fredag 7. mai 2010

Hogar bethel

So, I know I´m slow, SORRY!

I won´t write much, I will let the pictures speak for themselves...

The Sunday dance...


Me and Maria...


Me and Cynthia...


A normal day in the kindergarden...


The charming Santiago...


Playtime...


Milagros on the phone...


Me, Mara and Belen...

again...


The choir...


Breakfast...

Birthday-time...


Another band...

Photo-shoot...


my girls...


I will miss it, this place! I hope I can come back one day. On Monday it´s only 3 weeks left, time is passing very fast. I will write again though, so stay tuned. Just not right now, cause AK is visiting and we have things to do, places to see and songs to sing ;)
-Ida-












søndag 2. mai 2010

"Did you hear?"


Ida and AK got new boyfriends?



Did you also hear: AK doesn't want to write more essays!

PS: yes, dad, I did try to buy his guitar for you, but he didn't want to part from it,
as it was specially made for him.

lørdag 1. mai 2010

A visual summary of the trip to Santiago de Chile and Mendoza


Cool mix of old and new architecture in Santiago.

The view of some of the city from a view point.

The meeting point for the rafting excursion.

Summer meets fall? (at least for people who associate palm trees with summer!)

Mendoza by night (Plaza de Independencia)

A grape plantation belonging to one of the vineyards on our bike-and-wine list!

No comment necessary.

A happy biker.

Rafting in Medoza River!



Word of advice: don't sit down in the front of the boat -
you will be the one getting soooooaked. Learned that lesson the hard (wet?) way.

FUN! :)

tirsdag 20. april 2010

Bus trippin'

I forgot to tell you last time, that while Alejandro & Simon were visiting we did a little travelling too: specifically to Mar del Plata, which is about 5h. south of BsAs. It's the IT-vacation spot for porteños and is known for it's beaches and casinos. We tried both (although the beach was a cold pleasure - the casino was better). I learned (to love) playing poker!

Anyway, that's all old news now, because there is a new trip waiting to happen:
Tomorrow Kjersti & I (AK) will go to Santiago de Chile, check Chile out for a few days,
then go to Mendoza and hopefully rent a few (well..let's start with 2) bikes
and then bike from vinyard to vinyard, untill we fall off the bike (don't worry mum,
I won't actually fall of the bike..probably not anyway).

Hasta la vista babies!!!!!! (that sounded weird...I just wanted to call you baby!)

Ida-we miss u <3

torsdag 15. april 2010

Roadtrippin'



'Hola a todos

AK speaking again (Ida, where are you???? oh, that's right, in Villa General Belgrano close to Cordoba - update us please).

As you can guess, the band has split up : (not due to artistic differences)
Ida is in a town close to Cordoba working at an orphanage
Kjersti is on vacation in Peru, but is returning to BsAs in 2 days
and I'm still in Buenos Aires, studying hard....hard-ish.
When Kjersti gets back we're gonna (hopefully) do some traveling! :)

But untill then I thought I'd give you some pictures from the last travel.
All photo-credit goes to Kjersti, the master photographer of the trip...I think there's only 30 pictures from the last 4months on my camera...this is because a) I'm lazy. b) Kjersti is a better photographer anyway. If you wanna see more pictures, you should visit her blog:
http://hanna-ladybug.blogspot.com/


The first picture starting this posting is of Kjersti&I with Thys, who we picked up at the busstation and decided to travel with.
The one below is of me climbing to get to the falls (the guide also was the photographer of the day). And some gorgeous pictures of the nature on our way around the Salta area also follow.






Lamas everywhere!










THANK YOU to the photographer Kjersti!
Some of these are definitely going up on my wall at home when I get back :)

lørdag 27. mars 2010

Vacations

Hola a todos,
AK speaking! :)

We've been on the road lately, and therefore we now have a lot to tell you!

We've spent some days in Uruguay, passed through Colonia and Montevideo
and ended up in Cabo Polonio which is a peninsula with great beaches, no electricity,
and rarely running water. Thanks to helpful advice from the tourist-information lady at the bus-station in Montevideo we left believing that we'd be able to pay with credit cards at the
restaurants in Cabo Polonio...we were not. Thanks lady. The same lady told us that there were no restaurants close to the bus-station...as we got out we saw more than 3 in the closest street.

Cabo Polonio is about 5 hours from Montevideo along the coast towards the east and in order to get there you have to (after the 5h. busride) take a 4x4 truck to get to the town because you will be driving over sand mountains and beaches. Lovely.
I have never seen so many stars on the sky.

