Catching up today: June 9th

So this is actually all stuff from the first week here that I havent put on here so whatever, that´s a horse that I rode, Im from Ky and Ive never ridden a horse unil I got to Argentina, but that kinda cooler cause I learned it from a fake gaucho. Not that he´s fake really, gauchos just aren´t around anymore, I guess this guy is as close as you could get to a gaucho. Im no gaucho expert, but maybe theres some guy out in the desert wearing a pancho, riding a horse, clueless to civilization, trying to find other gauchos, ya never know. Modern times as they are, we settled for visiting the estancia, ranch of an old gaucho, named Don Silvano and seeing the gaucho way of life, pretty interesting. Here´s a bunch of pictures from it.

























In that picture where they are racing, that apparently is how the gauchos used to settle land disputes back in the day, they´de have a horse race. Id say thats a pretty good way to settle things, something I may take back to the states with me. Disagreements with roommates over the rent, if I want a raise at work, it will be settled with bike races from now on. Apparently they did some thing where they would put the ring of some woman on a little hook and then they would race at it on their horses and try o snag it with poles, and then I guess she marries the winner or something. We ate a bunch of food, had an asado that is, that´s where they make a bunch of meat and you eat it and they get a bunch of wine and you drink it. Thats about it for gaucho stuff I guess. They showed us how to milk cows and the prominent gaucho in the foreground of the one picture sang gaucho karaoke music during our meal, it was interesting, there were other gaucho people who did dances from different parts of the country. yep. This was all on the way to Rosario, this gaucho place was in between Buenos Aires and Rosario. So this is all like a week and a half old. So Here are a few pictures of where I am staying in Rosario.


Down is my room, and to the right is the terrace that is part of the apartment. The city is big, there are about 1.5 million people who live here.
















This is just at some cafe I ate at tonight and to the right is Hugo the cat he lives where I stay and thats the view from the terrace. So this is just a big load of pictures here from Rosario and the one that is an above view of a street corner is a view from the terrace here. It´s pretty interesting Ive never lived in a city this big. There´s lot of litter and lots of exhaust to breath in but there are a lot of interesting things to do and for the most part people are friendly. Ive been a bit hesitant to walk around with my camera so I dont have that many pictures to show at this point but I have devised a way to walk around with it and keep it safe. It´s just not smart to walk around with it exposed, it´d be like walking around waving money in the air. Rosario is the kind of place where poor kids walk up to your table while your eating outside and try to get you to buy things and then if you say you dont want anything they just stare at you for a while. People will just walk in some cafe and place a piece of paper on every table asking for money and then walk back around and collect the papers. I understand the purpose of the no soliciting signs in The US. Pretty much everytime I have sat at an outside table at a cafe someone has tried to sell me something or just asked for money. Hey being poor sucks, I guess Id do the same thing, I dont know I would probably go the juggling route. At the intersections when the traffics stops there are little kids who stand in front of the stopped traffic and juggle things, I wonder if these people every make any money, who knows, if people constantly do it everyday it must do something for em.Some pictures of Rosario below.

Below is a picture from a boat ride that the whole group did, the Rosario skyline can be seen faintly in the background, and to the right is a picture of what you see in one direction from the terrace thing where I live. After we took that boat ride, we all got off and there was a guy selling churros on a bike, like sugar doughnut things. And he said de donde son? that means where are you all from, I couldnt understand him at first because of his accent and then he said de que pais, and that means from what country so I said oooooooohh the US, and he said so you´re Jaankys, and I had no idea what that meant, and the girl next to me Jennifer in my group said no we´re not Junkies! and then the teacher clarified that he was saying Yankees, the accent throws you off. So the moral of this story is that Junkies = Yankees, and I should not forget that down here I am indeed a Yankee. That boat ride was on the Parana River, it´sa very big river with islands in it, it was an interesting ride