Monday was pretty boring. I went to COPA (I can’t even remember why….but I found out that we had another COPA laptop stolen. This time it was in a popular café with WiFi (one of the only café chains that also has plugs). The girl was sitting towards the front of the café with her laptop and some guys came in with a gun and stole all of her stuff and $600 AR from the register. What really freaked me out was that I was in the same café on Friday morning and Saturday afternoon with my laptop…my friends Diana and Blythe were there earlier on Sunday with their laptops also. This café is an easy target because like I said it actually has plugs and WiFi which is a rare combination. Many foreigners frequent its various locations and even though there is a security guard, he is relatively useless – he was in the bathroom during the time of the robbery. After leaving COPA I ran some errands and went home.
I spent most of Tuesday with the Tufts people. I went to their hostel and then we went to buy Buquebus (the ferry) tickets to Uruguay; I didn’t need to buy a ticket because I used the one we were supposed to use for COPA’s trip on Thanksgiving (I absolutely do not want to go anywhere with 120 people ever again…Iguazú was bad enough). Then I went with Marc and Julissa to Retiro because they wanted to buy bus tickets to Iguazú. They were only going to Uruguay for the day where as some people were going for the week (like me). We met up with the rest of the group at the Recoleta Cemetery, where we spent most of the time trying to scare each other. It was Halloween and we were in the cemetery so this was pretty fitting. Then we walked over towards Santa Fe because the girls wanted to go shopping, but we were first side tracked by an ice cream store. Marc, Ben and I ditched the girls (actually we let them walk ahead and didn’t follow). we went El Ateneo (a bookstore) where I saw more COPA people (I can’t escape them). Then I got them to a colectivo and I walked home. On the way up the street, I bought a pair of leather flip flops with brown flowers on them. They have already given me blisters.
Wednesday morning I woke up at the crack of dawn and grabbed my backpack and headed for the colectivo. we all met up at Buquebus to check in and stuff. The three hour ferry wasn’t bad at all; I spent most of the time talking to Christina (a Tufts girl here on another program) who I hadn’t seen this semester. we arrived in Colonia and split off into two groups based on who was leaving and who was staying in Uruguay (those who were staying were busy figuring out bus tickets first). Ben and I bought tickets and rented lockers for our stuff and then went outside to try to rent scooters (we were feeling adventurous). The other three girls soon followed us (Vanessa, Diana, and Raquel). we were going to rent four scooters (they wanted their own and I wanted to ride behind Ben who had ridden one before). There was also the problem of only two people having their driver’s license with them – this however wasn’t actually a problem because the scooter people didn’t really care that much. then we saw this girl wipe out on a scooter and screw up her ankle so we rented a golf cart for the girls and Ben and I got a scooter.
We scooted/golf carted around town and bumped into our friends. We saw all of the important sites in Colonia and went to a market. We climbed a light house and looked out over the city and we had a fantastic meal of seafood. Colonia is a tiny town which was originally founded as a Portuguese settlement to smuggle goods into Buenos Aires. The streets are cobble stone (which meant I actually had to get off the scooter at times because the stones were so big and uneven that Ben couldn’t maneuver the scooter over them). We left Colonia at 6ish and took a bus to Montevideo. The bus station in Montevideo is amazing; its actually a shopping mall with a food court and stores and tons of stuff, which meant we could have food court Chinese food for dinner…I really miss Chinese food. Then we caught a bus to Punta del Este where we arrived at midnight or so. We tried to find a hostel, but the one in lonely planet had closed. we finally found this really nice new one which happened to have a free room that could accommodate all 5 of us and had a private bathroom. We decided to go out and explore Punta del Este to see its nightlife (apparently its fantastic during the summertime, but this was only early November). We went to a bar where this crazy guy talked to us in English (he was very drunk, a total beach bum, walking around banging a drum). Punta del Este is a peninsula. The eastern side is the Río de la Plata (same river as in BsAs, but with nice water – its blue, not like our brown) and the western side is the Atlantic Ocean. it is the summer vacation destination of the wealthy from BsAs and Uruguay. we were not there in high season, which was a good thing. our hostel was 4 blocks from the ocean and one block from the river.
Even though we went to bed late Wednesday, I woke up early Thursday morning. I reset the alarm clock to wake the rest of them up and I went to the beach. I walked along the ocean and collected sea shells which I gave to the rest of them when I returned to the hostel. We were thinking of going to Punta del Diablo (a more private beach about three hours away), but realized it was really hard to get there by bus – the buses drop you off along the ruta (country road/highway) and you have to walk/hitchhike the 2 km to the village. We were going to rent a car – Ben and I walked around pricing it and it would have been relatively cheap, but then decided not to go because it wasn’t yet summer and the area would have been really dead. Instead we went to the beach, first the river and then the ocean. it was great to walk around in a bathing suite and flip flops and no one cared because we were in a beach town. We layed out trying to get a tan (I got one!). Then we walked around a bit and went shopping, but I didn’t really get anything. The rest of the girls continued walking but I went to the hostel to get my camera. I found Ben in the hammock and convinced him to walk to the harbor with me. At the harbor we saw seals. They had climbed up onto the dock and were just chilling out. I could get within 2 feet of them (they barked at me, so I didn’t get any closer), which was really awesome. Then we kept walking and stopped at a restaurant along the water. We had fantastic seafood and watched the sunset. On the walk back to the hostel we saw four seals on a dock in the harbor. We went to bed when we got to the hostel.
I woke up early again on Friday. The sky was grey and it appeared to be cold out…which meant I had to wear pants. I went to the ocean and climbed around on rocks. The waves crashing on the rocks were amazing and the town was so quiet. I got back to the hostel and woke the rest of the group. We ate breakfast and left for Montevideo. While we were leaving the woman at front desk commented on the girls’ suitcases, which were absolutely huge. We got to Montevideo and took cabs to the hostel, which luckily had space because there was a group of high schoolers there. They were from the interior of the country and were visiting Montevideo to see universities and the city. First we went to the eat lunch. We went to eat parrilla, which is a mix of grilled meats – various parts of the cow, and chicken and pork. Then we walked around ciudad vieja (the old parts of the city), which was disastrous because all of the Latin American presidents and the Spanish prime minister (or diplomat or someone) were at the Radison in the center of the principal plaza – Plaza Independencia. There were barricades all over the city: some for car and some for people. Also, there were motorcades with police escorts passing by constantly. We followed Lonely Planet’s walking tour and saw some old/nice buildings and plazas. Then we walked along the river and went back to the hostel to take a nap; I didn’t nap. There was karaoke going on for these high school students and the noise was so terrible. Afterwards, we walked to the downtown area again and had Mexican food! we left the restaurant and wound up inside the barricades. We walked around Plaza Independencia, but not near the Radison because there were a lot of police over there.
On Saturday, I woke up early and had breakfast with Ben and some of the guys he had been staying with at the hostel. Then we woke the girls and walked back to ciudad vieja (this time a different route around the barricaded plazas) for lunch. we all wanted seafood and Ben wanted paella. We found a restaurant in this market, el Mercado del Puerto (the Market of the Port) and tried to figure out what to order. The paella was for two people so basically he told me I had to share it with him…which was fine because I wanted it anyway. It was fantastic: they brought us the whole pan thing and plates, but we soon abandoned our plates and just ate it out of the pan, which lead to fork issues when I was eating too slowly and apparently had the good piece of fish on my fork. He basically just stole it off my fork and ate it. we shared with the rest of the girls and had a really good lunch. Then we shopped around the market and I bought a pair of earrings made from an Uruguayan stone. They actually clapped when I bought earrings because I don’t buy nearly as much stuff as the other girls. We walked back to the hostel and again wound up inside the barricades. This time we were in a different part of the plaza and couldn’t get to the center.
At the hostel we split up because I really wanted to take a local bus and the other girls couldn’t because their suitcases were too big. Ben came with me because he couldn’t fit in a cab with them and their stuff (and they were kind of driving him a little crazy). The local bus was interesting, we boarded and then paid a man who was in the middle of the bus who gave us a ticket. It was great because we got to talk to some Uruguayans and see other parts of the city. We got to Tres Cruces (the bus station) and got in line for the bus to the ferry (same company). It was so weird to be on a first come-first serve bus (I’m used to them issuing seats with the tickets). The girls were no where to be found, so we got on the bus without them, I was worried, but Ben wasn’t the slightest bit phased, even though our bus was clearly full and leaving. We saw them on the platform as we pulled away and they caught the next bus (I think there were three in total). when we got to immigration, we realized that the buquebus forms they had given us when we left Argentina were our entrance cards. I explained to the immigration official that mine was in my backpack which was checked. he acted pissy and then allowed me to go to the Argentine official who told me that my visa only allowed me to be in the country until July 18, 2007 (hello? thank-you….like I didn’t already know that). I walked through and found Ben searching through his papers for his entrance card, which he didn’t have and had to go back and tell them the same thing I had told them. Then we went through duty free where I bought Milanos. I don’t even really like milanos, but they were really good and I knew they didn’t exist anywhere in Buenos Aires. We got in the line to board and I tried to hand them my ticket when we got to the front, I was supposed to have my boarding pass out…it was in my bag.
On the ferry, I was in the tourist (aka cheap class) and the rest of them were in first class. I got one of the last cheap tickets (I already had the ticket, I just had to change it from the COPA dates). That meant that they were upstairs and I was downstairs. Ben left me in my seat and we figured we’d meat up and eat something when the girls arrived (we figured we had a three hour ferry ride ahead of us). I was studying my Borges readings for my upcoming final when the boat started to slow down…I couldn’t figure out why because we had only been going for an hour. I looked out my window and saw a city…we had wound up on the high speed buquebus; after talking to people around me, I found out that the slower one had broken down that morning and they were only running the faster one. I met up with the rest of them at baggage and we left. Once outside my cell phone started ringing, it was Marc wondering where we were. They went to their hostel and I went home. On the colectivo, the little girl in front of me (she was about 8 or so) was staring at my backpack and asked me about it…I though her grandma was going to kill her for questioning me. it was hilarious; I explained that my backpack was a suitcase and I went on a trip to Uruguay. I spent about an hour at home: took a shower and basically dumped my backpack all over my floor trying to find my razor for the shower. Then I went back to the centro to meet up with my friends and go to dinner with them for their last night in BsAs. I got home at 3ish and my key wouldn’t open the door. This had started happening recently, my key just doesn’t seem to work in the door…it takes me like 10 tries until it goes all the way in. I had told my host mom, but she refused to believe me and in a very condescending way told me to just be patient. So, to make my point, I switched her key with mine so she could understand that, yes, she should call the locksmith and stop putting it off…I hadn’t seen any results yet…
On Sunday, I woke up ridiculously early (well I went to bed really late). I went to the hostel (woke Vanessa, Diana and Julissa) and said goodbye to everyone. Then I went home and unpacked my stuff. I met Blythe at noon for coffee (I had juice because I had just had coffee at my apartment). We went to the feria de naciones, which was kind of like an indoor fair/market of items from around the world. We didn’t really see anything we were interested in buying. we had fake “Arabic” food (we in the PC world refer to it as middle eastern food) which wasn’t that great because it was made with meat instead of lamb. Then we went across the street to the feria de recoleta, which is an outdoor crafts fair. It was absolutely pouring, which meant that venders were more likely to give us deals on jewelry…Blythe is the biggest jewelry shopper I know.
Then we went to another café where she had more coffee and I had tea. I read the newspaper while she read for her paper. The Argentine newspaper is absolutely hilarious. There was in article about women in their forties who go shopping together “para que les digan si es cool o grasa” (Clarín 5 nov 2006) – to help each other buy clothing that they say is cool or grasa/fat/phat?. Basically they are using the word grasa which literally means fat to mean phat….which we found really funny because its an example of really bad translating…no one here refers to anything as grasa…its always cool. Clarín is a humorous newspaper anyway because it is my host mom’s bible and one of the two serious newspapers here (I never read the other because it is rarely in cafés). This particular issue had an entire article (we’re talking 1/3 of the tabloid-sized page) about how voters in Washington D.C. don’t have senate representation which means they have less representation than porteños (people from BsAs). I mean really, they dedicated precious column inches to this which seems so ridiculous because really all they are trying to do is point out that they are better than Americans. When I got home my host mom wanted to talk about the Washington thing because she thinks its ridiculous and doesn’t see how the US can allow this. I tried to explain that DC isn’t a state and she didn’t really understand that.
