Mate, trees, and Mendoza

Have I talked about mate yet?  I don’t think so, and it’s definitely worth mentioning.  Mate is like a bitter green tea.  The leaves are placed in a special cup and hot water is poured over them.  The tea is then consumed through a special straw with a strainer in it.  This is a very common drink in Argentina to share with friends and co-workers.  For example, at our workshop on Thursday, there was one cup of mate.  Someone would fill the cup with hot water and pass it to a co-worker, who would drink it.  That person would then pass it back, to be filled up again and passed to another co-worker.  I cannot quite imagine passing around one cup with one straw in a work meeting for everyone to drink out of, but that’s how it is done.

Friday was the volunteer event at Veronica’s alma mater, Universidad Siglo 21.  The day started with a tour of the university, followed by presentations by four IBM team members to the students.  Edwin, nominated as the class clown, had the crowd up singing and dancing to break the ice.  During lunch, we viewed a presentation on the university’s environmental and sustainability policies, and the day concluded with tree planting on the university campus.  Here are some shots of Tina, Roman, Edwin, and Gina planting their trees.
2013_08_16_treePlanting1a      2013_08_16_treePlanting2a 2013_08_16_treePlanting3a      2013_08_16_treePlanting4a

The long holiday weekend was spent in Mendoza, an absolutely beautiful city near the Andes.  I still need to go through pictures and will post more details soon. We had a wonderful time wandering around the city and the huge Parque General San Martin, hiking (and repelling) in the Andes, dancing at a hostel bar, and taking a bike tour of wineries and olive oil producers.  Quick teaser: Andes mountains in the background and up close and personal with a llama.
2013_08_18_mendoza1a      2013_08_19_mendoza2a

It is going to be a very busy week as we prepare all our final materials and presentations for ADEC and the closing event.  Henk, Jayan, Roman, and I worked until about 10pm tonight on the slides for the ADEC internal presentation on Thursday, calling it quits around the ‘proper’ Argentine dinner time.  More on that also to come hopefully soon in another post.

#ibmcsc argentina

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