Hoy

As I was about to leave the house this morning, I got a call from Gwen, who was already at the university, telling me that class was cancelled. I only have one class on Wednesdays, but I had a few errands to run.

These errands mainly involved running around the city looking for la lectura (readings) for a few of my classes for the rest of the semester. Unlike Whitman, I cannot show-up to the bookstore with a few hundreds of dollars in cash and leave with everything that I'll have to read for the semester.

For my introducción al arte class, it's fairly simple to get my reading material. I go to the basement of the building to the copy center and tell them what I want copied. I've been buying a few weeks of reading at a time.

For medicina laboral, the notes are put online and there appears to be no further reading. I was having people from the class email me the notes because I didn't have a username or password. Good news- username has been obtained! I just went to a copy center a few blocks from my house to print out the notes for tomorrow's class.

I just found out the theme of my Castellano Mantenimiento class- Música popular urbana en una Argentina de fin de siglo. One third of the class will be devoted to studying Argentine music from the 1960's to present, while the rest of the class will be 1/3 grammar and 1/3 literature. On Tuesday, I shelled out 74 pesos at a copy center to buy a copy of all of the lyrics that we'll be studying this semester. And today I went to our program center where 2 GB of music was waiting for me to burn to CDs.

The class that is driving me up the wall is Argentina en palabras. This class has easily 80 pages of reading a week, but there is absolutely no centralized location where I can find the material. The material is either 1) available for free online 2) will be emailed 3) at the copy center in the basement of the building 4) in a box in the library 5) most easily obtained at a bookstore 6) or the location is still to be determined. I probably spent three hours today and have less than half of the readings in my possession. In any case, I have the 20 poems by Borges for tomorrow sitting in front of me.

Despite not having class, I have not managed to actually do any homework.

I must say I am truly enjoying my time here, and that you might be getting a skewed perspective- seeing how I just blogged about one of the many frustrations of living in a foreign country.

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Update on the recurring theme of monedas. I went to a bank today, handed the teller a 100 peso bill and asked for monedas. I have known that banks will give you 10 pesos in monedas, but banks are only open from 10-3pm. I was pleasantly surprised when she handed me 20 pesos in change. To celebrate, I rode the bus home.

The subte is generally faster than the colectivos and gets me within 10 blocks of where I want to go. The colectivos are less crowded, but require monedas and take longer. It was an hour long bus ride from UCA to my house this afternoon. I got a seat, but it was in the second row. Seat security in this zone is fairly close to zero. Every time an elderly person, expecting mother or mother with young children, or handicapped person gets on the bus, the people in the first few rows give up their seats. Today I just spent the hour debating if the lady or man who just got on the bus looked old enough for me to get up and give them my seat. The conclusion every time was no. Oh the moral dilemma of riding the bus (and the subway as well).

I just took a nice 45 minute nap, and now I'm on to reading some Borges.

Here are a few pics from my trip to the Japanese Garden and Boca this weekend:

Gwen and I making fishy faces in the Jardín japonés.

Emma, Bailee, Gwen, and I posing in the slightly overrated Jardín japonés.

On the street called Caminito in Boca. This is BsAs tourist heaven. Maradona (hand of god) is on the second story balcony.

With Renato and his cousin Santi in front of the Boca Junior stadium.

There's a she wolf in the closet...

Normally I would be happy to hear Shakira blasting in my neighborhood, but this is not the way I prefer to be woken up at 10:30 on a Saturday when I went to be bed at 6:30 am. Actually, this is probably a very good way to be woken up- I'm just opposed to the unreasonably early hour that my neighbor decided to turn the volume up.

In any case, this serves as a wonderful example of the music here. Pop music from the US is played constantly here, typically with a remixed, techno beat in the boliches (clubs). I am personally a fan of the 'bad' pop music that is replayed endlessly on the radio in the US. But I was very amused yesterday when I was siting in a small, independent cafe, taking a break from shopping and eating empanadas and cafe con leche for lunch at 5 yesterday, and Justin Bieber started playing. This cafe appeared to be owned an operated by men in their 60's and 70's. I think I'll just credit the music selection to streaming internet radio.

This just serves as one example, but I managed to get really excited whenever I here music that I know. This occurs pretty much everywhere, but especially at the gym, in stores, and in the boliches. The boliches that I have frequented also play reggaeton and cumbia. For those of you who care to know, I've met an Argentine amigo who has tried to teach me how to dance to this music here. It involves very fluid hips and small, quick steps. Let's just say I need a lot more practice, and Renato is a very patient man for bearing with me and multiple unsuccessful lessons.