We almost left the café forgetting to pay because we had been there for so long and just didn’t realize. This happens fairly often because you don’t pay until you are done with everything, which is the opposite of how cafes/coffee shops work in the states. Then I went to Alto Palermo Shopping (the mall) and got completely lost trying to find the bookstore because I was confusing this mall with another one in BsAs. I think it was also the second time I had been to this mall even though it is five blocks away from my house. I finally found three bookstores, which only had novels in English, no polisci or history books like I was looking for. one bookstore basically specialized in Danielle Steal, John Grisham, and Stephen King…and only one had Lonely Planet guides (but not any good ones). Then I went home and ate dinner with my host mom.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Jumbo invasion (Part 1)
Wednesday went to Borges class after spending most of the afternoon at the burrito place for lunch. The burrito place is rather expensive (lunch costs $4US, which is a lot here). its run by two guys from California who are 25 or 26ish. they basically didn’t know what to do with themselves after college, so they moved here and opened up a burrito place in microcentro (kind of a cross between wall street and midtown…the working area).
Thursday I had my last History of the US class (I got an A on my 15 page paper), then I went to a café with Megan for the last time. Then I went to art history which was so boring because we’ve basically stopped paying attention. then Diana and I went to COPA so I could fax the office in the US. she’s from Tufts, but not in the COPA program. we met up with Meagan (different one) and Sandra and went to the burrito place (yes, two days in a row). Sandra split off to go back to COPA and the three of us wound up in the middle of an unemployment protest. I was able to play it off like I was a journalist (small notebook and all). the protest was because the people were offered jobs a month ago on public cleaning projects (kind of like how our government had a lot of public works jobs during the great depression in the 30s). being that its Argentina they hadn’t seen any of these jobs and were mad…that’s sort of how politics works here. so they came from mostly within the city but some people came from the provinces to protest…they closed down ½ of one of the avenidas (big streets) for 5ish blocks and generally pissed the police off (but not enough to cause problems). When we got through the protest, we went to the Plaza de Mayo (main square). we went into the Cathedral and saw the tomb of General San Martín (he liberated Argentina and most of the southern part of South America….he is the major figure here…they are obsessed). We also walked through a smaller protest (not sure what this one was for) where the people seemed to be dancing…again, no idea why. We went to cabildo (the town hall) and walked through the craft fair, which was tiny and expensive…we then walked through cabildo and realized that it was not worth actually going to the museum. we crossed the street into the plaza de mayo where the mothers had began marching. every Thursday afternoon, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo march around in a circle. They are marching to remember their children who were killed during the dictatorship. what they represent though has become way more political than that. the head of their organization on 11 sept, went on the news saying that the US got what it deserved and she was happy about it. my host mom can’t stand them. most of the women wear white kerchiefs on their heads with their children’s name embroidered on it. So, we did the tourist thing and took some pictures of them and stuff, then sat for a while talking to some American students visiting BsAs, then left Diana so Meagan and I could go to History of America. We had the last hist of amer class, where again we didn’t pay much attention…granted it was basically story hour. The teacher basically read us personal accounts of the founders of Argentina for two hours. then we all went to this café thing where my class consumed about 10 bottles of beer (that’s basically a liter a person, except some did have more and others less). I had a liquado (which is water, ice, and fruit) because they were super cheap and I hadn’t had one yet. I finally got home at 10 PM completely exhausted.
Friday I woke up to terrible rain, but packed my computer up and went to aroma (british café chain, they only place with wifi and outlets; and efficiency…) to meet Sandra. we worked on our final paper for our grammar class and basically enjoyed having internet for a little while. Then we went to a restaurant to meet up with some other people for lunch. At lunch my friend Marc (from Tufts) called me to say that he and 7 other Tufts people who are doing Tufts-in-Chile had arrived (I knew they were coming). We agreed to meet at the Plaza de Mayo later. I finished my lunch and went home to get some stuff done. Then I went to meet them and we hung out downtown…went to catedral again and the museum of the casa rosada (the presidential office building; he doesn’t live within the city). During the time, Blythe called me about going to her host family’s cousin’s sister’s aunt’s dog’s friend’s gallery opening (really, I still don’t understand whose event this was). I left the Tufts group, who were heading off to take a nap anyway, and went to meet her at a different Aroma. We walked to the gallery which wound up being outside under the highway by this little strip of restaurants and cafes (that are all very trendy). the art was really pretty: glass vase, that were super interesting, sculptures with glass and paintings. There was also plenty of champagne and lots of trendy/arts porteños. We talked to her host mom and the family members who had art in the show and more people I don’t know. During this time we went to Havana (the Starbucks of BsAs) and sat outside, which meant we were basically in the middle of the gallery, to have coffee. Then we went to another part of the gallery night because we realized that there were a lot of galleries across the street also. we wandered around a little and then sat in this expensive hotel to chill for a little while. Then I took the bus home (got home at 11:15), ate dinner and changed because I was supposed to meet the Tufts people…We met up at plaza Italia, they were late and walked to Plaza Serrano. We hung out there for an hour, where they made fun of me for my accent and we talked about Santiago and BsAs and stuff. Then they wanted to go dancing so we went back to Plaza Italia and got a bus to another area of the city and went to Meluca Beleza, which is the Brasilian club which I had been dying to go to.
Saturday I went to Aroma (again) to meet Sandra and Meagan and “do some homework,” which never happened….oh well…I didn’t really have much anyway. Then we went out and got ice cream to bring back to Aroma (their ice cream is really expensive and not that good). After, I went to Sandra’s so she could drop off her stuff and then we went to Amy’s where we made pasta and sauce. Her family ate dinner with us and we sat around talking. When we left it was pouring out and we ran for the colectivo to go to the movies. When we got near the movie theater, Amy texted Meagan to say I had left my phone there. I had to go back for it because that was the only way the Tufties had of contacting me. So I managed to take three colectivos in half an hour. When I got to Amy’s she had left with her host brother and my phone. I sat and talked to her host sister until she got back. Then I ran back to the movies-luckily it had stopped raining. We saw a 1AM showing. It was an Argentine movie called Nacido y Criado (Born and Raised). The movie was about a man whose daughter dies in a car crash and he leaves he wife in BsAs and moves to Pategonia to work at a local airport and drink all day. It wasn’t that good and was way too long (2 hours) for what it should have been. Meagan and Shannon had to watch it for their class. Having only had four hours of sleep, I practically fell asleep during the movie and then after on the bench outside. Luckily Shannon was taking a cab anyway, so I jumped in and rode the five/six blocks to my house.
Sunday I woke up and did some homework. Then I went to San Telmo with Sandra where we realized how we could spend all of our money there…the stuff is really fun – its antiques, random Buenos Aires tourist junk and great earrings, shoes, and clothes which are all made by artists. Afterwards I went to the Boca Juniors game. I had been dying to go but my friends here were somewhat scared or just didn’t want to go at all. The games can get pretty rowdy, but I felt so safe where I was. We got the cheapest tickets, which meant we were sitting in the bleachers (if I equate this to baseball), but we couldn’t actually sit for the game because everyone stands and yells and stuff. Its lots of fun. It was just me and the guys (Marc and Ben) because the girls had to wait for Leah who was with another friend in BsAs before the game. We wound up in the middle of a bunch of Brits, which wasn’t that great…it would have been better to be in the middle of Argentines. Boca played terribly, but still beat the Argentina juniors 2-1. it was really pretty effortless to get into the stadium, we were pat down which was complete useless because both women missed the clutch I had with my medicine. I had put it inside my pants which caused this bulge in my thigh and was really obvious…but they missed it. After the game it was no big deal to get onto a colectivo that was convenient for the guys and me. We had been warned we might have to wait four or five buses, but the first one had plenty of space. I got home and had homemade gnocchi which my host mom had prepared for her friends who were over. Then we made plans to go to the beach in two weekends.
Thursday I had my last History of the US class (I got an A on my 15 page paper), then I went to a café with Megan for the last time. Then I went to art history which was so boring because we’ve basically stopped paying attention. then Diana and I went to COPA so I could fax the office in the US. she’s from Tufts, but not in the COPA program. we met up with Meagan (different one) and Sandra and went to the burrito place (yes, two days in a row). Sandra split off to go back to COPA and the three of us wound up in the middle of an unemployment protest. I was able to play it off like I was a journalist (small notebook and all). the protest was because the people were offered jobs a month ago on public cleaning projects (kind of like how our government had a lot of public works jobs during the great depression in the 30s). being that its Argentina they hadn’t seen any of these jobs and were mad…that’s sort of how politics works here. so they came from mostly within the city but some people came from the provinces to protest…they closed down ½ of one of the avenidas (big streets) for 5ish blocks and generally pissed the police off (but not enough to cause problems). When we got through the protest, we went to the Plaza de Mayo (main square). we went into the Cathedral and saw the tomb of General San Martín (he liberated Argentina and most of the southern part of South America….he is the major figure here…they are obsessed). We also walked through a smaller protest (not sure what this one was for) where the people seemed to be dancing…again, no idea why. We went to cabildo (the town hall) and walked through the craft fair, which was tiny and expensive…we then walked through cabildo and realized that it was not worth actually going to the museum. we crossed the street into the plaza de mayo where the mothers had began marching. every Thursday afternoon, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo march around in a circle. They are marching to remember their children who were killed during the dictatorship. what they represent though has become way more political than that. the head of their organization on 11 sept, went on the news saying that the US got what it deserved and she was happy about it. my host mom can’t stand them. most of the women wear white kerchiefs on their heads with their children’s name embroidered on it. So, we did the tourist thing and took some pictures of them and stuff, then sat for a while talking to some American students visiting BsAs, then left Diana so Meagan and I could go to History of America. We had the last hist of amer class, where again we didn’t pay much attention…granted it was basically story hour. The teacher basically read us personal accounts of the founders of Argentina for two hours. then we all went to this café thing where my class consumed about 10 bottles of beer (that’s basically a liter a person, except some did have more and others less). I had a liquado (which is water, ice, and fruit) because they were super cheap and I hadn’t had one yet. I finally got home at 10 PM completely exhausted.
Friday I woke up to terrible rain, but packed my computer up and went to aroma (british café chain, they only place with wifi and outlets; and efficiency…) to meet Sandra. we worked on our final paper for our grammar class and basically enjoyed having internet for a little while. Then we went to a restaurant to meet up with some other people for lunch. At lunch my friend Marc (from Tufts) called me to say that he and 7 other Tufts people who are doing Tufts-in-Chile had arrived (I knew they were coming). We agreed to meet at the Plaza de Mayo later. I finished my lunch and went home to get some stuff done. Then I went to meet them and we hung out downtown…went to catedral again and the museum of the casa rosada (the presidential office building; he doesn’t live within the city). During the time, Blythe called me about going to her host family’s cousin’s sister’s aunt’s dog’s friend’s gallery opening (really, I still don’t understand whose event this was). I left the Tufts group, who were heading off to take a nap anyway, and went to meet her at a different Aroma. We walked to the gallery which wound up being outside under the highway by this little strip of restaurants and cafes (that are all very trendy). the art was really pretty: glass vase, that were super interesting, sculptures with glass and paintings. There was also plenty of champagne and lots of trendy/arts porteños. We talked to her host mom and the family members who had art in the show and more people I don’t know. During this time we went to Havana (the Starbucks of BsAs) and sat outside, which meant we were basically in the middle of the gallery, to have coffee. Then we went to another part of the gallery night because we realized that there were a lot of galleries across the street also. we wandered around a little and then sat in this expensive hotel to chill for a little while. Then I took the bus home (got home at 11:15), ate dinner and changed because I was supposed to meet the Tufts people…We met up at plaza Italia, they were late and walked to Plaza Serrano. We hung out there for an hour, where they made fun of me for my accent and we talked about Santiago and BsAs and stuff. Then they wanted to go dancing so we went back to Plaza Italia and got a bus to another area of the city and went to Meluca Beleza, which is the Brasilian club which I had been dying to go to.
