EIL Intercultural Learning

Interesting times in San Luis at the moment. There is a nice build up for the 16th of August that being the “kids day” when Argentinians have big parties for children and give them presents. The official day was actually last Sunday  but we are having the party in the comedor this Sunday. The other workers tell me that there are usually a few hundred children who come for the party !! It is going to be crazy but I am looking forward to it and I think it will be good fun overall.

This morning myself and a few of the workers went to another type of volunteering organisation in San Luis called Caritas. Caritas is an international humanitarian organisation  that works with people in need. In San Luis they give out food and clothes to poor people. They allowed us to use their kithcens today and showed us how to make a kind of sweet cereal bar from cereal and caramel. It was quite easy to make and we had great fun making them. We brought our goods back to the comedor which is currently been painted at the moment. The ceiling is being plastered and will then be painted. Before any painting is done on the walls they all need to be cleaned so we were using sand paper all day yesterday to take any marks or dirt of the walls. It you don’t like the sound of someone scratching on a blackboard then this certainly is not the place to be at the moment !

Last night after dinner my host family took me to the near by mountains. It has only rained once since I came so it is extremely dry here. Forest / bush fires often occur and at the moment there are a whole series of fires on the mountain range overlooking San Luis. A fireman and a policeman both died yesterday trying to fight the fire so it is a serious situation but no one in the city of San Luis is in an danger of the fires. Police were blocking access to a number of roads into the mountains but we managed to find a route where we could get a view of the fires. It was a surreal sight as it was night time and we could see the fires from quite a distance. I had never seen anything like it before. Ther mountains were so quite , the whole scene was bizarre. There is actually a village in the mountains called El Volcan and I imagine it is named after these fires which occured as the whole scene genuinely looked like some kind of volcanoe. Quite a sight.

So all good for the moment in San Luis and the kids day is on its way and hopefully it will be good fun.