12.09.2012

 Donkeys roaming in the town square.

The afternoon view, with the red stripe off to the left. Do you see it? This is our main road in the neighborhood. Vineyards to both sides, the view of the mountains all around, beautiful houses to look at…

 This is the Golf Clubhouse, do you see the red stripe in the background? And how beautiful is the shadow of the cloud?!

 The morning mountains on the other side. This is a picture from the side of the house that I live in.

I know it has been a while. I really have a lot to talk about. This past month/two months have been quite a whirlwind. Essentially, I moved back to Argentina to teach at an International School. However, the International School is not in my Mendoza, but in another region of Argentina altogether. The province is Salta (“La Linda,” “the pretty,” because it really is quite a beautiful province) and the town is Cafayate.

 Cafayate is absolutely gorgeous, mountains are surrounding the entire area; every morning on my run I look at the mountains on one side with purple, green, light blue, red, and orange tints; every afternoon I see the mountains on the other side so clearly with the distinctive red stripe. It really is quite a sight to see.

 Although, Cafayate the town itself is SMALL. I mean, for those of you familiar with West Windsor, the town of Cafayate is maybe as large as the McCaffery’s shopping center. Maybe. Nassau Street is way bigger and way more lively than all of Cafayate. Just Nassau Street…not even including the side streets. What makes my living situation even more isolated is that the private neighborhood in which the International School is based is outside of the small town. The entrance to the private neighborhood is about 4 kilometers away from the small town and I live about 4 km away from the entrance. Plus, I have no transportation—no bike, no car, no moped, nothing! Just my two legs and very nice people who will drive me into town. Anyway, it is a small place to be. Perfect for my job, because I do not have any distractions. Yet, if I ever need a distraction, going for an additional run or walking will be it!

I have been working a lot. Teaching is a lot more work than one may think. Especially at a start-up institution with no direction whatsoever. Therefore, I honestly have not had the time to sit down and think…other than how we are doing class tomorrow. Finally, it has settled down quite a bit. Plus, next week I will be returning to Mendoza for the holidays. YES! I cannot wait for a real asado and an afternoon with mate.

I decided today I needed to write up a post because I wanted to talk about the town donkeys. Yes. We have town donkeys. Even though Cafayate is tiny, it has its own donkeys. There are three. They travel around together. If you see one, you at least see one other. Most of the time you see all three together. They just roam around the side streets, eating up garbage and little patches of grass, minding their own business. Very often they will stand right in the middle of an intersection just hanging out. Not too much fun for manual cars. Especially when there are no stop signs or stop lights anywhere in Cafayate. Today, however, a sight I have not seen quite yet, the three donkeys were walking through the middle of the town square! I think they try to keep a low profile, so we usually find them on side streets. But today, the three of them were just walking around the bubbling town square. I tried to take a good picture of all three, but the car stalled. Great. So, the picture you see is as good as it is going to get.

(Other pictures I have included are of the paisaje of Cafayate, specially the neighborhood I live in. It is beautiful. I have to admit. But it is a beautiful hole…)

K bye.