of a muffin pan and other baking miscellany, there are no measuring cups in the Nunes household. Nor are there mixing bowls. Using my uncanny ability of estimating volume, I used a teacup as my measuring cup and measured everything with it for consistency. After I finished mixing everything, I realized there was a plastic cup on the counter with all sorts of measurement markings on it for various ingredients. Oops.

The set up: tea cup, cereal bowl, and salad bowl as equipment

Challenge #3: The Yeast & The Apple

Yeast cube

With no available instruction or guidance, I added an indiscriminate amount of yeast to my liquids and mixed it in before adding to the dry ingredients. Since the yeast was fresh and not the packet type I've used in the US, I figured I didn't need to activate it. I wasn't sure if it needed time to rise, though, so I left the batter out while I cut up an apple. I decided to go for cinnamon apple muffins because apples are cheap and chocolate chips/fresh blueberries/frozen berries are not available at Carrefour, my supermarket. For the life of me I could not find the vegetable peeler, despite having been fed shredded carrots frequently in the past few weeks, which confirms its existence. Turns out it was on the dining room table...? It also seems that there is only one knife in the entire kitchen, a paring knife, so I used that to peel and chop the apple. This was a struggle, because I was going for small pieces.

When I finally finished with the apple, my dough appeared fairly fluffy/bread-like as if the yeast had done something, so that was exciting. I mixed everything in and set about filling the muffin tin.

Ready to bake batter

Challenge #4: The Oven
I knew in advance I had no idea how to light the oven. When Martina, my housemate, popped in while I was eating lunch, I asked her about it and she showed me. When I tried myself, I could not for the life of me get any sort of flame, so I asked Sofia.

Sofia had clearly never used the oven before, as she couldn't get the gas to run. I figured that part out, and then she lit it for me. Success through teamwork! Since the muffins were supposed to bake at a fairly high temperature for a long time, I let them sit for 10 mins and then began checking on them, turning the pan halfway through. Surprisingly, they rose well and baked all the way through, with a nice golden top. For half of them, I made a crumble and put that on before baking.

Results
I am very pleased with my muffins. They're a little bland -- I should've added a bit more salt and used a green apple -- but the texture is surprisingly good. They did get a bit dark on the bottom, but you can't taste it.

Hopefully, I'll bake something again soon! With all the extra muffin wrappers, I'm thinking cheesecake bites...?

Week 2: Palermo, el Centro, and San Telmo

It's been another packed week. I've chosen a vague title so as to encompass the vast variety of landmarks I visited.

Monday, during a long break in orientation activities, Caroline and I decided to walk to Plaza de Mayo, a historical square in downtown Buenos Aires not too far from the IFSA office. On one end of the square is la Casa Rosada (the pink house), where I believe at least some government activities meet. As such, this space is the site of many protests, and marches often end here.

Recreated old church at one end of the Plaza that has some historical significance

la Casa Rosada

Catedral, which apparently looks more like a cathedral on the other side

Speaking of protests, this week was a big week for protests. Tuesday, IFSA classes were spontaneously canceled due to a workers' strike/protest that flooded downtown with people. Michaela and I took the opportunity to explore the parks in the north of Palermo; I've heard them called both Bosque Palermo and Parque del 3 de Febrero. The green space was beautiful, featuring an assortment of statues, ponds, geese, and a rose garden. The planetarium is also located there. On our way, we also meandered through an arboretum with an outdoor butterfly garden.

At the arboretum

Monumento de los Españoles

Geese!

Paseo el Rosedal

More geese!

Planetarium in Palermo

Thursday, I partook in an IFSA-led architectural/historical tour of el Centro, which started with witnessing the weekly rounds of las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. During the dictatorship in the 1970s, some 30,000 people went missing at the hands of the government. Las Madres still meet every Thursday to protest what happened as well as other political topics.

Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo

Friday, I went on another IFSA tour, this time of northern Recoleta to see the glamorous houses of pre-1930 rich people. After a yellow fever epidemic in San Telmo (I believe in the 1880s), the rich people in Buenos Aires moved to la Recoleta and built some fancy ass houses. Then, when the Great Depression shook worldwide finances, many found themselves unable to sustain such grandeur. Most of the houses are now institutions, including embassies. At the end of the tour, we explored Palacio Paz, the house of José C. Paz, founder of an important newspaper, La Prensa.

Rich person's house

French Embassy

Palacio Paz

Ballroom modeled after Versailles

Palacio Paz is a bizarre place in that every room we saw mirrored a different time period. I had to keep reminding myself that people actually lived there in the early 1900s. For example, the ball room is mirrored after Versailles; an office after a medieval English castle; and the hallway after some other French-Spanish ruler (Francisco?). We were repeatedly reminded that every piece of ornamentation and hand-carved wood work, as well as the front gate, were made in France and then shipped here. Absolutely insane.

Yesterday, Michaela, Lauren, Danielle, and I went to San Telmo to do some exploring. San Telmo is the old town, and the cobblestone streets and short buildings definitely give it a different feel. We wandered into some shops, stopped by la Iglesia de San Pedro Telmo, wandered the feria stalls in Plaza Dorrego, and had a coffee in el Mercado de San Telmo. Any guidebook will tell you to visit this neighborhood on a Sunday because of the feria, but I honestly think it was nicer to explore in the relative calm. And there was still plenty going on.

A tiny house -- the guide book called it a "casa de chorizo"

An antiques fair

Outside of Mercado de San Telmo

Inside of Mercado de San Telmo. Check out that metal work

Mercado de San Telmo

Iglesia de San Pedro Telmo

Inside la iglesia

Danielle and Lauren in some beautiful green space

Cute street in San Telmo

Next week, classes finally start! I will be trying out a whole bunch of environmental science classes before picking a handful to stick with. IFSA classes start the week after. At the end of the week, the whole program is taking a trip to Uruguay, so stay tuned for more adventures!