Matte, El Mundial, and Nomqom

First thing is first. I forgot to mention matte. Matte is the drink of Argentina, but especially of Formosa. It is an herb tea drank from a wooden cup in a metallic cup holder - the latter decorated with snake skin or, more typically, with etchings of animals and/or symbols. Considering it's winter (and 15 degrees is COLD for Formosa) many people walk around with their thermos and hierba in their cup - they just keep pouring water into the cup until they've soaked up the last of the flavor from the herb (or run out of hot [70 degrees to be exact] water). But what they drink it out of is the best - it's a metallic spoon/straw that function at a spoon because, well, it's a spoon, but as a straw because it has holes in the bottom (and it obviously hollow inside). If I sound overly amazed by such small things, please, don't take it as sarcasm. It's simply that Formosa is a quaint place, with little ostentatious display of culture (FIFA being the exception, but I'll get to that). So the little things really do become memorable.

Second of all - the Mundial. The first Argentina game was yesterday at 11:00 - and here in Formosa there was no way you could have missed it. I went to a birthday party for my colleague's friend's son (and to help keep an eye on my colleague's one year old daughter), so I celebrated the Mundial with some parents and a WHOLE BUNCH of kids. EVERYONE, from preschool to pension age, was decked out in Argentina attire. Of course, as soon as Argentina scored a goal (in the first 7 minutes) we all went crazy - kazoo's screeching, white and light blue pom poms waving, and needless to say everyone chanting ARGENTINA ARGENTINA. What an atmosphere. The rest of game was just as high energy, although as it got closer to the end it was pretty clear Nigeria was done for - although the only thing that knowledge changed was it made everyone scream even louder at the projection (they set up a projector and screen so that EVERYONE could see what was happening). If this is what happened over one goal, you can only imagine what happened when the game was over and Argentina had won. We ran out into the street - waving flags and chanting ARGENTINA at passing cars and pedestrians. Horns were honking, fireworks could be heard blasting from a few streets away, and even the sun came out (it had looked like it would rain earlier that morning). FINALLY, I see what futbol really means in Latin America.

Finally, let me introduce my work. I have not mentioned it thus far because I was still adapting to it and did not want to comment before I had a better understanding of what I was doing. I am working on two projects - one is as an assistant for Elena, a nutritionist working on her doctoral thesis (also my sister's name hehe), who is studying cardiovascular disease risks in Nonqom, and the second is my small side project looking at what is sold in the kiosks of Nonqom and what how much people actually buy from these kiosks to support or just supplement their daily diets.

The former intrigues me greatly - the layout of the project is taking a survey of what people eat, how often they consume certain food, and what people think is a healthy body image (by choosing a body type from an array of figures). We then take anthropometric measurements - height, weight, waist size. This is supplemented by levels of % fat (measured by a scale that passes currents through the body and based on the conductivity of the body it can determine how much is fat...muscles will conduct electricity well since they are mainly water and fat will not, so a precision equation programmed into the scale can take these values and convert it to an approximate value for % body fat), blood pressure, glucose, HDL, and triglycerides levels. Since Elena started the measurement part of this project as soon as I came, I have been with her throughout all of the new experiment stage thus far - coordinating how best to take all of the measurements quickly and accurately, finding correct lancets to use with our glucose/HDL/Trig monitor, and learning how to get large enough drops of blood (sorry, it's a lot less gruesome than I am making it sound) from participants so that the machine deems it is sufficient to read all of the levels of the blood. Basically, it's been a bit of struggle, but we're rolling now. Our daily schedule is as follows: arrive in Nonqom by 8:00 (we have to take all blood measurements before the person has eaten breakfast or drank matte), and go from house to house until around noon, which is when we usually call it a day and return back to casa 100 (where I stay). Elena teaches classes a few times a week, so she has to run off and get ready for that while I attend to things at home - lunch, laundry, work, etc.

~ By the way, I should mention that 12-5 is a strict siesta time in Formosa. As Elena says, "it's sacred here." That means unless you have school or work at a gas station or large supermarket (there are not that many of either here), you go home and supposedly, sleep. Actually, I do believe it. Many people take their daily naps. ~

In the afternoons I have slowly but surely been building up to beginning my project. I have already gone to a few people from the neighborhood who own kiosks and we have spoken about meeting times - so today is the big day when I will go and actually get some interviews in (hopefully). Also, I am looking forward to the bike ride there, a nice half hour trek on the shoulder of a major highway, but something that is surprisingly more peaceful than I thought (considering large trucks with cargo and livestock are known to frequent that road).

I will post after my first round of interviews and will give more details about the people. Sorry to be so vague, but I need a bit of time to digest everything before I actually post about it. As a friend of mine from Brazil says (whom I met here at Elena's class, which, yes, I attended): até logo!