Penguin walk

I hurt my feet from walking around Cordoba in leather sandals the past few weeks instead of shoes.. The sidewalks all around the city are made up of different types of flooring that are patched together and are either slightly elevated or slightly downward so finally last night I was in a lot of pain when I was putting pressure on them and I went to the doctor here.. its going to take two weeks to get completely better mas o menos but for now I'm walking like a penguin around the city, so much so that Benjamin told me we didn't need to go to Puerto Madryn to see penguins because we had one walking around in our house.. haha hopefully getting better soon!

BTW.. planning my trip to Brazil and I can't wait.. I finish my exams at the end of november and then will be traveling through the end of december through Brazil with my friend. December-the end of February are summer months here so I have until March to travel through Patagonia (for three weeks in January) and then stay in Montevideo, Uruguay for a month before coming back for my second semester in Cordoba from March through July!

Zurich Orchestra

Saw the Zurich Youth Orchestra with Benjamin at the theatre next to Patio Olmos and it was such an impressive performance.. The conductor conducted the entire performance without any music in front of him and the theatre is something in itself, so beautiful inside. I want to go to another performance there before Benjamin leaves for France at the end of november and I go to Brazil..

Horseback riding with Marcelo

Marcelo con Joaquin looking at the sheep

My friend Marcelo invited me to go horseback riding at his family's place this past sunday.. I laughed and said I didn't know how to ride a horse and he replied that it would be easy.. I was so nervous but it was such a great day. I LOVED it. Him and his brother picked me up in the center and we drove about an hour and a half to el campo where his other brother lives with his family. Marcelo and his brother showed me how to ride Manela, Marcelo's beauutifull horse and they rode on two others with me past all the surrounding fields and fabricas, we went for about two hours and then came back and played with his nephew, Joaquin, who is soo cute.. Then Marcelo and I took a bus back to Cordoba. When we were horseback riding, there was no problem riding through other family's field's which was strange for me, but really nice to see how they're so open with their neighbors. We also saw some Argentines training dogs to chase rabbits and they go so fast I couldn't believe it. At one point we stopped to look for some white horses that they wanted to check up on and we came upon this vast field of purple flowers.. it was so beautiful, I think it might be one of my favorite places in Cordoba.

NY

Kenny, Francis, Tina (main actors) and me

In the beginning of the year I finished a short film called, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? It is a student production that I wrote with Grant Curatola, and directed and edited myself, based on the short story by Joyce Carol Oates. The chilling work of Oates was based on a true story of a serial murderer in Tuscon, Arizona. It is a cautionary tale that tells of a teenager who when acting provocatively attracts the attention of a sociopath who then proceeds to psychologically terrorize his victim.

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/8555442

I've submitted the film to several film festivals and am waiting to see where the film will be accepted. In April it won first place at the Guild Hall Student Film Festival which granted it entry to the Hamptons International Film Festival, which was AMAZING. The film had two screenings over the weekend of October 10th and I flew back to New York for a week to go to the festival and see my family. It was an incredible week. The film was chosen as one of the seven "picks" by The Independent to see at the festival, the only short on the list, and listed alongside recognized directors and actors. All of my friends came to the screening which meant everything to me.. And after the second screening, the manager of James Franco called Kenny (lead actor and producer) to request a copy of the film for James.. Could not have dreamed of a better week at home.

When I came back to Cordoba, Kathryn was waiting at the airport to pick me up, so sweet.. and it was really nice to be home. Although the cab driver took us the long way back to Cordoba, now I'll know to state which way I'd like to be taken in the future.

Renting a car and heading for the coast

Video we took from the boat

Stefan, Benjamin and I by the cliffs

To save pesos on guided excersions in Puerto Madryn (they are such a rip off in Puerto Madryn, especially since we got there on the first day of the tourist season- Oct 1st-.. I'd highly advise renting a car for the day and doing your own thing), we rented a car and went off of our map to make our own stops and watch whales off of cliffs (you can see them right from the beach). We made our way to a whaling town and got lunch before getting on a boat that got RIGHT NEXT TO the whales. It was UNBELIEVABLE! They swam right beneath the boat and being about to look down onto them into the clear water, instead of seeing only the tops of their bodies at eye level, made it an even crazier experience than kayaking alongside them. They are so graceful and their colas, tails, are SO BEAUTIFUL to watch falling back into the water.

Stefan (who drove) right after we rented the car the night before

Benjamin while we parked at the beach

Driving back to town to have some dinner before getting on our 11pm bus back to Cordoba, we stopped by a beach and saw some beached sea lions. The beach was blocked off but since we had not passed a car in forty minutes.. we jumped the fence.. One sealion was lying, it was so big I thought it was a baby whale and I came right up to it for a picture because I thought it was sleeping when all of a sudden it flipped over and made a really loud noise- absolutely terrified me and Benjamin, who had been waiting to take a picture, was laughing soo hard.

¿Que es un Gaucho?

As I've been studying the history of Gaucho's in Argentina through my culture class at the University, I might have neglected to describe who they are. So, to put it most simply, I'll use a definition from wikipedia: Gaucho (gaúcho in Portuguese, gaucho in Spanish) is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Region, Brazil. The word gaucho could be described as a loose equivalent to the North American "Cowboy" ("vaquero" in Spanish).

Puerto Madryn

21 hours to Puerto Madryn by bus..

50 hours in Puerto Madryn..

20 hours back to Cordoba by bus..

Class.

Difficult..

But the whales were AMAZING.

Benjamin, Stefan and me

Thats one of the whales.. and me in my kayak.. so close

Haha on the bus ride there they played the movie, Everythings Fine, which is awfully slow moving. Stefan slept while Benjamin and I stayed up and watched it. We all woke up and they put the same film on at 7:30am and Benja went, "Oh my god.. this movie went so slow the first time.. I dont know, it must go in slow motion this time". 5 hours left on the way home, and I was staring out the window at the picturesque country side of Argentina between Cordoba and the tip of Patagonia and the view of the fields and tall trees reminded me of impressionist french paintings.. Writing in my journal to pass the time, I wrote, "I feel like I'm looking at a 1880 french landscape painting when I look out the window, I wish Ben was sleep talking next to me so that it would seem even more legitimate." (Benjamin is from Grenoble, near the Alps in France). I read him that and he closed his eyes and began to mumble in french for the next ten minutes, perhaps the most entertaining thing on the trip for me.

The first night we ate an asado at our hostel and slept before waking up at six am to get dressed for our kayaking trip. We spent four and a half hours kayaking right alongside WHALES. It was hard after a while but seeing a whale for the first time, only ten feet away or so, was worth it. We were all exhausted afterwards but we took a break in the middle and went hiking along these cliffs that overlooked the nature preserve we were on and the water.. breathtaking. On the kayak ride back, the sea lions swam alongside us.

Learning some guitarra

One of my flatmates, Luca, moved back to Switzerland but before he left he began teaching me what he knew of guitar and I love it. I can play one song.. called Spanish ballad, and now several gaucho chords. After horseback riding, the gaucho cooked us an asado that was so delicious with wine and too many different types of meat. After, he began playing guitar and singing gaucho canciones which were so beautiful to listen to, culturally and simply for listening. When the girls started talking to his friend about Brazil, I asked him if he would mind teaching me something (although I was so nervous to ask since I can't even play but I thought whats to lose) and he spent an hour and a half teaching me the beginning principles of playing how the gauchos play. I couldn't have dreamed of anything better, such a unique experience, learning guitar from a gaucho.. so cool

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