TravelStream™ news feed for member remingtonw on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/remingtonw en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:03:58 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219102200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219102200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219102200/tpod.html Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:03:58 -0400 Tales of a black woman in Buenos Aires.

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Buenos Aires, Tigre, Argentina

We had a holiday this weekend and in Argentina, if the holiday falls on the weekend, they recognize it on the following weekday. Yesterday(Sunday) was el dia del San Martin but we had today off:) I love it haha.--See bottom of entry to read a brief history of San Martin--

My buddies and I were debating if we were going to go to Mendoza, Cordoba, or somewhere in Uruguay this weekend, but after a few discussions we decided to stay in good ol' BsAs.
*Friday night we went to see RENT! and then we went to the Karaoke Bar(see 1st entry for details of that night).
*Saturday, I didn't wake up till about 4:30, trifling, I know, but cut me some slack. It is customary for people here to eat around 9ish, take a nap, then head out for the clubs(Boliches) around 12-1 o clock. They usually don't make it in till about sunrise. I can't hang like that, around 5 I was drained and the party was still going strong. Anyways, after I woke up Ashanti & I met up with Caitlin & Denicia in Barrio Once which is garbage,harsh, but merely my opinion, I didn't like it at all. I'm still trying to figure out what I can compare it to. It had 1,000,000 people walking on cracked sidewalks with construction on the streets and people trying to sell random things to you as you pass. I'm sure the people were wonderful, but I'm cautious of big crowds because almost every porteno (native of buenos aires) has told us that you can get robbed without knowing it.

One guy in our program got his laptop stolen by some con artists, here's what happened:
One guy came up to him and said, hey you dropped your wallet, and he told him, oh no that's not mine I have my wallet right here.And as they argued about the wallet not being his, the conny's right hand man came from behind and stole his laptop out of his backpack.
Another guy(let's call him Bill) in our program got his camera stolen but this is actually a funny story, here's what happened:
Bill had his camera out and this guy came up to him and told him to give him the camera. For some reason, Bill thought that giving your camera to strange people on the street was not a big deal so he gave it to him. Needless to say, the guy walked off with Bill's camera hahha. Butttt the guy who took the camera stayed in the vicinity of Bill, and Bill being innovative, walked up to the guy and told him he would show him how to use the camera,and then took it back.hahahhaha

So back to Barrio Once. I didn't like it, so we left and met with Brad at this cafe and eventually went to the movies. The movie theater we went to only offered two movies, "Un Novio para mi Mujer" (A boyfriend for my woman/wife) and The other Bolean Girl. We decided to be bold and went to see Un Novio para mi Mujer and it was beyyyoonnnddd difficult to understand. We got the basic concept, but it was a comedy and understanding cultural humor is completely different than understanding conversation. We went home after the movie because we had to be up early the next day.

Sunday we went on a Bici Tour of Buenos Aires! SCARIEST THING I'VE DONE IN ARGENTINA SO FAR!

One of the first conversations Dory and I had outside of our apartment was about how people drive crazy here and they don't respect the street lines. BsAs for the most part is pretty simple to navigate because most streets are one way street, but boy do I tell you, these people are INSANE on the road. They drive soooo fast, and pedestrians don't really have rights here so it's kind of a known fact that you don't cross if the cars are coming because they will not stop for you. A few days after I arrived Dory's daughter, was telling me how some many was speeding and ran into 4 teens as the were crossing the street. And taxi rides are like rollercoasters, I never thought it would be acceptable or safe to drive that fast and that crazy on the busiest avenues in the city!

So yeah, you can see that riding a bike for 3 hrs( 19 km, 11 miles i think) was quite frightening, but it was good exercise:)
My friend Denicia is hilarious! She's rather short and I think her bike was too big for her so she was having issues steering/breaking/etc...as we were approaching the Evita Monument, Denicia for some reason didn't see the man walking in front of her and she ran smack dab into his him. Fortunately he was mid step so it hit the bottom of his heel and he was a big guy so he didn't fly across the park. hahhahahahahah and the best part of the situation was Denicia laughing afterwards( she wasn't laughing in a mean way, but she allwwaayyyss giggles), it was soooo funny, I wish I could have caught it on tape.

