Opera Bay

Sunday night I cooked for Sierra and I. I made arroz a la cubana (Cuban rice) which involves fried eggs, rice, tomato sauce and fried banana (without oil…). Very simple, cheap and still very yummy. (Elegant, this is what you should try to cook in London).

I spent Monday writing my history of the US paper and studying for that midterm. My host mom still wasn’t home from the beach when I made dinner. I cooked chicken and pasta. She came home at 10ish and felt really badly that she didn’t have a phone so I couldn’t call her to tell her I was in the house. She would have wanted to come home early to cook dinner for me.

Tuesday, the COPA kids in my history of US class came over to study for the midterm, which I hadn’t really done much of because I was not worried about the test. Juan Cruz and Gilde came over for lunch.

Wednesday, I had classes and was at COPA for most of the day. I also met with my semi-useless tutor (more like an advisor).

On Thursday, my alarm did not work. I had set it to wake up at 6:45, but didn’t open my eyes until 7:31. My midterm started at 8 and I had to take the subte to get to class. I got ready super quickly and ran out the door. I was in the subte station by 7:42…thank goodness its right across the street. I made it to class by 7:59, 5 minutes before my teacher and the rest of the class arrived. The parcial was really easy; super broad questions…only three mini-essays. I also found out that one girl in the class (from COPA) is going back to the states this week because she can’t handle speaking Spanish and being in Buenos Aires. She is clearly one of the weakest speakers on COPA and missed her boyfriend a lot. She has a lot of mental health issues (insomnia and sees a psychiatrist) and just can’t handle being away from home. She never knows whats going on in class, even though the teacher is super easy to understand. So that’s it, she’s leaving. I don’t really like the city either. Its just another big city. There’s really no culture shock here. Its like I came, its kind of like New York except everyone speaks Spanish. Not really a big deal. The people who love Buenos Aires are people who are obsessed with partying or people who are from the Midwest or other places where they don’t really have big cities.

Then I had art history class and lunch with a girl from Tufts where we talked about how we don’t love BsAs and what our friends were doing at Tufts (ie- fall ball and bubs concerts). Later, I had history of America where we spent about 15 minutes comparing Boca/River (the two big football teams) to the Red Sox/Yanks. At 11:30ish I left my house to go to a locutorio (internet center) to use the computer. I sat down at my computer and noted that the guy next to me was clearly my age and a student (he had books and was working on a paper). I didn’t think much of it and signed on to gmail and facebook to do some stuff. A few minutes later he turned to me and said, in perfect English, “can I ask you a question?” I was more shocked by the fact that he spoke to me in perfect English than anything. He asked me if I was from Tufts and I said yes. He is here on another program studying for the semester. I never met him at Tufts because he has only taken 4 semesters of Spanish (which is the level I took when I entered), lived downhill and partied all the time. It was still super weird to run into another Tufts person here (so that makes 8 Tufts ppl in the city). He loves Buenos Aires because he parties all the time and people here party until 7AM. After that weird encounter I went to meet my friends at Plaza Italia and we went out to the bars in Plaza Serrano because it was Sandra’s birthday and she wanted to celebrate.

Friday afternoon I had my first of four two-hour tango lessons. I didn’t suck as much as I thought…which was a good thing. I also got to dance with one of the instructors at the end because we have very few guys in our group. Then I went out to lunch with Amy and Sandra. We were in a café until nearly 7PM just chatting and stuff. I got home and had dinner with my host mom. We ate left over chicken and she was somewhat horrified that I didn’t want mayo or ketchup with my chicken. She had hardboiled an egg to add to the chicken and mayo concoction. She also made me way too much food which is a battle everyone seems to be fighting with their host moms. The food here is always cooked in tons of oil and everybody seems to be ok with that…except us Americans. Friday night, I went to Opera Bay with Briana and Blythe. Opera Bay is one of BsAs’s trendiest night clubs and is full of internationals. We went because we had free passes from Blythe’s gym. They had sponsored the night in honor of 21 sept being the first day of spring (they celebrate that like crazy). Anyway, so Opera Bay kind of looks like an opera house and is right on the water in Puerto Madero (the new, trendy section of the city). Whats really nice about it is that you can take a colectivo to get there and back rather than paying for a taxi. Whats really bad about it is that it costs something ridiculous like $30 pesos to get in when you don’t have free passes. When we got there, there was a mass of people and we had to queue around this park area. Our passes said we had to enter by 2:30, but we didn’t get there until 2ish so we figured we were never going to make it in. I think we made it passed the bouncer by 2:29. Inside there were three rooms with different kinds of music. When we walked in, the first room was more hip-hop, the big glassed in room was 80s and the smallest room was techno, however this seemed to change as the night went on. We chose the biggest room which was also the nicest (it had a pool of water in it and glass walls overlooking the water). It was also really nice that we could go upstairs in this room by finding the staircase in the other room (usually upstairs is reserved for VIPs only). Briana and Blythe determined that I am the best at getting through crowds of people, which I attribute to my New-Jersey-shopping-mall-and-New-York-City-weekends upbringing. We didn’t stay too long because by 5ish they were starting to repeat the music. We headed back to the colectivo stop where we were joined by a swarm of younger Argentine girls. When the colectivo showed up, the driver didn’t really see us because there were other buses in the way. We all ran at the door and he turned to pull into the curb, so essentially almost hit all of us. It was somewhat hilarious that the Argentines and the Americans did the same thing. On the bus, the Argentine girls were teaching each other to sing some Brittany Spears/Jessica Simpson like song, while we (well I was) were singing Julieta Venegas “Que Lastima, Me Voy.” We went to Plaza del Carmen because we couldn’t find anything else open in the Col. Diaz/Santa Fe area (closer to Blythe’s apartment). We had medialunas in a booth and these Argentine guys asked us for 50 centavos so they could get the larger pizza on the menu. I gave it to them and then they took our picture…it was kinda sketchy. After that, I went home. It was 6.30 and the sun was coming up.

