Entering the last month (???!!!)

This is going to be a real blog post but first I just want to talk about how I'm sitting in the living room minding my own business but have realized that one of the cats (probably Ron because he's not as smart as Panzoti) has shut themselves into the coset and can't get out. I will go let him out now, I guess...

Anyway, here we go! Since I last posted I have gone through midterms and had to do some ACTUAL work for my classes. I feel really lucky that a) the university system here is less demanding than what I'm used to and b) Georgetown only counts our classes as pass/fail, they don't transfer the grades. Lots of my friends here get their grades directly transferred to their universities in the US, which doesn't make much sense to me but also means that they have to do really well, even though the system is set up completely differently. Fortunately for me, that's not something I have to worry about! Finals are about to start and it looks like these last few weeks are going to be filled with paper writing. Boo.

I have also, really really unfortunately, gotten my debit card either stolen or lost from me three times. The first two times it was stolen, and the third is questionable as to whether I dropped it or it was stolen. This is a fact I am very embarassed about, but just thought I'd throw it out there since it has been taking up A LOT of my conscious thinking and causing decent amounts of stress/inconvenience. I have rarely felt actually unsafe, in terms of feeling like my physical self was endangered, but people get robbed pretty frequently. Not just tourists or people who are out late at night, but people walking down the street during the day...one time I was walking down an extremely busy street in the middle of the afternoon and saw this guy run up behind a woman, grab her bag off her shoulder and keep sprinting down the sidewalk. Luckily another guy in the street chased after him and managed to knock the first guy down so that he dropped the purse, but the would-be thief jumped right up and hopped onto the back of his buddy's motorcycle, which was apparently waiting for him, and they sped off. It's not all the time, but it is something that people in any big city just have to be careful about. Sadly I have not been careful enough, it seems.

In terms of fun things, I have been making an extremely concerted effort to stay home/hang out with my host people more, and I think it's really been working! I was concerned for a pretty long time that I was spending most of my time with my friends from FLACSO who are also from the US, and not really getting a cultural experience. So, I decided to try to put myself out there more with Carla, Luciano, and Tilsa, and I have really been reaping the rewards! We have had a lot of really great conversations about life and politics, Tilsa has opened up to me about her family, we've laughed (not cried...yet!) and had good times and sat and done nothing together. It's delightful! Tilsa and I even hung out together outside the house, which was GREAT. We went to a Buenos Aires arts festival that Luciano's band played at (they're practicing in the house right now). Here are some pictures:

Luciano is the one with the accordion. I went with Natasha, Colby, and Crystal to a market that happens every week in San Telmo (and that Grandma Linda, Grandpa Jack, and Colly would LOVE) and perused the goods, but then, once it got dark, there was a milonga in the plaza! A milonga is basically just a gathering of people who dance tango in a given space...so it was just a little plaza area right off the street, but people had put up lights and were playing tango music and anyone who wanted to could go dance. We just stared at all of the regular, talented Argentines dancing, and we had a great time. It was so cool!

There is TONS of public art all over the place - on the sides of buildings, walls, etc. It's graffiti, but not just graffiti how I normally would think of with words. They are extremely intricate and beautiful murals. I really need to start taking pictures of more of them!

Luciano also, early in the semester, told me about this really cool cafe/bar place near FLACSO that's a meeting place for people who organize community things a lot of the time. They do workshops every now and then, and it was started to be a community meeting place by this group of women who started an alternative publication called "Mu" (like the sound a cow makes...in Spanish! haha) and who have a press called "La vaca" (the cow). The place is really cool and they sell lots of cool things there. They focus on publishing things that are just generally about political and social awareness...it's great! Here's a picture of Natasha in Mu, the cafe:

Haha. I also went with Natasha to visit the city Rosario, which I think is the second biggest city in Argentina. It was really really pretty (the architecture in all of the cities is gorgeous), but we didn't really do anything too much out of the ordinary because there weren't really any particular attractions there. I also didn't take any pictures :(

So now I'm kind of sick which is annoying, but I'm starting to feel better. Want a visual for my time left? I made one on paint because, since I don't have intertnet that often, I wanted to be able to access it at all times. Here's what it looks like:
See you all really soon, I guess!

Internet life is clearly not for me

Okay so...I really had high hopes for my travel blog...and maybe I still do sometimes, but obviously consistent updating is just not going to happen. First because I am really terrible at maintenance in general, second because I don't have internet very often, and lastly because I'm just not that iiiinnnntttooooo the internet (even though I think it's AMAZING and the best resource EVER and I LOOOVE wikipedia!). Anywayzzz. Just throwing that out there.

