Thursday of their first week at their organizations we pulled them out of their daily routine, and had them do another all day group community service project. This time at a comedor called los Pirulines, a comedor we had actually done community service with before last year, when we painted their class room. This time, since we were a much bigger group, we took on a more ambitious project…first, we decided to take on their much bigger common room (about 30 square meters or 90 square feet), then we had to plaster it first, before we could paint it. We also had a group working out in the back, creating a garden and moving a tree (??!?!?). It was really intensive labor actually, but they did an amazing job and really put their backs into it. The first time we had done the group community service work, many of them had only done the work half heartedly, but I think that their group leaders had a nice long talk with them…and told them not to act like privileged, entitled, Stanford students. They really gave it their all….
Sadly we were working so hard, that we didn’t take time to take many pictures…or maybe it is that we didn’t want to get paint all over the cameras!
While we worked hard, there was also a lot of fun to be had!
A nice group meal, consisting of some healthy breaded deep fried meat with cheese and ham on top, accompanied by extremely buttery mash potatoes.
At the end of the day!!!!! The whole crew! Notice how much Stanford pride they had…it was incredible how much Stanford clothing they brought with them.
Then after a long day of strenuous, rewarding work….we went to LA CANCHA! Estudiantes, the (better of two 
) local soccer team here was playing in the semi-final of the Copa Libertador, which is the league in which all the best club teams from around Latin America play…not just the Argentine league. It is a big deal to be in the semi-final of the Copa Libertador, and we had managed to get tickets for the whole group to go (which involved me standing outside for about 4 hours one freezing cold morning). VAMOS PINCHA CARAJO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t even think that I need to tell you all just how incredible of an experience it was. I have been to about 10 estudiantes games now, and I love the team, own the shirt (and the scarf), fight with Gimnasia (their rival) fans, and know all the words to the songs….but this was something else! Everyone was going crazy, and the kids were blown out of their minds, it was the opportunity of a life time (needless to say Estudiantes is play in the finals now! Vamos pincha! Dale Leon!)…somewhere a bit over whelmed by the loudness, the insanity, the intensity of the Estudiantes fans…oh and their ability to continue jumping for an hour and half straight!
This is when they were about to come on the field, they just released red and white (the team colors) all over the field!
Needless to say I did NOT bring my camera with me…that is just asking to get violently robbed, so we are sorely lacking pictures…but I think you can get the idea…just imagine walking up to the top of the stands and looking down onto 35,000 screaming, jumping, singing, banner waving intense Argentines, and then the whole stadium explodes with red and white smoke, fire crackers, drums and confetti flying everywhere….and to add to all the insanity and overwhelmed senses…the government which was up for re-election 3 days afterwards….flew over in a helocopter and dropped about 5 million leaflets all over the stadium!!!!!! It was an amazing spectacle and it filled my heart to see the wide eyed Stanford kids taking it all in!
Oh yeah, and we won 0-1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
