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Published: November 10th 2009
Cordoba
Monday 5th October - Wednesday 11th November Days 29-66 During our time in Cordoba it´s been difficult trying to juggle the experience of living/working here as well as being a tourist!
We live with a young couple called Jean and Ines who are both lovely. Ines is 26 and works for Projects Abroad and Jean is 27 and is training to be a chef. Jean is orginally from Brazil and is a bit of a surfer dude! They have a dog called "Fiedi" who they found as a puppy on the street.
First things you have to get used to here apart from the weather/language is the time you eat! Dinner is served anytime between 9.30-11pm on weeknights and even later at weekends. At first we felt really sluggish going to bed with a full stomach but now we´re used to it. People eat very little for breakfast here...crackers/bread with jam is the norm, sometimes not even that. Lunch is leftovers from the previous nights dinner.
During our first couple of weeks, we had another volunteer living with us all called Olivier. He worked in the French Airforce and was here for a month
The gang
Jean, Ines, Olivier, Lizzy, Rick and Fiedi the dogvolunteering in the care department. He was 32, quite shy but very nice. Rick shared a bedroom with Olivier and Lizzy got to have her own room downstairs.
Our house is in a small neighbourhood with a huge park opposite where people are regularly excersising as there is running track all the way round. A few blocks away is a main street called Rafael Nuñez where there are loads of shops, restaurants, bars and a couple of nightclubs.
On the first day we arrived at 10am and had been travelling overnight from Iguazzu Falls for over 20 hours. Ines met us at the bus station and we all got a taxi back to her house. The first day you have no plans, just to rest which was great for us as we were still tired from travelling overnight.
The 2nd day we went with Ines and Ryan (an American volunteer doing Care, 18) to the Projects Abroad office and met Ariel who we´d been in contact via email with before we came. He looked like David Walliams but a more camp version...! In the afternoon we got our tour of ´downtown´ with Ines. We have to take
Parilla
The oldest BBQ in town, est 1906 the bus to get there and it takes about 20 mins or so. One way costs 1.50 peses which is 25p! We loved the downtown area but were surprised with how big Cordoba actually was! There was a real European feel about the place which was nice...unlike Brazil where we stood out like sore thumbs, here we blended in. Cordoba is a fantastic city, rich in argentine history, but with the largest University population in Argentina. This gives the city character and makes it vibrant, with excellent nightlife.
On Wednesday we were meant to start school but we were told that as they had a school trip we didn´t need to go. Instead we took up on the offer to volunteer at the orphanage. When we were there we met 3 Texan boys, all around 20-22. They´d origanally been volunteering in the Hospital but transferred to Care as they claimed they had nothing to do...
Our first experience in the orphanage was difficult. None of the staff spoke English and as we ignorant English hadn´t learnt Spanish yet it made it even more difficult! Ines and the Projects Abroad director were speaking with the staff whilst we were all
playing with the kids. It was sad because a lot of them came from abusive families, one girl had a burn mark all over her face which she said her Mum did to her. A lot of them didn´t know how old they were or when their birthdays were, very sad.
Apart from playing with the kids we didn´t do much that day. They were all quite spiteful to each other (and the volunteers) as there aren´t really enough toys to go round so we spent a lot of time breaking up fights.
Before Ines left she explained that the Texan boys will be expected to dig up the garden whilst they´re here and help the kids plant vegetables...(We were glad to be doing teaching at that point!). 😱
Our Teaching Experience
Our first day at the school was brilliant...we are teaching at Castel Franco which is a billingual school (Argentine and Italian) half funded by the state and half by the parents. There are primary school children here aging from 4 yrs old and the kids stay at the school until they´re ready to leave at 16.
We met Manon who was the head of English and
The School
Castel Franco Bilingual School was responsible for us. She was very friendly...she was dutch but had lived all over the world and finally settled for Argentina.
Our first lesson was with Anna...Manon joined us to see how we got on. The class were in groups and had been asked to research about different cities and talk about why you should go there (in english). Afterwards, just before everyone was getting ready to go Manon suggested that we should stand up in front of the class and talk about Norwich...and why people should visit! Great... We were both quite nervous at first but we got through it! Luckily Lizzy had bought postcards of Norwich before we left so we passed them round... Most of the kids love the sound of England and they all want to go and live there.
After that lesson we also realised that the school was a lot more equipped than we thought...during the talks the kids were using powerpoint presentations on a projector. On the website for Projects Abroad it advised us to bring things to assist us whilst teaching as they had very little...so Rick, bless him, went out and bought loads of chalk. So there we were,
Miss Elizabeth
Preparing for the Halloween presentation all ready with our coloured chalk (thought we were quite fancy) and they had bloody whiteboards! Quite funny really...the orphanage will make good use of the chalk I´m sure.
Anyway...the rest of the classes we assisted in have all gone well...the first time we meet a class we were shoved in the front for a Q & A session for about 10 minutes.
Our time is split between the secondary school and primary however as time has gone on, Lizzy is spending more time with the primary kids and Ricks with secondary.
The primary kids are really sweet! They all want a hug whenever you walk in the room. Lizzy is now ´Miss Elizabeth´and Ricks just Richard...one kid tried to say ´Miss Richard´but he quickly corrected him.
