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Vocation, Visits & Vacation:
School groups continue to come and go each week at La Lucena Environmental Learning Center. They learn about ecology, sustainability, group dynamics and hopefully take some inspiration and motivation back to their homes in Buenos Aires. Every other week, Colby and Tremayne attend the Escuela de la Familia Agricola, catching the 6:50 am bus on Monday morning and making their way home by 7:30 pm on Friday evening. They march back into our lives exhausted but in good spirits. The normal routine of school, work and daily life in La Pampa was livened up during this month of October as we hosted our first North American visitor and went on a short vacation. Accompanied by David's mother, we left the still brown fields and slowly greening hills of Cordoba Province and journeyed to the lush tropical landscape of Misiones Province. New people and new perspectives are added to our broadening understanding of Argentina.

ESCUELA DE LA FAMILIA AGRICOLA With confident attitudes and adventurous spirits, Colby and Tremayne are thriving on the independence of their life at boarding school. Their new uniforms help them to at least look like full-fledged students even if it is questionable how much content they are able to absorb from their classes that are all in Spanish. Last weekend they brought home their first packet of homework, which was a good sign that the teachers were beginning to expect more of them. It was a challenge for the whole family to plow through the assignments - Lise translating the articles on international commerce, rural administration and tomato cultivation, David downloading webpages about food pyramids, thermometers and chemical formulas, and Colby and Tremayne plodding through the questions as well as they could with the background they have. They created a poster on water quality issues in Minnesota, although they were not certain exactly what it was for. They are learning much about patience, persistence and adaptability. This Week at School was not a usual week. Usual weeks are sitting in 9 hours of class making bracelets, eating, and sleeping. However this week Thursday and Friday were open house. Because of that there were almost no classes during the beginning of the week. Wednesday after lunch the entire school was turned upside down. All of the classrooms were emptied and the chairs were put in the comedor (the dining hall), the desks were set up as displays, half of the tables in the comedor were brought out to the barn, and extra classrooms were cleaned out. Then all the students spent the rest of the afternoon setting up their displays. During the open house, classes from other schools came to see the displays as well as parents of the students. The last day there were closing ceremonies and then pack up and catch the bus home. Colby Abazs embarrassment... My parents and grandmother showed up unexpectedly to school during the week. Apparently they had gotten a call saying that they should come and pick me up because I had a toothache. While they were explaining this to me I kept trying to save myself a whole lot of embarrassment by getting them to move to where there weren't any people looking. I thought the least path of embarrassment would be to say that my tooth didn't hurt that bad and I didn't need to go home, anyways I didn't even know that an adult knew that I had a toothache. So the trio left, leaving me with my classmates asking why my parents had come. : ( /tremayne\ xXxXxXxXxXxXx With the English teacher serving as interpreter, Lise and David gave a presentation about Round River Farm and U.S. agriculture at the school. Although it was somewhat embarrassing for Colby and Tremayne to have us show up on their turf, we think it was nice for their fellow students to learn a little about where they come from. It was also a nice way for us to meet the people they are spending their time with and to get a peek into the life they are experiencing. As the school year here draws to a close (unfortunately just as Colby and Tremayne are getting settled in) there was an elaborate open house at EFA where all the grades displayed projects demonstrating what they have been studying during the year. Posters and models about weather forecasting, irrigation systems, crop management and much more filled the classrooms, and the students presented their information to visiting parents as well as to busloads of students from other local schools. Colby and Tremayne sat with their fellow classmates though they did not have much to say. The language barrier is still a challenge but the boys seem very happy in this setting and they have adapted well to these 5-day immersions.

VISIT David's mother made the long journey from Kentucky to join us here in Argentina for two weeks. Katharine sashayed into our lives as gracefully as the folk dancer that she is and bravely followed us on our trip to Misiones. David thoroughly enjoyed her eagerness to play word and card games with him, and Lise was appreciative of her shared interest in birding. She arrived loaded down with books and other assorted items we had decided we wanted from the U.S. (The English chemistry and algebra books were put to use immediately on the homework assignments.) Her most precious delivery was a nice digital camera that Colby had ordered for his new hobby, inspired by fellow La Lucena teacher, Mike. (The yellow rose photo above is one of hundreds he has been taking of the progression of flowers bursting into bloom as summer approaches.) Although the singing birds were keeping well hidden in the dense thorny trees, Katharine still managed to add over 40 species to her life list.

VACATION A twenty hour bus ride through endless, flat farmland brought us to Misiones Province, the little finger of Argentina that extends up into the rainforest between Paraguay and Brazil. The journey was quite comfortable in the plush reclining seats of the double decker bus, entertained by bad American movies and served simple but decent meals. Upon our arrival we were welcomed like royalty by the family of Ivan, the AFS exchange student who had lived with us for a few weeks last winter. We feasted on traditional foods twice a day and were whisked around in their air-conditioned van to all the significant sights of the region including 400 year old Jesuit mission ruins and various rainforest education and wildlife rehabilitation centers. This was our first time being typical tourists here in Argentina and it felt a bit odd to be amidst the trinket sellers and begging children. During this trip we needed to renew our tourist visas by leaving and reentering the country. Although Brazil and Paraguay were within shouting distance, we hadn't expected to be able to cross their borders since they require $60-100 visas for U.S. visitors. Despite our doubts, Ivan's mother, Griselda, confidently drove us over the bridge to Brazil, and then, just for the experience, continued on into Paraguay as well. It was interesting to note the different flavor of the two neighboring countries during our brief jaunt across the borders. Brazil's wide and clean avenues were lined with sleek buildings and flashy signs. Paraguay's narrow and chaotic streets were crowded with tightly packed shops and vendors. The only place anyone checked our passports was on the Argentine side, where we were given our exit stamps and then the new entrance stamps, no questions asked. In addition to visiting a relative's native tree nursery and worm composting set up, we also were shown the sawmill and tree plantations owned by Ivan's father Tony. Strangely, the landscape of this subtropical region brought to mind Iowa. The gently rolling landscape was lush and fertile but instead of square miles of cornfields, there were endless hectares of araucacia and yellow pines all in different stages of production. The plots are treated very much like farm fields with the cycle for pulpwood in this climate only 8 years and the cycle for dimensional lumber only 20 years. It takes at least ten times as long for trees to grow in our north woods. Tony's mill processes 2 acres worth of trees every day and serves local and global markets. There was not much original rainforest to be seen anywhere except in the national park. The climax of our sightseeing was the incredible Iguazu Falls where breathtaking amounts of water pour over a basalt ledge two kilometers wide and 80 meters high. We elbowed our way through the crowds along walkways that crossed over numerous side cascades and then up under showers of spray. A two kilometer causeway crossed over the river above the falls where the current flowed gently over shallow rocks with sunning turtles and caiman cruising through the ripples. It led to the top of the Garganta del Diablo (devil's throat), a swirling cauldron that defies description. David cried, Lise got dizzy, Colby couldn't take his new camera away from his face and Tremayne crouched in the shade of a scraggly shrub and listened to the roar. The cool mist billowed like smoke into the heavy tropical air and death-defying swallows darted in and out of the shimmering rainbows and pounding spray to their nests behind the curtains of water. It was mind-numbing and a very appropriate culmination to a whirlwind of a vacation.