Sara in Buenos Aires

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

School school school

Hey guys! Hopefully you all have seen that I added an updated blog about my trip to Chile a little bit ago, because that one is probably more interesting than this one- although I guess it is called "study" abroad :) Here in Argentina I took 4 classes from four different universities, and I just finished with all of them last week, woo hoo! And yes, I passed them all!
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The grading system here in Argentina is much different than the United States. There are no As, Bs, Cs or Ds, but rather a grading scale from 1-10. A 4 counts as "passing" a class, anything lower is a fail and 9s and 10s are almost impossible to get. Average grades here are anywhere from 6-8, and most students are very happy with those grades.
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My first class that I finished was my Art History class from the University of Salvador, a private catholic university. For my final grade, we had to write a 15 page paper and take an in-class final. First, we had an in-class exam that we had to take with all the other Argentine students, which meant no special treatment for being foreigners. The exam was 3 essay questions about the different cultures we studied in class. My friends and I studied really hard, and it paid off because I got an 8.5 on my exam (higher than a lot of the the Argentines in my class!). The class is supposed to be a year long class, but since we were leaving after one semester, all the foreign students were asked to write a paper to make up for the material we would be missing in the second semester. For the paper, we had to go to a museum in the city of La Plata and pick four different artifacts from northwestern Argentina, preferably made of four different materials, from different time periods and from different groups of people. Although this sounded like a pretty easy assignment, the paper was all in spanish and there was not a whole lot of information on the pieces, neither at the museum or anywhere online. Regardless, I turned in a pretty well-written paper about four interesting artifacts (you can ask me about them later if you are really interested), 15 whole pages long in spanish, woo! I got an 8 on the paper, which again was very good, so I should end up with an A- in that class.
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The second class I finished was my hardest class- The emergence of Popular Culture in Argentina, which I took at the public university, UBA. I do not need many more classes to finish my spanish major, so I basically only took this class to ensure that I was a "full time student". Since it wasn't going to count for anything back at Wisconsin, I was a little aprehensive about just trying to pass the class and not taking away too much time from studying for my other classes. The only grade we were going to recieve in this class was a take home test, which was 2 essay questions, 4 pages each. We got the questions and had a week to turn in our responses. The class is very complex and hard to understand (even for native students), and the essay questions were equally as difficult. Luckily, my friend Hannah was in this class with me, so we worked on the questions together and put together pretty well written essays. I turned it in hoping I would just pass (receive a 4 or higher), and was shocked to learn that I got an 8! (Again, that is like an A-). I am now in the process of trying to make that class count for something back at Madison since I got a good grade, but I am honestly just so happy to be done with it because it was a very challenging course all year!
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My class at the catholic University (UCA) was my favorite class, it was Argentine literature with an amazing professor named Clara. The class was structured more like a class in the United States since it was for foreigners, so instead of just one exam or essay we had many different requirements throughout the year. We had a midterm halfway through the semester, we had to lead discussion one day, and towards the end of the year we had to write "micro-relatos", short stories that were only about 2-3 sentances long. The final grade, though, was a 12 page paper researching a topic from the works that we had read throughout the year. I really loved reading short stories by Julio Cortazar, so my final paper had a lot to do with his works and techniques that he used in his writing. I have yet to recieve my grade on this, but I have been doing well on everything else in the class so I am not worried about it! As a plus, our teacher was really amazing and taught us a lot! I actually just went out to coffee with her and some girls from my class where she announced to us that she has just gotten engaged, yay! (sorry for the side story but shes just a really great teacher!)
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Lastly, everyone had to take a class through our study abroad program. I took a class about documental films from Argentina, which was actually pretty interesting. The class is mainly designed to keep up our spanish skills, so the final grade was really simple. For my class, we had to write a 4 page paper comparing the different documentaries we watched (very very simple!). Also, we had to give a 15 minute oral presentation about our paper, and then be "interviewed"- which consisted of asking us how we liked our classes and what our favorite documentary was. This class was by far the easiest, but then again it was soley designed to keep up our speaking abilities so I guess it wasn't supposed to be hard.
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Although I don't have my final grades for all my classes, I am DONE DONE DONE with school work, woo! This year was extremely challenging just for the fact that it was all in a foreign language. Even if the subjects of our classes weren't hard, we had to work doubly as hard as everyone else to make sense of it all and sometimes try to translate it back to english. No matter how comfortable I feel with my spanish, there are always jargon words that I will not know, especially within different subject matters (aka Art history). Also, since Buenos Aires is so large and travelling takes so much time, most classes were only 1 day a week. This meant that each class was 2-3 hours long. It is difficult to pay attention to a lecture in English for 2-3 hours, let alone trying to stay alert enough to translate what is going on and figure out vocab words that you do not know for a long period of time. Reading took much more time than usual and at times it was very frustrating to be reading a book for an hour and only finish 20-30 pages. I will not say that the classes themselves were any harder than classes in the states, but the fact that it was in a foreign language made it much more challenging for all of us. As a Biology major, these classes were very different than what I was used to (Art History, Literature, Documental Film, and Popular Culture).
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I apologize that this blog isn't very exciting (and there are no pictures!), but that was my "study" part of my study abroad experience! I know that usually people focus on telling about traveling and cultural experiences while studying abroad, but I really did learn alot in all of my classes and it really pushed my spanish skills to have to take classes with other Argentine students. After finishing all my classes, I had time to do some last minute travelling and do some fun activities around the city that I hadn't gotten time to do yet. I will add another blog soon about my final activities in BA! Besos!

Feriado (federal holiday) in Chile

My friend Delaney and I by the Pacific Ocean in Valparaiso, Chile

May 25th was Argentina's bicentennial holiday- 200 years of independence, woo hoo! Since the 25th was a Tuesday, the president declared both Monday and Tuesday federal holidays so we all had long weekends in which we could travel. My friend Delaney and I decided to go to Chile- to the cities of Santiago, Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. We left on Thursday evening and landed first in Santiago, and then planned to take a bus to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. One of Delaney's roommates from her University was studying in Valparaiso, so she met us at the airport in Santiago to check out the city with us. We dropped off our luggage at the hostel which was located in the neighborhood of Bellavista, known for its night life and dance clubs and then went to a nice Chilean restaurant for dinner. Chile is well known for its sea food, so since I'm not a big fan of sea food I stuck to steak all weekend. We were pretty tired from travelling, so we checked out the strip with tons of bars that Bellavista is known for and then went back to the hostel to get a good night's sleep.

The next morning, we woke up early and took a gondola up the mountain to Subida a la Virgen (a giant statue of the

Virgen Mary overlooking all of Santiago). We didn't have the best weather, so the view from the top was impeded a little bit by fog, but it was still pretty gorgeous (the city is in the background of the picture, but the fog didn't really allow any of our pictures to turn out well). For some reason there were tons of bikers at the top of the mountain (there must be a trail near by?) and lots and lots of tourists. We looked around for awhile and hiked further up to the top where there was a gorgeous church and lots of cool prayer sights. It was really serene and a good way to get a first look at the city.

After seeing the cool view of the city, we rode the gondola back down and decided to grab some lunch. We had a guide book that suggested a cool city tour with lunch at this giant mercado, so we decided to check it out. We walked to the Mercado and walked into what can only be described as a giant fish market within a huge warehouse. We wandered through all types of weird fish and sea food until we made it to the middle of the warehouse where a bunch of different restaurants serve the freshest sea food in Santiago. After looking around forever to find a table (the place was packed!), we found a spot and Arlyn and Delaney tried out some local fish while I opted for meat again.

We decided to take the self-guided city tour after lunch. We started at the Plaza de Armas, a square surrounded by churches, the national bank and a museum. There were artisans and shows everywhere, and we stopped to watch a cool spray painting artist and also a funny comedy show. It was interesting to see the type of humor used in the comedy show because it was very different than comedy that we are used to in the states. The jokes were very crude and sexual, and even though there were young children in the audience, the actors used vulgar language and made dirty jokes the whole time. At one point, a two year old boy by us was crying and an actor in the show turned and screamed at him "shut up!!!" and everyone just laughed. Very strange, but a good look into Chilean culture.

We continued our city tour to the center of the town, including the old congress, the new congress, and the very beautiful capital building (see photo). Even though Santiago is a large city, it felt extremely small after being in Buenos Aires for so long. There is no way anyone could do a walking tour of Buenos Aires, its just too big! It made me realize how Argentina really has become my home, and how coming home to a "little cities" like Edina and Madison will probably be big reverse culture shock.