Saturday I went to Aroma (again) to meet Sandra and Meagan and “do some homework,” which never happened….oh well…I didn’t really have much anyway. Then we went out and got ice cream to bring back to Aroma (their ice cream is really expensive and not that good). After, I went to Sandra’s so she could drop off her stuff and then we went to Amy’s where we made pasta and sauce. Her family ate dinner with us and we sat around talking. When we left it was pouring out and we ran for the colectivo to go to the movies. When we got near the movie theater, Amy texted Meagan to say I had left my phone there. I had to go back for it because that was the only way the Tufties had of contacting me. So I managed to take three colectivos in half an hour. When I got to Amy’s she had left with her host brother and my phone. I sat and talked to her host sister until she got back. Then I ran back to the movies-luckily it had stopped raining. We saw a 1AM showing. It was an Argentine movie called Nacido y Criado (Born and Raised). The movie was about a man whose daughter dies in a car crash and he leaves he wife in BsAs and moves to Pategonia to work at a local airport and drink all day. It wasn’t that good and was way too long (2 hours) for what it should have been. Meagan and Shannon had to watch it for their class. Having only had four hours of sleep, I practically fell asleep during the movie and then after on the bench outside. Luckily Shannon was taking a cab anyway, so I jumped in and rode the five/six blocks to my house.
Sunday I woke up and did some homework. Then I went to San Telmo with Sandra where we realized how we could spend all of our money there…the stuff is really fun – its antiques, random Buenos Aires tourist junk and great earrings, shoes, and clothes which are all made by artists. Afterwards I went to the Boca Juniors game. I had been dying to go but my friends here were somewhat scared or just didn’t want to go at all. The games can get pretty rowdy, but I felt so safe where I was. We got the cheapest tickets, which meant we were sitting in the bleachers (if I equate this to baseball), but we couldn’t actually sit for the game because everyone stands and yells and stuff. Its lots of fun. It was just me and the guys (Marc and Ben) because the girls had to wait for Leah who was with another friend in BsAs before the game. We wound up in the middle of a bunch of Brits, which wasn’t that great…it would have been better to be in the middle of Argentines. Boca played terribly, but still beat the Argentina juniors 2-1. it was really pretty effortless to get into the stadium, we were pat down which was complete useless because both women missed the clutch I had with my medicine. I had put it inside my pants which caused this bulge in my thigh and was really obvious…but they missed it. After the game it was no big deal to get onto a colectivo that was convenient for the guys and me. We had been warned we might have to wait four or five buses, but the first one had plenty of space. I got home and had homemade gnocchi which my host mom had prepared for her friends who were over. Then we made plans to go to the beach in two weekends.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Tourism
Wednesday I spent the day at COPA finishing my paper. Then I went to class and went home.
Thursday I had more classes. I turned my paper in and went home for lunch. I went to the Evita Museum in my neighborhood. One of the COPA classes was going but the trip was open to all students. My tutor was the teacher in charge of the class and he took us on a tour of the museum. The museum was interesting, but extremely pro-Evita. The building it was in was worth the entire trip. Its this old house that was turned into a half-way house for women arriving in Buenos Aires (from the interior) to find work. They would stay in the mansion until they found housing for themselves and their children. The museum itself houses many of Evitas dresses as well as a ballot box from the first elections in which females voted, and a bunch of other items. After the museum, Steve and I went to the bótanico (because again, we both live right near it and had not been recently). Then we went to class and got there 20 minutes late (it was on purpose…Argentines are always late to things). We got our midterms back and I did well. Our teacher dismissed us for about an hour while he graded the Argentines’ exams. We went to a café/bar with our class where the Argentines ordered way too many beers (that we didn’t really drink). Then we went back to class and talked about the formation of Argentina.
Friday, Blythe and I went to Teatro Colón to take the tour. We did it in English (at her request). The tour was interesting: we got to see the practice rooms, storages spaces and workshops which are all two or three levels below the street. They are all below Av. Nueve de Julio (9th of July Ave.), which is the widest street in Buenos Aires (and maybe the entire western hemisphere). At its widest point the street is something like 16 or 17 lanes…but most of the time it is divided up in to sections of 5 lanes. It has parks running down the middle which separate the road from the service roads that run along side it. After seeing the theater, we went to buy tickets to the opera, we’re going on Sunday. Then we went to Recoleta and sat at a café for a few hours. It was one of those old cafes in BsAs, but is off the beaten path enough to not be overrun with tourists. They also had waffles (very rare here)…which were amazing.
Then we walked to Plaza San Martín, which has this growing display of large plastic/plaster/not really sure hearts. Each is painted/decorated and will be sold with proceeds going to charity (or so I’ve heard). A lot of the hearts are rather tacky…they use the heart too much and basically cover it with more hearts. Some of the hearts are covered with maps of the world (again, rather interesting because a map of the world is difficult to fit on the shape of a heart). Some of the hearts have parts coming off of them – like arms or faces. One heart was covered in band-aids; each band aid had a name and phone number on it. Another one had film strips (like from movies) with pictures of movies (Love actually was there!!). Another heart had sunflowers on it with their centers raised or recessed. The sunflowers were made out of pieces of stone in a mosaic. I don’t really know how many hearts there are or when they’ll be taking them down. Friday they were installing more. A guy was working on his heart which was interesting to watch. His was a “native” latina woman and he was attaching her arms to the heart.
Afterwards we walked around the center of the city trying to find a FedEx so Blythe could send passport photos to The Netherlands (for her program next semester). They required FedEx, which cost about $40 for the cheapest and smallest envelope. After finding FedEx and finishing all of that, we walked around a little more. Then I walked all the way home (only about ½ hr) and Blythe went to her gym. We met up later and watched Syriana (the George Clooney movie). It was very difficult to understand because of the traffic on the road outside…and the sound in the movie is soooo up and down…we wound up watching with subtitles and I’m still not really sure what happened.
When I got home my host mom was there cooking dinner. She has become afraid of the telephone… She used to be a psychiatrist or psychologist or something like that. One of her patients still calls her at home. The woman Graciela calls pretty much every day. I mean every day…and my host mom talks to her and then complains about how she calls every day…I don’t understand why she talks to her and doesn’t just hang the phone up. Sometimes she does just hang the phone up but mostly she talks to the woman and tells her about how her day has been and stuff. Well, on Friday, Graciela’s sister called to tell Gilda (my host mom) not to talk to Graciela anymore. Graciela lives by herself, but her sister is her caretaker/guardian or something. Most of the time I’m expected to answer the phone (esp. between 5 and 6 PM) and tell Graciela that my host mom is not at home. I do this and Graciela argues with me telling me that of course my host mom is home and I should put her on the phone. I’ve asked my host mom why she doesn’t just change her phone number and she said that would be too much trouble to have to tell everyone her new phone number.
Saturday I walked to Recoleta (I think its about a mile or two). I went to the Museo de Bellas Artes (museum of fine arts). After having been to the Met many times, as well as the National Gallery (in London), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (many times) and the National Gallery in the Washington DC, the Museo de Bellas Artes isn’t that great of a museum. The Argentina (which apparently means Uruguayan) section was good, but the European section wasn’t that great at all….they also grouped Diego Rivera with the Europeans which was interesting...
The best part of the museum was the view from the roof of the museum and the photo exhibit up on the top floor. The geometric abstract photographs were vibrantly colorful and interesting – from the US and various cities in Europe. After the museum, I went to the big metal flower and took some pictures of it. I still don’t believe that the flower opens and closes by itself, but its (not really) interesting as far as public art goes. Then I walked up Libertador towards Palermo. I stopped at this little plaza thing near my house and got ice cream, which my host mom swears is the best in the city. The place was packed…I think the phrase madhouse is more appropriate. I had two flavors: one was peach, strawberry and orange mixed, which didn’t really taste like anything except fruit cocktail, and the other was watermelon, which was pretty good….they didn’t have my favorite flavor, which is grapefruit. Ice cream in Buenos Aires (and all of Argentina) is amazing. I get the fruit flavors which are made with water instead of cream/milk. Ice cream here is more like gelato and every place has a ton of fruit flavors…which is great for me. Then I tried to decide between going to the movies (alone…or with people) and going home. I finally decided to go home because I was tired and hot.
Saturday night, I went out to eat Indian food. This is a good opportunity to talk about food in Buenos Aires. Most food here is beef but I don’t eat that much beef. Most restaurants in Argentina serve meat, salad (which usually includes lettuce, tomato, and onion), empanadas, and pizza. The food has very little or no spices, but is all cooked in/with oil. I am completely sick of anything that involves oil…which is pretty much all of my food. My host mom makes very good salads, which include a variety of vegetables and I am allowed to eat without oil. This week my host mom made a different egg based dish made in a skillet, which means involving oil. One night was tortilla a la española, which is fried potato with sautéed onions and eggs made into a tortilla (flat round thing). When we do eat beef, its usually in the form of milanesa- which is sliced meat, dipped in egg, coated in bread crumbs, and fried (it can be baked, but my host mom usually fries it). Milanesa comes in many forms- meat, chicken and, for the vegetarians, soy patties. Its always the same…usually greasy and usually the cheapest thing for lunch/dinner….along with empanadas. Eating healthily here is very difficult. We’ve all had this discussion- all my COPA friends- and it’s the same with everyone’s host families. They also usually don’t eat vegetables raw. Normal for my friends are veggies boiled and with sauce (that’s if the families eat them at all).
Sunday, I woke up and was trying to figure out what to do for a few hours…which meant I did some homework. Then I went to the movies with my host mom. We saw a comedy called Cara de Queso, mi primer gueto (literally face of cheese, my first ghetto). It was about a bunch of jewish people living in a country club outside BsAs. Everyone knows everyone and they’re all in each other’s business. I understood most of it…which was awesome. Our tickets came with popcorn (we had coupons) and my host mom chose the sweet popcorn, which comes coated in sugar. I chose the salty kind; neither were served with butter.
Later on, I went to the Opera with Blythe. We went to Teatro Colón. It was interesting, but in Russian….subtitled into Spanish, which means I have basically no clue what went on for half of it. We had standing room tickets, which are seven flights above the sage and we leaned on a rail for the four hour production. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. It was kind of fun to go to the opera…when I got out of the subte, everyone was flocking to the theater.
Monday I woke up really late. I went to the Japanese gardens and walked around a little. They were really nice, but really small. There was a pond and bridge and little island that were nice. I sat in the gardens reading for about an hour and a half. The problem is that the gardens are nice, but not fantastic and is surrounded on three sides by busy roads, two of which are practically high ways. That prevents the gardens from being really great because of the noise level. The best part was the restaurant, which had really good sushi. I haven’t had sushi since I got here because the fish here isn’t that great and its really expensive. I also ordered a lemonade, which came with sugar packets. I figured this was just the typical Argentine thing…they like things very sweet. So I tasted the lemonade and realized that the sugar was a little necessary…it was fresh-squeezed lemonade without any sugar added. After leaving the gardens, I walked a little bit of Libertador including the under-the-street gallery thing. it was a new exhibition of photography…which wasn’t that great. Then I walked through one of the smaller parks of Palermo. I walked by the US embassy, which really isn’t anything that special. Finally, I walked through one of the wealthier parts of Palermo and returned home. Then I went to the gym and returned home once more.
Tuesday
Again, I woke up late. It was super hot…like 35ºC (96ish) or something…the first hot day of the summer. I walked to the Museo del arte decorativo (museum of decorative art) which is in an old house that was designed by a French architect at the turn of the century. The museum wasn’t that interesting, but the house was beautiful. I was really only there for 15 minutes because there wasn’t much to see. Downstairs there was a Sweedish class exhibition….which wasn’t that great either. I continued walking to Sierra’s house where we walked to the Museo nacional del ferrocarril (National museum of the railroad). Again, the museum was free…we wouldn’t have gone otherwise. We walked around a little and saw really old stuff…like typewriters and cameras. The better part was outside: sculptures made out of old train tracks and scrap metal. Then, Steve showed up and we went to the Museo del arte hispanoamericano (Hispanoamericana art museum). It was another old house, which I really liked. I didn’t really care for the art which was pretty much all religious. Then Sierra and I left Steve and walked to Calle Florida (Florida St) where we searched for ice cream. We finally found it and it was really good…I got watermelon and kiwi. We continued walking to the Plaza de Mayo, which is the principal square in the city. We went to the Cabildo (town hall), but it was closed. Then we went inside the cathedral. It was ok…not super fantastic, but still really nice…I’m going to go back with my friends on Thursday. In the cathedral Sierra realized that someone had stolen her cell phone while we were walking. So, after the cathedral we walked to Movistar so she could buy a new one. Then we went to the Centro cultural Borges (Borges cultural center), but there really weren’t any exhibitions. Then I went home…I think I walked more than 5 km (3 miles) during the hottest day of the season….needless to say, I was exhausted. Wednesday=another day at COPA...