Today(Monday) we took the train to El Tigre, which is an city on the river, about an hour away and only cost 2.50 pesos round trip:) When we got there we ate lunch and then took a boat through the islands to this place called 3 Bocas. When we got there a woman gave us a map and we went exploring. Somehow we ended up on this back path that was taking us through peoples backyards on the river haha. We figured we were going the right way(to an unknown destination) because we were following the people about 40 ft in front of us. Eventually it got to a point where we stopped seeing houses and our path was leading us through this random brush. For some reason my friends thought it was a good idea to keep going through the plants and see what we were going to come upon. I was all for turning around for multiple reasons: 1) I had to go to the bathroom 2) I've seen way to many movies 3) We were crossing over 10,000 yr old bridges that wobbled(i'm exaggerating on the yrs but they did wobble!) 4) It only seemed right to turn around haha. But I continued with them because there was no way I was going back by myself and it was the middle of the day so I didn't think some masked murderer would be lurking on the river. We eventually passed through the forest lol and saw more houses. The houses were kind of cute, but I was quickly relieved when we saw this pastry shop on the path. I ran up immediately and asked for a bathroom. She pointed outside and so I walked out and looked for it but I didn't see it and I had to make sure she wasn't trying to play me so I went back in and asked her to show me where they were. She walked halfway down the stairs and pointed to these outhouse looking bathrooms that were in the side yard. I had no time to pass judgement on the restrooms bc i really had to use it. I tried to turn on the light switch but it wasn't working and I figured light wasn't really that necessary since I've kind of been using the restroom for about 20 yrs lol. All was well, I Purell'd it up after I left because there was no sink in there. (p.s. Purell is my new best friend, because there are very few places with liquid soap here, most restrooms have these metal sticks with a bar of soap attached and you have to stroke the bar to get a lather, it's really gross and I refuse to use it because I can SEE the germs on it lol. Anyways, after Ashanti & Caitlin used the restroom we were heading back and my darling friends were trying to convince me that the map said we were walking in a big circle so we should continue the way we were going, but fortunately enough for our lives I asked the woman at the pastry shop and she told us the place we were at wasn't on the map and we should go back the way we came. We took the boat back to Tigre and got on the bus. The bus that was there waiting was already packed and Denicia & I didn't want to stand the hour it was going to take to get back so we all waited for the next which was an excellent idea because it wasn't nearly as crowded and we all sat down. Ashanti got her seat by racing this man to the seat hahah she's so competitive, but she got the seat so power to her!

I just finished eating dinner and now I'm going to get ready for bed. First day of school tomorrow:)

Ciao!

San Martin is kind of a big deal here in South America, here's a brief history of his life (this info is just what I comprehended from our multiple tour guides, so I'd do a little more research if you are really interested):

He was born in northern Argentina, but his mother sent him to Spain to get a better education(yeah boarding school!) When he was in Spain he enlisted in the army at age 11, crazy right? During this time, Argentina (and a few other South American nations) was under Spanish rule and he got word that his people wanted to be free he knew he had to go back and help them! Since he had been in the Spanish army for a few years he kind of knew what was going on and where their weakest points were, so he went back to Argentina and told them how to defeat the Spanish army. The Argentine's defeated the Spanish and all was well. BUUTTTT nextdoor neighbor's Chile & Peru also solicited General San Martin's help so they could become independent as well. He helped those lovely people out as well and they gained their independence. After he finished being the hero, he went home to Argentina, I'm sure he was a little tired lol, but when he went home Argentina was having a civil war. He was upset that he did all that work to free them and they were just going to fight amongst themselves, so he left Argentina and moved to France where he spent the rest of his life. He died on August 17.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219012320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219012320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219012320/tpod.html Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:02:04 -0400 Tales of a black woman in Buenos Aires.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina

