6kg of meat for 6 men!
Although having actually finished now, the placement went fantastically. Upon arrival I had brushed up on a bit of Spanish but was hopeing for a fmaily which spoke at least some English - not at all haha!! This actually turned out to be great as it really forced to embrace the language and made the language barrier at the volunteer work much easier. My homestay family´s apartment is absolutly beautiful and in the perfect location of the city. Although it´s a very daunting experience, after my stay I would definetly reccommend the homestay to anyone travelling to BA. Every night I sampled a new taste of Argentina at the dinner table whilst attempting to make very slow but interesting conversation (my Spanish is still at the survival Spanish stage which makes it´s difficult, but that´s all part of the experience). I also feel like I have built a very close relationship wit the family. I am doing some independant travel for 2 weeks outside of BA now but when I return, they invited me back to stay before my departure!! Although I think that I may have been very lucky with the family I was placed with, I definetly has been the most memorabel part of the experience.
The one week of Spanish lessons were also ideal to get me on my feet in terms of the language and was also a great opportunity to meet other travellers and share tips. The school was very conviently located to Hayley and my homestays. I had a fantastic time there. My teacher and class in general were incredibly funny, with moments when all of us would litterally be speachless with laughter for minutes.
My placement saw me doing some home construction volunteer work through a company called Plan Techos (traslates to "project roof"). They basically set up teams of 5 families and provide them with micro-credit and materials for them to construct very basic homes for themselves. The areas are essentially semi-shanty towns with the families living in a lot of poverty. Things like electricity or a shower and working toilet are real luxuries. Most of the construction takes place in the area of San Miguel, in the "provinces" of BA city. The first few days were very interesting although not much work was done. Instead we met the organisers of the project and went around with them visiting fmailies who they work with and who we were going to be working with. A lot of maté was consumed (the national drink here which seems to transend class and is shared in a circle of friends) and it was great to meet everyone and practice my Castellano (the variant of Spanish which they speak here). The people were incredibly friendly and also very patient with my language skills - it was a absolute pleasure meeting some of them. Unfortunatly I have no photos of this!!! Altogether it was very interesting to see this other side of society after living in a upper-middle class area of Recoleta in the centre of Buenos Aires.
We didn´t actually end up doing any construction of the past 3 weeks as none is currently taking place which was a great shame. I got the impression that the global financial crisis had made it a lot more difficult to obtian credit loans which the construction relies upon. Compounding this was that it´s January here and everyone, literally halff the population of BA goes on holiday for the month haha. Bizarre but true. So instead we worked 3 days a week in their small factory (fabrica) assisting with making bricks to be used in the construction. We also did a few things to improve the efficiency and output of the fabrica. I really enjoyed it, despite the 2 hour commute each morning lol. An American called Nick was also voluntering and we became good friends with the guys at the factory, joking around, practicing our castellano as they practiced their english and also having the odd traditional argentian asado (6 kg of meat for 5 guys - afterwards I didn´t need to eat for a week!!).
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