Tecnologia

So there's actually been a few things going on. It's been kind of a busy week. We've been to a lot of Estancias Jesuiticas. We went to the Manzana Jesuitica here in Córdoba last tuesday before our afternoon classes. They were the ones that founded UNC here. The church inside was absolutely gorgeous! We also went inside one room in the old monastery that was part of the original university, and the tour guide told us that it was where all the students took their exams, and that the exams took about 8 hours straight, and were entirely in Latin.

On friday we all went on an excursion to Estancias Jesuiticas outside of Córdoba. The estancias are farms or ranches settled by the Jesuits. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the rooms at either of the estancias. First we stopped at the Estancia Corroya, which also functioned as a small boarding school if I remember correctly. It was so hot and humid there! More than in the city! And it rained during various periods throughout the day, and it would only make it more humid! But anyway, there were some really cool swords on display at the Estancia Corroya, and in one corner of the courtyard were these really weird statues, that looked like naked melting people. It was obviously modern art, and I have no idea why they were there.

The second one we went to was the Estancia Jesús María. I found this one a little more interesting, because it was et up more like a museum and they had a wider variety of things to look at. They had an exhibition about the aborigines here in Argentina, and how some of their stuff mixed with Christian ideology when the missionaries arrived.

They also had a lot of really cool artwork upstairs. It was all present-day art, some from foreign artists. I don't know why it was there, but they were pretty. We also saw some old school toilets, and there was a room that displayed old coins from around the world, including the United States. There was also a room full of all different types of porcelain dishes. The only place you could inside the actual church from the balcony in the back and look from there. The church was beautiful and huge, and really blue. The walls were also really bare. Our tour guide explained that there used to paintings all around the church, but they got stolen.

After visiting the two estancias, we went to lunch at about 2pm. We had lots of different types of carne asada. I ended up sitting by some girls from the other study abroad group. There was one girl from Germany, one from Brazil, Austria, and Switzerland. I don't remember any of their names, sadly. But I remember the German girl pointing out that it was interesting how we were all able to talk to each other with a common language, but it wasn't any of our native tongues.

The way lunch was set up, we didn't have our own personal plates. We had these ceramic discs placed throughout the table, and the waiters would come by every couple of minutes placing different foods on them, and you just ate off of the plate with the person/s you shared it with. One of the things they served was blood sausage. It didn't actually taste bad, but after four bites I just couldn't eat it anymore. It was the mushiest out of all the different meats and sausages they brought out. they also served salad on the side, and served papas fritas with scrambled eggs on top. It was really greasy, but it tasted so good! I took a few pictures of the food and serving dishes at the restaurant.

Speaking of pictures, and cameras . . . Mimi drove me nuts the other day. It wasn't something horrible, but she had this video on her camera that she wanted to upload onto her facebook. It was hard to tell her directions, because I don't really know computer terms in Spanish. It should have been a simple enough process, but what I could have easily told my own mother was difficult to explain to Mimi. We got the video file uploaded to her computer just fine, but then we had to figure out where on facebook you could upload the video. When I finally figured it out and had it start uploading, the internet connection was slow, and the upload bar said it would take three hours. I tried telling Mimi that it was uploading, but she could do other things on the internet and computer while it was doing that. She then proceeded to close the window, which stopped the upload, and then went straight to her profile expecting the video to be there, and then asked me why I didn't do it right. We repeated this cycle for over an hour and I just wanted to punch the computer. I kept telling her repeatedly that it was working, but that it was going to take awhile so she should just leave it alone. She asked me why I didn't know what to do, and I just told her that even in English I just don't understand technology all the time. It finally ended when she told me that I should get taylor to do it tomorrow. She ended up getting on her facebook by herself the next day when the internet connection wasn't so slow. I just never want to have to go through that again.