jack and ken's grand adventure

Hola! We´ve found ourselves a cute little home away from home in the city of Bariloche, Argentina. We really like it here, so we´ve decided to stay for five weeks (SUCH a welcome change of pace, travelling is exhausting!). Weve found plenty of things to keep us busy. I (this is Kendra by the way :) am taking spanish classes at a language school called La Montana. Im REALLY enjoying it... learning a language is SO hard, but I´m slowly improving... I´m able to get by with my basic travel spanish, but I look forward to being able to carry an intelligent conversation and actually use other tenses than just present. I sound like such an idiot sometimes. If someone asks me what I did yesterday, my responses resemble this- ¨I go to the store. I study spanish. I swim in the lake. Later I go to bed. It is very fun¨ !!! AHHH... It makes general conversation very difficult. Bluh...good thing I´ve got lots of time to learn! Jackie has been a saint, helping me learn... shes patient even when I make the same ridiculous mistakes over and over. While I´m in classes Jackie is working as a volunteer in two different places in the city. The first one, called Sembrar, where she goes in the mornings is an garden-forest deal where she works with indiginous plants, transplanting them... working in the sun. The other, called ¨gotitas de esfuerza¨, literally ¨Drops of Effort¨ is a huge kitchen where poor families can come to get food. She helps out with the kids, teaching them English and playing games with them. It´s in a really poor neighborhood of Bariloche. It´s incredibly sad to see how some people live. No running water, no electricity, literally little shacks in a row in a dust bowl at the bottom of a valley. Many of the kids quit going to school really young, to help out with their HUGE families, or to start families of their own. In our free time there is tons to do in Bariloche. We spent our first week in a hostel, but now we are living in a homestay... it´s much nicer! The school set us up with an Argentinian family. Jackie and I share a mother-in-law apartment below the house. We have everything we need, a kitchen, a bathroom, closets... even a really annoying dog named Tibu. There are 5 backpackers living in the house right now, all of us taking classes or volunteering at the school. Its really awesome to meet people from all over the world, and its perfect for practicing spanish becuase everyone speaks different languages. There are two German girls, two Dutch girls, and us.... quite a riot to hear us trying to communicate! There is a massive national park right by Bariloche, and we´ve had a killer time exploring the lakes and MILLIONS of hikes. Last weekend we went on a 2 day hike to the top of Mount Tronodor (Thunder Mountain!) We went with our friend Libby, and Aussie we met at the hostel, and two of her friends... one from France and one American. The hike was incredible... 6 hours of steep climbing through dense forests, mountains, and the best part... 2 massive glaciers at the summit. The Andes mountains are amazing, rugged peaks as far as the eye can see. We camped in a tent at the tope of the Mountain, right in between the two glaciers. It was such an experience... but VERY cold. Jackie and I had to spoon for warmth! Once the sun went down it was literally inky black save for the millions of sparkling stars overhead. The milky way is INSANE here... you can see everything so clearly, even a violet blue Venus, and the burnt orange of Mars. We woke up early and watched the sun creep up over the mountains, bathing the ridges in soft gold and pink light, while the glaciers growled behind us as the ice lurched into life. We descended that afternoon, exhausted but so stoked on the whole experience. We plan on doing some more hikes in the area... we´ll keep you posted! For now, it´s seista time, a part of latino culture we are more than happy to embrace! CIAO