Tuesday and Wednesday by Cristian Velez

Tuesday: Today is Tuesday, the 11th. It was an incredibly educative day. We started strong with a class about Argentina’s national drink, mate, its history and culture rooted in the indigenous culture and its present day relevance in the nation as something that builds community. After the mate class , accompanied by some snacks, we walked around the city and learned about its history, particularly its colonial history. We walked from school to some landmarks of historical significance on a tour led by our Colegio Del Salvador host, Eugenia. It was really interesting to learn about the nation’s history and have a morning snack in one of the most renowned cafes in the city’s history, Cafe Tortoni. The rest of the day ended pretty quickly, we walked back to school after visiting another landmark, the church of Saint Ignatius, and having lunch at school. School lunch was school lunch, acceptable to say the least and enough to get you through the day. We joined our host brothers in their classes, then after playing the Argentine twist on capture the flag, had an array of traditional Argentine snacks as our snack to bridge the gap between lunch and dinner, here it is called merienda. Many of us then went shopping and it was cool to see familiar and unfamiliar brands in the shopping center. In sum, a very educational day. 

The date is Wednesday the 12 of June, it is sunny and warm in Buenos Aires, unusual for this time of year, and today we spent the day in classes with our host brothers. It was very normal, nothing too crazy, we had an art class which was very cool. We also made some pretty cool collages of ourselves. We then hung around until some peer mentoring was done and we got to see the sundown. In all, a normal but interesting day.