After the city tour, we returned to our hostel to change and get ready for a night out on the town. Arlyn suprised us by telling us that one of her friends that was studying with her in Valparaiso was coming to Santiago with us to go out for the night. Her friend, Rodrigo, met us at our hostel and we went out to a bar nearby to have some drinks before we hit up a dance club for the night.

Since this was a big holiday weekend, we knew a lot of people would be travelling, especially kids from our program. We also knew that many would be in Chile for the weekend but we

made no plans to see them or talk to them at all during the trip. Much to our surprize, we walked into the dance club and ran into two guys, Zach and Daniel, from our program (both of which go to Madison with me)! We started talking about what a big coincidence it was that we were all in the same club in Santiago when all of the sudden we saw 4 more girls from our program! It was crazy that all of us ended up in the same club without planning it, but it was good to see them and we had a really fun night together!

The next morning, we woke up early and took a tour of Pablo Neruda's house. Pablo Neruda is a famous writer from Chile who lived in houses both in Santiago and Valparaiso. His house was really cool, with secret passages and really artsy decorations- definitely the house of a writer! We had seen pretty much all of Santiago that we had wanted to see, so we hopped on a bus to Valparaiso, located about an hour and a half west of Santiago.

We arrived in Valparaiso (Valpo, as the natives call it) in the evening and went straight to Arlyn's host home where her family was waiting to serve us the traditional Chilean dinner, called "once" (own-say). Once means 11 in spanish, and apparently the alcohol that Chileans used to drink with dinner had a name that was eleven letters long- hence the name "once". Their dinner consisted of tea or coffee, bread with ham, cheese and guacamole, and alfajores for desert (delicious cookies with cream filling- my dad brought some home after he came to visit me and I will definitely be bringing some back as well, they are amazing!). Arlyn's family was so friendly! They made fun of our "argentine" accents and taught us all about Chilean culture and the lingo (ask me about "ma o meno", "flaite", and "po"). We got to hang out with Arlyn's family more over the weekend and they were truly amazing. They definitely made our experience in Valparaiso so much fun!

After "once" wth Arlyn's family, we washed up and got ready for a night on the town in Valpo. Valparaiso is a city build on hills, so it is almost impossible to walk from Arlyn's house down the hills to the city. They have these taxis called "colectivos" (which means bus in Argentina, very confusing!) that whip around the hills collecting people and bringing them to the bottom for a cheap fee. We hopped in a "colectivo" and made our way down the hill to the main part of town where we went to meet up with some students from Arlyn's program a a bar called Pajaritos (meaning "little birds").

Much to our surprise, as we walked into the bar who did we run into but Zach and Daniel! Not only had we run into them in a dance club in Santiago, but now we ran into them at a bar in Valparaiso! Very weird! We all sat around and drank traditional Chilean drinks- wine (hot or cold) with fruit. Our table ordered hot red wine with strawberry and cold white wine with orange- delicious! We decided to go to a dance club called Nautica, and again we walked in the door and ran into the same four girls from my program who we had run into in Santiago! I could not believe we were running into everyone again in a different city than the night before! Such a coincidence, and so

much fun!

The next morning, Arlyn's family invited us back to their house for a family lunch. In Chile, lunch is the biggest meal of the day (not dinner) and "family" includes everyone- aunts, uncles, cousins, you name it! We walked in and they had set out a bunch of tables end to end with tons and tons of food! Arlyn's host mom bustled around serving course after course (never sitting down to eat herself, as is custom in Chile). We started with a delicious vegetable soup, then had chicken, more veggies, and alfajores for desert. The food just kept on coming, we were stuffed! Again, her family was absolutely amazing and wonderful to us, so hospitable! We were so lucky to have gotten to know a Chilean family and it really made us fall in love with Valparaiso.

After a huge lunch, we decided to tour the city a little. Like I said, Valparaiso is a city built on hills, and since it is a port city it looks alot like La Boca in Argentina, where all the houses are painted with the left over paint from the boats, so there are beautiful colors! The city is gorgeous with the houses on hills and the sea port (see above). In addition to the "colectivos" that take you up and down the giant hills, there are also these cool lifts on either end of the city that go on tracks straight up and down. We walked around, took pictures, did some shopping and took these lifts up and down to see the city.

We were wandering around the city seeing the sights when AGAIN we ran into a bunch of the girls from our program! We decided that we should just plan to have dinner together, since we would probably be running into each other anyways! We all went to this delicious pizza place and again ate way too much, but it was delicious! We called it an early night and went back to the hostel. When we arrived at the hostel, the owner of the hostel was in the main room watching a scary movie with a friend. The owner was really young and really nice, so Delaney and I hung out and watched the movie with him and he offered us vodka and fanta, a strange co

mbination but it was surprizingly good!

Arlyn had to work the next day, so Rodrigo was nice enough to take me and Delaney around town for the day. We did more sight seeing, took more pictures, and shopped around the city. He took us on a walk down the beach, when suddenly I realized that I had never seen the Pacific Ocean before! I got really excited and made Delaney take pictures of me touching the Pacific for the first time, kind of silly but very exciting for me! We went to a nice sea food restaurant right on the beach (where of course I resorted to eating beef...) and took a bus to Vina del Mar, a city right next to Valparaiso that had more beautiful beaches to us to walk down. We ended the day watching the sunset from the beach and the view was absolutely amazing (see picture).

Once Arlyn got done with work we again joined her family for "once" and headed down the hill to a quiet bar where we drank hot wine and reflected on our amazing trip to Chile. Valparaiso is such a quiet and relaxed city, a nice contrast to Buenos Aires. We went to bed early so we could wake up and take a bus back to Santiago in time to make our late-morning flight, so needless to say Delaney and I took nice long naps on the flight!

As I commented in my last post in my "misadventures", my trip to Chile took a bit of a rocky turn when my credit card reached its limit. Since my debit card had been stolen and I had no way of withdrawing money, I thought i would be alright using my credit card for what I could during the week, having Delaney spot me for the things I could not pay for with credit card. Unfortunately, I had charged my flight on my credit card, and since it is a student card I had hit my "monthly limit" and was not allowed to charge more, so I found myself without any form of money (and without a phone) while I was travelling in a foreign country. Luckily, Delaney is an amazing friend and agreed to spot me for the weekend with anything I needed and I was able to pay her back later when I got my debit card in the mail.

It was so nice to have a long weekend away before finals started, but it was kind of sad that we missed the bicentennial weekend in Buenos Aires. On our flight home we were flying into the domestic airport, Jorge Newberry, which is located right in the city (the international airport is about 25 minutes outside of the city). Our pilot decided that it would be cool for us to see the city in celebration from above, so we flew over the biggest street in BA and over some of the areas where big parties were happening. It was so cool to see the city celebrating their independence in the streets, everyone was so happy! The only downside, however, was that since it was a federal holiday everything was shut down- including buses and most cabs. Luckily, the subway was free (so people wouldn't have to work the ticket booths) so I hopped on a subway home where Sara and I watched the bicentennial festivities from the tv in the living room.

For the bicentennial, there were live shows and music commemorating the history of Argentina all over the city. The streets were packed with people celebrating, it really was one of the craziest things I have ever seen. Alot of important things have happened in Argentina within the last 50 years, so their history seems much more "alive" than history in the United States and you can really tell how proud Argentines are of their culture and what they have become. My host mom commented on the fact that although the streets were packed with people, no one was fighting or protesting, everyone was just happy and celebrating together!

Watching the bicentennial celebrations, I found myself filled with pride for the country that I now consider partly my own. Seeing Chile helped me realize that I really did make the best choice for myself in my study abroad country, and that Argentina is a place that I feel really happy and comfortable. Sara was so happy to see me, and it felt great to be back "home". I settled myself back in and got ready to buckle down for all my finals that were coming up and for my last month in Argentina. I will update another blog soon about the end of all my classes and my last few trips on this study abroad experience. I can't believe its coming to an end, ahh! Love and miss you all, and I will see you in less than a week! Besos!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