I have been in Buenos Aires for two weeks now and things are going pretty smoothly. I live with a host family which consists of a mother, Dory, father, Carlos, brother, Carlos(Carlitos), and grandson(well I guess technically he would be my nephew) Facundo. Facu is 25 and Carlos I believe is about 37 or something like that. They are cute family. We live in an apartment building relatively in the center of town, on a street called Juncal. When I first arrived at the apartment building I was just going to walk in, but this man stopped me from entering and asked me where I was going. A tad flustered, I just handed him my paper with my host mom's address and apartment number and he let me pass. I later found out that the man, Vincente, was my door man and I definately appreciate his stern ability to prevent random people from walking into our building! Our apartment is on the 2nd floor which is quite lovely, they have two elevators - they remind me of the elevators in Titanic, where you have to close the doors manually- but I usually walk up the stairs. The first day I got here I went to the wrong apartment door haha, when I knocked the person asked who it was and I responded, and proceeded to tell them I was looking for Dory and they kindly-without opening the door- let me know that Dory lived up one more floor. In Latin America, what we in America would call the first floor is called Piso Bajo- bottom floor- and what we would call the 2nd floor is the 1st.

I finally dragged my luggage up to the correct door and my host mom Dory greeted me with a warm smile and kiss on the cheek which is a common greeting in Buenos Aires among both men and women, you rarely see people shake each other's hand here. Dory gave me a tour of the house in a refreshing speed of Castellano-the type of spanish the speak here-. At the airport everyone spoke so fast and I was a bit overwhelmed, but Dory hosts exchange students all the time so I'm sure she understands that speaking slowly is the kindest welcome haha. My room is towards the back of the apartment, it's very spacious, I have a twin bed, dresser, t.v., closet, couch and a shelf/desk. I have a huge window in my room but I get no sunlight because I'm on the inside of the complex and our building has about 9 or 10 floors so I have a nice view of the concrete wall, but it's cool, no biggie.

My bathroom is right next to my room and it's a regular size bathroom with a shower/tub, toliet, sink, and a bidet(I've yet to try and figure out how to use it yet, & not sure how I feel about it either haha) The toliet is a little hard to flush and I was scared I was going to break the handle so I went and asked Carlos (my host dad) how to flush, and he just showed me I need to put a little more force when I flush the toliet. The shower heads here are different as well, the tubs are just like normal tubs, but in the states, our shower heads are usually at the end of the tub, but here they are in the middle of the tub which took a little getting used to because it didn't leave much space, without being from underneath the water-not sure if that makes sense, but yeah haha-.

After my tour of the house, I told Dory I was going to unpack my bags then take a nap. My nap was quite extended,I went to sleep around 11:30 I didn't wake up till about 4 pm. When I woke up I went to speak to Carlos and he told me someone had called and left me a message. I couldn't quite understand him when he said the name but when he showed me the paper it was my friend Ashanti. We had been messaging each other on Facebook for a month or two as we were getting ready for the trip and lo and behold, our hosts mom's are really good friends and live right across the street from each other! I called her back and we ended up meeting up to go cellphone/sim card shopping. Dory walked with us to the IES center to see where they would recommend us buy phones and then she went back home. She directed us to the nearest mall/shopping area and warned us to be careful because there are not many-and by many she meant almost none lol- black people in Buenos Aires and men will try and hit on us.(Ashanti is black as well)

I had already noticed that I was being stared at while I was in the airport, but when we were walking down the street it was 500x worse. I guess people honking is not that strange because idiots in Atlanta do that all the time, but here there are Taxi drivers honking, men whistling out of the car windows, or on the street, etc... Men, women, and children stare at us, but the men are usually mumbling things like " que lindas" "que bellezas" and things of that nature. When Ashanti and I made it to Florida ave- which is somewhat like their version of Canal street in NY- we were mistaken for Brazilian MULTIPLE times. Not sure how many of you all know that I tried to teach myself portuguese not too long ago, so I'm familiar with the basics, and people who were trying to sell us things were speaking to us in portuguese haha. We thought we really just couldn't understand their spanish-which a lot of times is the case- but I started really focusing on what they were saying and a lot of the times it was portuguese.

