Today I got home from a weekend trip to a small town in the province called San Hilario. It's where a classmate of mine is from, and she goes there every weekend to be with her mom. It also happens to be the town of the Japanese student Ruka. So, this weekend, she invited me to go with her.
We left straight from school on Friday and got on a little, fourteen passenger mini bus to the town. It was more or less an hour and a half, partially on the highway and partially dirt roads. We arrived to her house around 2 in the afternoon starving, and we sat down to some delicious beef and salad for lunch. Afterwards, we went out so she could show me the town. It has a population of about 600 people, and is super rural. Rural, not like Vermont, where everything is just spread out. Rural in the sense that to take a hot shower, one has to go and fill up the tank with water and wait for it to heat up, and when it runs out, it doesn't matter if you still have shampoo in your hair. Rural in the sense that a lot of houses don't have glass in their windows or doors that close tight, or that most of the family sleeps in one room. What surprised me was that here in Formosa (the city), there's a lot of people that talk about how impoverished they are and how tough their living situation is, but there in the town, everybody seemed pretty content and grateful for what they have.
I had a chance to go to the school and talk to a few classes there in English, and then Spanish. The English teacher had a very good accent, and although he talked reallyyyy slowly, he didn't sound like an Argentine.
Apart from that, my friend and I passed most of our time going from house to house, drinking terere and chatting. It was nice to have a laid back weekend for once. I enjoyed it.
Monday morning (aka today) we got up at 4:20am to get the bus around 5:00 and head to school, arriving at 7:28am as they were about to close the doors. So obviously, seeing as I went to bed around 1am, I am exhausted. Time for a siesta. There's photos on my Facebook if you all want to see, but don't google San Hilario Formosa because none of the pictures that show up on Google are actually from the town.
And... 43 days till I leave, 45 till I get home. Six weekends left. Woah.