School stuff, Adventures and Misadventures

Hey guys! Sorry about the format of this post but this website is a little touchy sometimes! So hopefully you all have seen that I posted a new update about my trip to Iguazu. In this post I'm gonna update you on everything else that has been going on here in Argentina, from school to cool activities to robberies, ay!
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School has been going really well so far. Granted, classes are extremely difficult because they are about a subject I do not know in a foreign language. Paying attention to a lecture in Madison is hard enough, but here our classes are longer (usually 2-3 hours) and in a foreign language with jargon pertaining to that subject that I generally do not know. Here's an overview of my classes:
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I'm taking a class called Argentina en Palabras (Argentina in words) at the Catholic University (Universidad Catolica Argentina). It is a class for foreign students, so my class consists of a girl from Mexico, a guy from France, 2 girls from England, 2 other American students and 2 girls from my study abroad program. About halfway through the program (at the end of April) I had a parcial exam about all the works we had read so far. It went really well and I got a pretty good grade, so yay! I also had to lead discussion for a day based on two fantasy stories by Julio Cortazar which went well, and I am currently working on my final paper which is due in two weeks. I have really enjoyed that class and my teacher is so smart and wonderful, I have definitely learned a lot!
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I am taking an Art History class through the University of Salvador (another private university), and I recently finished all of my work for that class. Last Monday I had an in-class exam (with all the other Argentine students, the same test as them, eek!) which went very well, and a few days ago I turned in my final work. My final work was a 15 page paper about four artifacts from northwestern Argentina from about 1000 BC to 2000 DC, discussing the cultures they come from and the role they played in that society. I am so happy to be done with that paper because it took a lot of work, but I think it turned out really nicely! The teacher for that class is very nice, and her assistant (like a TA in the states) is amazingly sweet and helps us out a ton when we don't understand something. The students in the class are nice too, but a little shy. It's a year long class, so although we have 1 more class before their "winter break", all the foreign students are done with that class, woo!
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My hardest class is a seminar at the public university about the emergence of pop culture (culture of the people, not pop culture like we think of it) in Argentina. It's a class of about 300 students, and the professor of the lecture is extremely smart, a lot of the reading for the class is written by him! The foreign students did not have to take the first exam because the teacher knew it would be way too hard for us (the class assumes we have an extensive knowledge about Argentine history, which we obviously do not), and we have a take home test sometime next week. The regular students got their take home test assignment today, but the foreign students take a separate test written by the professor, which we were supposed to receive today but did not. School in Argentina is very chaotic, as I'm sure you can tell by the fact that I do not know when my take home test will be.
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My last class is given by my study abroad program and is about Documental Film in Argentina. This class is fairly easy because it is designed for us as exchange students and really helps us improve our grammatical skills. We have short essays almost every week that are corrected by our teachers and show us where we can improve. We have a paper due at the end of my program (the end of June) and an interview (an oral exam of sorts) with professors of the public university to make sure the program is up to par in what they are teaching us grammatically.
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Overall, school is going very well! This is "final time" but I'm lucky to have all my stuff pretty spread out and I am actually almost done with everything. I have definitely learned a lot and my spanish has improved a lot. (on the right, a picture of me and Nico at Kansas, the American restaurant)
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I have had some really good food in the last few months. Some highlights have been dinner at ritsy places such as Godoy- a warehouse turned into a swanky restaurant and Asia de Cuba- an Asian inspired restaurant right by the port. For my friend Alex's birthday we went to an American restaurant called Kansas and ate barbecued ribs, yum! Sara continue to make delicious dinners at home- we usually eat chicken and potatoes or empenadas. Recently she made these delicious spanish filled pancakes, and spinach soup- I didn't even know I liked spinach! Empenadas and superpanchos still are my favorite foods here, but who knows, maybe I will get sick of them in the last month!
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My friends and I have become obsessed with a restaurant by our houses called "Los Molinos". We found this restaurant the first week because it is by me, Amy, Eddie, Emily, and Alex's houses, it is open 24 hours a day and it takes credit card (hard to come by in Argentina!). Los Molinos has become our late night spot to get some food after a night out, and we have discovered the deliciousness that is ham and pinapple pizza. Most nights, we come storming in, say hello to our usual waiter, Carlos, and they don't even bring us a menu but instead start making our ham and cheese pizza and give us tap water, which they also don't usually serve in Argentina (they make you paid for bottled water usually). Los Molinos has come to be one of my favorite spots in Argentina, and definitely a good place to wind down and eat some food after a night out.
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We have also had some fun nights out here in Buenos Aires. We have been invited to some house parties with Argentines and other American students alike, and have tried all sorts of different night spots- from cool Irish pubs, to salsa dancing or hip hop dance clubs.
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The circus was in town recently and my friend and I went to check it out. Apparently there's different groups from different countries that perform on different nights, so we picked an Italian act. Turns out that the "circus" here is very strange: the show was at night and there were no elephants or clowns or anything- it was Italians speaking in Italian and doing weird dancing and a few arial acts. We got in for free because the guy selling tickets thought the girls in our group were "so beautiful" (which actually happens a lot here, I think it's because we look foreign?), and we tried to keep ourselves from bursting out laughing the whole time because it was just so different than the "circuses" we used to go to.
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5 de Mayo was an interesting celebration here in Argentina. A Mexican holiday that Americans seem to love for some reason, 5 de Mayo is not celebrated by Argentines like it is in the US. All of my friends from my program and I decided to go out to celebrate 5 de Mayo, so we signed up for the 5 de Mayo party at a Mexican bar, only to show up and have it be all Americans with overpriced drinks. Still, we treated ourselves to nachos and margaritas and had a very fun night.
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I have recently acquired my Argentine residency- I am a legal resident of Argentina! Until August... It seems silly that we had to do this at all, and it took soooo much time! In Argentina you can stayfor 90 days without a visa, and if you leave the country at any point and re-enter, your 90 days starts all over again. So, since I have gone to Uruguay I don't even technically need a residency, but for some reason our program needs it to allow our grades/transcripts to transfer back home. This means that we had to pay 300 pesos (about $80), take new passport photos, and go to the migrations office 3 different times to complete the process. It was confusing and definitely unnecessary, but hey, I'm a resident!
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And now for my misadventures in Buenos Aires... A few weeks ago the director of our program hosted a big dinner with all of us so we could talk with him about what was going poorly/well on the program and what we would change. It was a very nice dinner with delicious food, and my friends and I dressed up nicely for the occasion. Usually, I don't bring a purse out, especially not when I'm going to a club, but since I had this dinner first I had it with me and we went straight out after dinner.
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We headed to a few bars to hang out and meet up with our friends, and later in the evening we decided to go to a dance club called LOST. This place is known to have theives that will pickpocket you and steal your wallet, and I have been there many times when friends have gotten pickpocketed. The whole night I spent with my purse on my shoulder (with my coin purse that I use as a wallet inside), with all of my friends around me, and not talking to Argentines that I did not know. We had a fun night and a bunch of us took a cab home and to where else, but Los Molinos. As we got out of the cab, I realized that although I had my coin purse in my wallet, and my ID and my cards such as my Starbucks cards, I had no cash. I thought this was strange because I could have sworn I had about 60 pesos (13 bucks) in there, but my friends told me I probably spent it or something, so I brushed it off an had them spot me. I went home and went to bed, not suspecting anything.
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The next morning I woke up to a frantic Sara knocking on my door telling me that someone was on the house phone speaking to her in engish and she didn't understand what they wanted. I sleepily answered the phone only to hear my father, who told me someone had taken my debit card and spent a lot of money on it! I had no idea how this could have even happened. Not only was my coin purse in my purse all night, but somehow they got into my purse, into my wallet and took only the money and the card- leaving the rest behind leading me to believe that only the cash was missing.
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We cancelled the card right away and got things squared away with the bank, but I realized that I was pickpocketed, and that they are very good at what they do because I had absolutely no idea! It turns out another one of my friends got pickpocketed that night at the same place. We ordered a new card, and I had my credit card safe in my room, but I still felt terrible that I had now been robbed, just like almost every other person on my program.
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A few days later, my friends convinced me to come out with them even though I was upset that I had gotten pick pocketed. With no debit card, I took the remaining cash I had an went and had a fun night with my friends, making sure to leave my purse at home and carry only what I needed and keep it close to my body. But yet, more was to come, and I left my phone in the cab on the way home. I was the last stop, and had been keeping my phone in my pocket (since I refused to bring a purse), and as soon as I stepped out of the cab I realized it had fallen out but the cab was gone, never to be seen again. And since we had hailed it from the street, I had no idea the company name or cab number. My friends and I tried calling my phone to see if someone to answer but to no avail. There I was, no phone and no debit card. Boo! (on the left, a picture of me, Amy, and some other girls at Asia de Cuba)
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Although it was a very sad weekend, I chalked it up to life experiences and laughed it off. My new card came in the mail (after a funny weekend of travelling with no money with my friend Delaney in Chile, next post!) and I bought a phone for really cheap off my friend Nico who had an extra one. So, everything is okay and I now have a phone and a form of money, but it was definitely an interesting weekend. It was also amazing to see what kind of people I have around me here. My host family offered to lend me money for anything I needed and looked out for me, the program coordinators were extremely helpful, my good friend Delaney spotted me for cash all weekend in Chile, and my friends worked around me not having a phone by using skype as our form of communication. I wish that crazy weekend hadn't have happened, but it showed me what kind of people I have surrounding me and how to survive without some of my modern day conviniences.
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Another crazy misadventure happened just this Monday. My friends, Emily, Eddie, Caitlin and I had just turned in our final work for my Art History class and we went to Starbucks nearby to study. This Starbucks is on the corner of two very busy streets in my neighborhood of Argentina, which is very safe and nice. We were standing in line by the entrance to the cafe, and me and Eddie had our backs to the door. Suddenly, I heard commotion behind me and turned around to see a man running out the door and a girl right behind him. This girl had been working at a table right by the door on her computer, when this man walked into the cafe, grabbed the computer and ran out the door! She chased him out the door and onto the street, and he jumped onto a moped that his friend was waiting for him on and they were off with her computer. Not only that, but there was a security guard at Starbucks and a police car right across the street. No one could do anything! It happened so fast! Eddie and I were right there and although Eddie went out the door after him too it was just too fast, it happened in the blink of an eye. This girl was actually working on her computer and BAM its gone! It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen!
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Although its scary that so many things have happened around me here, Buenos Aires really only has a problem with petty crime like this, not violent crimes. Yes its sad that this girl just lost her computer, especially because she was probably working on a final paper or studying for a final exam like all Argentine students, but she is totally okay and no one got hurt.
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Even with all these things happening, I absolutely love this country and am so happy to be here. I can't believe my trip is almost over and I only have one month left. It will be nice to come home, but there are definitely things about this country that I will miss dearly.
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Sara and Marcelo have started telling me (almost daily) how much they will miss me when I go. They have host students all the time, I think I am their 8 or 9th student, and they have another student coming the same week that I leave (crazy!) but they say that they have bonded with me so much and we get along so well. I really do feel like Sara is a mother/grandmother figure to me, and Marcelo is a protective big brother/uncle. I can't begin to express how much I will miss them, they have welcomed me with such open arms in this country and made me feel so at home. School has been crazy recently and is now winding down, and I'm taking the time to take in everything that I will miss. In the next few weeks I plan to do the few things I have left to do on my "checklist", take pictures of all of the crazy things that exist here that I would never have expected, and take in all I can in my last month. Hopefully I will update my blog again today or tomorrow about my trip I took to Chile at the end of May, and the bicentennial celebration in Argentina. The mundial (world soccer playoffs) starts this week, so be sure to cheer on Argentina with us! Put on your blue and white and cheer hard, and I will be back before you know it! Love and miss you all!
- -Sara

