Mate, Chocotorta & Futbol

By the end of the week, and before one of our biggest adventures of this journey, we had a good dose of Argentina: mate, chocotorta and fútbol. Students were allowed to invite the friends they had made these weeks in our different visits to schools to have an Argentinian traditional 'Merienda'. So, once we were all packed up we started with our workshop: how to make a good mate and share it with friends. Yerba Mate is a herbal infusion made from the leaves of  a tree that grows exclusively in certain subtropical regions of South America. Yerba Mate has existed for many centuries and is today the number one drink for millions of people in Argentina. It is a social drink and makes no social distinctions: you can see colleagues sharing mate in every job, and you can see friends sharing mate in almost every social meeting, despite their social class. Mate is something that Argentinians share, generally it's just one mate (the vessel is named 'mate' as well as the drink itself) and everybody take turns to drink it. But mate is just half of the merienda. It's no merienda if you don't have a meal to share as well. So, we learned how to make a good, spongy, sweet chocotorta. Dulce de leche, cream cheese, chocolate cookies: a total winner. So, Thursday was about meal, Friday was about sports. One of our favourites of this program was fútbol (soccer). Some weeks ago we played fútbol and the Argentinian staff was pretty much surprised by the skills of the young students, so there had to be an encore. Lots of goals, nice dribblings. It was quite a lot of fun and there is a lot of amazing young talent in these boys and girls from the States, so no wonder why Messi chose the MLS League to continue his career.

And finally, some rest. And on Saturday... Iguazu, here we come.