Felices Fiestas del Campo! I have so much to report!
Im here in Pasman (pop 200) and am having a blast! I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to spend the holidays here in the campo with Vanina´s family who have been so wonderful in showing me around their farm, town, the nearby city of Suarez (where I have come to use the computer), and the bigger city of Bahía Blanca 200 kms south. And the best part of it all is that in the last week, I have not spent time with a single person who speaks English. This has been a goal of mine from the beginning and it is such fun (and quite challenging, no doubt) to truly have to put my language skills to work without having anyone to turn to for help when Im struggling to express something. When I set out on this journey, my goal was to do everything possible to truly experience life as it is lived in the places I choose to travel. Thus far, I have gotten to meet quite a few Argentinians and Chileans and, by spending time in smaller towns, had the opportunity to get to know people from each place a little better. But NOTHING compares to my time here. I feel like I either know everyone or everyone knows OF me and comes by to meet me. Seriously, I cannot think of another time in my life where I have felt so special - people WANT to meet me. They hear about me from a friend of a friend and so by the time I meet most people they already know all about me - it´s a really really weird feeling. Yet, at the same time, Ive never felt so out of the loop. I want so badly to wake up tomorrow on Christmas morning and discover that Papa Noel has brought me the ability to understand everything everyone is saying to me. I find myself exhausted at the end of the day just from concentrating so hard on listening to people´s converstaions trying to understand as much as I possibly can without asking over and over again for the people to repeat themselves. At the same time, it is incredibly rewarding when I do have coherent conversations with people. I now know how my sister must have felt when she went to live in the campo in El Salvador!
Whoever thought life in the campo was boring has never spent time in the Argentinian campo - there is NEVER a dull moment. The whole town knows each other and we spend much of our day "paseando" which is to say that I go outside to get my laundry off the line and some neighbor sees me and comes by to talk and an hour later when I eventually go back inside with my laundry someone else has shown up to drop off a package at which point we then leave the house to buy groceries at the store down the street and run into another friend or family member and spend un rato talking about this and that. And when we aren´t paseando for the pueblo, we are out in the campo feeding the pigs, picking fresh veggies from the garden, and milking the cows. I LOVE it!
But being in the campo is only part of the experience. My first day here, I saw a tornado del tierra, hooted and hollered with a group of some 20 family and friends for a family member I had yet to even meet as she exited her last exam of college and then watched as her friends threw eggs, flour, the fermenting crap inside of pig intestines (this is NO joke - YUCK!), and dirt on her, cut off her clothes, then put her in the back of a car and drove through town honking their horns as they paraded her around the main plaza - if only they had such exciting ways of celebrating our final exams in the states! I then went to the after party and by the time we left at 2 am (and still had a 2 hour drive to get back), I was barely functioning! Yet, I quickly discovered this was only the beginning of the Argentinina customs I would come to experience. I have already mentioned in my blog the Argentinian custom of eating late, going out later, and partying until the break of dawn, but other than my time in Buenos Aires with dad, I have yet to really experience this custom in all its grandeur. Well, folks, welcome to the campo where the day begins at dawn and ends not too long before the sunrise the next day. In the days since I got here, I have been asked time and time again, "What is different about the States? Do we have this or that? Do we do this or that?" And the one thing that continues to blow my mind, is their custom of staying up SO DARN LATE....EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Dad, Susan, Annelle, Jarratt, you would LOVE it here! For example, I have not eaten dinner before 11 pm once since I got here - and it´s often 11:30 or 12 before we sit down to eat. We went to a family member´s 60th birthday a few days ago, and didn´t even arrive at the dinner party until 10 pm - and we were EARLY! Later - MUCH later - at 2:30 am, a magician arrived to perform some magic tricks. I looked around in complete shock as everyone at the party from babies just a few months old to people in their 70s, sat around laughing and enjoying the performance like it was really no big deal that it was 2:30 in the morning. Before I got here, I could understand (sort of) this idea that the clubs dont even open until 2 or 3 am, but it never occured to me that this late night culture isnt unique to people in their teens, 20s, and 30s, this is LIFE here. Eating late and staying up later is the norm. So much so that they find US weird. Every time I tell them that we typically eat around 7:30 or 8, their jaws drop and they ask me "How do you eat so early?" and "What in the world do you do with yourself after youve eaten?" Well, I guess the least I can say is that I find their ability to eat late just as strange as they find my ability to eat early! But Im slowly adapting to this life and while everyone 2 and 3 times my age can definitely outlast me when it comes to having energy at 4 am, I no longer find myself needing dinner at 8 pm (no small miracle for those who know me), and thanks to the daily siesta, I may just be able to keep up with the Wisner family at tonight´s Christmas party!
So thanks again to Vanina and her family for welcoming me into their home and allowing me to experience a wonderful Christmas with such a loving family since I can´t be with my own back in Mississippi. Merry Christmas and much love to everyone! VIVA!
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