So...lately, life in Argentina has been great! I have been up to:

I went on a couple of GREAT trips to mountainous outdoorsy regions and fell in love with a tea shop in the middle of nowehere in La Cumbre, which is right outside the city of Cordoba (in the province of Cordoba).

The tea shop:

La Cumbre:

We went mountain biking down an ACTUAL mountain without thinking about how we were going to get back up. It was super treacherous but when we got to the bottom there was a river and we went swimming. Then we had to go back up and it was going to be 10 miles straight up. We realized we weren't going to be able to make it and decided that the next pickup truck that passed us going up we'd ask for a ride from (because there were 3 of us and three bikes. So we did. We got a ride from this guy who literally threw the bikes in the back, we climbed on top of them, and then started speeding up the mountain. I literally thought I might die, which was terrifying, because I was closest to the edge and the bed was down because the bikes wouldn't fit in otherwise. I was being pulled down by gravity but held in by Colby and Crystal. Luckily we made the 10 miles alive by some miracle from God/the universe because there were lots of cliffs we could have fallen off of. Then we ate delicious ice cream at the tea place even though we were dirty and covered in bike oil and sweat. It was AMAZING.

I also rode horses through the mountains while we were there.

Natasha and Elizabeth hiked to Jesus, as in to a GIGANTIC statue of him that looks over La Cumbre from the mountainside. I probably should have, but they did that while we went bike riding. Colby, incidentally, got to pet the cutest puppy I have ever seen. Here is documentation:

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, the program went to Mendoza, which is wine country, and we went rafting (which was really more like advanced inner tubing...not too exciting) and hiking, and drank a lot of wine and ate too much food but we got to sit by a river and bond and we got to pick our cabin buddies so it was generally a really good time.

Our scenery every morning in Mendoza from our cabin:

The bodega that we visited was right next to a gorgeous vineyard, which was exciting to see as I had never seen wine country of any kind before.

As you can see, Sara and I continue to see each other, though not all the time...but it's waayyy nice to have her around!

The city of Buenos Aires is still amazing. I love hearing Spanish all the time and going to class in Spanish though I will be so much more thankful for being able to actually understand what my professors are saying without using every ounce of concentration next semester! People go out at like 2 in the morning and don't go home till 7 (but if you stop at a cafe to get coffee or tea and medialunas (which are like croissants but sweet) you don't get home till 8 or so). Everyone is so politically aware and active which I love, and there's a general valuing of each other...like when people are selling things or performing on the subway, people give money, like LOTS of people do, and when a performance ends, even if it was mostly stupid, like someone who can't really juggle juggling, everyone claps! I think it's great. Here's a picture of an AWESOME (not pity-clap level) band that plays at an outdoor market in San Telmo every Sunday. I bought their cd. They're fabulous.

So overall I'm having an amazing time. I'm going to miss it a lot when I go back! I would definitely consider coming back here. Also the artesanal goods are so awesome. The jewelry and leather goods are sweeeeeet. As a side note, the ice cream here is the best ice cream I've ever had, anywhere. It's sort of a cross between gelato and regular ice cream, and it's out of this world. When Adam, Sara's boyfriend came to visit, we got a kilo of it to share between five of us. It was heavenly. My opinion on this matter is clearly illustrated in this picture, I think.

I thought (and I think others were with me on this) that I was going to probably die having to eat Argentine food all the time. There's not too much variety...it's pizza, empanadas, milanesa (basically country fried steak...) and pasta at most restaurants, and that started getting old pretty quickly. But being here longer we've managed to find restaurants that have lots of different foods, or good Argentine interpretations of other types of food. Good mexican was hard to find but after a while Sara and I found one that ACTUALLY tasted Mexican and incorporated cilantro into the dishes. I also went with Crystal and Natasha to this FANTASTIC Armenian restaurant near FLACSO. There's apparently a big Armenian population here because of the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century. Interesting!

Tomorrow is my birthday and also the second program trip to a place called Tandil, which is apparently known for it's cheese (?) and located in the southern part of the province of Buenos Aires. So I guess I'll be celebrating my birthday FLACSO-style. Woo hoo! Iupi! Also it happens to be Georgetown's graduation, so to any graduating seniors...Congratulations!

Enough for now and I'll try to be better about updating. Love and miss you all!

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.

Pictures + other adventures

Hey everyone! I have some pictures now (though still not many) but at least you can see what my house looks like!