There´s one particular class (5th grade) which we were warned about by Manon. They were orginally 2 classes but have been joined together and no one seems to know why. There´s about 30+ students who never stop shouting, leaving the class, throwing things etc...it´s chaos. We´ve both had our turns with this class and it´s horrible...they don´t listen! We haven´t seen much discipline in the school as you have in the
The Teachers
Manon (head of English), Rick and Nati (4th/5th Grade) UK. We´ve seen one teacher send someone out of the class but they only stand outside banging on the door...teachers spend so much time shouting here, we always leave with headaches!
Apart from that class however it´s all good. The secondary students are all between 13-16 and speak very good English so we spend time talking to them, helping with their pronounciation etc. Overall it´s very enjoyable and rewarding. Unfortunately from talking to the teachers in the staff room (haha - still doesn´t feel right being on the ´dark side´) we found out that teachers here get paid very little so there are often strikes. There have been 3 days where the schools been closed because of strikes since we´ve been here. Apparently bus drivers get paid more than teachers here and when they retire, the state only pay them half their salary.
We´ve met loads of other volunteers whilst we´ve here...Ryan, Marina (German), Emily (English), Irene (Dutch) and Vanessa (from all over) are the usual people we meet up with. We all get on really well and have had some good nights out! We´ve been out for meals, played pool until early hours of
the morning and been out to some clubs downtown. It´s nice being in a group...
The weather here is very hot and it´s only spring here...we´ve had days over 40 degrees which isn´t nice...it´s too hot to do anything! Most of the time it´s around the high 20´s, early 30´s which is okay.
We thought we were witnessing the apocolypse the other day. Rick was chilling in the park, reading a book. The sun was beaming down, a cloudless, vivid blue sky above, and a spectacular panaramic view of the whole of Cordoba below. Rick looks up from his book to see a huge dark blanket of brown engulfing the city, and heading straight for him and at fantastic rate! It looked like something from a disaster movie, like the end of the world, as if a massive bomb had exploded. It was in fact a dust storm. Following that there was an ice shower with hail the size of golf balls...quite scary!
During our time here we have also been having Spanish lessons with Ines´s Mum Susana who is also an English teacher. It´s helped us a lot but still neither of us can roll our R´s!
The Church
The wedding of Jean and Ines After only 1 month of lessons we really only brushed the surface of the language but it helped us with the basics. It´s definetaly something both of us want to continue learning...
We got on really well with our hosts, Ines and Jean, so much so we had an invitation to their wedding which was on 7th November! We had already been to the stag/hen do´s and never expected an inviation to the wedding. We were both very touched and excited! It all started at the church at 9pm (yes, 9pm) and the ceremony went on for about 45mins. The church was amazingly big compared to British standards and as they are Roman Catholic the service itself was different to what we were used to. After the wedding we all went to a hotel for the party...the hall was decorated beautifully thanks to Susana (Ines´Mum) who planned it all. At first we all gathered in the garden were drinks/appertisers were served. They had light shows against the trees which was all very impressive. The steak dinner was served around midnight and we didn´t finish desert till well after 1am...all felt really strange! There were no speaches, instead everyone raised
Ines and Juan Carlos
The bride dancing with her father their champagne, shouts out "Viva los Novios!" and heads to the dancefloor! Drinks were free all night. More food and deserts were served around 4am. After plenty of dancing/drinking/eating, everyone started to leave...by the time we looked outside we realised it was daylight and now 7am. It was a brilliant party!
We also spent time getting to know Ines´family and were invited to go to their house in the countryside to share Mother´s Day with them. Their house is set in a small villiage, surrounded by lakes/mountains. They had a huge garden and Ines´s father had made a mini golf course which we all played. Everyone is very welcoming. We shared Asado (BBQ) with plenty of meat/wine to go round. We got to know Ines´parents and her brothers well during the time we spent here.
We were invited to watch Matius´s band (Ines´s older brother) play at an underground venue the night after the wedding. They play a lot of punk rock and were 1 of 4 bands playing. We met a lot of his friends
and it was good to watch some Argentina rock close up. The ´mosh pit´ was mental, we stayed well clear of it!
Matias and Dolares
Ines´s brother and partner (Rosie - reminded me of Fat Pauly days!! haha). 😊
Matius and his girlfriend Dolares invited us to their home for dinner. Dolares is an English Teacher and Matius owns his own graphic design company. Their home was amazing and they had a huge brick BBQ in the garden. Matius had bought the biggest piece of meat and made a traditional dish for us, meat covered in cheese with tomato sauce on top...kind of like meat pizza...totally delicious! We shared wine and stayed up talking until early hours of the morning, great company.
Overall we really enjoyed our stay here in Argentina...we will miss the people, the meat, wine, everything.
Both of us agree that 1 month wasn´t long enough and we definitely want to come back again!
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Eileen Rye-Hannant
non-member comment
I am fasinated to read your blogg, your mum talks to me and i read the blogg, we feel as if we are with you, fantasic discriptions. A wonderful experince for you both, It must be really hard for you both to see the schools and the children. I am sure you will learn and gain a lot from this experince. Take care Eileen