Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.
Sorry I missed blogging last night but I was just too tired. My body is still not used to getting up a 3 AM central. I know I will have the exact opposite problem when I return in 3 weeks but somehow I don't think sleeping LATER will be as hard as getting up earlier.
Starting with Thursday evening at dinner up until dinner last night was one great 24 hour period! Thursday evening we went out to a nice restaurant with the Argentinian team. I do not remember the restaurant name (I should bring a pad and paper with me for these things). Anyway, we arrived at about 9:30 which is about the right time to eat dinner here I am told. We ordered some Argentinian wine and the waiter brought us some bread. I think I mentioned previously that I do not have the palate to tell good wine from bad. This is probably a blessing since I can be equally happy with good wine or bad. Either way, I am told that this wine was good so I will take their word for it. I only had 1/2 of a glass anyway. The bread had a spread in a bowl next to it that the Argentine people were spreading so I jumped in. This, ladies and gentlemen, was my introduction to pate. I had never had it before and will not likely eat it again but I did finish all of my bread at least. The appetizer was calamari. This, ladies and gentlemen, was my first time eating this stuff as well. It was not too bad I guess. At this point in time I am ready for anything. They had English versions of the menu so at leat I could tell what I was ordering. I had some big hunk of beef and French fries. The beef down here has some sort of unique taste. I think it is because everything is field / grass fed as opposed to American beef. I do not know how to describe except it tastes a little gamey (like deer meat maybe). It is still very good and but the piece was too big so I could not finish mine. Everyone was drinking water and the waiter would just keep bringing water in glass bottles and filling our glasses. Here it is popular to drink carbonated water (aka with gas) but I ordered mine "sin gas" (without gas). Desert was tiramisu and it was great as well. We left around 11:45 and there were still people coming in to be seated for dinner! We arrived back at the hotel around midnight and I collapsed on my bed.
I did not order breakfast for Friday morning since I was still full from dinner and we all arrived at work around 9AM. There was some frustration on the Argentinian coworkers part as they could not get the projector for the training room until 10. My coworker and I are not scheduled to begin training until next Monday so we were not effected. We were taken to a bank to exchange our US dollars to pesos (3.05 peso = 1 dollar). This took some time as the banks here are only open four about 5 hours per day and since it was Friday, the line was very long. I walked out of the bank with about 320 pesos (and 25 centavos) and felt better knowing I could now go anywhere and at least be able to pay my own way.
For lunch we went to the same cafeteria like place that we went on Thursday for lunch and I did the same thing I did on Thursday, namely pointed at the person in front of me and said "same" so I did not have to pronounce what I wanted. I thought I was getting fish but it was chicken along with some vegetables and some sort of thing made with pumpkin and spinach (in a triangular cake slice type shape). That along with a Fanta orange was only 8 pesos ($2.75). Food is very inexpensive down here.
In the afternoon, they asked us to sit in on an overview presentation of our process and invited us to jump in and answer questions. There were 10 people training and 4 people running the training (not including us Americans). My coworker jumped in and explained a few things. He and some other trainers had to go to a meeting so I stayed in the training room with the 2 remaining trainers and within about 10 minutes, I was leading the class. This was going to be the most scary part I thought. The point that I dreaded the whole time leading up to the trip. How well will these folks understand English, will my sense of humor come through, etc. Everything went great!!! It was like I had been doing this sort of thing for years even though I have very little experience in this sort of thing. I must have spoke off and on for about 2 hours and during a break time, I was speaking to about 1/2 the class about America and other things. We finished up around 6 PM and since all the other trainers were heading back to Buenos Aires for the weekend, my coworker and I were left all alone.
We got a taxi (actually a "remis") bask to the hotel (12 pesos) and then killed some time in the room until about 8 PM (we did not want to go to dinner too "early"). We wanted to go over to the mall close to us and buy some water (the water in the room in the fridge is a little pricey - about $1.25 per bottle - not bad for America but really high for sown here) and we thought we would take a chance and go to the food court at the mall for dinner. We found a medium size grocery store inside the mall. This must be normal thing (having groceries in a mall) as a bank we visited earlier in the day was also in a mall and there was a grocery store there as well. We roamed around the grocery for about 30 minutes. It was neat to see all the different things that they had for sale and to see what brands that they had in common with us too. We decided to eat first and then come back for our water. The food court was very typical and had normal choices (pizza, Chinese, burgers, ice cream, etc.). We settled on the pizza place and I ordered first. I attempted to pronounce everything correctly and between that and pointing at the pictures on the wall I was able to order my pizza, empanada and coke (total - 7 pesos - $2.40 US). My coworker ordered a calzone and a beer (every place sold beer). The food was OK (typical of food court food). We went to the grocery and picked up some bottled water with no problem and then retired for the night.
I conquered a lot of fears in those 24 hours (eating pate was one of them!). I was able to get pesos, speak in front of the training class in English, order food, and purchase water. All in one 24 hour period. Needless to say, I am feeling great today. I will try to post about my day sometime tonight to catch up and maybe post some more pictures. Talk to you soon.
Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.
Jon
No comments:
Post a Comment