Thursday I had more classes. I turned my paper in and went home for lunch. I went to the Evita Museum in my neighborhood. One of the COPA classes was going but the trip was open to all students. My tutor was the teacher in charge of the class and he took us on a tour of the museum. The museum was interesting, but extremely pro-Evita. The building it was in was worth the entire trip. Its this old house that was turned into a half-way house for women arriving in Buenos Aires (from the interior) to find work. They would stay in the mansion until they found housing for themselves and their children. The museum itself houses many of Evitas dresses as well as a ballot box from the first elections in which females voted, and a bunch of other items. After the museum, Steve and I went to the bótanico (because again, we both live right near it and had not been recently). Then we went to class and got there 20 minutes late (it was on purpose…Argentines are always late to things). We got our midterms back and I did well. Our teacher dismissed us for about an hour while he graded the Argentines’ exams. We went to a café/bar with our class where the Argentines ordered way too many beers (that we didn’t really drink). Then we went back to class and talked about the formation of Argentina.
Friday, Blythe and I went to Teatro Colón to take the tour. We did it in English (at her request). The tour was interesting: we got to see the practice rooms, storages spaces and workshops which are all two or three levels below the street. They are all below Av. Nueve de Julio (9th of July Ave.), which is the widest street in Buenos Aires (and maybe the entire western hemisphere). At its widest point the street is something like 16 or 17 lanes…but most of the time it is divided up in to sections of 5 lanes. It has parks running down the middle which separate the road from the service roads that run along side it. After seeing the theater, we went to buy tickets to the opera, we’re going on Sunday. Then we went to Recoleta and sat at a café for a few hours. It was one of those old cafes in BsAs, but is off the beaten path enough to not be overrun with tourists. They also had waffles (very rare here)…which were amazing.
Then we walked to Plaza San Martín, which has this growing display of large plastic/plaster/not really sure hearts. Each is painted/decorated and will be sold with proceeds going to charity (or so I’ve heard). A lot of the hearts are rather tacky…they use the heart too much and basically cover it with more hearts. Some of the hearts are covered with maps of the world (again, rather interesting because a map of the world is difficult to fit on the shape of a heart). Some of the hearts have parts coming off of them – like arms or faces. One heart was covered in band-aids; each band aid had a name and phone number on it. Another one had film strips (like from movies) with pictures of movies (Love actually was there!!). Another heart had sunflowers on it with their centers raised or recessed. The sunflowers were made out of pieces of stone in a mosaic. I don’t really know how many hearts there are or when they’ll be taking them down. Friday they were installing more. A guy was working on his heart which was interesting to watch. His was a “native” latina woman and he was attaching her arms to the heart.
Afterwards we walked around the center of the city trying to find a FedEx so Blythe could send passport photos to The Netherlands (for her program next semester). They required FedEx, which cost about $40 for the cheapest and smallest envelope. After finding FedEx and finishing all of that, we walked around a little more. Then I walked all the way home (only about ½ hr) and Blythe went to her gym. We met up later and watched Syriana (the George Clooney movie). It was very difficult to understand because of the traffic on the road outside…and the sound in the movie is soooo up and down…we wound up watching with subtitles and I’m still not really sure what happened.
When I got home my host mom was there cooking dinner. She has become afraid of the telephone… She used to be a psychiatrist or psychologist or something like that. One of her patients still calls her at home. The woman Graciela calls pretty much every day. I mean every day…and my host mom talks to her and then complains about how she calls every day…I don’t understand why she talks to her and doesn’t just hang the phone up. Sometimes she does just hang the phone up but mostly she talks to the woman and tells her about how her day has been and stuff. Well, on Friday, Graciela’s sister called to tell Gilda (my host mom) not to talk to Graciela anymore. Graciela lives by herself, but her sister is her caretaker/guardian or something. Most of the time I’m expected to answer the phone (esp. between 5 and 6 PM) and tell Graciela that my host mom is not at home. I do this and Graciela argues with me telling me that of course my host mom is home and I should put her on the phone. I’ve asked my host mom why she doesn’t just change her phone number and she said that would be too much trouble to have to tell everyone her new phone number.
Saturday I walked to Recoleta (I think its about a mile or two). I went to the Museo de Bellas Artes (museum of fine arts). After having been to the Met many times, as well as the National Gallery (in London), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (many times) and the National Gallery in the Washington DC, the Museo de Bellas Artes isn’t that great of a museum. The Argentina (which apparently means Uruguayan) section was good, but the European section wasn’t that great at all….they also grouped Diego Rivera with the Europeans which was interesting...
The best part of the museum was the view from the roof of the museum and the photo exhibit up on the top floor. The geometric abstract photographs were vibrantly colorful and interesting – from the US and various cities in Europe. After the museum, I went to the big metal flower and took some pictures of it. I still don’t believe that the flower opens and closes by itself, but its (not really) interesting as far as public art goes. Then I walked up Libertador towards Palermo. I stopped at this little plaza thing near my house and got ice cream, which my host mom swears is the best in the city. The place was packed…I think the phrase madhouse is more appropriate. I had two flavors: one was peach, strawberry and orange mixed, which didn’t really taste like anything except fruit cocktail, and the other was watermelon, which was pretty good….they didn’t have my favorite flavor, which is grapefruit. Ice cream in Buenos Aires (and all of Argentina) is amazing. I get the fruit flavors which are made with water instead of cream/milk. Ice cream here is more like gelato and every place has a ton of fruit flavors…which is great for me. Then I tried to decide between going to the movies (alone…or with people) and going home. I finally decided to go home because I was tired and hot.
Saturday night, I went out to eat Indian food. This is a good opportunity to talk about food in Buenos Aires. Most food here is beef but I don’t eat that much beef. Most restaurants in Argentina serve meat, salad (which usually includes lettuce, tomato, and onion), empanadas, and pizza. The food has very little or no spices, but is all cooked in/with oil. I am completely sick of anything that involves oil…which is pretty much all of my food. My host mom makes very good salads, which include a variety of vegetables and I am allowed to eat without oil. This week my host mom made a different egg based dish made in a skillet, which means involving oil. One night was tortilla a la española, which is fried potato with sautéed onions and eggs made into a tortilla (flat round thing). When we do eat beef, its usually in the form of milanesa- which is sliced meat, dipped in egg, coated in bread crumbs, and fried (it can be baked, but my host mom usually fries it). Milanesa comes in many forms- meat, chicken and, for the vegetarians, soy patties. Its always the same…usually greasy and usually the cheapest thing for lunch/dinner….along with empanadas. Eating healthily here is very difficult. We’ve all had this discussion- all my COPA friends- and it’s the same with everyone’s host families. They also usually don’t eat vegetables raw. Normal for my friends are veggies boiled and with sauce (that’s if the families eat them at all).
Sunday, I woke up and was trying to figure out what to do for a few hours…which meant I did some homework. Then I went to the movies with my host mom. We saw a comedy called Cara de Queso, mi primer gueto (literally face of cheese, my first ghetto). It was about a bunch of jewish people living in a country club outside BsAs. Everyone knows everyone and they’re all in each other’s business. I understood most of it…which was awesome. Our tickets came with popcorn (we had coupons) and my host mom chose the sweet popcorn, which comes coated in sugar. I chose the salty kind; neither were served with butter.
Later on, I went to the Opera with Blythe. We went to Teatro Colón. It was interesting, but in Russian….subtitled into Spanish, which means I have basically no clue what went on for half of it. We had standing room tickets, which are seven flights above the sage and we leaned on a rail for the four hour production. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. It was kind of fun to go to the opera…when I got out of the subte, everyone was flocking to the theater.
Monday I woke up really late. I went to the Japanese gardens and walked around a little. They were really nice, but really small. There was a pond and bridge and little island that were nice. I sat in the gardens reading for about an hour and a half. The problem is that the gardens are nice, but not fantastic and is surrounded on three sides by busy roads, two of which are practically high ways. That prevents the gardens from being really great because of the noise level. The best part was the restaurant, which had really good sushi. I haven’t had sushi since I got here because the fish here isn’t that great and its really expensive. I also ordered a lemonade, which came with sugar packets. I figured this was just the typical Argentine thing…they like things very sweet. So I tasted the lemonade and realized that the sugar was a little necessary…it was fresh-squeezed lemonade without any sugar added. After leaving the gardens, I walked a little bit of Libertador including the under-the-street gallery thing. it was a new exhibition of photography…which wasn’t that great. Then I walked through one of the smaller parks of Palermo. I walked by the US embassy, which really isn’t anything that special. Finally, I walked through one of the wealthier parts of Palermo and returned home. Then I went to the gym and returned home once more.
Tuesday
Again, I woke up late. It was super hot…like 35ºC (96ish) or something…the first hot day of the summer. I walked to the Museo del arte decorativo (museum of decorative art) which is in an old house that was designed by a French architect at the turn of the century. The museum wasn’t that interesting, but the house was beautiful. I was really only there for 15 minutes because there wasn’t much to see. Downstairs there was a Sweedish class exhibition….which wasn’t that great either. I continued walking to Sierra’s house where we walked to the Museo nacional del ferrocarril (National museum of the railroad). Again, the museum was free…we wouldn’t have gone otherwise. We walked around a little and saw really old stuff…like typewriters and cameras. The better part was outside: sculptures made out of old train tracks and scrap metal. Then, Steve showed up and we went to the Museo del arte hispanoamericano (Hispanoamericana art museum). It was another old house, which I really liked. I didn’t really care for the art which was pretty much all religious. Then Sierra and I left Steve and walked to Calle Florida (Florida St) where we searched for ice cream. We finally found it and it was really good…I got watermelon and kiwi. We continued walking to the Plaza de Mayo, which is the principal square in the city. We went to the Cabildo (town hall), but it was closed. Then we went inside the cathedral. It was ok…not super fantastic, but still really nice…I’m going to go back with my friends on Thursday. In the cathedral Sierra realized that someone had stolen her cell phone while we were walking. So, after the cathedral we walked to Movistar so she could buy a new one. Then we went to the Centro cultural Borges (Borges cultural center), but there really weren’t any exhibitions. Then I went home…I think I walked more than 5 km (3 miles) during the hottest day of the season….needless to say, I was exhausted. Wednesday=another day at COPA...
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Tigre- biking and kayaking
Wednesday I spent at COPA working on my History of US paper, which my tutor read and told me was great. Then I had Borges class. Then I went to a café with Blythe…we discovered another internet café.
Thursday I had two classes and then came home and basically napped (I was supposed to be working on my art history paper….i can’t get into it….i would much rather write another history paper).
Friday, I woke up to the sound of rain hitting the porch roof of the apartment below us. I called COPA to see if we were still going to Tigre (about 45 min north). Daniel, my favorite COPA staffer, answered and in a very peppy voice (esp because it was 9 AM), told me of course you’re still going to Tigre! So I headed to the Torre de Los Ingleses/Retiro to meet up with our guides and pick up my bicycle. By the time my colectivo got there it had stopped raining. I bumped into another COPA girl on the colectivo and we talked about how we couldn’t remember the last time we were on a bike (this seemed to be very common even though we chose to go on this bicycle excursion). We took a train to La Lucila which is in the suburb of Vincente Lopez. From there we rode for about 2-3 hours (stopping and taking breaks). We rode through nice neighborhoods and slummy areas (which weren’t really that slummy). All of these suburbs are right along the river. It’s the widest river in the world (or so they claim, but as I’ve come to learn, Argentine’s will claim just about anything. Its also a very disgusting looking brown river which makes the Hudson look swimmable.
Sandra was the first to fall off her bike which was a very hilarious fall (she was perfectly fine). She was trying to turn onto this stone path thing on the side of a ditch. She went too slowly and turned to much, started heading down the ditch (on the bike), the bike came out from under her and she wound up with her (helmeted) head below her knees. She was perfectly fine…no scrapes or anything and is very mad that I did not take a picture of her. From there we went out to a lookout area where we could see the city. Then we went to another lookout area and had snacks and mate. Mate started in northern Argentina with the Guraní people. When the Jesuits came they found the Guaraní drinking herbs our of gourds and basically stole the tradition. What you do is, take herbs (special herbs from the mate plant) and put them in a gourd called a mate. You pour hot water (not boiling) in and drink it from a special straw what has a strainer on the bottom. The custom is that one person drinks a gourd full (this isn’t very much) and passes it on to the next person who drinks one and then passes it on. Yes, its somewhat germy, you basically share the same straw with up to 20 people (one of my friends was in a class where they passed around one mate for the whole class. Its not super common in Buenos Aires (actually its more common in Uruguay, but don’t tell the Argentines that because it started here). Also, in Paraguay and Brasil, they drink it cold and sometimes put juice in it. Its super bitter, but I kinda like it. There are all these rules that go along with how to politely drink mate and what to say to the server and stuff…its somewhat complicated.