As far as the color thing goes, it has taken awhile for me to get 'accustomed' to it, and by accustomed, I mean, not get offended by people staring at me. I had to think about it from my own life experiences. At Spelman, which is a historically black college, when we see a group of non-black people on campus it's somewhat strange because we are used to seeing black people for the most part. Clearly it's a different extreme but in the U.S. it's hard to say that you haven't seen a type of person before, and probably about 97% of the black people the Argentines see here are from Brazil so it's no biggie. But I still see no explanation for these raunchy men who feel that it is acceptable to honk, whistle, holler, etc... at us when we walk by, I don't like it in the states and Argentina is no exception.

By the way, it's winter time here. I'm cold:(. But it's really not too bad for it to be the dead of winter. The coldest it has gotten has probably been low 40s. Cold is still cold though, and if you know me well, you know I'm complaining about it haha. I have a space heater in my room and I crank it up every night faithfully! Spring should be here in a few weeks though so I'm trying to stick it out. The best thing about coming to another country towards the end of a season is the end of season markdowns! The dollar is super strong here! It's 3 Argentine pesos to $1. That basically translates to AMAZING! What is even more amazing is that Argentina has an excessive(not the best word but it works for my usage) amount of vacas(cows)! And that my friends means that leather is in abundance here because these people LOVEEEE beef. You would never be able to tell though because everyone here for the most part is super skinny. I've seen only about 5 obese people, and I read an article the other day that Argentina has the 2nd highest percentage rate of anorexia & bulimia, interesting don't you think? But anyways, back to the leather. I bought two pair of shoes the other day. One was a pair of leather boots and the other were a pair of funky wedge tennis shoe looking things lol, sounds strange but they're really cute. The leather boots were 270 pesos($90 us) and the other pair were like 120 pesos($40 us), along with the end of season markdowns there was a buy one get the other 40% off, ANNNNDDDD(can you tell how excited I was about this haha) Argentina charges like 41% sales tax but if you get this tax rebate form from the store and mail it in when you return to the states you get more money back! So not including the sales tax rebate, I paid about $114 us for 2 pairs of shoes, one being leather boots! If that doesn't sound like a great deal to you, you might be foolish lol jk.

Now switching back to the food here. The food is delicious! I might be worried about gaining a million pounds here if I didn't have to walk everywhere(I'll explain that ordeal a little later). Back in the states I tried not to eat beef and red meat because it's not that healthy for you, etc...but here, 1. they only eat beef and 2. it's delicious so I don't really have any other options haha. Empanadas are great! I've heard that they are native to Argentina but I don't know if that's people just being overly proud of their nation or not haha. Empanadas have different fillings:beef, chicken, humita(a mixture of veggies but mostly corn), ham & cheese, or cheese & onion. The first night here I was soooo hungry, and here they eat meals really late so I had to wait till 9 o clock to eat, which would be 10 in Atl, and 11 in Houston. Dory fixed a salad, but she told me she knew it was customary for us in the states to eat salad before our meals, I ate it the first day out of courtesy but I told her I don't really eat salads before my meal so it was fine if she didn't fix it but I'm not sure if she understood me because she made a salad everyday that week, but she stopped making them now so that's good. She asked me what food I don't like so she wouldn't make them, I told her I despised whipped cream and I didn't like peas, I didn't know the word for peas so it took us awhile to figure it out lol but we got it. Our host families provide us with breakfast and dinner on the weekdays and only breakfast on the weekends so we've been finding some good/bad places to eat around the city. As of now I have fallen in love with Hamburgers w/ boiled eggs. It sounds strange but it's quite delicious. Also they have this company called Ser which makes healthy drinks and health bars, well they have these ceral bars(kind of like Chewy bars except with fruit) that are ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! They come in peach, apple, strawberry, chocolate and almond. Wine is very cheap here, one day at lunch I tried to order a glass and accidently ordered a half bottle hahah, but it was only 7 pesos.