This is my room. It's pretty small but comfortable and definitely plenty of room for my stuff

It has a bathroom in it, which is nice, but really tiny. I could literally pee and shower at the same time...but as the hot water for the shower doesn't work, I just use the shower downstairs, which is way more comfortable anyway :)

My room is more or less on the roof of the house, attached to this patio. This is the view from my door. It's pretty nice to have this right outside, and I can see what's going on in the street below, which is always entertaining.

One of the coolest things I've done since being here was going on a walking tour of an area of the city called Puerto Madero.

Puerto Madero is the port of the city of Buenos Aires. It used to run parallel to the Rio de la Plata, which constitutes Buenos Aires's eastern border (where it looks like the coast should be) and still kind of does, but for various reasons the edge of the river is now miles further from the edge of the city than it used to be.

This picture shows the old part of Puerto Madero, on the side of the port that the city is on. The other side of the port (where I was standing when I took this picture) is actually all brand new. Until fairly recently it was full of abandoned buildings and was really run down. The government then decided to tear down everything and build all new office buildings, apartment complexes, retail stuff, etc. It's now the richest and newest part of Buenos Aires, but also the least interesting. What IS interesting, though, is what they decided to do with the debris from the demolitions of the old buildings. Instead of moving it, they just left it all there, till things started growing again, and now it's an "ecological reserve."

....

interesting....

So now they have all this nature, but it's growing on a whole bunch of trash...

Anyway, it was really fascinating.

Something else that's cool about Puerto Madero is that in the entire area, both on the older side and the newer side, all the streets are named for notable Argentine women. According to our tour guide, the people who were doing the street namings at the time noticed that the cities as a whole generally lacked representation of important and influential women in their street names; they recognized men of all kinds, but rarely were streets anywhere named for women. So, they decided to dedicate the whole area to this recognition. They have streets named for women poets, artists, politicians, activists, etc. Two of them are named for the two Madres de la Plaza de Mayo who were disappeared by the government in an attempt to discourage the rest of them from contnuing their protests during the Dirty War of the late 1970s and 1980s. Overall, I thought this was a really cool tribute. The bridge that connects the older side with the newer side is also called Puente de la Mujer (the big white bridge you see here).

I've also had a chance to walk through the parks in Palermo and Recoleta (two of the higher-class barrios) which are beautiful and really extensive. Sara and I went to the Museo Nacional de las Bellas Artes (the National Museum of Art) which was kind of small but had some really cool Argentine art and some amazing photographs. There was even one of Che in Bolivia right as he was about to be killed. Pretty amazing.

Anyway, that's about all I have for now. I've been in an internet cafe for several hours and I should probably go do something exciting and fun but I hope this was interesting. At least the pictures might have spiced things up :)

Until next time...!!

My official entry into technology

Hello readers! Happy welcome to my travel blog. This is the second blog post I have ever made, and I only even started reading blogs in the past few months, so please bear with me as I do my best to forge ahead.


I'm spending my spring semester this year in Buenos Aires, Argentina (hence the blog title; "gaucho" is the word used specifically for Argentine ranchers) and arrived at the Ezeiza Airport last Thursday. I haven't written yet because, since then, internet access has been somewhat hard to come by. I'm participating in a program for students from the United States and there's a computer lab that we can use at the headquarters for the program, but it's not open on weekends and I don't have reliable internet connection at the house where I'm living. So, I think I've figured out that I can write my blog posts in a Word document, save it on a USB drive, and then bring it with me to the lab and just copy and paste it into the blog. It seems somewhat low-tech but hopefully it will work out.


I'll apologize in advance for the length of the post. I have lots to talk about since I haven't been able to write yet, but I promise future ones won't be as long.


I feel like I should start everything out with some useful terms so that people can reference them if necessary. There are acronyms and other things that might be useful...


• CIEE: A huge study abroad program (I think it only serves students from American universities) with sites all over the world. They have staff in each location that find students housing and make sure they have everything set up to enroll in classes at the destination of their choosing.
• FLACSO: Facultad Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales: For the intents and purposes of this blog, FLACSO is the CIEE branch in Buenos Aires. It has other functions but the only one I'm really concerned with is its role as CIEE coordinator here.
• Sara: One of my good friends from Georgetown who happens to be participating in the same program that I am.
• Barrio: An area or neighborhood within the city of Buenos Aires. There are many and each has its own personality.
• Subte: Buenos Aires's subway system. All rides are $1.10, one-way.