We continued to ride along the river until we got to San Isidro where we saw the cathedral and where the rich people live (and the view they have of the lovely brown river). We kept riding through San Fernando until we got to Tigre (we left the train at about 11:30 and go to Tigre for lunch at 3ish). We went to the Puerto de Frutas (fruit port) where they used to bring in fruits to the city and ate sandwiches there. Then we rode through Tigre (saw the Parque de la Costa, the closest roller coasters to the city) and went on to our Kayak place.
So Sandra and I in a Kayak was rather hilarious...mostly cause we got the bum kayak…our steering mechanism was missing….which meant we had to steer with our oars…which the instructors neglected to teach us when we were on dry land. So now were in this river thing where all the tourist boats (big) and boys crew teams are. We’re trying desperately to not hit any boats (we hit the stone walls several times). I started saying things like, “we want to hit that boat on the left side, cause I can work us out of that…if we hit on the right, we’re stuck between the boat and the wall…ok, push left.” Then we almost hit one of the stone supports for the car bridge and we screamed, which made these guys on the bank crack up (we pretty much did the same thing on the way back, even though we tried really hard to miss the bridge). We make it out of the stone wall part and have to cross the bigger river…which of course starts to pull us down stream. We make it into the other small river (it was like crossing the street). We are clearly the last kayak and the instructors had to wait for us….which was somewhat embarrassing. We finally explain to one of them that we keep heading right (aka into the river bank) and she realizes that’s because our rudder is stuck in the position for turning right…so it wasn’t just us. We had to work against this, so we were super tired and couldn’t figure out how everyone else was finding this so much easier than us. So now, we get going and 5 feet later its time to turn around. Sandra started to really get the whole left right steering thing and I was the stupid one. We crashed into a lot of other kayaks (like the bike guides…and alex and brandon’s boat like 5 times).
We finally got back to the Kayak place (we were the first boat in the water and the last boat out). At least we weren’t Alex and Brandon, who had to pour the bathtub out of their boat (I really don’t know how they didn’t sink…they had so much water in their boat). The river was so gross. It smelled and was full of garbage. Thank god we didn’t fall in it…I had sort of prepared myself for falling in. I really though we would, but we didn’t. after that, we went to the bathroom/put shoes back on/drank some water and then….got back on the damn bicycles…which was very bad. Luckily we just had to ride to the bridge (about 5 blocks away) and cross to the train station. We got back on the train and headed to Buenos Aires. By the time I got home it was 8:30 PM and I was exhausted…my shoulders and crotch were also screaming at me in plain…a lot of pain. My host mom and I ate dinner and I went to bed.
Saturday I woke up and worked on my paper. Then I thought about going to the movies and went to Steve’s house where we decided to go back to my house and work on our papers/midterms…so practical. Saturday night I went to dinner with the girls. We went to TGI Fridays which was horribly tacky and expensive, but they did have pretty good fajitas (which is hard to come by here – considering most food here is exactly the same everywhere).
Sunday, I woke up and watched West Wing (thanks to Blythe for lending me all of her seasons 1 and 2). Then I went to the outdoor market at San Telmo, which is a sort of artsy barrio in the southern side of the city. Most of the fair is antiques (literally antiques, mostly junk), but there are some other stands which are jewelry and art stuff. It was absolutely packed with tourists and I think I heard more people speaking English than Spanish. Afterwards I walked to the theater Colón to try to get tickets to take a tour. I had actually got there too late so I’ll have to do it some other day. I went home to finish working on my midterm. Sunday was Mother’s Day here so we had the daughter and grandchildren over. They brought Lola, the yellow lab (yay!). getting Lola into the apartment was a challenge because they could only use the service elevator which stops ½ a floor away (in the stairwell). Getting the dog up the ½ flight of steps was nearly impossible…the dog is afraid of everything including changes in floor surfaces, electrical wires, and apparently stairs. My host mom had spent all week preparing this meat dish which was sliced cold meat (it needed days to cool properly) with a sauce of mayonnaise, mustard and egg with crumbled hardboiled egg on top. Honestly it wasn’t worth the weeks wait, but whatever. Then we had Chinese food, which was really just noodles with chicken and veggies…no rice (there was bread), no soup, no wings (I really miss wings, Chinese restaurants here don’t have wings). After that my host mom had prepared a scavenger hunt for the 8 year old grandson. Yes, this was mother’s day, but she hand whipped cream for her granddaughter (who didn’t really want it), made a dish she makes once a year, and designed a scavenger hunt all over the house for her grandson (and bought him this trading cards to be prizes). The dinner was fun and tiring.
Monday, I woke up to four messages from steve (steve my friend here, not the one from tufts) saying he was awake and wanted to go to a café to study or something…I put that off until noonish. We went to the café where I sat on the internet for three hours and had a fantastic salad (which is pretty much an oxymoron here). Then we went to steve’s house because my computer died (they don’t believe in outlets in cafes or pretty much anywhere here). Then I went to the movies and saw The Wind that Blew the Barley (I think that was what it was called)…it won the Cannes film festival. Its about Ireland in the 1920s and Irish and British fighting…it was really sad, but good. Then we went and had more Chinese food (twice in two days is amazing!!). next we went to burger king because amy wanted soft serve ice cream and then I walked home and watched more west wing before going to bed.
Tuesday was another working on the paper day for me. Spent most of the day at COPA, went to a café with Blythe. Watched some TV. Edited my paper some more. Slept…forgot about pilates…oops!
Wednesday was yet another day at COPA…starting to get sick of going there.
Thursday I had two classes and then came home and basically napped (I was supposed to be working on my art history paper….i can’t get into it….i would much rather write another history paper).
Friday, I woke up to the sound of rain hitting the porch roof of the apartment below us. I called COPA to see if we were still going to Tigre (about 45 min north). Daniel, my favorite COPA staffer, answered and in a very peppy voice (esp because it was 9 AM), told me of course you’re still going to Tigre! So I headed to the Torre de Los Ingleses/Retiro to meet up with our guides and pick up my bicycle. By the time my colectivo got there it had stopped raining. I bumped into another COPA girl on the colectivo and we talked about how we couldn’t remember the last time we were on a bike (this seemed to be very common even though we chose to go on this bicycle excursion). We took a train to La Lucila which is in the suburb of Vincente Lopez. From there we rode for about 2-3 hours (stopping and taking breaks). We rode through nice neighborhoods and slummy areas (which weren’t really that slummy). All of these suburbs are right along the river. It’s the widest river in the world (or so they claim, but as I’ve come to learn, Argentine’s will claim just about anything. Its also a very disgusting looking brown river which makes the Hudson look swimmable.
Sandra was the first to fall off her bike which was a very hilarious fall (she was perfectly fine). She was trying to turn onto this stone path thing on the side of a ditch. She went too slowly and turned to much, started heading down the ditch (on the bike), the bike came out from under her and she wound up with her (helmeted) head below her knees. She was perfectly fine…no scrapes or anything and is very mad that I did not take a picture of her. From there we went out to a lookout area where we could see the city. Then we went to another lookout area and had snacks and mate. Mate started in northern Argentina with the Guraní people. When the Jesuits came they found the Guaraní drinking herbs our of gourds and basically stole the tradition. What you do is, take herbs (special herbs from the mate plant) and put them in a gourd called a mate. You pour hot water (not boiling) in and drink it from a special straw what has a strainer on the bottom. The custom is that one person drinks a gourd full (this isn’t very much) and passes it on to the next person who drinks one and then passes it on. Yes, its somewhat germy, you basically share the same straw with up to 20 people (one of my friends was in a class where they passed around one mate for the whole class. Its not super common in Buenos Aires (actually its more common in Uruguay, but don’t tell the Argentines that because it started here). Also, in Paraguay and Brasil, they drink it cold and sometimes put juice in it. Its super bitter, but I kinda like it. There are all these rules that go along with how to politely drink mate and what to say to the server and stuff…its somewhat complicated.
We continued to ride along the river until we got to San Isidro where we saw the cathedral and where the rich people live (and the view they have of the lovely brown river). We kept riding through San Fernando until we got to Tigre (we left the train at about 11:30 and go to Tigre for lunch at 3ish). We went to the Puerto de Frutas (fruit port) where they used to bring in fruits to the city and ate sandwiches there. Then we rode through Tigre (saw the Parque de la Costa, the closest roller coasters to the city) and went on to our Kayak place.
So Sandra and I in a Kayak was rather hilarious...mostly cause we got the bum kayak…our steering mechanism was missing….which meant we had to steer with our oars…which the instructors neglected to teach us when we were on dry land. So now were in this river thing where all the tourist boats (big) and boys crew teams are. We’re trying desperately to not hit any boats (we hit the stone walls several times). I started saying things like, “we want to hit that boat on the left side, cause I can work us out of that…if we hit on the right, we’re stuck between the boat and the wall…ok, push left.” Then we almost hit one of the stone supports for the car bridge and we screamed, which made these guys on the bank crack up (we pretty much did the same thing on the way back, even though we tried really hard to miss the bridge). We make it out of the stone wall part and have to cross the bigger river…which of course starts to pull us down stream. We make it into the other small river (it was like crossing the street). We are clearly the last kayak and the instructors had to wait for us….which was somewhat embarrassing. We finally explain to one of them that we keep heading right (aka into the river bank) and she realizes that’s because our rudder is stuck in the position for turning right…so it wasn’t just us. We had to work against this, so we were super tired and couldn’t figure out how everyone else was finding this so much easier than us. So now, we get going and 5 feet later its time to turn around. Sandra started to really get the whole left right steering thing and I was the stupid one. We crashed into a lot of other kayaks (like the bike guides…and alex and brandon’s boat like 5 times).
We finally got back to the Kayak place (we were the first boat in the water and the last boat out). At least we weren’t Alex and Brandon, who had to pour the bathtub out of their boat (I really don’t know how they didn’t sink…they had so much water in their boat). The river was so gross. It smelled and was full of garbage. Thank god we didn’t fall in it…I had sort of prepared myself for falling in. I really though we would, but we didn’t. after that, we went to the bathroom/put shoes back on/drank some water and then….got back on the damn bicycles…which was very bad. Luckily we just had to ride to the bridge (about 5 blocks away) and cross to the train station. We got back on the train and headed to Buenos Aires. By the time I got home it was 8:30 PM and I was exhausted…my shoulders and crotch were also screaming at me in plain…a lot of pain. My host mom and I ate dinner and I went to bed.
Saturday I woke up and worked on my paper. Then I thought about going to the movies and went to Steve’s house where we decided to go back to my house and work on our papers/midterms…so practical. Saturday night I went to dinner with the girls. We went to TGI Fridays which was horribly tacky and expensive, but they did have pretty good fajitas (which is hard to come by here – considering most food here is exactly the same everywhere).
Sunday, I woke up and watched West Wing (thanks to Blythe for lending me all of her seasons 1 and 2). Then I went to the outdoor market at San Telmo, which is a sort of artsy barrio in the southern side of the city. Most of the fair is antiques (literally antiques, mostly junk), but there are some other stands which are jewelry and art stuff. It was absolutely packed with tourists and I think I heard more people speaking English than Spanish. Afterwards I walked to the theater Colón to try to get tickets to take a tour. I had actually got there too late so I’ll have to do it some other day. I went home to finish working on my midterm. Sunday was Mother’s Day here so we had the daughter and grandchildren over. They brought Lola, the yellow lab (yay!). getting Lola into the apartment was a challenge because they could only use the service elevator which stops ½ a floor away (in the stairwell). Getting the dog up the ½ flight of steps was nearly impossible…the dog is afraid of everything including changes in floor surfaces, electrical wires, and apparently stairs. My host mom had spent all week preparing this meat dish which was sliced cold meat (it needed days to cool properly) with a sauce of mayonnaise, mustard and egg with crumbled hardboiled egg on top. Honestly it wasn’t worth the weeks wait, but whatever. Then we had Chinese food, which was really just noodles with chicken and veggies…no rice (there was bread), no soup, no wings (I really miss wings, Chinese restaurants here don’t have wings). After that my host mom had prepared a scavenger hunt for the 8 year old grandson. Yes, this was mother’s day, but she hand whipped cream for her granddaughter (who didn’t really want it), made a dish she makes once a year, and designed a scavenger hunt all over the house for her grandson (and bought him this trading cards to be prizes). The dinner was fun and tiring.