Iguazu Falls - The Biggest Waterfalls in the World!

The whole Iguazu gang in front of the "smaller" waterfalls (in the back is Emily and Alex, then in front from L to R is Dallas, Kasia, Amy, Me and Andrew)

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't updated my blog in so long! I have been really busy so I will try to write a few entries today about what I've been up to for the last (I can't believe its going so fast) 2 months.

The first weekend in May, a bunch of my friends and I decided to take a trip to Puerto Iguazu, home to the largest waterfalls in the world and a trip that I have wanted to take since I knew I was coming to Argentina. Unfortunately, my dad and I did not get to take this trip while he was here, so although I had a fabulous time I want him to know that I wish he would have been able to come too! Anyways, we left Thursday May 6th on an evening bus to Iguazu. The bus ride is at least 17 hours long (depending on how many stops we make), so my friends and I all gathered up homework and things to keep us occupied for the journey and hopped on the bus.

The buses here for long distance travelling are amazingly comfortable. They have chairs that lean back really far with footrests and all the windows have thick curtains to keep out the early morning sun. We did some work, had an iffy dinner (provided by the bus company) and went to sleep. Early the next morning, we woke up and started planning our weekend. The forecast said it was going to be rainy pretty much all weekend, so we knew we wouldnt get fabulous views but it was still worth it to us.

Andrew and Kasia had been talking about seeing these cool ruins a few hours outside of Puerto Iguazu (the town where Iguazu falls and the national park is located). As they were checking out these cool sights in our lonely planet book, they realized that the ruins are 5 hours outside of Puerto Iguazu, but that our bus would pass it on the way. We talked to the bus driver who told us that although it wasn't a usual stop on their route, they would pull over at the city where the ruins were located and we could hop off and go see them. Thus began an amazing adventure...

As we approached the small city of San Ignacio (I think...), we collected our belongings and hopped off the bus. The bus drove away and we, a group of American students, were standing on the side of the road in a town in the middle of nowhere with backpacks and all of our stuff. We didn't really know what to do, and were struggling to trudge through the mud and rain with all our stuff when a man in a little white car pulled over to us. Turns out he was the "head of tourim" for the town and was really nice. He took us the bus company's kiosk where he offered to let us leave our stuff. Since we didn't know the town or this strange man, we agreed to leave our backpacks but took out anything of value and shoved it into the few purses that the girls had. He then led us to his "tourism hut" and gave us maps of the towns and coupons for cheap lunch in town. The journey was going well so far!

We trudged through the rain a few miles, following the map, until we came to the hub of town that appeared to be brimming with tourist activity. There were shops everywhere selling all sorts of native products, and many of my friends sprung for llama sweaters, flutes, or artisan jewelry. We headed over to the ruins site, bought our entrance tickets and waited for our tour guide.

The other tourists in our tour group all happened to speak english, so we chatted with them

until the next tour "in english" was to start. There was a group from Norway, some Australians, and some other Americans. The guide did not speak english very well, but since no one else in the tour group spoke spanish (except our little group), we had to endure a very awkward tour. The explinations of everything might have been shakey, but the sights were amazing!

The ruins were huge and absolutely amazing! There were over a thousand little two roomed houses where the Guarani (indigenous) people lived with their families. The picture to the left is of us standing in the ruins of what was their church. The people who ran the missions taught the Guarani people how to build these houses and how to sustain themselves, so there were also workshops and schools as well. Something really interesting about these ruins is that the men and the women were kept seperate almost at all times. The single women lived in the oposite area of the complex as the men, and even in the cemetaries there were areas for men, women, girls and boys. The ruins were really cool, and definitely worth the detour!

After our tour of the ruins, we got to roam about on our own for a little bit and take more pictures, and then we headed back into the touristy part of town for some lunch. We had milanesas (breaded chicken or fish sandwich with fried egg) and french fries, and headed back to the edge of town to get our stuff and get going.

The "head of tourism" told us that the same bus company that we had taken to get there passes by the town every half hour, and for a small fee (about $10) we could hop on another one whenever we were done. We timed our walk back perfectly so we could pick up our stuff from the bus kiosk (that had "siesta" until 3:00) and make the 3:30 bus that would be passing by, but upon arriving back to the bus kiosk we saw that the owners were not back and our stuff was locked inside. Realizing we should have known better than to count on the promptness of Argentines (who are always, always running late), we helplessly sat outside and watched as the 3:30 bus rolled by.

Finally, the owners returned and we got our stuff, safe and sound, and walked back to the bus stop to wait for the next bus. Although we had to wait in the rain for about another hour, we were all in good spirits and so happy to have taken the adventure to see the ruins. Once the bus arrived, though, we had other problems. The bus driver took our 40 pesos ($10) and told us to find a seat up on the second level, but upon climbing the stairs to the top level we realized that the bus was completely full. We were pretty sure that this meant we would be standing for the next 5 hours...

Thankfully, people slowly started getting off and by about 2 hours in all 7 of us had found seats. We all took naps, and arrived in Puerto Iguazu around 9pm. Not knowing where our hostel was located, we hopped in cabs and told them the address. We asked the cab driver how much it was going to cost and he replied that it would only be about $2 (8 pesos), great! After the cab driver made 2 u-turns, we realized we were probably lost. Turns out that our hostel was on the same street as the bus stop, and the cab driver just couldn't find the exact address, so we paid him the 8 pesos and got out and walked the one block from the bus stop to the hostel, another small adventure for the weekend!

The hostel we stayed at had been recomended by friends on our program who had already gone to Iguazu, so we knew it would be nice. It had a pool and a cool area with swings and hammocks outside, and we settled into our hostel rooms (that had their own bathrooms, a big deal for hostels!), and got ready for dinner at a nearby restaraunt where Viviana, the owner of the hostel, had suggested and given us vouchers for.

The restaurant, named TaTas (haha) was really good and treated us to complimentary champagne since we came on Viviana's recommendation. We were pretty tired, so although we wanted to check out the town, we called it a night pretty early and got ready for the next day when we were going to go to the National Park and see the falls.

