El Centro ("Downtown")

Saturday, 13 July

This was our day of orientation.  Nancy and I had breakfast (toast and jelly and hot tea) then Gabi drove us to the National University of Cordoba (UNC), our school.  I'm not sure, but I think driving it took nearly 15 minutes?  During the orientation, the two directors told us (all in Spanish) about safety, health, transportation, typical class environments, if you have problems with your host family, etc.  Those kind of things.  

It made me feel better that I could understand much of what one of the directors was saying because the night before with my host mother I did not catch a lot of it.  Thankfully, Nancy (my roommate) knows more Spanish than I and Gabi even knows a lot of English.  After orientation, the directors took us to a small restaurant close to UNC.  This also helped to boost my confidence about my Spanish because I sat with a whole table of students who are at my level of speaking.

When we left the restaurant, we were sent off with two other guides who were to give us a tour of the city (the downtown area called 'el centro.')  It was really pretty neat to see all the buildings and plazas--there are tons of plazas here!  The plazas are similar to a small park; they have music, fountains, art, and lots of people.  Sometimes people sell things there, too.  If I understood our guide correctly, there is usually a church and a bank next to the plaza.  There are so many churches here also!  Especially in el centro.  We visited a church but I do not remember the name of it.  It may have had something to do with Buen Pastor (the Good Shepard) or the Franciscans but I'm not sure.  I'll probably find out at some point.

(Update: I found out it's name is Saguro Corazon--Sacred Heart.)

I've made it a goal to take a picture of every statue of St. Therese of Lisieux that I come across as she is the saint whose name I chose for Confirmation.  Well, I found her there in the church!  I have a feeling I'll be seeing a lot of her here...

St. Therese of Lisieux

When Nancy and I returned home, we met Yaco's dad who stayed for dinner.  He seems pretty awesome and laid back.  The rest of the evening was very laid back.  Nancy taught Yaco how to play the card game Speed and he seemed to really enjoy it.  At 10:00 we ate dinner which consisted of steak and calabanza de puré (mashed pumpkin) and it was very tasty and filling.  Yaco had a friend, Lucho, come over to spend the night and while they played in the other room, Nancy, Gabi and I sat at the table chatting about everything under the sun.  Nancy and I decided to give her our gifts that we brought her; Nancy brought two kinds of chocolate from North Carolina and I brought two postcards (one of Indy at night and one of an aerial view of Crawfordsville) and a bag of Popcorn Indiana which Yaco and Lucho devoured during their movie.  Nancy and I went to bed at 1:00 after a nice, relaxing evening in.

Abrazos,
Jessica