So we´re in this little city of 600,000 people, having spent the day at a series of tours at the local electrometalurgical plant after a series of nights with fewer than five hours of sleep (last night was the record so far at 3 hours), and now after two bottles of wine we think it went fairly well.
Except for the quasi-giggle fest during our five-to-one meeting with the biggest of the big wigs at the metalwhatsamacallit plant (two bottles of wine). We think we kept up appearances well enough for our team and our country.
Here´s the scoop – two weeks into our program (at which point,we´ve been warned by previous travelers we would be close to loosing it), we are still getting along incredibly well and enjoying ourselves. But, some things are difficult.
Like Alecia´s experience at her Italian host family´s dinner last night where yelling at one another is an appropriate communication method, and talking about your guest being an imposition is also perfectly appropriate, providing the family thinks you can´t understand.
Later, things calmed down for Alecia when she joined Jen and Beth for a pajama party at Beth´s host family´s home. We all met at the airport at 6 a.m. for our flight to San Juan.
Why are we in San Juan? It´s the question we all have been asking, and one that we have heard a great deal from our friendly reps at the plant. Is it to visit the world famous vineyards? See dinosaur bones? Shop for artisan goods? Wander around looking for the one restaurant in town? We don´t know, but we do know that the very generous owner of the Andina Electrometalurgica plant honed in on the fact that there are three engineers in our group who might be very interested in a tour, and so graciously paid for our one-hour flight here, five hotel rooms and meals.
What was the giggle-fest about? Well, late in the afternoon, after a satisfying lunch and a long, sunny drive back to the plant, Don and Beth had a hard time staying conscious long enough to listen to the vice president (and our benefactor´s son) extemporate on the history of the plant and on that of the practice of electrometalurical-something in general. Bryan, Jen and Alecia tried hard to pose intriguing questions while failing to choke back their laughter during the hour-long, and tremendously intriguing presentation about the history of metallurgy. Apparently they found their team mate´s difficulty maintaining consciousness to be funny. We have since discussed that the two worst things that can happen during a meeting with an important person are being tired or having the giggles.
Okay, let´s skip to shopping. Did that in Buenos Aires yesterday (tried on a bunch of coats for Sonia, Bryan´s wife, and Mike, Beth´s husband – while finding a few “deals” for Jen and Alecia), and a little more shopping today in San Juan in artisan shops (dusty, old stuff, but a few cool things for family and friends). Tomorrow we have some time to tour “bodegas” and vineyards (with a few dams, reservoirs and dikes that we have to inspect thanks to our engineer entourage), then it´s back to BA for a good night´s rest of, oh, I don´t know, five hours or so.
We think that our continuity as a group will carry us through this difficult hump, and next week we´ll be ready to go with new host families, new attitudes, more sleep, and a few more bottles of vino tinto.
Buenos Noches,
Beth and Alecia
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