Argentina, I’ll Miss You

Our empty apartment after we packed up.

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The time has finally arrived: my last Argentinian post. Looking back on the past month, it’s truly been fun. I’ve experienced many things and learned a lot about myself and the Argentine culture. I’ve learned how to avoid copious amounts of dog poop without notice, avoid huge piles of trash on street corners, and avoid big ditches in what some may call sidewalks. I’ve mastered the art of ignoring “I love you”s from strange men (young or old), the art of using charades as a form of everyday conversation, and the art of having hand sanitizer on hand at all times for use on the public transit systems. My biggest pride, however, comes from my new ability to stomach my weight in cow meat—I’ll be recovering from this for the next few days, I’m sure.

Among these new skills, I’ve also made a bunch of new friends that I’m really excited to stay in contact with even after school begins. With these new besties, I’ve experienced many things that I’ve never experienced before—and probably never will again. Most of all, Lael and I have gotten so much closer and shared things together that I’m sure we will remember forever—one of the best roommates I’ll ever have!

As we try to pack in as much we can while trying to control the weight of our bags, the sun is shining through our orange curtains, Spanish music is playing on the TV, and the sounds of the city are still trying to seep through our windows—ah, BA, how we’ll miss you! For the last time, ciao ciao!

A Taste of America Before Heading Home

At our last group dinner!

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OK, so I’ve reached the second-to-last post of the trip, and things are beginning to wrap up. Today was another uneventful day until the evening began. Lael started her packing early, and we had some coffee and walked around, but the fun started when we headed to a GREAT Brazilian restaurant for our last group dinner and then went out one last time to have some fun before we all part our ways.

I’ve been to a Brazilian restaurant before in California, so I knew what to expect, but the meat at this place was absolutely amazing. These types of restaurants are a bit hectic as food is served incessantly to you until you feel like you’re going to pop. But, with food like that, who wants it to stop?

We finished up the meal with a little goodbye speech from our professor, and we finally said a HUGE thanks to Damarise for all of the involuntary translating throughout the trip with a gorgeous purse and necklace. It was a great way to celebrate the memories we shared during the past month.

Finally, a small group of us went to a very American bar for a final night out, and we ended up meeting a lot of really nice American students from all over the United States. The music was chill (think Red Hot Chili Peppers), and the people were even more fun to be around.

After a lot of chit chatting and exchanging of experiences, we are finally safe and sound at home watching “Sex and the City” finishing up our ice cream and getting ready for a hectic day of packing tomorrow! Look forward to the last Argentina post tomorrow; ciao ciao!

First Day of Spring

Taking pictures in the viewing room of Jackie's parent's condo.

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As the days are dwindling, the whole group is just trying to get in our last errands before we have to call it a trip. In the midst of getting that done, we are also trying to keep the money to a minimum as the international bank charges are starting to add up.

So, to sum it up, we slept in a bit, went to a new part of the city to get some things done, had the best hot dog known to man (for only $3.50 in pesos—which is less than a U.S. dollar), and then had dinner with one of our classmates’ families at their rented condo (which is absolutely beautiful, by the way).

The dinner was a catered traditional Argentinian dinner, and unlike our previous traditional-dinner attempts, it was so good I had to stop myself from eating it all. And, thanks to the caterers, everything was in small portions, allowing my stomach to thank me for once. We also got some great pictures up on their 43rd floor, all linked to above.

Sadly we did not get to our favorite ice cream parlor in time before we called it a night, but that’s what tomorrow’s for! For now, ciao ciao!

A Trip Abroad While Abroad

Exploring Colonia along the coast of Uruguay.

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I can describe our trip to Uruguay in one word: cold. OK, I lied; that doesn’t cut it. Uruguay was not just cold, but freezing and rainy and a little bit creepy. Not to say that it wasn’t a fun and enlightening weekend abroad, but the weather the first two days was absolutely dreadful (don’t worry, we did get one day of cold sunshine, too).