Monday, I woke up to four messages from steve (steve my friend here, not the one from tufts) saying he was awake and wanted to go to a café to study or something…I put that off until noonish. We went to the café where I sat on the internet for three hours and had a fantastic salad (which is pretty much an oxymoron here). Then we went to steve’s house because my computer died (they don’t believe in outlets in cafes or pretty much anywhere here). Then I went to the movies and saw The Wind that Blew the Barley (I think that was what it was called)…it won the Cannes film festival. Its about Ireland in the 1920s and Irish and British fighting…it was really sad, but good. Then we went and had more Chinese food (twice in two days is amazing!!). next we went to burger king because amy wanted soft serve ice cream and then I walked home and watched more west wing before going to bed.
Tuesday was another working on the paper day for me. Spent most of the day at COPA, went to a café with Blythe. Watched some TV. Edited my paper some more. Slept…forgot about pilates…oops!
Wednesday was yet another day at COPA…starting to get sick of going there.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Noche de los museos
Wednesday I spent a lot of time at COPA using the internet. I talked to Rachel and Steve for a really long time, which was really nice considering the time differences. I was supposed to be working on my paper, but it all worked out…Then Maria, Alex and I went to Borges class together and almost lost/forgot Alex on the colectivo. She was at the front and Maria and I were at the back. I knew where to get off, but couldn’t see Alex anymore. I had to run to the middle door which was about to close…luckily the driver say me/Alex lunging to get out and re-opened the door. After class, I shocked Bryan by actually having a subte pass. He nearly fell over…usually I don’t have a pass and I waste time by buying one (or Glen spots me a ride). Maria’s cell phone was stolen at a concert over the weekend. There was this series of concerts that were free and a really big deal that I didn’t go to. She went to one and her bag was cut while she was dancing. I saw the bottom of it; it was a leather bag and had two gashes about 4 inches long each in it. When I told my host mom about it later she was like, oh yeah, there was a time when that would happen daily, no big deal. They don’t use a knife, they have rings with blades on them. It happened to us in Brasil. I was just like umm, sure, that’s perfectly normal….not. she told me that the blade can’t cut skin and I refrained from pointing out that leather is pretty damn thick and if a blade can cut through leather that it can sure as hell cut through skin.
Thursday I went to US history and art history and then went to Sierra’s house to study before our American History midterm/final/only grade in this class. The test was pretty much exactly what I wanted/planned on it being, which was fantastic. I think I wrote about 8 full sides of paper in response to three questions. My hand nearly fell off. It was a really interesting test because the Argentines are having their midterm next week (we take different tests because their classes are year-long, so we don’t know everything they do). They were having class and talking and stuff in the same room as us. We were also allowed to talk to each other somewhat during the test. We didn’t talk about the questions…just made comments about how we couldn’t wait to be done writing and stuff. We also had three hours to take the test (which is the duration of a class period). After class, Meagan, Steve and I went to Shannon’s so I could tell her happy birthday (and give her a Kinder Egg, Rachel you better know what these are…they have them in London also) and that I wasn’t going out to dinner with them. Then I got home at like 10ish…and had dinner with my host mom and basically fell over into bed.
Friday I woke up early and worked on my paper for US history and my midterm-thing for Borges class. I also went to the gym and ran 4km. I went to the fish store to buy some stuff for lunch and the woman there was like, “where are you from? Utah? Utah? Utah? I have a cousin’s niece’s friend’s uncle’s brother in Utah. Do you live near there? Do you know them?” I kindly explained that I live near NYC (saying New Jersey means absolutely nothing here) and that’s about a 4 hour plain ride from Utah. I’m pretty sure she said Utah at least 10 times. Then I went to tango class and then came straight home for work on my paper some more. My host mom and I were sitting around the table having tea and bread. She took out the middle of the bread (the soft part) and rolled it in a ball because she doesn’t like that part. She then told me that the poor kids in the campo (field/plains/area outside the city) use this part as an eraser for their schoolwork. So I went to my room, got paper and a pencil and guess what?? It actually sort of works (apparently my pencil was too high in quality…way to go Tufts bookstore!!). Her only comment was, “these are the ways of 3rd world countries.”
Saturday I woke up early again to work on my paper some more. I had the last tango class…really, I’m not that sad. Classes are ok. I actually like most of the COPA people in the class and we have fun, but I’m a rather practical person and I know that I’m never going to dance tango again and I’m ok with that. After tango I went to Plaza Congreso to take some pictures of it. Then I walked to Recoleta to meet Meagan. We went to Steve’s instrumental concert and I saw the big metal flower (not that interesting, supposedly it opens and closes with the sun, I think it might be a machine…). The concert was in Facultad de Derecho (the UBA law school), which is a really nice looking Greek building (with columns and all) from the outside, but very ugly inside. Then Meagan and I went to the Museo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Museum) to pick up material about the Noche de los Museos (Night of the Museums). We figured out a “game plan” and walked up through the Recoleta fair, where I got a giant empanada for dinner.
We went to the Centro Cultural Recoleta and saw the Borges travel photos and an exhibit about disappeared people that wasn’t really effective and mostly just weird. It wasn’t just about the disappeared people in Argentina; it included a bunch of other countries as well. We met up with Steve, Shannon, Sandra and Amy. We hung out at Meagan’s for a little while and then left for the museums (without Shannon).
We first went to La Boca where the colectivo didn’t go quite as far as it appeared on the map, which meant we were walking around La Boca at 11PM. On any other night this would have been a terrible thing to do, but because it was noche de los museos, there were people everywhere. We went to three art museums (Teatro Rivera, la Quinquela, y Fundación Próa), one outdoor museum that we had been through before and the Boca museum (literally a blue and yellow museum in the stadium dedicated to the fútbol team and with Nike logos everywhere. After the museum is the gift shop which is also plastered with Nike logos and blue and yellow everywhere. The prices are very American and clearly the whole thing is set up for tourists.
After La Boca we got on another colectivo and went to Puerto Madero (the trendy/hip/new area of the city). Noche de los museos was having a final party there. We never made it to the party because we went to another museum instead. This one was a boat, which was really cool to walk around on (we ignored the exhibit and explored the boat). It was a fun night, but there were way too many of us and we should have left earlier to start going to museums. We were especially amazed at how organized the entire night was….we’re talking people in T-shirts everywhere (to answer ?s) and all the museums had the booklets with info about the night….it was pretty amazing…considering we’re in Argentina.
Sunday I woke up and did some more homework. That was pretty much all. I went to a café and used the internet…for quite a while. Rachel sent me an article from the NYTimes online that had a picture from Tufts. That was cool.
Monday, more homework!! Went to the Lincoln Library at ICANA (North American Cultural Center) which was an interesting experience. The library is basically the size of three tufts doubles put together, but has higher ceilings. Its very American in that almost all of the books are in English and they are arranged by the dewy decimal system and you can touch them!! (this does not happen at the national library where you have to order them and watch a TV screen to find out when they are brought upstairs for you). I was the only person under 30 there and for a while, the only female. It was 2-3 business men reading the New York times. People come in and out. Phones ring. Everyone has to walk up to the desk when the enter and ask the guy working how is he and whats new and so on and so forth. They didn’t actually have half the books my teacher told to use there, which goes to show that even though the library is very American and the class is history of America, the teacher is still very Argentine. All in all, it was a fine experience; I got some sources for my paper. Then I went to COPA to use the internet and to actually finish my paper – the library didn’t have outlets and my computer does need power, occasionally- they don’t really believe in putting outlets everywhere here…its nearly impossible to find any in cafes that have wifi also. I had a tutor read my paper and it was like being 12 again with tons of little mistakes… then I went home and had dinner with my host mom. Apparently, the news paper said that Argentina is the country that eats the most beef (which is pretty much common knowledge around the world), but I can’t actually remember the last time I had beef. I think it was last Wednesday or Thursday. She’s telling me this as we eat our corn tort (corn, egg, pepper and onion inside a pastry shell). We rarely eat meat and the people I’ve talked to in my program said the same thing about their host families. Frankly, I think Argentines eat more ham than meat. They will put ham on everything, including hamburgers and pizza….and I’m not just talking about the occasional hamburger or pizza, its common to see ham on these items.
Tuesday was yet another day of homework…. This time for my art history take home midterm which is 10 pages long…I don’t really think this fits the category of midterm…but whatever. It is also our ONLY grade for this class. I got bored around mid-afternoon and went for a walk in the neighborhood. I went to the grocery store which is apparently under constructions and nightmarishly slippery (or slippy as the Aussies we met at Iguazú would say). Then I check my email and saw that my advisor had FINALLY emailed me telling me I could switch to Mendoza…she had been out of town for over a week. Then I returne home and realized I didn’t have the ganas (kind of like didn’t feel like it) to work….so I’m typing more of my blog….and now I’m going ot type some more….
This section is especially for Rachel and Steve (because they think they are Stacy and Clinton from what not to wear). This is a MAJOR what not to wear….it could actually encompass ½ of Buenos Aires because I have come to realize that Argentine fashion is an oxymoron. I don’t have to worry about spending money on clothing because I won’t be…. The Argentine “hip” girl look…as spotted yesterday: red high top converse (they are obsessed with the high top converse here…its kind of scary how obsessed), tied half way with the rest folded down. About four inches up the leg start the pants (the pants really are the entire badness of the look). Now, when these pants start they are skin tight for a good 6 inches (they’re basically yoga pant material). After those 6 inches they proceed to billow, yes billow, outward until they reach the waist where they are tight again. Now, you have to realize that Argentine girls don’t have thighs, but this look is still terrible. Most of the billowyness hangs around the knee (gravity comes into play on this one), which isn’t so terrible on the thigh part, however, it does make them look like pares with the round/wide part at their knees. [Rachel, I thought about buying you or me a pair (as a joke) and then realized you’d never speak to me again and that would just be sad]
Equally bad, but different Argentine look, as spotted on a colectivo (bus):
Somewhat orange (due to fake tanning) woman in her 60s. wearing all white…it is spring time here but still. The white was as follows: kitten heel mules (cute), nylons cut off mid calf (not cute), mini skirt with frills (very not cute) and lacoste polo (not objectionable). They are big on the nylons cut off mid calf and skirt here (I wear this in boston when I can’t handle wearing pants anymore during the winter). Its practically warm enough to not need this look, ever. Most of the time, I look at them and think, “oh sad honey, did you not look in the mirror before leaving the house today?”
Tuesday night I went out for ice cream at 10:30 and didn’t get home until after 1AM. Blythe and I just sat and talked about our schools and traveling and summer
Thursday I went to US history and art history and then went to Sierra’s house to study before our American History midterm/final/only grade in this class. The test was pretty much exactly what I wanted/planned on it being, which was fantastic. I think I wrote about 8 full sides of paper in response to three questions. My hand nearly fell off. It was a really interesting test because the Argentines are having their midterm next week (we take different tests because their classes are year-long, so we don’t know everything they do). They were having class and talking and stuff in the same room as us. We were also allowed to talk to each other somewhat during the test. We didn’t talk about the questions…just made comments about how we couldn’t wait to be done writing and stuff. We also had three hours to take the test (which is the duration of a class period). After class, Meagan, Steve and I went to Shannon’s so I could tell her happy birthday (and give her a Kinder Egg, Rachel you better know what these are…they have them in London also) and that I wasn’t going out to dinner with them. Then I got home at like 10ish…and had dinner with my host mom and basically fell over into bed.
Friday I woke up early and worked on my paper for US history and my midterm-thing for Borges class. I also went to the gym and ran 4km. I went to the fish store to buy some stuff for lunch and the woman there was like, “where are you from? Utah? Utah? Utah? I have a cousin’s niece’s friend’s uncle’s brother in Utah. Do you live near there? Do you know them?” I kindly explained that I live near NYC (saying New Jersey means absolutely nothing here) and that’s about a 4 hour plain ride from Utah. I’m pretty sure she said Utah at least 10 times. Then I went to tango class and then came straight home for work on my paper some more. My host mom and I were sitting around the table having tea and bread. She took out the middle of the bread (the soft part) and rolled it in a ball because she doesn’t like that part. She then told me that the poor kids in the campo (field/plains/area outside the city) use this part as an eraser for their schoolwork. So I went to my room, got paper and a pencil and guess what?? It actually sort of works (apparently my pencil was too high in quality…way to go Tufts bookstore!!). Her only comment was, “these are the ways of 3rd world countries.”