Here are a few songs that I enjoy and seem to be popular in the clubs:




I spent Thursday night with Cailey and other friends, celebrating Cailey's 21st birthday. I went shopping yesterday and finally bought a pair of leather boots. Leather boots are worn by pretty much everyone here. I bought dark brown boots that hit mid-calf, and are fairly simple. I wore them out last night and they stretched a bit in the width with is what I needed. Last night we went to a bar called Sabbia. There was a group of Argentines celebrating a birthday, and we joined them in the festivities for a few hours. We had to insist that they speak Spanish a few times. In they end, we just practiced our Spanish and let them practice speaking English. I did learn one interesting thing though through an English explanation. The preface to the story- my Spanish professor at Whitman will occasionally say 'sí, sí,' which means 'yes, yes.' The explained his usage as being more or less equivalent to the common ticks for 'um' and 'like' in English. It appears I picked up on this and was affirming that I understood this guy by saying 'sí, sí.' He eventually starting laughing, explaining that it was my usage of 'sí, sí' that he found funny. Apparently this has a connotation of yes, I already know/get out of here/go to hell. I guess I'll have to work on my usage of that.

Today I'm going to a festival at the Japanese Garden, eating with friends, and meeting up with Renato. Tomorrow we're going to la Boca neighborhood where the famous colorfully painted houses are. There's also a tango show there. I should have some more pictures soon.

Off to the gym and then showering to cleans myself of the odor of smoke. This is a futile activity since the results will last 5 minutes tops.

Barrio chino

I live 2 blocks from BsAs's Chinatown. I walk through part of it twice a week going to and from Di Tella, but I haven't spent very much time actually looking around. I went on a little walk there today because I needed a break from homework.

Something about it was just a little too funny. It was as though I was in any Chinatown in the US. This feeling really should not have been too surprising since Chinatowns are more about China than the country they are in. I did find a source of skippy peanut butter, top roman, and hot sauce. I may have said this before, but the only spice used here is salt. Maybe some Italian seasoning is thrown in occasionally, but that's about it.

I bought some hot sauce in an oriental store. My decision about which hot sauce to buy was made solely on which I could buy and get the most monedas in change. One was $7.80 and the other was $11. If I got the $7.80 one, I would have payed with a ten and gotten a $2 in cash back and $0.20 back in monedas (coins). I ended up getting the $11 peso one, giving the cashier a 10 and a 2 peso bill. She promptly asked me if I had a one peso moneda (so that she could give me $2 in cash back, and save the precious coin in the register). I keep my monedas in a coin purse, but I pretended to fumble around in my wallet looking for a one peso moneda. In the end I scored a one moneda peso in return. I did the same thing later with $3.25 cookies, giving the cashier a $5 bill. I pretty much maximized my moneda acquisition with that one.

I will be spending the semester lying about whether or not I have coins. Perhaps this whole thing should have been prefaced with the fact that monedas are the only was to ride the bus here. I realized last night that I had less than 2 pesos in monedas and that's only enough for one bus ride.

Morcilla, chinchulines, y riñones

I think I can categorize my experiences of last night as being truly Argentine.

I woke up around 4 pm yesterday and joined Cailey at the gym. I went back home and ate 'lunch' around 6:30. Cailey and I took the subte to an upscale shopping mall in Palermo. I'm on the lookout for some leather boots, but this place was just a little more expensive than I'm willing to pay. I encountered the second Starbucks that I've seen in the city. The other one is on a pedestrian street called Florida that is very geared toward tourists, go figure.

We then made our way to a theater called Teatro del Perro (Theater of the Dog). The theater occupied a street corner, but there was absolutely no sign to identify the building from the outside. We arrived around 10:30 but were too early for the show. We found a restaurant where we could eat dinner, but they didn't have very much of what was listed on their menu actually available. After trying to order chorizo (sausage), the woman explained that they could put together a sampler plate of the cuts that were on the grill. We were sitting right in front of the grill and as I watched the man prepare the meats, I decided I had absolutely no desire to know what 'cuts' they were. When the food came I could identify the chorizo, blood sausage (morcilla), some very fatty chicken, something very tubular, and something that tasted like chicken. The very tubular 'meat' ended up being chinchulin (intestines) and the meat that tasted like chicken was in fact riñones (cow kidney). At least I've tried enough to know that I'll stick with only the chorizo in the future. We also had some very delicious pure de calabaza (pumpkin), which is a popular side dish.



We returned to the theater so watch the show. It was mainly featuring a tango band of 10-12 people, but a few couples put on their dancin' shoes and joined the show. The venue was a large room with a bar on one side and a dance floor covering the other half of the room. There were chairs lining the wall, but we sat on the floor in front of the band and the space left for the dancers. This was the first time that I've seen tango, but it was much less rigid than the stereotypical image of tango. It was incredibly fun to watch and well worth the 15 pesos it cost to enter.



Tomorrow is the day that the death of General José de San Martin is observed so I'm getting an extra long weekend. According to Wikipedia, San Martin helped liberate Argentina as well as Peru and Chile. I'm about to get ready for the day and go shopping in the leather district of BsAs.

¡Chau! Y feliz día del libertador José de San Martín!

