Summer vacation (almost..)

I am almost done with my internship at CEJIL, and I can´t wait! In the end I am not going try to stay here - there just isn´t enough to do, and the lawyers have honestly been treating the interns like a waste of their time. So I unfortunately still don´t have a stable NGO placement, and since January and February are summer vacation months here, it´s even more difficult to find a new position right now.

The good thing is that I have a couple of friends visiting from the US, so I am going to play tour guide in Buenos Aires! Jess and Carol have been here for almost a week, and we spent last weekend in Colonia, Uruguay, so that they could spend time being beach bebes and I could renew my tourist visa.


I took Carol to see the new murals on the "El Olimpo" detention center in my neighboorhood. In the first photo, the rainbow colored flag in the background is the huipal, a symbol of the unity of indigenous peoples. The woman in the white headscarf represents one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The man on the poster is Jorge Julio Lopez, a witness in one of the trials of one of the military leaders, who was disappeared in September of 2006.


In the next photo, the priest holding the money represents the priests who were involved in disappearing people - some of the priests took confession from the people who were about to be killed, or convinced families that they were going to help them escape the country and then turned them over to the military. The people falling from the airplane show the common practice by the military of taking the "desaparecidos" and dropping them over the ocean.

While we were in Uruguay, we happened to hear about a show taking place for el Dia de los Reyes Magos, or Epiphany. The event was called "The Fiesta of San Baltazar, the blackest of the Three Kings," and included a murga, or drum group, from Montevideo, as well as Colonia´s School of Candombe, which is an African-influenced style of song, dance and drum. These are a couple of the photos:
















And more Uruguay photos:

Beach time!













And back in Buenos Aires, being dramatic with the city lights:






Today Lindsay and Josh get here, so I will have four visitors in town at once! They´ll all be here until the 16th, and after that I´m going to try to do some travelling to see the rest of Argentina, and maybe visit a friend in Brazil. I would welcome any travel tips or words of wisdom, and I´ll be sure to keep the pictures coming!