Viviana set us up the next morning by buying our passes to "La Gran Adventura" (the Great Adventure) over the phone, so once we took the bus to the national park, we paid

our entrance fee (really expensive for Americans, grr!) we walked right down the path to start the treck. On our walk through the park to get to the sight of the jungle treck, we found ourselves face to face with the infamous coatis (ko-ah-tees). Coatis are extremely common in Iguazu, and they look like raccoons with an ant eater nose (right). They are pretty timid, but like any animal in a national park, coatis know that humans usually carry food, and they are pretty ferocious trying to get it. They ran after my friend Dallas (who strangely wasn't carrying any food) and came close to all of us, so we snapped a few pictures and continued on our way.

The first part of "La Gran Aventura" was an hour long cruise through the park. We got onto a big open air jungle cruiser and started to cruise through the jungle. Our tour guide was really great, pointing out certain plants and animals indigenous to Iguazu and telling us the history of the park. At one point, the tour guide thought it would be a good idea to stop and show us this huge spider web hanging between the trees. Unfortunately for us, they stopped when the spider web was directly over our heads and the big spider was sitting there. It was really, really scary! But, while we were stopped looking at the spider web, the driver spotted a troup of capuchin monkeys high up in the trees! Ever since my primate behavioral ecology class I have been dying to see a monkey in its natural habitat, and although I didn't get any great pictures (they were too high up in the trees) it was a really exciting sight!

After the jungle cruise, we headed down toward the water for the second and most exciting part of "La Gran Aventura". We changed into our waterproof gear and loaded all of our stuff into giant waterproof bags and boarded the boat that we would take all the way up to the falls.

We were so excited, and after a few minutes of cruising up the river, the trees cleared and we got our first shot at the falls. They were absolutely gorgeous! There are no words to explain how amazing they are, and pictures hardly show it (see right). We got to take pictures from afar of both the small falls (in the picture on the right) and the larger falls, called "la garganta del diablo" or "the devils throat". Because of the recent rain, we couldn't get that close to the big falls, but we still got some gorgeous shots and the rain even cleared up and the sun shown through! It was so magnificent, one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my whole life!

After taking pictures of both sets of falls, we were told to put our cameras into the waterproof bags and get ready for our "shower". We put our stuff away and held on tight as the boat went up to, and under, both sets of falls! None of us could see anything since the water was pounding so hard, and we were all laughing so hard we could hardly breathe! It was so cool, and there was a guy with a waterproof camera taking a video of the whole thing! Emerging soaking wet, we docked by the falls and all grabbed our stuff and got off. We signed up to buy the video (we bought one video and copied it amongst ourselves) and started our hike up the mountain to get b

ack to the top.

On the way up, we noticed an amazing picture-worthy sight at Salta Bosetti (Bosetti falls), but since we were soaking wet and cold we decided to come back once we changed. To the left is the picture of us by Salta Bosetti after we had changed back into our warm clothes (from L to R: Andrew, Dallas, Kasia, Emily, Amy, Me and Alex). The falls were so beautiful from below, and although we had to treck up the mountain twice (once after we had gone up and changed), it was worth it to take this cute picture! Up the mountain again, we started our adventure along the top of the waterfalls, on overlooks that the park built so we could walk across the entire set of falls and see it from almost every possible angle.

After stopping for a quick lunch and chasing off the coatis that wanted lunch too, we walked along the top of the "smaller falls". We walked and took tons of pictures and observed the amazing view. It was shocking to see how much water pours out of the falls every second, and how far down it really goes! I took a million pictures of the treck on top of the falls, so I will be happy to show you all when I get home but there's just not room on here! After seeing all of the "small falls" from above, we took a little train (it was adorable) to the "big falls" on the other side of the park. Once we arrived at the enterance of "la Garganta del Diablo", we started t

he long treck along these man made bridges to the mouth of the waterfall. The walk was soooo long and was amazing how long the bridges were! It was a little freaky walking over all those bridges, but we made it to the falls without problems.

The picture on the right is from "la Garganta del Diablo", which is pretty aptly named because it definitely did look like we were looking down the throat of a giant beast! The pictures I took do no justice to how big and magnificent these falls were, they were truly breathtaking. Like I said before, we were so lucky that the rain let up and the sun came out so we could really enjoy the experience. Just look at that rainbow! Iguazu falls were so cool, and I will never see anything like it again in my entire life.

The only thing left to do in the park was to go see the falls from the Brazil side (the park shares boarders with Paraguay and Brazil), but since Brazil is not open to American tourists without a pricey visa and Emily had forgotten her passport all together, we decided to head out early and take a nap before exploring the city for the night. We all showered (our second shower of the day?) and headed out to another restaurant that Viviana recommended. Of course, we were showered with complimentary champagne and appetizers again, and enjoyed another delicious dinner. Viviana also gave us vouchers for free drinks at many of the bars in town, so we headed out for a night of fun.

If the extremely short cab ride/walk from our bus station to our hostel didn't tip us off as to how small Puerto Iguazu is, this night certainly did. We walked into the "nightlife" part of town, which again was only a few blocks from our hostel, and were showered in free "capirinhas" a strange drink with floating limes in it. The boys really liked the capirinhas and downed all of our free ones, while the girls opted out and bought our own drinks. We had a fun night out at the towns 3 bars (yeah, really small...) and went home.

The next day we headed to "Tres Fronteras", or "three fronteirs" where you can see Argen

tina, Brazil and Paraguay all in one place. We walked for about 20 minutes to get there, and although our friends told us you could go swimming in the river that belonged to all three countries so that you were "three places at once", we couldn't really find it nor did any of us want to go swimming in the brown, murky water. Instead, we wantered around the small shops and look out points and took a few pictures (see right, Emily, Amy, me and Kasia in front of the flags from the three countries). There honestly wasn't much to see, so we headed back to the hostel and packed up to get on our bus home.

We checked out and thanked Viviana for everything and headed to the local bakery to pick up dinner to take on the bus (just in case we were left with the same gross meal as last time...). We got on the bus around 4:00pm, and got ready for another 17 hours of homework and chatting. I worked on a presentation for my Literature class (more to come in my next post) and we watched the strange movies the bus offered (an italian movie with spanish subtitles). Dinner was not the same as last time, but surprizingly much worse, some type of grey hot dish with really bad meat - definitely the worst food I have had in this country, but I guess what can you expect from bus food?

We started realizing that the bus ride home seemed to have much more stops than the ride there, and a few times Argentine police would get on an take a look around the bus. At one point there was a drug sniffing dog and my friend Emily was asked to take her blanket off her bag and show what was in it. We found out later that the 'tres fronteras' is a place where a lot of drug trafficking happens, and the drug lords try to bring drugs into the city. Because of this, the ride home was much longer, and although we were supposed to get in around 9am we didnt get in until around noon. We were all so tired from our long trip but so happy to have done it!

Iguazu falls were absolutely amazing, so beyond word or pictures. We were so lucky to have such good luck with our side-adventure to the ruins, and we were blessed with good weather and good people like Viviana to show us a good time! The other people at the hostel were really nice as well. There was a man named Richard who was a doctor and quit to travel the world (he was a little odd...), a nice boy from Saint Louis Park that went to Madison, and a really cool group of students from Ireland. It was my first time staying in a hostel and it was very nice, a lot more comfortable and safe than I would have guessed! This was definitely the trip of a life time and I will never forget it!

I will try to add another update today about other stuff going on here in Argentina, and also about my trip to Chile last weekend. Love and miss you all!

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Colonia, Uruguay

On the Beaches of Colonia, Urugay (from left to right, Amy, Morgan, Dallas, Me, and Delaney)

Every year, our study abroad program plans a trip to Colonia, Uruguay, where the director of our program, Mario, owns a house/bed and breakfast. Since our program is so big, we were split into two groups to partake in the trip on different weekends, and as it happened to turn out almost all of my girl friends were on my trip and all of my guy friends were on the other trip, so this was a nice girls weekend for my friends and I. Colonia is such a gorgeous city and we had so much fun! Definitely one of the most fun things I have done so far.

This trip is included in the price of being a part of the program, so we didn't have to worry about paying anything and simply met the leaders of our program at the boat station at 8:30am on Friday morning. We got our tickets and went through customs (for my first time other than Argentina, yay! Another stamp in my passport!) and proceeded to board the boat. I have never been on a cruise so I don't really have a good comparison, but this boat was absolutely amazing and huge! Not like any "boat" I have ever seen. There were 3 floors; the first floor had cafes and a duty-free shop (that sold very strange things, lots of perfume and alcohol but at good prices because there is no tax!), and the second floor had more cafes a

nd a huge seating area for anyone that wanted to sleep or relax for the trip. My friends and I propped ourselves at a cute little table on the upper deck and got to enjoy the sights and the sun as we started our 3 hour boat ride across the bay to Uruguay.