Waking up at 5:45 a.m. to leave for the ferry was absolutely no fun, but the ferry’s airplane-like seats totally topped any Victoria Clipper, so we caught up on some sleep on our three-hour trip across the widest river in the world to get to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. Once there, we were immediately dropped off at our apartments (after dealing with a much-too-peppy tour guide for our much-too-sleepy bodies and minds).

The apartments proved that once in for all, looks can definitely be deceiving: A shiny lobby does not at all mean that the rooms will be as glamorous. To simply get to our floor, Lael and I had to ride the smallest most unsafe-looking elevator ever, and the room—which didn’t look too bad—gave off a prison-like feeling (I’m assuming the bars on the windows didn’t help much with a homey décor). But the weirdest thing about our room, at least for me, was that the shower had half a door, so the bathroom floor led directly to a half-open shower, making showering a difficult task.

We didn’t have to spend long at our deceiving hotel however because we embarked upon a little exploring of the city before getting an actual three-hour city tour. Hungry, as always, we headed to a small restaurant to have our first try at Uruguay’s famous chivito sandwich: steak, eggs, lettuce, fries, tomatoes and lots of mayo.

With stomachs full and bodies still drowsy from the ride, we spent three hours on a bus touring the famous parts of the city (lots of pictures linked to above), most of which I spent snoring in the background. The one really exciting thing about the tour was that as we were driving past a statue of the nation’s hero, we saw a small car with a Uruguay license plate and…wait for it…A UW STICKER!!! No, I’m not joking; it was so cool! (This was only one of three times that we truly realized that we do live in a small world: On the way back to BA, we ran into a couple traveling for business from Seattle, and while walking through the open-air markets today, we also ran into a small group of American students who heard us speaking English, and guess where they were from…UW!!!!)

The tour gave us enough reason to call it a day in Montevideo and sleep off our traveling drowsiness just to wake up early the next morning for a two-hour public bus ride to Colonia, a touristy and quaint city in Uruguay. Our hotels there were much more welcoming, yet still a bit creepy because of the crazy cupid-like angel theme (there were angels EVERYWHERE, no exaggeration necessary). Lael and I got a loft-like room, and spent most of our time trying to get the heater to make our room hot enough to make up for the blistering cold storm outside.

In Colonia, we got another city tour that was mostly walking, to our dismay, but the city was very cute. The only disturbing thing about it was the ridiculous amount of homeless dogs, some of which decided to follow us everywhere we went!

Our second day in Colonia was much more pleasant as we spent the afternoon walking around the markets and old part of the city in the sun taking pictures on the coast. Needless to say, we were quite excited to go back “home”—yes, by this point, BA feels like our home; so weird!

Today we took a few fun subway and bus rides and did some final gift shopping for our last day of open-air-market shopping. Tomorrow is the first day of spring here and what they call “students’ day,” so we are all very excited to join in on some celebration! Till then, enjoy the many pictures, and ciao ciao!

P.S. Can’t wait to see my daddy at the airport in four days! I’m so excited to see my parents, especially since my countdown is less than a week now!

Could I be a TV star?

Watching a live "news flash" before our actual tour of the TV station started!

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Short post for today because not much happened, but to sum it up, we spent the afternoon visiting one of the local TV stations. We got a grand tour of the place and even watched an entire newscast—it was great!

To start off, the station was HUGE and hosted not just news, but also soap operas, gossip shows and even sit-coms. We started out watching a short “news flash” as they called it, then we headed to the gossip news studio. After that, we headed to the area where they tape the sit-coms and soap operas and checked out the editorial newsroom where writing and editing is all done. Finally, on our way to watching the live newscast we stepped into a control room to see how it’s all put together in the end.

Our tour guide was a very experienced and popular news anchor, and all of the studios we visited (even if they were 10 feet apart) looked SO different! It was like stepping into a new building every time we moved from place to place, and the ceilings were just lights after lights after lights. And after we watched the newscast, we got to take a picture up by the anchors’ desk with one of the most famous anchors in the business—so fun! (And, we actually learned a lot about the TV business, too—my career options are continuing to expand!)

