I have had to dig up some long lost spanish skills from high school in the past few days! At the hotel where I am staying in Arroyito, not one person speaks English. When I checked in the hostess pulled up google translator to communicate the details of my stay. Today, I mangaged to communicate to a shop owner that I was "here to work at the Genencor Plant", which here is pronounced Henencor. I think that I might stand out a bit from the locals...
I am halfway across the world and farther away from home than I have ever been.
To quickly review my long travels, I started in Cedar on Saturday afternoon. I am traveling with Filip Lundqvist, of Hanko, Finland, and Osvaldo Cordoni of Arroyito. They are my engineering counterparts at their Henencor sites. We flew first to Dallas, and then boarded our 10 hour flight to Santiago, Chile. I have to say that I expected worse. I was able to check in early in Cedar Rapids for the flight, and snagged seats for Filip and I in the exit row. We had plenty of space, even for economy seating. We had dinner on the flight (chicken and mashed potatoes), watched a movie, and then attempted to sleep. The lights went off and the plane fell silent, and it wasn't all that bad. It felt like a public slumber party with complete strangers, which was odd but kind of fun. I was sleeping well when we hit our first turbulence. It kind of felt like I was falling out of a dream, and then I woke up to realize we were actually falling. I was terrified for all of 30 seconds, and then fell back to sleep when plane regained its route.
In the morning, they suddenly turn on all the lights and shove breakfast on your tray. Good morning! they say over the speaker, Buenos Dias! wake up, its time to eat!...(and you don't have much time because we are landing soon)!. Shortly after I had a moment where I was really caught off-guard, the passenger at the nearest window had opened the shade and right outside were the Andes Mountains...just breathtaking. This is when I realized I was no longer in the Northern Hemisphere.
We spent five hours in the Airport in Santiago, Chile. I bought some souvenirs in the gift shops and read a book while looking out the windows at the foggy Andes. We ate a Ruby Tuesday and then boarded our plane to Cordoba, a small town in Argentina. We flew over the Andes, which made the 2 hour jaunt fly by, no pun intended :)
After going through customs and retrieving our luggage (thank gosh)! we got into a taxi and drove two hours to Arroytio. The roads are crazy! Everyone drives very fast. The is a lot of poverty and garbage everywhere. Random animals too. Many stray dogs, and horses and chickens. The land is flat, and there were moments when staring out over the soy bean fields made me feel as if I was still in Iowa.
The town of Arroyito is more wealthy than the neighboring town. Genencor and another manufacturing plant, Arcor, employs much of the 22,000 citizens. I still have a lot to cover, but I am going to eat dinner first. check back soon!
Love and miss you all.
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