It was a georgeous day for a boat ride, and although it only takes an hour to cross the sea, or program chose the "slow" boat so we could enjoy the trip a little more. We bought mimosas and chatted as we left Buenos Aires behind us and headed into open water towards Uruguay. We snapped a few pictures of the shoreline (see right, me and my good friend Emily) and relaxed. At one point, an older man came over to our table and asked if he could sit with us in an empty seat. We got to talking with him and his wife who came to join us shortly after and learned that they were from Sweden and owned a sailboat that they had docked in Uruguay. They were so nice and had a teddy bear named Charlie (just like Matthew's) who wore a sailor outfit and a captains hat that "looked over their journeys". They were so much fun and we chatted the whole trip. The husband told us he wrote the song "Dancing Queen" by Abba, but who knows if that is true or not, still makes for a funny story!

When we docked in Colonia, we were met by the director of our program, Mario, wearing a University of Wisconsin tshirt, wooo! I snapped a picture with him on my friends camera, so hopefully I ca

n put it up later. We hopped into a few big buses and started the journey to Marios house. We were dropped on a little dirt road that looked like it was in the middle of nowhere and hiked a little ways until we came up to Marios beautiful house (see picture, left). He has a beautiful house with lemon tree orchards surrounding it. There was a pool, a lake, and lots of beautiful scenery. We all changed into swimsuits and layed out by his pool as he prepared lunch for us all. We wandered around the lemon trees and swam in the pool until lunch, which was served to us by professional servers as we sat a big tables with white tableclothes in his backyard. We had a traditional Argentine asado, or barbecue, with chicken, beef, pork, sausages, you name it. Just when we thought we were getting full, another server would come around with a different kind of meat or side dish. We sipped on wine and chatted and after lunch none of us could hardly move from eating so much!

Afterwards, Mario took us on a walk down to the beach (see picture above of my friends and I). The beach was gorgeous but the water was really cold, and we took in the views and layed out until it was time to go. We all got back on the buses and were dropped off in smaller groups at various hotels. About 15 girls and I stayed at a hotel called "Las Angeles", or angels. My friends Amy, Dallas and I took showers and took a nap, opting out of the free city tour (it was night time so we were sure you couldn't see much and we were tired and had the entire next day to get to explore the city). We woke up from our nap and went to a delicious dinner at "The Drugstore".

Another thing that the program provided for free, "The Drugstore" had an adapted menu for us (since we were such a big group) and was so much fun. Britney Spears music videos played on a big screen at the back of the resaurant and we ate chicken, beef or spaghetti and drank a sangria-like drink with fruit floating in it. Desert was absolutely delicious, I got a piece of chocolate cake with dulce de leche filling (dulce de leche is extremely popular here, and from what I can tell its pretty close to caramel). After dinner, some of us went to a cute karaoke bar nearby for a little bit and decided to go home and get some sleep so we could

enjoy the next day.

That morning, we decided to sight-see the tiny town of Colonia, so we rented a moped and a golf cart for us 6 girls (2 on the moped, 4 in the golf cart). The city is so small and old that mopeds are really popular, and you can rent them almost anywhere for $35(US) a day. Since my friend Dallas and I both own mopeds in Madison, we were the designated drivers and let the girls switch off riding on the back with one of us (in the picture at the right is Dallas driving with Emily on the back). We drove around and got to see the "old" part of the city, which was beautiful with cobblestone streets, cute cafes and botiques. We also got to drive along the shoreline and observe the beautiful scenery. We had lunch at a cute pizza place that specialized in an Uruguay traditional dish, chivito, which is bascially a steak sandwich with egg, lettuce, tomato, cheese, ham and mayo. Delicous!

After lunch, we headed down to the end of the shoreline where a woman that works at our hotel told us we could find a man who rents out horses. We drove along until we saw 7 horses tethered in this little forrest with a man and his 6 year old son. Wondering if this was the right place, we talked to the man who told us we could rent the horses for 10 pesos every half hour ($2.50/half hour, ridiculously cheap!). We all agreed right away and we got situated on horses (that didn't have names, weird) an

d got ready for our adventure. My friend Amy had never ridden a horse before so the guide put her on a little black pony, she looked so funny (she is all the way on the right in the picture)! The guide came with us and showed us all sorts of sites around the city. We rode past an old bull fighting ring, got to see the poorer area where locals greeted us enthusiastically, and the very rich part of the city with amazing houses. We also rode along the beach and into the water so our horses could have a drink. The guide took a picture of all of us (see left, notice the small pony on the left, which was the guide's horse and was the "girlfriend" of my horse, so they always walked together, so sweet!) and we rode back into town to end our ride. It was so much fun, the guide was such a sweetheart and we tipped him heavily and got back on our moped/golf cart to return them and get back on the boat to come back home.

After checking out of our hotel and thanking the adorable women that work there, we boarded the boat again around 8pm. Since it was night and a little chilly on the water, we opted to sit downstairs. We grabbed a quick dinner of sandwiches from the cafe and took naps. When we got home Amy, Emily, Kasia and I got changed and ready to go out to meet up with a few Argentine friends, Fernando and Ariel. We met the boys at a club that the boys wanted to go to and were shocked to see how swanky and cool it was! It was a place called Roxy and there were huge lines of Argentines waiting to get in. We were getting ourselves prepared for a night of waiting in line when the boys told us they got us on the list, so we got to use the VIP enterance and walk right in! It was such a cool club and we had lots of fun.

All in all, I had a fabulous weekend and got ready for another week of classes. I am so thankful that we got to go to Colonia, Uruguay and that we didn't have to worry about paying! We were blessed with really nice weather and I had a blast hanging out with the girls all weekend. I will add another blog soon about everything else that is goin on down here! Love you all! Besos

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Daddy in BsAs!

Daddy and I at Senor Tango

(by the way, my spell check is only working in Spanish right now, so sorry if I spell things wrong!)

Sorry I haven't updated my blog in awhile, but with classes in full swing (finally) I've been pretty busy! I'll try to write a few posts to get you guys up to speed on all the stuff I've been doing since my last post!

March 28th-April 2nd my dad came to visit me, yay! I was so excited for his arrival, and with it being semana santa (holy week leading up to Easter) I had a few days off from classes to hang out with him and do all the touristy things I have wanted to do. On Sunday my dad arrived in the morning and came to meet my host family before we headed out to la Feria del San Telmo. His hotel was about 3 blocks from my apartment, which was awesome, so I headed over to meet him and give him a big ole hug! We had breakfast in his hotel, which basically consisted of fruit and croissonts or "media-lunas" (half moons) and chatted. His hotel supposively used to be a gay hotel? We don't really know what that means but the men that worked there definitely fit the stereotype, although they were extremely helpful and nice the whole week. We walked back to my apartment and he came in to meet my host mom, Sara, and my host brother, Marcelo. We sat and chatted, me translating back and forth between Sara and my Dad since Marcelo speaks english pretty well. My dad brought gifts for Sara and Marcelo for taking such good care of me: two cotton tshirts for Marcelo which were his request since cotton from Argentina shrinks really easily, and a carving of a duck for Sara since she collects and loves ducks. Daddy took a tour of my apartment and took some cute pictures from my balcony (check them out on facebook!). After meeting my host family, we went to la Feria del San Telmo, a cute little market in the San Telmo neighborhood.

With his first look into life in Argentina, we watched street tango performers, wandered through the little antique kiosks and other street vendors, and munched on empenadas. There were people everywhere, tons of tourists and Buenos Aires inhabitants both, and he got to practice some of his spanish on the vendors. I bought myself a really pretty photograph of La Boca area (more to come on that later) and we bought some gifts for people back home. Lunch was at a little cafe where we devoured our empenadas and people watched. The little kiosks are endless and sell anything you could think of, lots of antique items and collections of all sorts of things. As in Argentina custom, we decided it was a good time for a nap before the evening, so we headed home to rest up. All in all, I think the San Telmo fair was a very good start to his Argentina trip.

After a much needed "siesta", we met back up to take Sara and Marcelo out to dinner. We went to a delicious parilla (basically barbecue with lots of meat) right by the Reco

leta cemetary where we sat outside and enjoyed the wonderful Argentina night. Daddy got his first Argentine steak that he had been desperately waiting for which was absolutely delicious! At one point I had to challenge my spanish skills by translating Daddy's jokes about why there are fences around cemetaries- because people are dying to get in! It really was an awesome night, good food and good conversation.

