Paraná and Santa Fe

Wednesday, I had my horribly boring COPA class. It’s about grammar, but the teacher is terrible. We get nothing done. We spent two hours talking about two cases of the subjunctive (verb form that doesn’t exist in English). Then I went to Retiro bus station to buy bus tickets with Blythe to go to Paraná and Santa Fe (two cities in the Mesopotamia region up north). After that I walked to Borges class and tried to read in a park on the way (it was too cold).

Thursday I had History of the US in the morning. I really like that class, too bad I don’t need the credit from it. The Argentine students decided when they wanted to take the midterm (its next week). It’s a very democratic/adult system at times. The teacher says to the students we should discuss the midterm and the students respond, how about the 28th? Then the teacher says ok, but lets wait to see if more students come to class today to see if the date is ok with them. This would never happen in the US. The teacher picks the day and only changes it if enough students won’t be in class (which rarely happens unless you have something like Hilary Clinton speaking on campus). Then I had my Art History of Argentina/America class. It was hilarious, I was with this Argentine girl and we could not find the class. Most of the class was in our 5th floor classroom about 15 minutes early, so I went to the bathroom. When I came back, there was an Argentine girl talking to the director of the department and everyone else had left. So we went down to our 2nd floor classroom (one has a computer, the other slides...thats why we need two). There was another class in there, so we went back up to the 5th floor where we saw our professor talking to some other adult. We went into our classroom and were joined by a bunch of other students. We hung around for about 10 minutes and when we went out into the hall our prof wasn’t there anymore. So we asked the head of the department where we should go and she sent us down to the entrance floor to an auditorium-like room. We got to class 15 minutes and there was the prof sitting and waiting for the students. Typical Argentina.

Friday, I went to Retiro (another time) to buy tickets with Sierra for the upcoming weekend. They we ran some errands in microcentro and then went to lunch with Amy, Meagan, and Sandra. Another two hour lunch in their favorite restaurant. Then to Amy’s house so they could consume 1 kilo of ice cream while I ate an orange (they were actually pretty disgusting to watch). I went home a few hours later, showered, ate gnocci (yum) and left to find Blythe before going to Retiro another time. Our bus left at ½ past midnight. We slept as much as possible, which was difficult with the guy in front of us snoring and sounding like a horse.

We got to Paraná at 6:30 AM Saturday morning and walked around a little. We finally found a café that was open (Paraná doesn’t function on the same 24 hour all the time schedule as BsAs.) and had the most amazing breakfast in Argentina. They don’t really eat breakfast, so this was really incredible. For 10 pesos: omelet with ham, coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice, toast and marmalade. It was fantastic. We hung out there until 10 ish and then began to explore the town. We walked to the water and along the river’s edge. We tried to find a mate museum, which had moved to the center of town (we were pretty far our by the river). Instead, Blythe bought a mate and then we went to lunch where I had an empanada of river fish and fish meatballs (yum-yum). Then we went to find out if there were river excursions. We wound up going to this hotel which organized trips. We went in a group of 8 for a little more than an hour. It was great to be on the river and see the city. After that we went back to the center of town and saw the church. Then we left for Santa Fe (across the river, through a tunnel).

When we got to Santa Fe, we found a hotel for the night. We crashed for an hour and watched C-Span because we didn’t get BBC world. Then we went into the center of town, which was not as charming as Paraná. We ate at a sidewalk café which had incredibly cheap food (we’re used to BsAs prices). Then we got some ice cream and went back to the hotel to go to bed.

Sunday, I got up really early and stayed in bed doing nothing. We left the hotel at 11ish and went in search of breakfast. More omelets, this time not as good. We walked to the town plaza and tried to go to a museum and a convent, which were both closed. We just chilled in the plaza and then walked around a little bit before going to a zoo/experimental farm/family park thing. We saw a bunch of animals and sat at the park’s café enjoying the lack of dust/colectivo noise. Then we went back to town, walked around a little more. None of the store opened for the day every. Apparently in Santa Fe, everyone spends the day at home on Sundays. We picked up our stuff at the hotel and went to the bus station. We had hamburgers and sat around for two hours completely exhausted. Our bus left a little before 1AM.

Monday, we arrived at retiro at 6:35AM really tired, took the subte and went home and went to bed.