Right now, Lael and I are packing for our three-day trip to Uruguay (kind of like a vacation within a vacation!) and trying to get ready for bed early because our wake-up call is at 5:45 a.m. We’re not taking the computers, so there’ll be no posts for the next couple of days! Wish us luck on our travels; ciao ciao!

P.S. I’m starting to get pretty darn homesick (not just for a warm bed, my cute puppy, my family and the such, but also for Dairy Queen, IHOP and my mommy’s home-cooked meals), so hopefully this change of scenery might help with that!

Opa!

Learning how to dance traditional Greek dances!

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The past couple of days have been “free days” for us, so Lael and I spent a lot of the time doing nothing, resting up before our trip to Uruguay.

Yesterday, we spent most of the day lounging and watching movies (which our apartment TV has so much of here!), but we did get ourselves out of bed to buy a few more souvenirs. And to further challenge our bodies, we decided to forget about taxis and walk from place to place, which definitely proved to help our quickly growing tummies.

On the walk back from our shopping, we even encountered a protest that we decided had something to do with veterans. It was a huge march of men in army uniforms and drums, and it was a little bit scary because we didn’t really know what it was about and randomly we’d hear the man with the megaphone on the army jeep yelling something that had to do with “Estados Unidos” (the United States in Spanish), so we decided not to let anyone know we were American— just in case. We also had no dinner plans and ended up (unfortunately) succumbing to good ol’ Burger King for the third time this trip. (I swear we never have it at home; it is by pure necessity that we indulge here!)

Today was a bit more eventful as we got out of bed a bit earlier today. I was actually rudely awakened by what seemed like noises of an entire apartment being constructed right next to my ear at around 7:45 this morning. It wasn’t too bad since we actually slept at a reasonable time last night, and by waking up quite early, I got to finish the novel I’ve been reading before Lael woke up.

At the request of our classmate/neighbor, we were summoned out of bed to enjoy the bright sun on the roof upstairs. We actually ended up getting a tan/sunburn and felt some heat again! The sunbathing of course brought on cravings for Starbucks, and being as lucky as we are, we knew just where one was and headed straight over. (With a little bit of charades and some Spanglish, I ended up with a delectable blended cinnamon dolce latte!)

But our night was the real fun as we went to a famous Greek restaurant. A little cramped but very well decorated, we were served some of the best Greek food I’ve ever had. Cuisine aside, the entertainment was the definite highlight of the evening! Every 15 minutes or so, two professional Greek dancers would come out and dance between the tables. AND, to top that off, after our meal, they grabbed us and taught us how to dance and twirled with us for a good five minutes; it was so much fun! When things seemed like they couldn’t get better, the waiters came out with a bunch of extra plates and very nonchalantly explained that it is Greek tradition to break plates to show happiness, keep away vices, and show appreciation for how well a man is dancing. With that said, the male dancer came out, did a few more of his amazing jump-kicks, and a waiter came out with about 10 plates, smashed them to the floor and gestured for us to join. Completely stunned and smiling like giddy children, we started chucking ours too—and it was amazing!

That was probably the funnest restaurant we’ve been to, and I’m excited to see what else is to come—especially when we get to Uruguay! Tomorrow will be a visit to a TV station, so look forward to a post about that! Ciao ciao for now!

0-0

The home-team fans getting rowled up for the game!

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Instead of getting good sleep last night and waking up early enough to go the farmers’ market before going to the soccer game, we ended up getting together with a couple of our UADE friends and spending the majority of our night in the biggest club I’ve even seen, located right on the big river of the city—literally! So, our day actually started right as we left for the stadium to watch one of the top two teams of the country, River Plate, play against Colon.

Just driving to the game gave us a pretty good sense of how important futbol is for Argentinians as the streets were completely flooded with people sporting red and white athletic clothing (River’s colors are white and red.). Even getting inside the stadium was an experience; people will do anything to try to get you to buy their River flags, their River scarves, their River clothes, their River anything!

