Meet me at the Cathedral!

Today was our first day of work for the FARG in La Plata. We took an hour bus ride to La Plata, which is a city south of Buenos Aires. La Plata is the capital of the province of Buenos Aires while Buenos Aires is the federal capital of Argentina. One of our bosses, Martin, arranged that we meet him in front of the famous Cathedral. It was a dark and gloomy day and I felt like a secret agent waiting for intel on a mission in front of the omnimous cathedral.

Martín picked us up and we went back to his home for a cup of coffee before heading to the Economics Department of the University of La Plata to meet our other boss, Ricardo. Having our boss take us home on our first day is totally representative of the friendliness and caring nature of Argentineans.

At the University, we met Ricardo and three students from the University, Sofia, Mercedes and Cristian. Sofia is Ricardo's daughter and Mercedes is his niece. Cristian is a part of the Grameen La Plata team with Martín and Ricardo. We discussed our plan of work for the next seven weeks. We are going to spend most of our time talking, interviewing and observing the borrowers. At the end of our time we are supposed to create a report on the bank and indicate in what ways it alleviates poverty and accomplishes the goals and philosophy of Muhammad Yunus, who is the founder of Grameen Bank and mastermind behind the idea of social business. A social business is designed and operated as a business enterprise, with products, services, customers, markets, expenses and revenues -- but with the profit maximizing principle replaced by the social-benefit principle. All goods, services and revenue are for social good or to alleviate poverty. If you're interested in this, check out the book "Creating a World Without Poverty" by Muhammad Yunus.

At the end of the summer, we'll present our report to the Economics department at the University. Furthermore, we are going for an assembly of all the banks in the FARG the first weekend of August in Mendoza (northwest wine country) and will discuss our report there as well. We are both really excited by the energy of our bosses and the opportunity to do fieldwork.

After our meeting at the university, Sofia invited us back to her home for drinks and snacks. We loved being able to chat and make friends with Argentinean university students. We passed around the maté and talked about differences between the US and Argentinean culture. For instance, in Argentina, everyone kisses each other on the cheek when they greet and say goodbye. They wanted to know how we greet each other in the US and if we found the kisses here strange. We both love it because we think it shows friendship and mutual understanding. It also creates a stronger feel of family and kinship. We've decided we are kissing everyone on the cheek like they do here when we get back. So, don't think I'm making a move on you next time we meet!

Another interesting discussion was that they found it weird that in the US we say "I love you" to friends, family and significant others without differentiation. In Argentina, to say "I love you" for a friend, you say "Te quiero", but to say you love your boyfriend, you say "Te amo". It's interesting that there is a difference here, but we don't really think about that in the US.

After rounds and rounds of Maté, we headed back and got back around 10 pm. I hope I can sleep tonight after all that caffeine! We are heading out early tomorrow at 8:30 am!