Sara and I got to Buenos Aires on the hottest day of the summer so far (yes, it's summer! hooray for the southern hemisphere!). The high was 40.5 degrees Celsius or 104 degrees Farenheit and everyone in our group was having a panic attack thinking that we hadn't brought the right clothes for the trip. What kind of clothes would actually make one feel comfortable in that kind of heat I'm not sure, but we were all concerned. Two FLACSO people, Roche (who immediately complimented me on my Ratatat t-shirt - go figure!) and Uke, met us at the airport, and we waited around with our luggage until all of the others scheduled to arrive within the same four-hour time period got there. Then we all piled into a bus to the hotel in which we would be staying for a couple of days.

I'll spare you all the details of the hotel stay, but essentially we had a little while to meet other people in the program and find our way around the area. It was somewhat first-year orientation-like, which was annoying, but it was also nice not to be alone in our first days here. I was delighted to find out upon arrival that the exchange rate, dollar to peso, is 3.5 to 1, not just 3 to 1 as I had read in my Lonely Planet book, and I got to drink my first beer of this semester with my friends Emmett and Sara.

Living and Roommates

Saturday morning, after our second night in the hotel, we met our host families. In this case, the term "family" can be interpreted somewhat loosely. CIEE has separated them into four categories which are 1) Single woman with kids, 2) Two parents and kids, 3) A single older woman or 4) Young professionals. My family falls into the last category. I'm living with Carla and Luciano, 20-something roommates who live in a barrio right in the geographical middle of the city (though downtown is actually on the coast). Carla is a personal trainer, does translations from/to Spanish from/to Portuguese, takes literature classes at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and is learning to play the clarinet. Luciano works in movie production, teaches literature at the arts school for young kids where he and Carla (and many of their friends, they've said) met, and plays in a Latin American folk music band for which he's learning to play the acordeon (typical of Argentine tango music). They're very eclectic in their interests and extremely kind and welcoming. They also love to watch the Simpsons and Futurama in Spanish, which amuses me to no end. I'm still figuring out how to navigate certain things, like how to be an interactive roommate but not be in their space all the time and how to figure out what the dinner plans are. Asking would clearly be the best but honestly waiting until 11:00 or 12:00 for dinner is really hard if that's what the plan is...so my goal at this point is to try and figure out how to navigate that. Let me know if you have suggestions, por favor!

The house is set up more or less like a town house. They each have individual rooms and there's a patio on the first floor, with kitchen, bathroom, den, and dining room. There are stairs from the dining area to the roof, which is actually a patio as well, with my room and TINY bathroom inside a door on the roof/patio. It's nice and very private, and while I shower in the bathroom downstairs, it's really great having my own sink and toilet. I just realized that that's never happened to me before. Ha. Anyway, Carla and Luciano have been fantastic. They are definitely more like roommates than parents, which concerned me at first, but which I think is really going to be fine and even an advantage. Saturday night they took me to their friend's house where I learned how to make delicious empanadas, and then to someone's birthday party. Sunday Carla took me with a couple of her friends to see an outdoor movie and have pizza, and last night we went to Puerto Madero, a barrio right by the edge of the city (where the Rio de Plata used to be but is no longer) to have a picnic of these great pork sandwiches with a friend of theirs. I think I'm (to a definitely limited extent, but still) getting more socially out of my family situations than I might if I had a different type of family.

Food and Money

Eating out has really been an experience. First of all, people should know that in Buenos Aires, people call a menu "una carta" rather than "un menu." I've found that nothing makes me doubt my Spanish skills more than not being able to understand the first sentence out of the server's mouth. Adapting to price differences food-wise is funny; I feel like every time I go out to eat I either think I'm spending way more than I am because the numbers look so high or I think I'm practically eating for free and forgetting that pesos are, in fact, real money. The lunches I have eaten so far have ranged from $9 for a ham and cheese panini (they eat SO MUCH ham here) to $30 for a three-course meal + drink. I'm still working on trying to find the cheap but good places near me, but even an accidental $30 in pesos comes out to $8.50 in American dollars. Not great, but it's also not as terrible as it looks, especially for what I got.

The types of food are interesting. While I knew that Argentina has a huge descendents -of- Italian- immigrant population, I don't think it translated for me how much this heritage would influence their cuisine. All I had really heard about prior to visiting was the beef and the wine, but what I think I should have heard more about was the pizza and pasta. The pizza is all AMAZING, no matter where you get it, and the first day I was here Luciano and Carla bought fresh pasta for us to eat, which was filled with mozzarella and ham, and it was absolutely delicious. There are multiple pizza places on every corner and almost ever restaurant I've been to has sold pizza even if it didn't specialize in it.