Once inside, we saw that our seats were right in front with a perfect view of the players, the field and the whole stadium! As cool as this was, I think the reason they gave us these seats was because they were a bit calmer than the normal section—which could be seen as good or bad: The “normal” seats are CRAZY, but in that sense, they looked really fun. Also, from our seats we could clearly see the “visiting” side, which was surprisingly not very filled. The funny thing about it is that the visiting section of the stadium not only holds the worst kept seats in the house, but it also is surrounded with barbed wire to show how violent things can get if someone from the visiting side even gets close to someone from the home team. (The doors to get into the stadium for the different teams are far, far away from each other for that reason alone.)

From the moment that the players stepped out onto the field, both sides of the stadium started screaming songs with their personal bands (more like drum choirs). The songs were screamed from each side to the other, and it didn’t stop until the entire game was over. Not only was their singing, but the home-team side had a huge section of just flags that represented the team and didn’t stop being waved until the end of the game! Also, every time the game would get exciting, the entire “normal” section of the home-team seating would start jumping up and down, and this would make the entire fan section look like a wave of chanting and pounding fists. It was an amazing site.

Scenery aside, the game was pretty exciting and quite violent. It was my first time actually watching a live soccer game, so it was very cool to see all of the soccer kicks and tackles up close. But, the game ended up scoreless, and I think the players knew that would happen, so the entire last 2o minutes, the players were very rough with one another, and the crowd was even more rough. Even the old people around us were screaming Spanish profanities at the top of their lungs, and Spanish profanities are so much better when said with Italian accents and hand gestures (which is how Argentinians speak).

Even though the game ended up scoreless, it was great to experience a huge part of Argentina’s culture. To make up for all of the culture in one day, we finished out the night with Chinese food and some dulce de leche ice cream (OK, dulce de leche should be considered a huge part of the culture since it’s in EVERYTHING here—as is ham and cheese.). Now we’re getting in touch with our racial understandings by watching “Crash,” and we’re trying to plan our free day tomorrow. Post to come about it tomorrow, but for now, ciao ciao!

Horses and gauchos and mate, oh my!

At the end of the gaucho show at the estancia.

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Today might go down as the best day we’ve spent in Argentina—at least, so far! We spent the entire day at an estancia (which means “ranch”), and it was a great break from the hustle and bustle of the city. To top it off, the weather was absolutely gorgeous today.

The beginning of the trip was a little rough because we had a long ride to the ranch, and one of the girls got sick on the bus about 20 minutes before we were there—Lael and I were lucky enough to be sitting in the row right next to hers (ask anyone, I detest any form of puke with a passion). Fortunately, we got to the ranch soon enough, and the fun immediately began!

We were greeted by a very sweet gaucho who was holding a hot plate of carne empanadas—yum (probably the best empanadas I will have on this trip)! We were then ushered into a small shack-type building where there was another gaucho serving up drinks.

After a quick walk around half of the ranch, our guide invited us to go horseback riding, which I will admit, I was a bit scared to do. (The last time I had gone was with my dad in Tucson years ago.) A bunch of us were terrified, but we got on horses anyway (mine was named Paco, who I continued to call Bakho for the longest time because I had misheard our gaucho—and he was a major chub chub because he kept stopping along the ride for snacks). The ride began kind of scary because the horses were so well trained that they started walking on their trail with no direction from anyone, and I thought I would completely lose control and fall off the horse (of course!). But, with our nerves a bit calmer, the ride ended up being a lot of fun!

After the entire group got a try with the horses, we were sent into a huge mess hall for a traditional Argentinian lunch (which we saw cooking outside on the HUGE grills they had). The hall was so antique and cute, and the food was much more appetizing than our last traditional meal. (We spent half the meal laughing so hard that our stomachs ached because we informed Damarise that in fact, she does have a Spanish accent when she speaks—which she apparently had no idea of!)

