Hey everyone!

Sorry it’s taken me so long to update…I’ve been keeping pretty busy, what with classes finally in full swing all over the city and actually making FRIENDS (see some here)!

Clockwise from the top left: Sara (from Elon in NC), Natasha (from University of Oregon), Colby (from Vanderbilt), Me, Crystal (from Occidental College in LA).

This picture was from one of my recent adventures in which I went to go see Luciano’s band, Imperio Diablo, perform at the Festival Nacional de Folklore in La Plata.

La Plata is the capital of the province of Buenos Aires (I’m living in the city of Buenos Aires, which is different…the city functions basically like Washington, DC does; it’s the capital of the country but doesn’t pertain to any province) and it’s about an hour away from the city of Buenos Aires by bus. A bunch of us went to see them play. Here’s a picture, which I stole from my friend Sara’s (top left above) facebook!

The band has about ten members but this is a pretty excellent picture of Luciano playing the accordion in one of their songs. Their music is Latin American folk music meshed with sort of hip hop-y stuff. They were really fantastic. Luciano gave me one of their cds but it just really can’t compare to hearing them live. They’ve got brass instruments, some electronic stuff, the accordion, strings, etc. It’s really fun to listen to, and since they practice over here fairly often I get to hear lots of it. Iupi!

A couple of weeks ago I also finally got to go see La Boca, which is one of the most famous barrios in Buenos Aires. It’s also one of the very poorest, but has become a tourist attraction because of its colorful houses. The area is right on the edge of the city by the port and is where the vast majority of the European immigrants who came near the end of the 19th century settled and worked in shipyards and other such places. They built houses out of sheets of metal and used whatever paint was leftover from painting ships and stuff to paint the sheets. Hence, the colorful houses.

While it is very touristy and there are shops and a market that clearly exist for that reason, the tourist area is really only a few blocks and everywhere outside of that tiny area is exactly the opposite of touristy. It’s interesting to see that juxtaposition of lots of expensive things being sold to people who are clearly there visiting right in the middle of a community that couldn’t afford to buy the things those vendors are selling.

My classes are all going very well so far, I am happy to say. I’m taking one at FLACSO, one at the private Catholic university here (UCA), and two at the public University of Buenos Aires (UBA). I like them all, but the ones at UBA are definitely the most fun for me, just because I feel like I’m really with Argentines…the FLACSO one is with all students from the program, which is great but they’re all from the US. The one at UCA is with Argentine students but, because of the way it’s set up it seems much more like high school in that everyone knows each other and the professor and it’s very cliquey. The UBA is definitely much more of a university feeling, and it’s been really interesting to see how that works here. UBA is completely free and anyone who wants to can take classes there. So, in my sociology class people range from me being almost certainly the youngest to a woman who is in her 60s. Most of the students appear to be in their mid20s but it’s just cool to see such a wide range of people there with all different situations. It also makes for really interesting class discussions! It’s the most prestigious school in the country (and a world-class institution, at that), but there is no entrance exam or application and no student body limit. The only requirement for attending is being willing to take all the classes required for your major and being able to pass them, which is definitely a challenge, but there is no rush; people can take as long as they want or need to graduate. So if someone is working and can only take one class at a time or someone has a family or other emergency, or just doesn’t feel like taking classes one semester, nothing precludes them from taking the time they need. I feel like in certain ways it makes an excellent university education much more accessible than it is in the United States. The facilities are not nearly as high-tech, but there are pretty classrooms and chairs and chalkboards and professors (who get paid very little and t.a.s who are volunteers) and it seems to work pretty well.

So when Adam, Sara’s (from Georgetown) boyfriend, first got here (because he’s visiting) we thought it would be fun to go eat at a parrilla since neither of us had done so yet. Parrilla means grill and they’re the restaurants to which one would go to get a good Argentine steak. When I realized I’d been here for a month and hadn’t been to one yet, I realized that the situation needed correcting immediately, so we set up a date to go to one together. We found one that was supposed to be pretty good and relatively inexpensive, and we sat down to eat. About 15 minutes after getting there, before we ordered, we noticed that the room was filling slowly with smoke. We looked down the stairs at the kitchen and the cooks, we saw, were throwing buckets of water at the wall above the spit/oven/grill thing. Well that couldn’t be good. Then all the lights went out, so we decided at that point that leaving would be the best idea at that point. No sooner had we gotten across the street than the entire side of the restaurant and the chimney and the wall that connected to apartments were all completely on fire.

It was too unbelievable not to take a picture.

Anyway, sadly we didn’t get any steak…but sadder for whoever had to fix that damage. Luckily nobody was hurt.

On March 24 there was a huge march in memory (but not honor…) of the 33 anniversary of the last military coup that took place in 1976 and which started of the Dirty War that I mentioned in an earlier post. I went to it and it was amazing. Over 100,000 people were there, including student groups, older people, political groups, and people whose family members and friends are still missing (never returned) after having been disappeared by the government. It was really moving.

I still haven’t bought a mate but it’s my goal for the week! I’ll take pictures and explain when I finally get one.

My favorite decorative item in Carla and Luciano’s house:

(Alice in Wonderland with a blowtorch…?? )

Most amusing stencil I’ve seen so far:

T-shirts of the week: “Let’s Monster” and “Who loves good times enjoys good life” Amen to that!

Okay well I think that’s it for now. I hope you all were entertained by my musings, or at least by the pictures… I miss you all and hope you’re doing well!

I don't get this cultural humor

Okay so....you know how people always say that understanding humor in another culture is the hardest part of getting to know it? Well I've never really had the opportunity to understand that until now.



