Asado, The Musical Bus, The Maradona moment and lot more

Today is the sixth day after I landed back in Bangalore & I am still trying to get into my normal routine after such an eventful month in Buenos Aires. Every night I am having dreams like I am into a school with Fariba and Mo, all of us having dinner together & working on presentations etc. I have talked about the assignment in my posts, but Social Sabbatical was much more than that & I realized that I need to describe that experience as well.

As I am thinking back about the last month, it feels that I have been part of a sports league where 12 of us from different countries are playing together with the aim to win the championship. The reason being we were all staying in the same hotel, used to meet each other almost everyday, share stories, create videos & lot more. We went out together for sight seeing during weekends, played soccer one day and also drove to Carolina's house for asado in a musical bus.

During the first day, when we were at SAP office meeting the clients, Koert mentioned  that we could play soccer as we were in Argentina. 'Where there is a will, there is a way' and there we were playing soccer in the battle of social enterprises on April 21st at City Stadium. Most of us were either first timers or playing after ages.I myself was playing after almost 18 years. There were matches between the four NGOs & finally a match between SAP & all NGOs together. Our team JA didn't have great outing as we conceded few goals, but we were the most diverse & enthusiastic teams and won many hearts . In the final match we were playing for SAP against the solid Argentinian line up from all four clients. Somehow I managed to score the equalizing goal for my team in this game & I was on seventh heaven and  took off my shirt off in celebration. That was my Maradona moment. We went to Piola for drinks & dinner afterwards and had one of the most amazing evenings of the month.

Just couple of days after the soccer, we were excited again to go for Asado to Carolina's place. Asado is term used for barbecue techniques & social event of having  barbecue in Argentina. We had a mini bus booked & we had Rob the rock-star with his guitar. It was an amazing journey with great singers like Rob & Paul stealing the show. We reached Carolina's house which was as beautiful as her & her family, who greeted us with a warm welcome to the magnificent asado place. We enjoyed the delicacies with the wine & even  a non beef eater like me loved this experience as Carolina had ensured there were veggies available.

Argentinian Mate

Again aftersome casual talks we had a musical afternoon courtesy Rob, Paul and Juan. And then we celebrated Mo's birthday which continued throughout the week. We ended it with a round of Mate, the traditional Argentinian drink made by a an infusion of dried leaves of yerba mate (llex paraguaiensis). There are numerous other stories with the amazing team we had & memories are definitely not going to fade soon and I hope to meet everyone sometime or other in future.