Hola a todos! My summer vacation is almost over, but I still have a week of fun left. Something equivalent of a county fair is in town, and we go every night to eat, hang out, and admire all of the handmade goods for sale. I’ll probably buy a bunch of nice things to take back with me.
I recently was at the Cerro Colorado in Cordoba. This was really fun, but it made me miss Whidbey Island because the life there was so similar. Calm, peaceful, with lots of open space. It was an awesome vacation from Viedma.
I’d planned to go to Bariloche, but the house of my friend there was totally full of other relatives. Hopefully I’ll find a 4 day weekend that I can get away and enjoy it. I really want to go skiing or snowboarding, because its been about 14 months since the last time I went.
This coming week I start at a new school. I’ll be a senior at the Industrial High School. My classes are all technical, ranging from metallurgy to electronics. The only downside is the schedule. 1:30pm to 9pm every weekday! Plus, 2 days a week, I have PE in the morning. I hope it will be fun or at least more interesting than the cows I would be studying if I’d stayed in the agricultural school.
Only 4 months are left! Summer has gone by faster than ever before. I kind of look forward to going home, but I know that I will miss some things. I still think I’ve made a very good use of my time this year. I hope everyone who reads this is doing well and living healthily. Until next month, that’s all for now. Bye! Love you all!
Here’s my newspaper article:
What comes to your mind when someone says "paradise?" Do you imagine a sunny beach in the tropics, with crystal blue water and palm trees? Maybe it’s the backside of Steven’s Pass, with free lift tickets and perfect snowboarding weather. Or is it something smaller? A simple overstuffed chair by a blazing fire, with a good, long book to read.
Personally, I define paradise as somewhere or some time that makes me forget about the cruel world and lets me concentrate on having fun. This is a very broad definition; all of the above situations follow it.
It’s also possible to have more than one paradise. Depending on the time of year, where you are on the globe, (or off of it), your definition may change dynamically. Someone walking the 4 miles home in the rain will have a different description of paradise than another who’s been burnt to a crisp because he or she slept all day under the sun in Tahiti.
So, everyone has a definition that changes from time to time. I recently found a new paradise, in Cordoba, Argentina. It’s called the Cerro Colorado, or Red Hills. A nature/cultural reserve in the middle of the desert, I find plenty of reasons to call it a paradise.
Everything about the place is peaceful. When I went there, every day I slept in until 11. After eating lunch, (pretty much everyday we barbecued), we’d all go out front and relax in the river, which flows over sandstone rocks with a pleasant gurgling sound. After an hour or so of that, it’s naptime, while the sun is hottest.
Around 5 o’clock, I’d get up and have a snack. Then, we’d go someplace, whether it be climbing one of the hills or taking a walk to see ancient pictographs.
After dinner at 10 or 11, I spent a few hours stargazing every night. That’s something I really loved. It was completely peaceful, almost no bugs, warm, dry air, and millions upon millions of stars I’d never seen before, thanks to light pollution. I’d really missed that.
Before coming to Argentina I spent lots of time backpacking, mountain climbing, and just being in the great outdoors. In Viedma, there isn’t anywhere to do those activities that I love. It had been a long time since I’d seen the stars so clearly, so my trip to the Cerro Colorado was a giant uplift for me. I only wish I could have stayed there longer and seen some more of the natural beauty.
I would have done that, if the family I stayed with wasn’t busy working and raising their one-year-old daughter. During my first week at the Cerro, my host father was with me, on vacation. He took me around to see lots of places; however, all too soon, he had to return to working. I didn’t, so I stayed for another week.
This second half was different, because I was on my own. Marcelo and Mariana, my hosts, are artists, and have to work continuously. They make handcrafts, such as paintings, ceramics, and rainsticks, all with the pictographs found throughout the area. If you want to see some of the photos, visit my website at
www.angelfire.com/trek/jonathanscoles/argentina/argindex.html.The rest of my trip to the province of Cordoba was pretty mellow, ending with a 12-hour drive back to Viedma. Another big difference between Argentina and the US is travel. If you want to go anywhere out of town, it’s usually by bus, and it will probably take more than 10 hours to get there. For example, to get to Bariloche, a big ski resort due east of my city, the bus takes 14 hours to drive straight on a dirt road all the way there, without stopping. You see nothing, apart from fences and the occasional carrion bird. One problem Argentina will never have is to run out of space. The vast majority of the country is flat, open and uninhabited like the Patagonia.
It’s huge. Practically deserted, the northeastern Patagonia is occupied only by the scarce flock of sheep or cowherd. Picture an enormous desert, covered with knee-high scrub bushes that provide no shade whatsoever, with stiff, dry, and prickly grasses below, making walking a very unpleasant experience. This Patagonian desert is definitely not on my list of paradises.
On the other hand, many other places in Argentina are. From the small town, Alumine, in Neuquen where we had the AFS retreat to the shopping centers in Cordoba and Buenos Aires that you really miss after months without them. Sometimes paradise is when I talk with my family, or read letters from home.
Paradise is defined as "heaven," or "a place or state of bliss." This is definition is dynamic, meaning it changes from time to time, and from place to place. Every once in a while, when one is bored or unhappy or homesick, paradise for him or her is home. This happens to me a lot. All of the people I’ve been with for all of my life are at home or nearby. Most my dreams for the future take place somewhere in America. Even though one of my paradises is at home, I know that I have other ones for the 4 months that remain of my endeavor here. When you don’t get exactly what you want or hoped to get, sometimes you find that you didn’t really need it so badly, and often end up better off than before.