The next day we decided to check out the Recoleta cemetary (being too afraid to check it out by night of course). The cemetary is huge and absolutely amazing! There are cats everywhere, which we think are to keep out the rats? Who knows. We got a map to guide us around because it is actually like a small city, and got to direct our route so we could see the mosoleums of famous Argentines. We saw the graves of Diego Sarmiento (a very famous Argentine writer who became President), Firpo (the famous boxer) and of course Evita, to name only a few. The mosoleums are so ornate and breathtaking, with biblical references everywhere and a lot of symbolism in the statues. There were spectacular sites next to sites that were literally crumbling and falling apart. I was very impressed with the cemetary, and we spent a couple of hours just wandering around and looking at the beauty that is the cemetary. After working up a good appetite, I took Daddy to my favorite Pancheria right by the cemetary, which are amazing hot dog stands. I got a hot dog with ketchup, mustard, three cheese sauce and spicy sauce, and all hot dogs come with shoestring potatoes on top, YUM! They cost about 5 pesos ($1.25), and our drinks were actually more expensive than the hotdogs themselves. Daddy liked them so much he went back for seconds, which is not suprizing because most of my guy friends here can polish off about 3 in one sitting.

That evening I left Daddy to go to my evening class at la Universidad del Salvador, while he went and bought tickets for us and some of my friends to La Bomba del Tiempo

. We took a cab to the Konex center where La Bomba del Tiempo is held, and stepped out into a scene that to quote my father "looked like a giant frat party". La Bomba del Tiempo is a big drum show held in an open air venue where people go and drink and smoke a lot of marijuana and enjoy the music. My dad got to meet a bunch of my friends (see picture, Nicolas in the blue, Eddie, and Hannah) and revert to his college days as people around us did all sorts of crazy stuff. We are pretty sure that the drummers are not musically trained at all and had no real plan of what they were playing, but it still sounded pretty cool and people really got into it. We had a blast watching the show and dancing to the music, and afterwords he took me and my friends out for pizza. Daddy got to get to know my friends personalities a little better at dinner, especially my friend Matt who constantly tried to say things to shock my father, to no avail. It was a very fun night, and although we didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into I thought it was so great!

On Tuesday I had class in the middle of the afternoon right by la Casa Rosada, so I took Daddy on the bus and dropped him off to wander around while I continued on to class. Daddy had lunch at a really nice restaurant filled with business men, fed the pidgeons, and checked out la Plaza del Mayo until I got back. He also checked out the national bank, which I have yet to see but he said was aweso

me. We tried to go on a tour of la Casa Rosada after my class but it is only open Thursdays on Sundays, so we took pictures from the outside and did some shopping and then returned home for a siesta before dinner. That night, we went to dinner with a bunch more of my friends at another nice parilla right by my house, the Buenos Aires Grill, and headed to Volta, a delicious ice cream place, after. It was so nice for my dad to get to meet my friends down here, and everyone really had a good time. Eddie and Nick came to hang out with my dad again, and my friends Harrison, Emily, and Delaney came to meet him and get to know him as well. My friends now talk about "papa schroedes" and my dad asks me about all the kids he met when he talks to me. Since the next day was the beginning of Semana Santa (holy week), most of my friends would be leaving to take advantage of the long weekend and travel, so I was so happy my friends and my dad got to hang out.

On Wednesday I had class in the morning and in the evening, so I ran home between the two so Daddy and I could do some shopping on Avenida Santa Fe, a bustling street right by my house that looks much like New York City. We went to lunch at Los Molinos, a restaraunt a block away from me that my friends and I always go to since it is open 24 hours a day and accepts credit cards, so the waiters all know us. After our lunch we wandered around, trying to find a soccer jersey for my brother and other souveneirs. After buying two soccer jerseys (one for me and one for Matthew) and other random goods, I darted back to the other side of the city for my evening class. That night we decided to wander around and find a good place for dinner in my neighborhood. On our walk, we met a nice Argentine man who helped us find a place to eat. He was so friendly and excited to practice his English, as are almost all Argentines! He was walking his two german-shepard dogs and told us about how he raises german-shepards and works as a doctor here in Buenos Aires. He was definitely a little strange but helped us find a great restaurant called Cholitos. We ate choripan, basically a smoked sausage on bread with chimichurry, and more steaks! Another delicious dinner in Buenos Aires, and since we had a full day planned the next day we went home and skyped with Tappy from Dad's hotel room and went to bed.

The next day we returned to la Casa Rosada for a tour and hung out at la Plaza de Mayo. Argentina is about to celebrate its 200th anniversary, so the capital building was under construction in many areas but it was still gorgeous! We got to see the room of Argentine women commemorating the important role many famous woman (including Evita) have played in Argentine history, with me translating for Dad the bibliographies of each woman that was recognized. We went out onto the famous balcony where Evita made her speeches as Daddy sang a little bit of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina". We walked through the hall of Presidents (sculptures of their heads, actually a little creepy), got to see rooms where different diplomats meet, took a cute picture outside in front of the Argentine flag, and I even got to snap a picture with an Argentine guard!

After our Casa Rosada tour, we grabbed some lunch at the same restaurant that my dad had eaten the other day while I was in class, except this time it was virtually empty due to the fact that everyone travels during Holy Week. We killed some time walking around and buying gifts from different street vendors and chatting with Argentines we met on the street. We went to this cool shop that was filled wall to wall with anything you could think of, old coins and bottles to beautiful jewelry. Definitely an interesting store, but it was huge and there was so much to see that we stayed for about a half hour and didn't even buy anything. We later made a stop at Starbucks, just so we could take a picture and send it to my mother! For the record, it tasted exactly like Starbucks back home.

We finished up our coffee and went to get in line for our bus tour of Buenos Aires. On our way to get in line, we realized that there were signs up saying that the bus stop had moved down the street, which seemed weird to me but hey, this is Argentina and they do weird things here. As we were trying to figure out where we were supposed to go we realized the cause for the bus stop change- they had shut down the main street by la Plaza de Mayo to film a commercial of people running down the street carrying random appliances. We stood and watched for awhile as they took a bunch of takes of this mass of people running up the street. Just another example of how crazy Buenos Aires is.

The bus for the Buenos Aires tour is hilarious and exactly what you would expect as a gaudy tourist activity, its a big yellow bus where people sit on the top deck wearing giant headphones to listen to the tour while weilding big cameras taking pictures of everything. It started out with a tour around the capital building area, winding around to almost every area of Buenos Aires while passing parks and monuments galore. I really have never realized how many pretty parks Buenos Aires has and how many cool monuments and statues we have, in commemoration of special events and given to Argentina from all different countries. One minute we would be driving through a New York City-looking business and shopping area with skyscrapers and people everywhere, and the next minute we would be driving by a serene park with people sitting and drinking mate. We really got to see areas of Buenos Aires that I haven't even seen yet. Check out the pictures of the city tour on facebook, because there are just way too many to put here! As the sun set in Buenos Aires we got to see cool buildings and areas by night, and we jumped off the bus as it made a stop right by my house to get ready for our night.

We cabbed it home and changed for our night at Senor Tango, an awesome tango show. Dad organized the tickets with the guys at the front desk of his hotel, who were extremely helpful. A car came and picked us up at the hotel and brought us to the venue where we started out the night with a nice dinner. We were put at a booth with a couple from Colombia, and we started chatting right away. The husband, Jaime was very nice and spoke english very well, and his wife was equally chatty in spanish with me. We shared a delicious dinner and I sipped on wine as we waited for the show to start. Jaime took an adorable picture of me and Daddy (see above) and somebody that worked for the restaraunt took another one that was blown up and framed and given to my mom when Dad returned home. The show started and we moved over to our seats to watch men on horses (yes horses) tell the story of the gauchos, or cowboys, of Argentina. There was dancing, singing and music and it was all over the top and so cool to watch. There were the "tango twins", who sang and danced with an audience member, an ariel act where a lady hung from the ceiling on fabric, and amazing tango dancing with a little humor thrown in. The show was truly spectacular, and we had so much fun! The car took us home after the show and we passed out after a long and fun filled day.