Yesterday I tried a dish that I'd seen everywhere but hadn't had yet because I didn't know whata it was for the first time. I finally decided to take the plunge. It's called Milanesa and it's some kind of steak-type thing that's cut very very thinly and then breaded and fried. It was really good but I don't know that I would make a habit out of eating it too often. Just as there is pizza everywhere, so too are empanadas seemingly ever-present. Usually at the same place as the pizza. They have ones of beef, vegetables, and Rockefort (or Roquefort or something) which is apparently a kind of cheese. Anyway it's everyone's favorite and I also will say that they are really fantastic. The food, to be honest, has all been wonderful. The only thing I've had that I didn't like was an omelette that came with really gross vegetables on the side. There is fresh fruit everywhere, but vegetables are hard to come by or when I've found them I've been disappointed.

As far as beverages go, you have to pay for water always. Even in restaurants, there's no suchc thing as water from the tap. You get either agua gaseosa (sparkling water) or agua sin gas (without bubbles) from a glass bottle if you ask for it, and pay usually $2 (which comes out to less than a dollar, so I'm not too concerned at this point). People also drink coke pretty frequently. Quilmes is the beer of Argentina. It comes in several varieties, such as Cristal, Red, and Black, as well as some others, and people drink it all the time. It only really comes in 650 mL bottles (similar in size to a 40 but I don't know what the actual conversion is) for about $15 each, so people share them. One guy in the program has a host brother who works for Quilmes, as a side note. Sadly for my friend, there doesn't seem to be any free beer that comes along with that position... And then, of course, there's coffee, which you can find literally anywhere in a million varieties. Mostly they make espresso and then add cream or milk and sugar, but any real restaurant will have an extensive list of coffee and tea options. That I've seen so far, breakfast nearly always consists of medialunas (croissants) and coffee for around $6. Or Mate. But I'll have to write about mate at a later date because this is getting long. But one thing about money...

The Coin Crisis

Within the first few hours of our visit we were warned about a coin shortage that has already become a nearly all-consuming reality. The CIEE staff kept insisting that it would be extremely important that we hold on to our change and to try to always have small bills on hand. At first it all seemed somewhat silly, but after a few days of trying to navigate making purchases of all kinds, getting subway cards, and trying to come up with bus fares (which are only accepted in coin form...) it's become clear that it's actually a pretty significant problem. As someone whose fastest route to where I need to get every day is a bus, it's really annoying and inconvenient that nobody EVER wants to give me change. It doesn't matter if I'm in a convenience store, an electronics store, or trying to get my visa, cashiers want the smallest bills I have and throw a fit if they have to give me coins in return. I, on the other hand, am completely unwilling to give up ANY of my coins because every one can get me five cents or more closer to a bus ride home, rather than a subte one with a long walk attached. I've found so far that the best ways to get coins are to take the subte, where if I give them a $2 bill they have to give me 90 centavos back, or to go to a big store in an upper class neighborhood where people are less likely to take the bus (and thus more likely to give up their change to cashiers, who can then give it to me when I make a carefully calculated purchase). I actually even find myself tempted sometimes to pay the $1.10 subte fare and not use the ticket, just so I can get coins. That's right - I'm tempted to PAY $1.10 for someone to give me 90centavos THAT I ALREADY HAD in a different form so I can have it on hand at some point if I should happen to need it later on. Buses are so much more useful than the subte that I can almost make it make sense in my mind. A guarantee of a bus ride later is worth it to me, should I find myself needing to get home and unable to get easily to a subte stop. But it shouldn't be that way.

Sara had mentioned that she read an article about the coin shortage before we came. I wonder at this point if it may have started out as a small problem that was then worsened by the hype which makes crazy people like me feel like I have to do everything in my power to hoard my coins, just like everybody else. This article talks about the problems it's causing in a little more detail and conveys the absurdity of the situation a little more clearly. Something else supposedly adding to the problem is that the Mafia is collecting all of the coins and then selling them on the black market at a higher price. I need to do some more researching because it's crazy. Sorry if this was a lot about coins but I think it's really interesting (though not as interesting as it is inconvenient).

Oh yeah - and style

Nose, lip, and eyebrow piercings are EVERYWHERE. Even older women have nose piercings.
The clothes are very similar to the US from what I´ve seen, except that women never wear tshirts or shorts, unless they´re longer.

Mulletts and rattails are way too common for my personal comfort


DISCLAIMER: Everything I've written is based on my experiences in one week and so what I've seen or perceive as trends is clearly subject to change pending further life education :)