A crazy few days

It's amazing how fast the time is passing. We've been here nearly three weeks, and on Saturday we're off to Salta for an 11 day trip north. I remember looking at a calendar and thinking about how much time there was before we got to travel, and yet, here it is.

The last few days have been crazy. We headed into this week knowing that it was going to be busy, but classes have really picked up and I'm not sure where the time has gone. Tomorrow we are visiting an organization, Sol Naciente, that works with single mothers in one of the biggest slums in Buenos Aires. In the middle of the city, among the high-rises and resturants, is a very large shanty town, mostly filled with single-parents households. This organization, from what I understand, has bascailly formed a collective where women can live free of fear of domestic violence and send their children to school. Among the services it offers are a soup kitchen, a mini-market where women can sell handicrafts and childcare during the day while these women work. I believe we have an escort to go into the shanytown, though. Should be quite interesting. Then friday we have our spanish "midterm" and two written assignments on the theory of social movements due. Work? What is that? I've sort of forgotten how to sit down and study.

Once I get through Friday, this week should really take off. Saturday we leave for Salta (20 hours by bus to the north). We are doing some touring (visiting local monuments such as the indignenous museum, the salt mines) doing some hiking and taking classes on indigenous movements and social organization at the University of Salta.
Then we start our rural homestay. Now that should be the interesting part. For four days we are living with farmers, in their huts, in this small village outside of Jujuy. No cell phones. No lights. I can't wait. The houses -- well, at least one per neighborhood -- are equipted only with radios in the off shot that something happens. Needless to say they've already placed me with the equivalent of the town doctor, as close to the "main" road as possible, but so it goes with my asthma. Sigh. Either way, it's going to be so interesting to see the different lifestyles and pace down there. I am so excited to sit under the stars and talk to my host family (all 10 of them that live in the house?) I am so ready to be pushed out of my comfort zone again.

That's all for now. Missing everyone in the states a lot..


Random addition: Latin salsa turned out to be more like step aerobics/cardio latin dance, to bad spanish covers of 90's music, in spanish. Needless to say it kicked my ass.