Saturday afternoon was more tango. We moved on to moves which look more like dancing….as opposed to the beginning steps we were doing before. Afterwards, Sandra, Amy and I went to Disco and bought food to prepare at Amy’s house for dinner. Meagan came over at 8ish and we made meatballs and steamed veggies. They were yummy, but we forgot to egg in the meatballs, so they kind of fell apart… we also made them with chimichuri, which is a mix of spices Argentines eat on their beef (its also the only spice they eat…its oregano, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper – its somewhat spice). Amy’s host sister even tried our food and liked it. We were just excited to be eating veggies without sauce and oil. Apparently Amy’s mom likes to add alfredo sauce to her steamed veggies. Luckily I’ve gotten mine to the point where she knows I eat veggies plain. “No oil, thank you….really, I don’t like olive oil either. I know that argentines can’t handle eating strawberries without sugar, but I really do like them plain, grapefruit also.” These are the arguments we are constantly having with our host mom’s. They give us way too much food and try to make us eat things with oil, excessive amounts of salt, and unnecessary sugar. My host mom’s grandson’s “salads” involve lettuce, oil, salt, and vinegar. There are more condiments on the salad that actual salad. They are also obsessed with cooking everything in oil (see Sunday)

Sunday morning, I slept late. Then Meagan and Steve came over so we could study for history of America 1. Our test is on Thursday, but we know that we have one question for each of three readings, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Then, we went to Steve’s house to get some guide books and wound up talking for a while. My host mom made dinner, which consisted of beef (cooked in her warped grill pan, which is actually really good), fried eggs, steamed yam, and a salad. She fries eggs by pouring oil in the pan, cracking the egg and then scooping the hot oil on top of the egg to cook the yolk. Its incredibly disgusting (well, the whole egg and steak thing is pretty gross to begin with). I’ve tried explaining to her that I don’t use oil in my house and apparently the other girls before me have done the same. She told me that Americans don’t use oil, but instead our containers of food are so huge (apparently the girl before me had brought a humongous tub of peanut butter, which doesn’t exist here). She also asked me how I make French fries at home if I don’t use oil and I was like, I don’t eat French fries at home. Argentines are obsessed with oil and carbs. This isn’t a culture of meat, like the rest of the world thinks…it’s a culture of carbs. They can’t go a meal without bread of some form. Every night at dinner, my host mom had to eat some crackers with her meal, even if it involves scooping up rice with a cracker. I use the crackers for things like the fish stew she made. My friends and I have talked about our host families comparing this and they’re all the same in this aspect. We’re also having trouble controlling the portion size of our meals. My host mom served me two pieces of beef and I told her I was not going to be eating both. She swore they were small and I had to eat both. So I ate 1 ½ and left the other ½ for my lunch the following day. The other day, I didn’t finish all of my squash and she told me to eat it, so I got out a plastic container and put it in the fridge for the next day. My friends are having the same problems with their host families trying to feed them way too much food.

Monday, I woke up early to do some homework. Went to the gym and spent most of the day working on my US history paper. My host mom and I watched CNN en Español to find out about the school shooting in Amish country. Then we went to my host mom’s grandson’s 8th birthday party. It was kind of fun and kind of psychotic at the same time…it makes me never want to have kids because these children were off the wall. The party was at a bowling alley, which has a full staff to run children’s parties. There were at least two more in addition to Juan Cruz’s party. For birthdays here, the entire class (30 kids) is invited and each kid gives the mom money to buy her son/daughter a gift. The close friends also buy something for the birthday child. So there weren’t a million gifts floating around. At the party, the children were first fed hot dogs and hamburgers and chips and stuff. Then they moved on to the bowling lanes where they played for more than an hour (the whole party was supposed to only last 2 hours). It was basically an hour of kids screaming their heads off and throwing themselves on the ground. Then it was cake time (cause after kids act crazy, they need more sugar). Gilde (Juan Cruz’s mom, my host mom’s daughter) had made a cake. It was really good- layers of chocolate and dulce de leche. But the most incredible part was the top of the cake. Using marzipan she created a completely separate cake topper with Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean). It was amazing, he actually kind of looked like Johnny Depp; there was an island, palm trees and a treasure chest also. I took a lot of pictures which was a good thing because Gilde’s pictures didn’t come out (it was kind of dark and difficult to get in front of the children). Afterwards, my host mom and I returned home and ordered empanadas for our dinner.

Tuesday, I woke up and studied for my midterm. Juan Cruz and Gilde came over for lunch and I gave them my jump drive with the photos, which they both loved. Juan Cruz ate some more sugar…his grandmother can’t not buy him chocolate and candy. Then I studied some more and did more homework for my other classes. I had my pilates class. We had dinner and I worked on my history paper some more.