Saturday I woke up early again to work on my paper some more. I had the last tango class…really, I’m not that sad. Classes are ok. I actually like most of the COPA people in the class and we have fun, but I’m a rather practical person and I know that I’m never going to dance tango again and I’m ok with that. After tango I went to Plaza Congreso to take some pictures of it. Then I walked to Recoleta to meet Meagan. We went to Steve’s instrumental concert and I saw the big metal flower (not that interesting, supposedly it opens and closes with the sun, I think it might be a machine…). The concert was in Facultad de Derecho (the UBA law school), which is a really nice looking Greek building (with columns and all) from the outside, but very ugly inside. Then Meagan and I went to the Museo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Museum) to pick up material about the Noche de los Museos (Night of the Museums). We figured out a “game plan” and walked up through the Recoleta fair, where I got a giant empanada for dinner.
We went to the Centro Cultural Recoleta and saw the Borges travel photos and an exhibit about disappeared people that wasn’t really effective and mostly just weird. It wasn’t just about the disappeared people in Argentina; it included a bunch of other countries as well. We met up with Steve, Shannon, Sandra and Amy. We hung out at Meagan’s for a little while and then left for the museums (without Shannon).
We first went to La Boca where the colectivo didn’t go quite as far as it appeared on the map, which meant we were walking around La Boca at 11PM. On any other night this would have been a terrible thing to do, but because it was noche de los museos, there were people everywhere. We went to three art museums (Teatro Rivera, la Quinquela, y Fundación Próa), one outdoor museum that we had been through before and the Boca museum (literally a blue and yellow museum in the stadium dedicated to the fútbol team and with Nike logos everywhere. After the museum is the gift shop which is also plastered with Nike logos and blue and yellow everywhere. The prices are very American and clearly the whole thing is set up for tourists.
After La Boca we got on another colectivo and went to Puerto Madero (the trendy/hip/new area of the city). Noche de los museos was having a final party there. We never made it to the party because we went to another museum instead. This one was a boat, which was really cool to walk around on (we ignored the exhibit and explored the boat). It was a fun night, but there were way too many of us and we should have left earlier to start going to museums. We were especially amazed at how organized the entire night was….we’re talking people in T-shirts everywhere (to answer ?s) and all the museums had the booklets with info about the night….it was pretty amazing…considering we’re in Argentina.
Sunday I woke up and did some more homework. That was pretty much all. I went to a café and used the internet…for quite a while. Rachel sent me an article from the NYTimes online that had a picture from Tufts. That was cool.
Monday, more homework!! Went to the Lincoln Library at ICANA (North American Cultural Center) which was an interesting experience. The library is basically the size of three tufts doubles put together, but has higher ceilings. Its very American in that almost all of the books are in English and they are arranged by the dewy decimal system and you can touch them!! (this does not happen at the national library where you have to order them and watch a TV screen to find out when they are brought upstairs for you). I was the only person under 30 there and for a while, the only female. It was 2-3 business men reading the New York times. People come in and out. Phones ring. Everyone has to walk up to the desk when the enter and ask the guy working how is he and whats new and so on and so forth. They didn’t actually have half the books my teacher told to use there, which goes to show that even though the library is very American and the class is history of America, the teacher is still very Argentine. All in all, it was a fine experience; I got some sources for my paper. Then I went to COPA to use the internet and to actually finish my paper – the library didn’t have outlets and my computer does need power, occasionally- they don’t really believe in putting outlets everywhere here…its nearly impossible to find any in cafes that have wifi also. I had a tutor read my paper and it was like being 12 again with tons of little mistakes… then I went home and had dinner with my host mom. Apparently, the news paper said that Argentina is the country that eats the most beef (which is pretty much common knowledge around the world), but I can’t actually remember the last time I had beef. I think it was last Wednesday or Thursday. She’s telling me this as we eat our corn tort (corn, egg, pepper and onion inside a pastry shell). We rarely eat meat and the people I’ve talked to in my program said the same thing about their host families. Frankly, I think Argentines eat more ham than meat. They will put ham on everything, including hamburgers and pizza….and I’m not just talking about the occasional hamburger or pizza, its common to see ham on these items.
Tuesday was yet another day of homework…. This time for my art history take home midterm which is 10 pages long…I don’t really think this fits the category of midterm…but whatever. It is also our ONLY grade for this class. I got bored around mid-afternoon and went for a walk in the neighborhood. I went to the grocery store which is apparently under constructions and nightmarishly slippery (or slippy as the Aussies we met at Iguazú would say). Then I check my email and saw that my advisor had FINALLY emailed me telling me I could switch to Mendoza…she had been out of town for over a week. Then I returne home and realized I didn’t have the ganas (kind of like didn’t feel like it) to work….so I’m typing more of my blog….and now I’m going ot type some more….
This section is especially for Rachel and Steve (because they think they are Stacy and Clinton from what not to wear). This is a MAJOR what not to wear….it could actually encompass ½ of Buenos Aires because I have come to realize that Argentine fashion is an oxymoron. I don’t have to worry about spending money on clothing because I won’t be…. The Argentine “hip” girl look…as spotted yesterday: red high top converse (they are obsessed with the high top converse here…its kind of scary how obsessed), tied half way with the rest folded down. About four inches up the leg start the pants (the pants really are the entire badness of the look). Now, when these pants start they are skin tight for a good 6 inches (they’re basically yoga pant material). After those 6 inches they proceed to billow, yes billow, outward until they reach the waist where they are tight again. Now, you have to realize that Argentine girls don’t have thighs, but this look is still terrible. Most of the billowyness hangs around the knee (gravity comes into play on this one), which isn’t so terrible on the thigh part, however, it does make them look like pares with the round/wide part at their knees. [Rachel, I thought about buying you or me a pair (as a joke) and then realized you’d never speak to me again and that would just be sad]
Equally bad, but different Argentine look, as spotted on a colectivo (bus):
Somewhat orange (due to fake tanning) woman in her 60s. wearing all white…it is spring time here but still. The white was as follows: kitten heel mules (cute), nylons cut off mid calf (not cute), mini skirt with frills (very not cute) and lacoste polo (not objectionable). They are big on the nylons cut off mid calf and skirt here (I wear this in boston when I can’t handle wearing pants anymore during the winter). Its practically warm enough to not need this look, ever. Most of the time, I look at them and think, “oh sad honey, did you not look in the mirror before leaving the house today?”
Tuesday night I went out for ice cream at 10:30 and didn’t get home until after 1AM. Blythe and I just sat and talked about our schools and traveling and summer
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Esteros de Ibera, Posadas, Resistencia
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent doing homework, running errands and getting ready to leave again Wednesday night. Monday night, I went to my program director’s house for a useless dinner about our progress in the program and life in general.
Sierra and I left Wednesday night at 9:15 to head to Esteros de Iberá (esteros are wetlands/swamps). We arrived in Mercedes, Corrientes, Argentina at 5:30 AM Thursday and tried to find a bus to Colonia Carlos Pelligrini (where the Esteros are located). We were told about the possibility of four different buses (we’re not really sure if any existed) at 7 AM, 11 AM, 12 PM, and 1 PM. We finally decided to share a 4x4 (small pick-up truck) with an older Argentine couple for the two hour, 120 km drive. The dirt road from Mercedes to the Esteros is not that bad of a drive and we were really tired, so I don’t really remember it to well. Once we got there, we realized it would not be that easy to get back or onward to Posadas so we wandered around town with our driver trying to figure out what we should do. We didn’t know if we should take a boat launch and then return to Mercedes or explore more or stay the night. We finally found a man who had a couple staying at his house who were also trying to get to Posadas. We went to the inn/house/ranch and met them and found out that it was possible to get to Posadas the next morning.
We spent Thursday walking around the nature reserve. We met the people who were going to drive us to Posadas; a couple who ran a safari/excursion company in Colonia Carlos Pelligrini. The wife, a 30-something Japanese woman named Akari, informed us that her English (after a few years of living in Canada) was better than her Spanish. We hung out with her and her 17-year old Argentine brother-in-law who didn’t speak English for some of the afternoon looking at monkey and caimen. She took us on a walk to the part of the jungle where the monkeys live. We saw four monkeys (two female adults and two babies). Caimen are like crocodiles and there was a family of them in the water right near the road (aka 20 feet away from where I was standing). We also saw some birds near the water. Then while Akari was in the ranger station, the brother-in-law, Sierra, and I went into the woods and saw a lizard thing. It was kinda scary because we weren’t on the path, but we only really saw its tail (it looked like a humongous gecko). Then, Sierra and I returned to the inn and met the British couple, Henry and Jo. We tried to find the boa constrictor they had seen the day before (it hangs out near the rocks on the side of the road in the afternoon sun). Henry spotted the tail end of the snake as it went back under the rocks, but none of us girls saw it. After that, the four of us walked around “town,” went to the central square and an artist’s house.
We ate dinner together at this family house/restaurant. Then we went on a night safari. This time, the husband, wife, and brother-in-law took us in their Land Rover. The husband, Gaston, an Argentine with a pony-tail and camouflage jacket, was a DJ in Spain when he and Akari met two years ago (she was there studying), which meant that his iPod video accompanied various parts of our safari. He took us back down the road towards Mercedes where we saw an armadillo, capybara (including babies), swamp deer, raccoons, fox, and even caught a glimpse of these little rodents that can only be found in this part of Argentina. The best part was when we stopped at one point to look at the stars. We were so far out in the middle of nowhere, with no light for at least 20-30 km, that the sky looked like we were inside a planetarium. It was practically a perfect bubble with stars literally all around us. The only other time I’d seen stars like this were on the ferry between Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. It was surreal to be standing in South America looking at this bubble of stars including shooting stars.
The next morning we woke up and had the standard Argentine breakfast: tea and toast, with marmalade or dulce de leche. However, it included veggie marmite (courtesy of the British), which I will never eat again. It was sort of this and somewhat/very disgusting, but I guess could grow on you….or not. Then, Gaston, his brother, and Akari arrived with the Land Rover. We put our backpacks on top and piled in for the 3 hour, 210km dirt road to Posadas. Henry and Jo were on their way to Iguazú and Sierra and I were going to see Jesuit ruins. This was the first week of Henry and Jo’s 9 month tour around the world (they’ve done several big trips and been to many incredible places before). They started in Buenos Aires, then went to the Esteros, then Iguazú, then are continuing down through Argentina to Patagonia and up Chile before they fly to Easter Island for a week, then Fiji (I think) and then New Zealand and Australia. (I think there might Thailand and something else in southeastern Asia in there also). They were super interesting and nice people with a lot of travel tips and ideas.
We finally got to Posadas, it was weird to be in a city again (not that Posadas is really a city). We went first to an ATM so we could pay for our ride (everything turned out to be more expensive than we thought and Sierra had forgotten her money in Recoleta (BsAs)). Then, the four of us found the colectivo to get to the bus terminal. Henry and Jo bought tickets while all of us rushed to find buses which were leaving in two minutes. We thought we were going on different buses because we were at different ticket windows so we said good-bye and ran (Sierra and I could buy tickets on the bus because we were getting off very soon). We wound up on the same bus, Sierra freaked a little because we got on without paying…I have a bit more bus experience to know that you can pay once on the bus and still get off at your stop. We ate a milanesa sandwich on the bus (milanesa is a piece of breaded and fried meat, eaten hot or cold, with lettuce and tomato….i would never eat this in the US, but it only costs a peso or two and is the quickest, most abundant food in the entire country…it also never contains anything I’m allergic to).
We arrived in San Ignacio and headed for the Jesuit ruins. We left our backpacks with the gate people for free, which would never happen in the US, because there you have to pay for everything and entered the ruins. We didn’t take a free tour because the groups were ridiculously large and our choices were teenagers or old people, neither of which excited us. We wandered around the living spaces, jail, school, church, cemetery, and government building in the ruins. Some parts were especially nice, but I decided that I am completely jaded by Macchu Picchu and no ruins will be able to compare. Then, we tried to find Horatio Quiroga’s house (Uruguayan born Argentine writer). We realized it was too far on foot and were way to tired to try to find the remise (taxi). While waiting for the colectivo, I talked to an Argentine girl who was about to finish colegio (meaning she was about 17 or so). She was completely impressed that Sierra and I had taken the time to come to her part of the world to see these ruins and that we were from the US and living in Buenos Aires (she had never been to the city, but hopes to go after graduation). It made me think how lucky we are to have the opportunity to travel and see the world.