This has been a very long post and there's still so much more to say but I will spare your poor eyes and post some other time:)

!Ciao!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219011840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219011840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/remingtonw/1/1219011840/tpod.html Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:28:00 -0400 Tales of a black woman in Buenos Aires.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina

This picture captures the bulk of our night:

After we saw Rent, we hailed a taxi so we could get to the Karaoke Bar. In result from last weekends adventures of being charged double because Brad wouldn't stop speaking english in the taxi(making it clear to the taxi drivers that we were silly Americans), we all agreed to only speak Spanish when we were in taxis.

So we all got into the taxi and Ashanti attempts to explain to us that her pants were stuck and us clearly not understanding what the heck she was talking about proceeded to laugh at everything she said afterwards. We then arrive at the Karaoke Bar and pay the driver. Upon getting out of the car, Ashanti reminds us again that her pants are stuck and she can't get out.
Upon further observation of the situation, we notice that she really was stuck, her belt loop had some how become punctured by a piece of metal sticking out of the seat.
We tried to get it off but it was so small we couldn't see. The dear taxi driver offered us a flashlight(see photo) which eventually helped alleviate the dilemma of not being able to see,and in turn, helped us free poor Ashanti.

Despues, we went to the bar and quickly left because we remembered we were hungry so we walked around the block to find something to eat. We stopped at one restaurant, but they had 6 peso empanandas(which is quiet expensive) so we continued our search.
As we walked, we passed by some garbage men who were hooting and hollering at us, but clearly we ignored their foolishness( Ashanti ignored the best because she couldn't process the one man who followed her for about 5 steps, two inches away from her face lol). After being terrified we tried to get into the sushi restaurant but they were closed. As we were walking away, Ashanti's admirer handed her a coke(see photo) which she continuously denied, and I eventually accepted bc we had seen the sushi man give it to him so it had to be safe and we really wanted them to leave us be.
So after that fiasco we went back to Don Julios, the restaurant with the 6 peso empandas. We sat down at the table and only ordered 3 empanadas, which is quite triflin at an expensive restaurant. The waiter asked us if we wanted anything to drink but we kindly declined, and he joked about how we brought our own coke.

We ate our three empanadas and as we were eating we noticed that the gentlemen sitting next to us were looking at us and us not wanting to pay 33 pesos for our 3 empanada meal(they charge you a service fee for sitting you down) thought we might entertain their curiosity.

One of the gentlemen informs us that he is studying wine so that he can open a winery, and in order to do that he needs to brush up on his english. He asked us to ask him any questions so that he could practice his english. Me, being the bold person I am, decided to ask him " Would you like to pay for our meal?" He responded yes and then proceeded to pull out a 5 peso bill and jokingly said would this be enough. He obviously didn't know how serious we were and put his bill back once I told him that would help so we would take it.

He then asked us, why are american girls so obsessed with money. I then told him in one fashion or another, that he asked us to ask him a question so we did, and that he insulted us by calling us money obsessed american girls.

After he apologized he came over to our table and gave us this long story about how he got into wine, how bad his english is, how his teacher is the most famous guy in the country, why he doesn't like the U.S., why he likes Christina Kirchner, etc...

Amidst his rambling he offered us the opportunity to learn how to taste wine. He gave us each a cup of Malbec(see photo) and taught us the tricks of the trade.

All in all, it was a good night, and even better once we made it to the Karaoke Bar. Great times in Buenos Aires.

A hardy laugh a day keeps the doctors away:)
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