Filled to the brim with meet, the inside show started. A small band and two professional Argentinian folk dancers entertained us with a quick tour through the music and dances of Argentina through the years. The show was great, but it got even better when the dancers decided to surprise us by inviting everyone on the floor to join them. “Invite” puts it too simply, however, since everyone was eventually dragged on the floor by someone who worked there. At one point, I was even asked to dance by the professional male dancer, and directly following that, our whole group got up and danced around to the last song they played; it was so much fun! (And it helped us digest the pounds of meat we had just consumed!)

Next, we moved outside for a gaucho show that consisted of three gauchos galloping on their horses toward a ring held up by a rope that they each tried to catch with a stick as they rode by it. It was really entertaining to watch, and the game actually ends with the gauchos who caught rings coming up to the audience and giving the rings to people of their choice: If handed to a woman, the woman was supposed to kiss the gaucho; if handed to a man, the man was supposed to kiss the horse—very cute!

Finally, we finished out the ranch trip with a quick tour of their small art museum accompanied with Argentina’s traditional drink, mate, drank with a small dessert. I was surprised as to how much I actually liked mate (a strong herbal tea that kind of tastes like green tea; people here live by it, and it’s pretty difficult to prepare), and I’m definitely buying some to bring home!

After a nice nap on the bus on the way back to the apartments, Lael and I are relaxing a bit before we get some dinner and come back home to watch “P.S. I Love You”—what a great day! Till tomorrow, ciao ciao!

It’s about time we spoiled ourselves!

Tango singers at the restaurant we went to.

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Another short post today, as the day was quite simple! Lael and I finally got our day of shopping—for ourselves! We walked down Avenida Sante Fe to search through boutiques and then finished up at the mall Alto Palermo. Luckily, the trip was finally a success, and I got back to the apartment with a new trench coat, one pair of long black boots with wedge heels, and one pair of short dark brown boots with a short heel.

Of course, we spent the rest of our day sporting our new goods, and boy was it worth it! Not only does shopping make me happier, but now we fit in here more with clothes and accessories that Argentinian people actually wear.

Now, we’re relaxing after hanging out at a restaurant that hosts tango singers (one of which totally looked like an Argentinian version of Cher). Tomorrow, bright and early, we’ll be heading to the countryside to visit a ranch to ride horses, watch a gaucho show, and eat yummy empanadas! So, exciting post to come tomorrow, but till then, ciao ciao!

Is that an American flag?!

No pictures today, only a quick description of our day’s toils. First off, we had our last Spanish class! Success! To celebrate, Lael and I went to a natural “super” market and bought some peanut butter; we were so excited about it, it’s kind of sad—but our current stash was running low so buying the new can was a must. Next, I will guiltily admit, we had our second serving of Burger King—but I will say that it was only because our favorite Chinese place was closed; apparently, we never know when it’s actually open.

But, the day really started when we headed to the U.S. embassy for a talk with one of our diplomats. To say the truth, I was really excited to see the American flag for some reason, but sadly, the U.S. embassy looks like any other American building from the outside and definitely didn’t compare to the many other neighboring embassies. Once inside, after the buttload of  security we had to go through, it was actually quite interesting to hear how a diplomat’s life works (three-year work shifts in each country, a constant attention to exchange programs between countries, immersion into bunches of different cultures). My favorite part of his speech was when he explained that the reason he loved doing his job was because he wanted to connect and understand the countries that the U.S. should be in conversation with; I really appreciated that.

Afterward, we headed to a PR radio show—yeah, that is really weird, and I’m still not really sure what it’s actually about. But, the cool thing was that four of our classmates actually got to be on the radio (while we all sat in the studio and watched), even if it was extremely against their will. Overall, the experience seemed like it was beneficial for both us and the station.

Finally, we finished the night with another group dinner at some swanky bar/restaurant in Palermo and had “Mexican” tacos (anything that says “Mexican” here is NOTHING like it should actually be). With full stomachs, we walked around the district a bit and are now resting for a full day of shopping tomorrow! Good night and ciao ciao!