Upon arrival in Posadas, Sierra and I determined that spending the night there was the best plan. We found a hotel in the center of the city for $35 pesos a night ($12 dollars US), which is a fantastic price. We left our stuff and walked around for a little while: saw the center with the church (standard south America). Then we went to find food for dinner. We found a few bar/restaurants with outdoor seating (Posadas is up north where its warmer). We had hamburgers and fries while people watching and chatting. I tried to order a martini which was $4.5 pesos on the menu (really cheap for a mixed drink), but it turned out to be a bottle of alcohol (we’re not really sure what it was, but I refused it when the waiter came). That price for a bottle of almost any kind (not Quilmes, the local beer), is really incredible and really shocked us. Then we went across the street for ice cream, which by the way is so much better than in the states because its more like gelato and all of the fruit flavors are made with water, not milk. Luckily they had my absolute favorite, grapefruit!!! We ate our ice cream while walking around the plaza, then returned to our hotel, showered, and went to bed.
Saturday morning we left Posadas for Resistencia (another city 5 hours away). We arrived in Resistencia at 2ish and left our bags at the bus terminal (this time we had to pay 2 pesos each…boooo). We walked around town trying to find as many sculptures as possible. Resistencia is a city which considers itself an open-air museum. There are more than 200 or so sculptures all over the city (they are more frequent than traffic lights). We got a map from the tourist booth (the woman was so happy to see us, I think we were some of the only tourists that day). We spent the day walking around. The city is really interesting. For some reason, there are immigrants there from all over the world. The plazas are named for the different countries, like Ukraine and Bulgaria. It’s really bizarre because Resistencia is the provincial capital of Chaco, which contains a region called chaco, which is a brutally hot, dry area. The locals told us we were lucky because we arrived on a day that wasn’t hot, it was about 80ºF. we had lunch at another outdoor café, while trying to plan our travels for this summer. We did a little shopping in the central plaza where stands were set up by local indigenous people. Very few indigenous people remain in Argentina, they were pushed out when the Spaniards settled the country. The remaining groups live in the north, near Posadas and Resistencia, and also in the northwestern provinces of Salta, Tucumán, and Jujuy.
Then, we headed for the bus station to get our 12 hour bus to Buenos Aires. Bus travel in Argentina is actually fantastic. It beats bus travel in the US, Britain, and the Balkans and plane travel anywhere. When your bus arrives, you check your bags and are given a claim ticket, which is really important because you must have the ticket to get your bag back. You get on the bus where the seats go back a lot more than in the US and you have a leg thing which supports your thighs and acts as a foot rest at the same time. There are movies (mostly American, with subtitles and sometimes sound in Spanish or in our case, Portuguese). The bus company provides you with unlimited coffee and hot water and they feed you. We had ham and cheese sandwiches, muffins and cookies at night, then biscuit/cookies for breakfast. The buses are comfortable and everyone sleeps.
We arrived in Buenos Aires Sunday morning and went home. My host mom wasn’t home because she had gone to her beach apartment for the weekend (when she heard I was going out of town, she decided to also). I was supposed to come back on Tuesday, but we decided we didn’t need a day in Posadas and we didn’t really want to go to Corrientes (city). I spent the day working on my History of the US paper, grocery shopping and organizing my laundry.
Sierra and I left Wednesday night at 9:15 to head to Esteros de Iberá (esteros are wetlands/swamps). We arrived in Mercedes, Corrientes, Argentina at 5:30 AM Thursday and tried to find a bus to Colonia Carlos Pelligrini (where the Esteros are located). We were told about the possibility of four different buses (we’re not really sure if any existed) at 7 AM, 11 AM, 12 PM, and 1 PM. We finally decided to share a 4x4 (small pick-up truck) with an older Argentine couple for the two hour, 120 km drive. The dirt road from Mercedes to the Esteros is not that bad of a drive and we were really tired, so I don’t really remember it to well. Once we got there, we realized it would not be that easy to get back or onward to Posadas so we wandered around town with our driver trying to figure out what we should do. We didn’t know if we should take a boat launch and then return to Mercedes or explore more or stay the night. We finally found a man who had a couple staying at his house who were also trying to get to Posadas. We went to the inn/house/ranch and met them and found out that it was possible to get to Posadas the next morning.
We spent Thursday walking around the nature reserve. We met the people who were going to drive us to Posadas; a couple who ran a safari/excursion company in Colonia Carlos Pelligrini. The wife, a 30-something Japanese woman named Akari, informed us that her English (after a few years of living in Canada) was better than her Spanish. We hung out with her and her 17-year old Argentine brother-in-law who didn’t speak English for some of the afternoon looking at monkey and caimen. She took us on a walk to the part of the jungle where the monkeys live. We saw four monkeys (two female adults and two babies). Caimen are like crocodiles and there was a family of them in the water right near the road (aka 20 feet away from where I was standing). We also saw some birds near the water. Then while Akari was in the ranger station, the brother-in-law, Sierra, and I went into the woods and saw a lizard thing. It was kinda scary because we weren’t on the path, but we only really saw its tail (it looked like a humongous gecko). Then, Sierra and I returned to the inn and met the British couple, Henry and Jo. We tried to find the boa constrictor they had seen the day before (it hangs out near the rocks on the side of the road in the afternoon sun). Henry spotted the tail end of the snake as it went back under the rocks, but none of us girls saw it. After that, the four of us walked around “town,” went to the central square and an artist’s house.
We ate dinner together at this family house/restaurant. Then we went on a night safari. This time, the husband, wife, and brother-in-law took us in their Land Rover. The husband, Gaston, an Argentine with a pony-tail and camouflage jacket, was a DJ in Spain when he and Akari met two years ago (she was there studying), which meant that his iPod video accompanied various parts of our safari. He took us back down the road towards Mercedes where we saw an armadillo, capybara (including babies), swamp deer, raccoons, fox, and even caught a glimpse of these little rodents that can only be found in this part of Argentina. The best part was when we stopped at one point to look at the stars. We were so far out in the middle of nowhere, with no light for at least 20-30 km, that the sky looked like we were inside a planetarium. It was practically a perfect bubble with stars literally all around us. The only other time I’d seen stars like this were on the ferry between Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. It was surreal to be standing in South America looking at this bubble of stars including shooting stars.
The next morning we woke up and had the standard Argentine breakfast: tea and toast, with marmalade or dulce de leche. However, it included veggie marmite (courtesy of the British), which I will never eat again. It was sort of this and somewhat/very disgusting, but I guess could grow on you….or not. Then, Gaston, his brother, and Akari arrived with the Land Rover. We put our backpacks on top and piled in for the 3 hour, 210km dirt road to Posadas. Henry and Jo were on their way to Iguazú and Sierra and I were going to see Jesuit ruins. This was the first week of Henry and Jo’s 9 month tour around the world (they’ve done several big trips and been to many incredible places before). They started in Buenos Aires, then went to the Esteros, then Iguazú, then are continuing down through Argentina to Patagonia and up Chile before they fly to Easter Island for a week, then Fiji (I think) and then New Zealand and Australia. (I think there might Thailand and something else in southeastern Asia in there also). They were super interesting and nice people with a lot of travel tips and ideas.
We finally got to Posadas, it was weird to be in a city again (not that Posadas is really a city). We went first to an ATM so we could pay for our ride (everything turned out to be more expensive than we thought and Sierra had forgotten her money in Recoleta (BsAs)). Then, the four of us found the colectivo to get to the bus terminal. Henry and Jo bought tickets while all of us rushed to find buses which were leaving in two minutes. We thought we were going on different buses because we were at different ticket windows so we said good-bye and ran (Sierra and I could buy tickets on the bus because we were getting off very soon). We wound up on the same bus, Sierra freaked a little because we got on without paying…I have a bit more bus experience to know that you can pay once on the bus and still get off at your stop. We ate a milanesa sandwich on the bus (milanesa is a piece of breaded and fried meat, eaten hot or cold, with lettuce and tomato….i would never eat this in the US, but it only costs a peso or two and is the quickest, most abundant food in the entire country…it also never contains anything I’m allergic to).
We arrived in San Ignacio and headed for the Jesuit ruins. We left our backpacks with the gate people for free, which would never happen in the US, because there you have to pay for everything and entered the ruins. We didn’t take a free tour because the groups were ridiculously large and our choices were teenagers or old people, neither of which excited us. We wandered around the living spaces, jail, school, church, cemetery, and government building in the ruins. Some parts were especially nice, but I decided that I am completely jaded by Macchu Picchu and no ruins will be able to compare. Then, we tried to find Horatio Quiroga’s house (Uruguayan born Argentine writer). We realized it was too far on foot and were way to tired to try to find the remise (taxi). While waiting for the colectivo, I talked to an Argentine girl who was about to finish colegio (meaning she was about 17 or so). She was completely impressed that Sierra and I had taken the time to come to her part of the world to see these ruins and that we were from the US and living in Buenos Aires (she had never been to the city, but hopes to go after graduation). It made me think how lucky we are to have the opportunity to travel and see the world.
Upon arrival in Posadas, Sierra and I determined that spending the night there was the best plan. We found a hotel in the center of the city for $35 pesos a night ($12 dollars US), which is a fantastic price. We left our stuff and walked around for a little while: saw the center with the church (standard south America). Then we went to find food for dinner. We found a few bar/restaurants with outdoor seating (Posadas is up north where its warmer). We had hamburgers and fries while people watching and chatting. I tried to order a martini which was $4.5 pesos on the menu (really cheap for a mixed drink), but it turned out to be a bottle of alcohol (we’re not really sure what it was, but I refused it when the waiter came). That price for a bottle of almost any kind (not Quilmes, the local beer), is really incredible and really shocked us. Then we went across the street for ice cream, which by the way is so much better than in the states because its more like gelato and all of the fruit flavors are made with water, not milk. Luckily they had my absolute favorite, grapefruit!!! We ate our ice cream while walking around the plaza, then returned to our hotel, showered, and went to bed.
Saturday morning we left Posadas for Resistencia (another city 5 hours away). We arrived in Resistencia at 2ish and left our bags at the bus terminal (this time we had to pay 2 pesos each…boooo). We walked around town trying to find as many sculptures as possible. Resistencia is a city which considers itself an open-air museum. There are more than 200 or so sculptures all over the city (they are more frequent than traffic lights). We got a map from the tourist booth (the woman was so happy to see us, I think we were some of the only tourists that day). We spent the day walking around. The city is really interesting. For some reason, there are immigrants there from all over the world. The plazas are named for the different countries, like Ukraine and Bulgaria. It’s really bizarre because Resistencia is the provincial capital of Chaco, which contains a region called chaco, which is a brutally hot, dry area. The locals told us we were lucky because we arrived on a day that wasn’t hot, it was about 80ºF. we had lunch at another outdoor café, while trying to plan our travels for this summer. We did a little shopping in the central plaza where stands were set up by local indigenous people. Very few indigenous people remain in Argentina, they were pushed out when the Spaniards settled the country. The remaining groups live in the north, near Posadas and Resistencia, and also in the northwestern provinces of Salta, Tucumán, and Jujuy.
Then, we headed for the bus station to get our 12 hour bus to Buenos Aires. Bus travel in Argentina is actually fantastic. It beats bus travel in the US, Britain, and the Balkans and plane travel anywhere. When your bus arrives, you check your bags and are given a claim ticket, which is really important because you must have the ticket to get your bag back. You get on the bus where the seats go back a lot more than in the US and you have a leg thing which supports your thighs and acts as a foot rest at the same time. There are movies (mostly American, with subtitles and sometimes sound in Spanish or in our case, Portuguese). The bus company provides you with unlimited coffee and hot water and they feed you. We had ham and cheese sandwiches, muffins and cookies at night, then biscuit/cookies for breakfast. The buses are comfortable and everyone sleeps.
We arrived in Buenos Aires Sunday morning and went home. My host mom wasn’t home because she had gone to her beach apartment for the weekend (when she heard I was going out of town, she decided to also). I was supposed to come back on Tuesday, but we decided we didn’t need a day in Posadas and we didn’t really want to go to Corrientes (city). I spent the day working on my History of the US paper, grocery shopping and organizing my laundry.
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