Correo

Shout outs to Uncle Jeff, Haya, Mom, and the Pierce County Auditor's office for sending me mail here in Argentina! If you send me a letter, I'll return the favor.

My address here is-

Monica Paulson
Institute for Study Abroad
Av. Corrientes 880, 8°C
C1043AAV, C.A.B.A.
Argentina


I believe I'm off to get ready for my first tango show!

Yes I've been busy

Sorry it's been a while since the last update. I've realized that life is enough different here that it's impossible to convey everything. I'll just have to choose what you get to hear about.

Classes started two weeks ago. We have a month long period where we can try out classes to decide which classes we actually want to enroll in. This had lead to more hours of class and longer days than I'm accustomed to. I've decided on a Argentine Lit class at the Universidad Catolica Argentina, a class called 'Medicina Laboral' at the Universidad del Salvador, and an art class at Di Tella. I'll also be taking a Spanish class through the program. Each university has it's own feel, but I am missing out a tad by not taking classes at the Universidad of Buenos Aires, which is public, free to everyone, and has 300,000 students. The stories I've heard from other people include Marxist stickers on the back of all the chairs, the professors smoking during the whole class as well as bringing their children, and homeless people wondering the halls.

This Wednesday and Thursday I went to two plays. One was Tatuaje by Alfredo Arias. It was about Miguel de Molina and Eva Peron. The acting and singing was excellent, but I can't tell you much about the plot. I understood the individual scenes, but didn't understand how they all fit together.

Last night I saw Un dios salvaje, which was very easy to follow. It basically involved two couples united by a fight that involved their sons. The couples proceeded to get very drunk and fight- the perfect plot for foreign students who don't understand the subtle humor of language in Spanish. After each play, the director of our program took the 8-10 of us out to dinner. I had very delicious salmon salad and milanesa on Wednesday followed by flan with dulce de leche. Last night I had veggie ravioli with bolognesa sauce and dulce de leche ice cream. I'll need to watch how many 3 course meals I eat... so much food.

Today I had a busy day of errands. Going to the gym, grocery shopping, going to the photocopier at Di Tella to print the next month's worth of reading (they don't use books- just photocopies), finding the US embassy to mail my ballot for free, and going to BsAs Fashion Week.

I'm going to nap now and go out in a bit! Monday also happens to be a holiday- so I'll get a four day weekend.

One of the things I've decided I will just never understand...

WHY THE HECK CAN'T I DO MY OWN LAUNDRY?!?!?!

There are lavaderos (Laundromats) on every street, but they are valet service. The person there washes your clothes for you.

So last week, after being here for about a week and a half, I decided I needed to do laundry. The truth is, I just didn't bring that may clothes. I elected to not have my jeans or pj's washed to save $$, but I had a few articles that I didn't want in the dryer. I went to the lavadero, explained that I didn't want the articles in the specified bag put in the dryer, and was told I could return within 3 hours or by 7:20 that evening. I wasn't able to pick up my clothes until the next morning, but it cost 36 pesos. That's a little more than 10 bucks. The price was a little more than I expected since most things are cheaper here than in the US (but maybe I've just gotten used to free laundry at school). I figured I'd just bring my laundry to the lavadero this week and do it myself.

I lied, I actually can do my own laundry, but the price is the same, whether I do it myself or the owner does it. That just doesn't make sense to me. I've become accustomed to washing certain clothing in hot water, others by hand, some go in the dryer, some are hung; therefore, doing my own laundry is more convenient than explaining to someone else how I want my clothes washed. This also results in more small loads and more money.

I ended up doing my own laundry today with help of the owner as he explained how to operate the machines. I used 3 washers (totally could have fit it into two) and one dryer. The result being my room filled with half dry jeans and my bathroom crowded with damp shirts and underwear. It was 32 pesos, but at least I got all my clothes washed this time.



The remedy: Yesterday I bought a small tub, so I can hand wash the clothes that I don't want in the dryer. Today my jeans might have gotten the only bath they're getting in the next 6 months. I will bring the rest of my clothes to the lavadero for valet service when necessary, but will skip the dryer. That should run me about 16 pesos a week.

But why aren't there self-service laundry mats here?!

Let the classes begin.

The semester starts tomorrow at most the universities that I'm considering enrolling in. I've selected roughly 10 classes to try out during our month of 'shopping.' I'll take 3 or 4 of them in the end, along with the required Spanish class through the program. Many of the classes that I wish to try overlap in schedule or have little time between them but are far away from each other, so I'll just have to try my best to get to the classes that I can. This should be a very filled few weeks. With the exception of Fridays, which I have chosen to keep free.

I'm going to try out a few Spanish literature, Argentine history, art, phycology, and science classes. I should be able to finish Whitman's distribution requirements, as well as my Spanish minor and perhaps one class toward my major.

Tomorrow I have an art class at the university that is close to my house, and then a history class during the evening.

Updates to come!