I knew something was up when I got here and quickly noticed that Simpsons paraphernalia and references were somewhat constantly present. The FLACSO people brought up episodes randomly in conversation, and the first show I ever saw Carla and Luciano watching was the Simpsons, dubbed in Spanish. Then, walking down the street I would see street vendors selling their own hand-crafted likenesses of Homer, and a teacher brought the show up in one class. I watched the Simpsons Movie with Luciano and Tilsa. And, as of today, I've officially watched a Simpsons episode FOR CLASS (a different one)! None of us in the program can figure it out. Sure, the show is popular in the US, but here it's like an obsession, and anyone you meet could probably talk extensively about a given episode. When a professor asked one of my classes at the UCA (the Catholic university) if we'd seen some episode, every Argentine student laughed in affirmation. The only ones who were clueless were the ones from the US. The professor then said she thought Argentina needed to get its own Simpsons to have an awesome show like that reflect their own culture. I halfway feel like the Simpsons are almost theirs anyway, though. Definitely more theirs than mine!

I was also lucky enough to win a raffle (which is crazy because I never win things!) to get to see a major Argentine play for free. It's called Mas respeto que soy tu madre and it's by a comedic playwright from here. I went and understood most of what was said. I also understood almost all the jokes and yet....I just didn't think they were funny. I would say that I generally really like humor and have a pretty good sense of humor, think things are funny, and laugh often, but there I was, in a theater full of Argentines howling with laughter, just sitting and watching them all crack up and having no idea why. Seriously. I felt like there was something wrong with me, and I'm sure the people next to me thought there was because everyone else was hysterical and I was clearly out of the loop. I'm glad to have seen the play but I'm more glad to have had that experience (because honestly the play just wasn't that funny to me. ha). Crazy times.

Anyway I just wanted to share because for the first time in my life I have compared a Simpsons episode to a Borges story and I'm still reeling :)

Disparates Argentinos

Okay so I´m going to do a shameless plug for Jack Mahoney and my band called Born in the 80s because we finally have two original songs up! Check them out on our myspace if you feel like it. The originals are called Change and 18 Wheeler. Jack´s on guitar/vocals/effects and I´m on drums/vocals/harmonica. Good fun :)

So...my favorite thing about Argentina so far is, without parallel, the translations of things into English that one sees while walking around the streets. People are always wearing t-shirts with English phrases and stores often have signs in English in the windows. Sara saw someone wearing the best t-shirt I´ve heard about since I´ve been here, which said, I like magical feelings! Just yesterday I saw a store with a sign in the window that said, Sale or Die! Needless to say, they provide endless amusement for those of us who speak English fluently enough to understand the hilarity. I can´t get enough. I really want to buy one before I leave...ha.

Friday was the most ridiculous day of my life (okay maybe not of my whole life but seriously...it felt like it). More than any other day so far, that was the day that I really noticed the difference between how things work in Argentina vs. at home. Fifty US students from FLACSO went to the Migrations Office to get our student visas (which not only give us the ability to legally study here, but also confer resident status, which comes with tons of benefits, like being able to get cheap fares on buses and intranational travel). We were told that since we were all going together the process would be much easier and things would go very smoothly since they were doing the exact same thing for all fifty of us. To come at another time, we were warned, would be hellish and really hard. Wellllllll.....it was both anyway. We got there at 7:15 am and were told we would be able to leave by 12 at the latest. At 6:30 pm we finally left, after system crashes, miscommunication, no airconditioning on a super hot day, no food, and nothing digitalized. Twas pretty awful. But, we all survived AND we have student visas!

That night, Sara and I went with Luciano and Tilsa and a few of their friends to a really small concert in a bar-type setting to see this woman that Luciano had seen one other time perform. It was reaaaalllyy awesome! Normally she has a band but that night it was just her playing guitar, but even still it was great. She played tons of different styles of music, from Tango to more ballad-y type things but she was clearly very talented and her lyrics were also super interesting. I think this kind of thing is what I really want to do a lot of while I´m here; the idea of getting to know music and cultural stuff that I wouldn´t be able to access without spending a good amount of time here is really exciting and intriguing.

This weekend, a few of us from the program went to Mar del Plata, which is a beach about five hours away from Buenos Aires. You´d think that since Buenos Aires is on the eastern coast we would be closer to a beach, but we´re not (except for ones in Uruguay)...I´m still not exactly sure why, but anyway...it was a great time. We all got a little sunburned but coming from winter in DC and hearing about how the US east coast got slammed with snow made me feel okay about it :) I also had my first hostel experience, and it went really well! For about $10 we got a night´s stay and breakfast the next morning, and five of us shared a very sparse room but we had our own really clean bathroom and beds to sleep on, so overall it was great. Well worth it, to get to stay just a few blocks from the beach.

I´m also really starting to enjoy Buenos Aires a lot. One of the most interesting things about it to me is how extremely friendly the city, in general, seems. People are sooooooooo friendly and approachable and outgoing, all over. I would almost say it´s the opposite of the reputation that New York has. People are very city-like but if you sort of combine street-savviness with the friendliness that people claim exists in the southern US you´d have Buenos Aires, from what I´ve experienced in the past 3 weeks or so. Like...two girls at a bar eating chips they just ordered offer some to me because I´m sitting next to them. Or when someone shows up at a gathering they greet and cheek kiss every person there, even me who they probably have never met. People also just strike up conversations in random places, like on buses or in stores or whatever. It´s really interesting and also I think makes it hard to feel really lonely because I feel like, if I wanted to, I could have a conversation with lots of people. They are forever asking where I am from and how old I am because I look so young (apparently, according to multiple random Argentines). It´s a really interesting feeling, and it makes it hard not to enjoy exploring the city more. Safety is always something to think about, absolutely, but it makes this huge city a little less intimidating.

Anyway, I´m off to do unspecified things away from the computer but that´s an update. Hope it wasn´t too long. Love and miss you all.