We knew we had to pick up the keys to the 24m2 house we were renting (for 4 people) from a guy called Leo in a blue house close to the lighthouse. However, when we got to Cabo Polonio..it was dark and we had no idea where the blue house was. Neither did we know which house we had rented. This could have gotten tricky, but thanks to a very helpful man who came with the same truck we did (who walked us to Leo's blue house, and then to the house we rented with a flashlight) everything was ok.

During our stay we got to see sea lions (both alive and dead), a huge number of stray dogs,
some cute puppies, got to shower outside in water from the well, and finally managed to scrape together enough money to eat at on of the restaurants (we chose to do so in the dark, as then we would not notice that it was quite dirty). Oh yes...and some of us might have gotten a bit sunburned as well.

From there we went back to BsAs, but just for 1 night, and then we got on a bus to Cordoba.
Cordoba seems like a much smaller city (of course) than BsAs, and also it looks a lot cheaper (of course). It also has an awesome "Museum of memory" for the Dirty War (la guerra sucia)
which I recommend to anyone passing through the city.

The people of Cordoba are also very helpful (whenever you pull up a map 5 people come running to help you figure out where to go) and a special thanks should go out to the 2 old men who stopped me and Kjersti from walking on the "bad side" of the river ("you can't walk there with a purse!").

Ida & Simon stayed in Cordoba and explored the area around, while Kjersti & me took a bus to Salta. At the busstation we met a guy from the Netherlands, Thys, and decided to rent a car and drive from Salta to La Poma through the spectacular scenery with lots of mountains, colors, and kind of crappy roads. We found a very small restaurant there (the town is TINY) and I got to read children's stories to the chef's incredibly cute daugther. From there we went to Catchi where we spent 1 night, and then to Cafayate a lot further south where we took a guided walk to Rio Colorado, a beautiful waterfall where we took a swim. Luckily we opted for going there with a guide, although the Lonely Planet book mentioned nothing of this need, because we suddenly found ourself climbing up 10meters on rocks with a rise of almost 90degrees.

We drove back to Salta for a night, and then up past Jujuy and to Purmamarca, where I might have gone sligthly berserk buying souvenirs. This is also where you'll find the mountains with 7 colors (very pretty!) not to mention countless police controls as it is relatively close to the boarder of Bolivia. We drove back to Salta and spent the last night there, and checked out the Inca Museum and the view over Salta before we said goodbye to Thys and got on a plane back to BsAs.

Salta and the area around definitely has a different feel to it than BsAs, obviously the cities are smaller, but the people also look different, supposedly because of a lot of immigration from Bolivia. And most people are extremely helpful whenever you pull up a map here too.

Today it's Saturday, yesterday we got back from our adventure, and this morning at 6.30 I picked up (read: ambushed) Alejandro at the airport in BsAs, and now we will spend 2 weeks exploring BsAs and enjoying the Easter vacations.

Happy Easter!!!!!!!! :)

lørdag 13. mars 2010

Important Buenos Aires tips!

A word of advice:

If you HAVE to take a taxi in Buenos Aires alone (try to avoid it if you can)
make sure you WRITE DOWN the name of the taxi company (because you
should take a RadioTaxi - that means, a taxi connected to a radio central...they're
easier to track if something should happen, and more accountable because they are
representing a taxi company, and they're not just random independent taxi drivers)
AND also write down the 3 digit number that you will see displayed on the back of each
taxi (and usually also on the side of the taxi) - that way you will be able to
trace the taxi-driver if something should happen.

This is what a taxi that's NOT connected to a radio central looks like

(now you're thinking: wow, that has to be an old picture, because the car is so old!
well...you're wrong..there are a surprising high number of cars driving around here
that haven't been seen in Norway since the 70s).

This is what a radio taxi looks like:

It's a bit hard to see from this picture, but the relevant information here
is the name of the taxi company on the back-door "City Taxi" and the
3 digit number above the front wheel (in this case 387).
So, remember that if you are ever taking a taxi alone in Buenos Aires.
A good idea can also be to send a text to a friend where you write this information
that way, someone else will know that you are in that specific taxi at that
specific time.

Because, sad as it is...things happen.
A friend of ours was just robbed by the taxi-driver (yes, a radio taxi)
on her way home from a tango-show we'd all been too.
All of the sudden, the Buenos Aires that has seemed so safe for so long
doesn't seem as safe anymore.

Note to self: stop taking taxis alone.
and remember your old paranoid-self:
everyone is out to get you, trust no one.
(ok, choose a few people and trust them ;))