EL Campo

The goal of the trip to rural rosario was to get an impression of how the economic policies that we've been studying have affected the rural, agrarial communities. we visited a university there that specialized in agriculture, as well as stayed with a family in a farming community for two days.

the whole trip to rosario was great, we were there monday through friday, and stayed on the farm tuesday until thursday. it was short, and we learned a lot, but by thursday i was ready to leave.

we were each paired up with at least a few other kids on the trip to live with, so that made the whole experience a little less scary. when we first got to the farm, the first job that we got to help with was changing the cows. there were around 300 cows in one pasture, and when we lifted up the rope to fence them in, all 300 (+) cows trotted around us to the other pasture where they could eat.

beyond that, we didnt really do that much on the farm. there werent all that many jobs for us to do. but we followed around gerarado, the owner of the farm, and he explained to us all about the different crops, and nitrogen fixing bacterial, and sustainable soil usage ( i mean at least i think thats what he was saying, he was speaking in spanish, and my agribio vocabulary in spanish is nothing to speak of...)

my stomach must have increased in size 10fold at the farm. they just kept feeding us! wednesday night the pueblo threw an asado (barbeque) for all of the kids on the program staying in that village. it was so special how excited they were to have us there. my host mom (who has a radio show in the village) wanted to do an interview with us to play on her show. after dinner she took out a tape recorder and we all spoke about our experiences on the farm. it seemed corny at first but it was actually a really nice way to complete the experience.

(this photo is from right before the asado, some of the woman from the pueblo took the girls on a tour)

a few girls on my trip are hispanic (their families are from mexico and the dominican), and they both had very emotional experiences at the farm, because they were able to experience first hand their families livlihoods. it was very interesting.

another something that i noticed at the farm that was interesting was they have a different way of speaking than they do in buenos aires. similar to the way one would compare the speach to someone from an american city, versus a country bumpkin in america. soemone in the city would speak much more properly, using correct grammer....whereas the person in the country would stereotypically tend to use more slang. the same was such here. one specific example the phrase che, means like hey you, or dude, it is very casual and is used occassionally in buenos aires. but everyone used it in rosario.

after rosario we went back to buenos aires, we got home around 10 on friday night. only to pack up and leave for uruguay sunday afternoon.