On Friday, for my dads last day, we decided to explore La Boca, a big port area in Buenos Aires (named "the mouth" because of the way the coast makes it look like an open mouth) that is full of colors and street tango, probably the most touristy area of all of Buenos Aires. We wandered around and took pictures of the streets with brightly colored buildings, painted by the Italian immigrants with the paint remaining from painting their boats. There are cool sculptures of famous Argentines hanging out of the windows and stores filled to the brim with "Boca Juniors" paraphenalia, one of the popular soccer (futbol) teams of Buenos Aires located in, where

else, la Boca. We went to a street pancheria for lunch and wandered around taking pictures of the cool scenery around us. There were street tango performers all over that you could pose and take pictures with, cool street acts and artisans selling their work everywhere. Daddy bought a cool picture of La Boca, and we posed for a picture with our Edina Magazine in front of the famous corner store that sells alfajores, delicious cookies that Dad brought back to the states for everyone to try. Dad bought a cool belt made of Argentine leather (very well made and pretty cheap) and we admired the sites around us until we decided it was about time for dad to go home and get ready to fly home. We said goodbye to Sara (Marcelo was gone visiting his sister for Easter), who commented that my dad was the nicest parent she had met yet, which means a lot because she has had 6 or 7 students live with her! We went back to the hotel to get his suitcases, I gave him all of our gifts to bring back for me and we shared a sad goodbye, and he hopped in the car and took off.

I had so much fun with his visit! We got to do pretty much everything we wanted to do, and since I had saved a lot of stuff I wanted to do until he came I got to learn a ton more about Buenos Aires. We had so much fun with our friends and my host family, and of course the food was absolutely amazing, steak steak steak! Marcelo now emails back and forth with my dad and both he and Sara always ask about my family. Although it definitely made me home-sick to see him leaving in the cab, I know I will see you all sooner than we realize and that I have to make the most of my time while I'm here. Since most of my friends were travelling for the weekend I got to have a really relaxing weekend hanging out in my pajamas, doing homework, and watching movies with Sara. On Easter, I went to coffee with a friend and then we went to a service at a magnificent church by the cemetary with her host family. It was such a good week and we couldn't have asked for better weather! I am so lucky to have a family that loves and cares about me so much and as much as I wish everyone could come visit me, I had a blast showing Dad the country that more and more I like to think of as "mine". I will post another update about what I have been doing these last couple of weeks too! As always, love and miss you all! Besos!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Mar del Plata, St Pattys day and Badger Basketball

My friend nick and I hangin at the beach!

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't updated everyone in awhile! I have been doing a lot of things and having a lot of fun, so this post is a long one!

Last weekend a large group of us went to Mar Del Plata, a tourist destination south of Buenos Aires. Since it is about a 6 hour drive, we took the midnight bus and slept on the way up. The bus was actually very nice and cheap, so it is now definitely my prefered way of traveling. The large seats recline almost all the way, there are footrests, and thick curtains to keep out the sunlight. We arrived around 6 in the morning, and since we couldn't check into the hotel until noon we grabbed our stuff and headed to the beach! We spend the morning relaxing and taking in the ocean view. We met a cool surfer from California who said he could tell we were Americans even while he was far out in the water, so I guess we are not blending in as well as we would like. It might have also been our large amount of luggage since we had no where to go...

Friday and Saturday were spend lounging on the beach without a care in the world. Mar del Plata is a very tourist driven city, but since school has started here the young people weren't around and it was just a bu

nch of elderly people, very Atlantic city-esque. The ocean was very cold but safe to swim in, although my host brother Marcelo warned me that they do have sharks. There were beach side vendors selling everything you could think of; jewlery, pirated DVDs, balls, underwear, clothes, anything. We bartered things down and ended up getting some cute jewelry and headbands, while our friend Alex bought a Power Rangers kite and entertained himself (and the rest of the beach) for a few hours (picture, spot the gringos!). We ate superpanchos (hot dogs) and delicious pastries called churros from beach side vendors all day. At night, we went to a very nice seafood restaurant and took over the place when we asked for a table for 15. The food and wine was delicious and we ended the night at a huge but expensive dance club where there were different rooms depending on what music you wanted to listen to.

We got back late Sunday night just in time for me to get a full nights rest before a week of class. I tried out a bunch of new classes at different universities this week. The public university, Universidad de Buenos Aires is very interesting. Since it is free, they don't have a lot of money to pay for nice desks or supplies of any kind, so I am defintely opening up my eyes to how the rest of the world lives, even in a nice country like Argentina. There is grafiti all over the walls and since smoking in public is legal there are cigarette butts everywhere. My first class is about pop culture and started with us watching about 20 min of a video of a Elvis impersonater- I still don't know what that had anything to do with the class. The Universidad del Salvador is very nice but very far away, plus the classes I want to take have a maximum number of foreign students that they will accept so I'm going to have to keep attending multiple classes in case I can't get into my first choice.

On St Patricks day the American students piled into the few Irish Pubs in the city. Argetines don't really celebrate St Patricks day, but since it is another reason to have a night of drinking and socializing they try to get into the spirit. The first pub, called Shamrock, was packed with people drinking green beer and doing irish carbombs, and the bartenders were all from Ireland. After that we headed to an area called Reconquista where the street gets closed off and people just hang out and wander between the many bars on the strip. It was very weird talking in English to most of the people I met that night, but I met some cool people from all over Europe and some Argetines who like to tell the American girls they are from Dublin, as if that will score them some points. St Pattys day in Argetina felt very much like it usually does in the states, but surrounded by people that are better dancers than Americans.

My friend Delaney and I had our first day of shopping here in the city, and the stuff here is absolutely adorable! I bought a cute pair of sandals (since flip flops aren't allowed at the catholic university and its way to hot to wear my boots) and some cheap jewelry. The accessory store we went to was amazing! It had tons of bright jewelry and bags, sunglasses and headbands. And it was all ridiculously cheap. I could get myself into trouble if I stay in that store too long... We chatted with the people working in the little shops and I keep being suprised by how warm and receptive they all are towards us! Haven't encountered much animosity yet, knock on wood!

Since we have all been blowing through our money like crazy, we decided to take a day trip to el Tigre on Saturday instead of travelling for the entire weekend. El Tigre is a town with tons of rivers and (as we were told) lots of pretty beaches. We hopped on a 45 minute train ride for 3 pesos (less than $1US) and arrived in the cute city where we paid 17 pesos for a river taxi to take us around the islands. The river is definitely NOT swimable, it is brown and gross with a shocking amount of weird catfish-looking fish. The river taxi made many stops at different islands and people were hopping in and out at random, so we picked a spot that looked good and hopped out. There are definitely no beaches that we could see, so we went on the deck of a restaurant overlooking the river and hung out for the day. It was definitely a learning experience and we want to go back and try to find a beach next time, but it was a well spent day of relaxation and easy on the wallet too!

This week was the start of the NCAA playoffs for college basketball. Since we have about 25 kids from Madison on my program, we all went to a very American sports bar right by my house to hang out and watch the game. Decked out in red badger gear, we were suprised to walk into the bar, called El Alamo, and see not only lots of other badger fans, but that the bartenders were wearing badger gear as well! Watching the game was so fun, we felt very much like we were back in Madison. There were a ton of kids from Wafford (our apponent) from another program at the bar with us so it got pretty rowdy. After our win, we huddled around and "jumped around". It was defintely one of the highlights of my time here, and although it made me feel like I had briefly stepped back into a Madison bar, I was happy to leave and go back out into the city of Buenos Aires that I am starting to love. Although we lost today, we went back to the same bar and hung out with many of the same people and met some new ones too. We met a very nice guy who works as a pilot for American Airlines who bought a huge pitcher of beer and refused to let us leave until we finished it "like true badgers" and made up for our teams loss. On Wisconsin!

Last night we went to our first ever house party here in Buenos Aires. The people who live in the house are students from England, and their place was absolutely gorgeous. For about $450US a month they get to live in this beautiful house in downtown Buenos Aires that has marble floors, granite counter tops, and a pool and patio out back. I tought an Argetine how to play flippy cup (a team game where you have to flip your cups quickly before the other team) and he went nuts! He thought it was the funniest game and was so excited to teach all of his friends, so although I am learning so much here at least I have now left a small mark of American culture on this city :)

I continue to be so happy in my host home, Sara and I watch televison every night together (usually the show House or Two and a Half Men) and have had conversations in which I have to improvise my spanish. Recently I had to explain to her the difference between Lutheranism and Catholicism in our beliefs and also the US policy on abortion. I have learned how to think on my feet in Spanish and have had very little trouble communicating with locals. I have even been asked for directions and help on the subway a few times! I survived a weekend at the beach without getting sunburned (thanks to lots and lots of sunscreen) and am settling into a ruitine for my class schedule. It is strange how at times I feel like I just arrived to this city yesterday, but how at the same time I feel like I have been here forever. The kids on my program are awesome, we feel like we have been friends for ages and already have plans to go visit each other at our respective universities. With semana santa (the holy week surrounding Easter) coming up, many students have parents here or ones that are coming soon, so I am definitely getting antsy to see my dad on Sunday! I wish more of you were visiting (especially my mom and brother) to see this amazing country, but I will continue to take pictures and (hopefully) get them up on facebook soon! Love you all! Besos!