May 28: 11,962 steps in Córdoba, Argentina

Today was my least favorite day of the trip so far. I woke up with a scratchy throat, and to find out that the laundry machine at the hostel was broken. Luckily there was a laundry mat down the street, so a bunch of us took our clothes there.

We spent the entire day at Facultad Arquitectura Urbanismo y Diseño Industrial (College of Architecture, Urbanism, and Industrial Design). We were split into groups and paired off with groups of their students to do a collaboration project. Kristi, Reva, and I were put in a group with 5 guys from the college. Only one of them spoke good English. 

The project they were working on was a 3 day design charrette where they had to design and build a piece of interactive furniture. Today was the last day of the project, so all of the groups were working on building their pieces to present later. We were all under the impression that we would be working on a design with the students for the project, but since it was the last day, they were obviously beyond the design phase. So our role for the day was to pretty much help them build their project. Which would have been fine if the group we were placed in had actually worked with us. 

Since only one of them could and would talk to us, he was pretty much in charge of giving us non-essential tasks to entertain us. Keep in mind these groups had 3 days to put this project together, so every minute is crucial to getting done on time. So this guy really did not have all day to tell us what to do when he could just do it himself in less time. Which is what ended up happening. After an hour of us drawing measurements on some wood only to have him erase them and so them himself, he told us to do some sketches to hang on the bulletin board that was in their project. Basically busy work to get us to go away. I don't blame him for wanting us to leave them alone because I would not want to be distracted by other random people if I had a deadline either. But we can only do so many random sketches. 

We went and got some lunch after a while and came back. The group kind of ignored our existence on more than one occasion when we tried to approach them for more work to do. So we got the hint after a while and went to another group with Ally, Ege, and Judy. They didn't need help either, and only one of them spoke English.

We talked to our fellow BSU classmates and apparently all of the other groups got pizza for them, except the guys we were paired with, which we were kind of mad about. Apparently the groups were given money to get us food because they knew we were coming to help them, so I'm not sure what the guys in our group did with the money they were given, but they definitely didn't buy us lunch, or even offer to eat with us. 

The 6 of us ended up practicing sketching on our own to pass the time. We started doing times sketches (1 minute, 30 seconds, 15 seconds) of random things around the area, like a tree or a wall. It was actually pretty fun and a good way to practice sketching and to think about what to focus on when doing a sketch in a small amount of time. We started filming each other while we sketched and then hyperlapsed the videos (watched them in fast forward), which was really cool. 

A couple of the groups actually did utilize the people from our study abroad group, so some of us got to help build the projects. All of the other groups at least invited their designated BSU humans to present the project with them, except for our group. They clearly did not want us around. 

It was no one's fault how today went. It was just really frustrating because we had nothing to do and no way to contribute to this project that was a big reason why we came to Córdoba in the first place. Plus I don't feel very good. 

The language barrier caused a huge rift in today. Collaborating with these students could have been very beneficial to both us and them, even if it was just linking pieces of wood together. At the end of the day Spodek gave a presentation in English and Ana translated to Spanish. I tried to pick up on some of the translation to better understand the language, but wasn't very successful. Kristi tells me you have good days and bad days when traveling abroad, and you just have to appreciate the good ones and get through the bad ones. Darn I hate when she's right. 

Kristi and I ended the evening with McDonald's in bed at 9:15pm, and I never left my bed after that. I fell asleep shortly after eating, and woke up a couple hours later with a headache and feeling achy. I tossed and turned all night, never getting back to sleep. At 5:00am I got up and went to the bathroom and decided to take a Tylenol because I had to be up in 3 hours and I was unbearably uncomfortable. It must have worked because I passed out within 10 minutes.