Buenos Aires Blog 7

Our day on Wednesday started at 6 am in the morning when we all gathered at Buenos Aires airport to fly domestically to Salta.  We were able to quickly get through checking in and security and reached the gate with enough time to spare to go find coffee or a couple snacks.  The plane boarded late and took off about 40 minutes after it was scheduled to.  Most of us took naps on the plane.  When we arrived in Salta and got our bags we piled in the small 11 person van and were driven to the hotel where we checked in and got in our rooms.  

Afterwards we met our tour guide Guermo,  He took us to "la plaza" and we got to see a the view of the plaza.  Part of touring the plaza was going into the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology which had an exhibit on the Incan Empire with in depth information in both English and Spanish on the Incan Empire, which Salta was a part of before the empire fell.  In the exhibit there was a girl who had been killed and buried up in the Andes and her body was preserved when the archeologists found it.  For lunch we went for empanadas and milanesas, they were amazing and we thoroughly enjoyed them. 

We then were driven to the Fe y Alegría school and we were hit with a reality of just how privelaged we are.  For some quick background, the students of this school are the equivalent of native Americans in America and they are treated injustly and discriminated against.  They live in poverty and barely have a chance at education, Fe y Alegria provides them with that chance.  So on Wednesday we walked into that school and into a room full of seniors.  We went through the regular introductory questions which were pertaining too our names, how old we were, and something interesting about yourself.  When the introductory phase from both sides finished, it was snack time however not many of us didn't have anything because we were still full from lunch.  The most important part of snack time was the socialization with the students, we all tried our best to interact with our fellow students.  It was cool to get a sneak peak into each other's lives.  We proceeded to learn games, teach games, play games, sing, and dance for the rest of our ninety minutes there.

But our day wasn't done yet.  At 8:30 we headed out to get dinner and celebrate the birthday of our youngest student, Will Cole - French, as he made the switch from fifteen to sixteen.  It was a dinner of a empanadas, pasta with spinach, beef and cheese, topped off with a celebration ice cream and dulche de leche dessert. 

Thursday morning we had to leave the hotel by 8:30am to get out to the school for our day of service there.  It was a sunny day with clear skies in dusty Salta.  When we walked in to the school we were greeted by smiles from teachers and students alike.  They proudly gave us a tour around their neighborhood which was full of dogs running around and slums.  The highlight of their neighborhood is the modern public hospital and "el parque" which is a big park with several different activities available to take advantage of, we chose to play futsal with a couple boys from the school.  Continuing on we walked back to the school and set up to help run the physical education class for the first and second year students of the high school, then we did the same after lunch for primary school students.   Finally, we headed back to the high school and sat around with sodas and cookies and reflected on the past day and a half together, from singing, to the thousands of pictures that were taken, to talking and laughing.  As a group we are all at different levels of Spanish speaking and understanding from as little as two years as experience to ten years or more, and regardless of skill level we all tried to talk to and understand the students of Fe y Alegría in Spanish.  We finished our day with dinner with the daughter of one of the teachers at Fe y Alegría and some of her friends, that was also a social event as topics were on all ends of the spectrum and conversation flowed and flowed.  All in all a very fun day and a fun and satisfying way to be a man for others; bringing smiles to other peoples faces 

-William Cole - French '19









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