Five weeks in.
Trip Start
Aug 03, 2008
1
11
23
Trip End
??? ??, 2008
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Monday, September 8, 2008
Not a ton of news, just another pretty laid back week. First, I changed my plane ticket, which was frustratingly expensive but had to be done. I am officially coming home December 18th at 10:21 am. (If you forget though, I'm sure Gram will have it written down) The end of November was just too soon to see all the people I want to see from exchange in South Africa, and I'd love to use up my whole J-term here and not come back until the end of January, but I think I'll miss my friends and I think my credits cards will be maxed by then. So I'll be home for Christmas AND Hanukkah!
Class has been going well, despite some frustrations with the fotocopiadora which keeps giving me the wrong pages to the texts I need. It's not even my fault for having weak spanish skills, it's written clearly on a paper and I just point to what I need, and they still manage to get it wrong
Donatella's face/argentine women w/ work done
. But, I guess, this is still better than paying full price for text books.I'm starting to really feel at home here, even though it's only been about a month. I'm just getting used to the constant sound of honking and sirens and breathing smog. At first, I felt like this is a great place to visit and maybe even stay for a few months, but not to live. Now I'm beginning to see the beauty in it. Although nobody ever having change or coins (well, they often have them but just wont give them up) still feels like reason enough to not actually live here. Grr.
Last Monday I joined a gimnasio (gym) which is about a block away from my house. The one month membership is 70 pesos ($23) so I thought I'd try it and see how it goes. From what I can tell so far, I'm the only person that has broken a sweat there. This place is small and cheap so it's crowded and you have to wait for most of the machines, and then while people are waiting they watch you which is about too much for me to handle, so I spend most of my time on the treadmill, which isn't really the kind of excersize that I need to be doing.
So... I also changed my major this week. Not officially, as I have to do it in person, but I changed my course-plan and everything to Ethics and Legal Studies in Business. I enjoyed my accounting classes but, it's just a bit dry, and if I dont actually want to do accounting after school, it makes more sense to do something more broad and fun. Plus, this is better prep for lawschool anyway.
Hmm.
A pretty typical church.
. I went to an informational meeting for my IES trip to Bolivia in October, and I'm pretty excited despite the gloom and doom that pervaded most of the meeting. We are not to listen to cops or give them our passports because they're largely corrupt, we're not to use any of the water (not even to brush our teeth), etc. etc. Whatever, the packing list says to bring swim trunks so that's all it takes to get me on board.Yesterday I went to the Omnibus (always an adventure) to buy my bus tickets because I'm leaving for IGUAZU on Wednesday night. I'm excited. For those of you who don't know, Iguazu is the 2nd largest set of waterfalls in the world after only Victoria Falls in South Africa. There's a lot of other natural type stuff to see there, and I'll be there until Sunday, so I suppose I'll be forced into hiking or some other sort of unpleasant physical activity involving bugs and snakes.
After that, I went with some friends to the area near Plaza Serrano in Palermo Soho, which is maybe the trendiest area of Buenos Aires for shopping and the like. The clothes here are amazingly ballin'. It's more European, which I like, and also more tailored to fit people with my body type (i.e. stick figures). I bought only a light jacket, because I don't own one and it was cheap. But it will be hard to not go shopping often here... Oh there was also a craft market. If any of you peeps back home have anything in mind in terms of gifts, let me know, because I am having a much harder time picking out things from here than I did in Africa. Also, send money! Haha
My host mom and I are getting along great
Possibly the world's shortest barney. 5'
. She only watches American crime shows at night (I think there are like 3 crime-show channels on her cable thing) and I usually sit with her and listen to her exclamations and read the Spanish subtitles. And she gives me change, which makes her a saint.Random facts:
-The older people dress really well here. I think it's because they grew up in a much wealthier Argentina. (In the last hundred years, Argentina went from being the 7th wealthiest country in the world to comething like the 40th) Think fur coats and pearls on the women, and tweed jackets and berets on the men.
-Lots of the older women look like Donatella Versace (I attached a picture for those of you who aren't familiar with her face)
-Peanut M&M's are practically worth their weight in gold here. I don't know why they're so expensive, but it saddens me.
-There's a family of little homeless boys (I'd guess ages 5, 8, and 12) on the subway that I see often, and they always have some outrageous clothes that they found somewhere. The youngest boy was superman yesterday. The oldest one plays the accordian and the littlest one dances to it. It's hard not to give them money
A corner in Palermo
. Which is why I always cave.-Nonstop people asking for money. I'm told it wasn't like this before the economic problems in the last ten years. But it's not just people sitting and begging. People will come onto the bus or subway and give a speech about what they'll use the money for, what happened to their family's money, etc. It's interesting.
-People come on the bus and subway to sell things. The weirdest was a knife salesmen on the collectivo (bus). He was sharpening them and waving them around and the bus is packed and unstable and scary. He made a killing though!
That's about it. I'll attach some random pics but I haven't had the camera out much lately.
