- Classes are mostly good. My psicología social class might kill me because it's super-theoretical and would be hard enough in English. I really like my intensive Spanish class; the students and professors (there are two) are fun and I love that my schedule will be really open after the course ends in early October.
- I can't believe it will be September tomorrow. And I'm turning 21 next week...?!
- Social life is good. Interesting. Slowly adjusting itself to this whole classes thing.
- There is a music festival this weekend! I went yesterday and will go back tonight or tomorrow. Is there anything I love more?
- I am getting used to short hair.
Friday, August 31, 2007
I will update this for real soon.
But until then:
Monday, August 27, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
We found Jesus in Argentina!
Yesterday was a day like no other. Hannah, Liana, Andrew, Facundo and I embarked on a sacred adventure. Our destination: Tierra Santa. Yes, that's right. A religious theme park, complete with biblical scenes and a resurrection every half hour.
Watch out Israel, the holy land's in Buenos Aires. We are awful people.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
month one: check?!
Dear Body,
You're a champ. The way you've been handling my lifestyle is thoroughly impressive. Keep up the good work because I don't plan on slowing down or sleeping more or anything ridiculous like that. And I'm going to keep going to the gym, too--you'll thank me later.
love,
me
Dear Mind,
This is where it starts to get interesting. And by interesting I mean overwhelming and slightly scary. I know just listening to all that Spanish is making you feel like exploding by the end of the day, but guess what? Now it's time to start reading, too. That endless stack of Freud and Lacan for psicología social isn't going to read itself, and it isn't going to translate itself into English, either. Best of luck.
love,
me
Dear Buenos Aires,
Things are getting pretty serious between us, aren't they? And yeah, we both know New York is waiting for me back home but we've definitely got a good thing going. I think you know how I feel: I love you more all the time, despite your faults. Sometimes the bus takes ten minutes to come and people get robbed and my classes start half an hour late, but I'm staying with you, and I feel good about it.
love,
me
You're a champ. The way you've been handling my lifestyle is thoroughly impressive. Keep up the good work because I don't plan on slowing down or sleeping more or anything ridiculous like that. And I'm going to keep going to the gym, too--you'll thank me later.
love,
me
Dear Mind,
This is where it starts to get interesting. And by interesting I mean overwhelming and slightly scary. I know just listening to all that Spanish is making you feel like exploding by the end of the day, but guess what? Now it's time to start reading, too. That endless stack of Freud and Lacan for psicología social isn't going to read itself, and it isn't going to translate itself into English, either. Best of luck.
love,
me
Dear Buenos Aires,
Things are getting pretty serious between us, aren't they? And yeah, we both know New York is waiting for me back home but we've definitely got a good thing going. I think you know how I feel: I love you more all the time, despite your faults. Sometimes the bus takes ten minutes to come and people get robbed and my classes start half an hour late, but I'm staying with you, and I feel good about it.
love,
me
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
You Know You Live In Bs As When… (Part 1)
- you encounter a protest march on your way to class.
- the subte closes randomly (an accident? you’ll never know) when you’re trying to get somewhere, so you whip out your Guia T, find a bus, and hop on.
- you spend more time waiting for your food than eating it. Your waiter also may disappear for twenty minutes at a time.
- your classes are interrupted by passionate students handing out newspapers and ranting about the problems of the administration (seriously, UBA students make Wes kids look beyond apathetic).
- you can’t get a cab at 7am because everyone else is leaving the clubs, too.
- a red light after midnight means “hey, why stop when it’s about to change anyway?”
Monday, August 13, 2007
MONEDAS, or why the bus system is going to make me fat
Don't get me wrong; now that I can use the colectivos, I think they're great. From almost any point A, there is a convenient bus that can take you to almost any point B. But bus tickets can only be bought with coins. And while in the States my wallet constantly fills with change that I unload on disgruntled Starbucks employees when it gets too heavy, I never ever have enough change here. Colectivos make coins not just useful but necessary.
So why will this make me fat? The anwer: kioscos. On nearly every block, there's a kiosco where one can buy candy, phone cards, and not much more. So when I find myself changeless on my way to take a bus, there is only one way to acquire monedas. Simply asking for change is a no-go because everyone else needs theirs as badly as I do. Therefore, if I start expanding, I will blame not the white bread that is served everywhere, not the delicious steak, not the helado: it's the bus system, damn it. It's not my fault.
So why will this make me fat? The anwer: kioscos. On nearly every block, there's a kiosco where one can buy candy, phone cards, and not much more. So when I find myself changeless on my way to take a bus, there is only one way to acquire monedas. Simply asking for change is a no-go because everyone else needs theirs as badly as I do. Therefore, if I start expanding, I will blame not the white bread that is served everywhere, not the delicious steak, not the helado: it's the bus system, damn it. It's not my fault.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
baby´s first...*
...bus ride!
I took my first colectivo successfully on Tuesday morning. Now, it´s probably impossible for someone who has not been to Buenos Aires or tried to navigate using a Guia T (little book with maps of parts of the city) to fully comprehend what a difficult task it is. There are literally hundreds of different buses, with different colors and numbers and routes and ways to screw you over. I am not even going to try to explain the process one must go through to decide which bus to take, let alone how to find where the bus will stop. Or should stop - since, you know, sometimes they decide to change their routes, seemingly for no good reason except to confuse angry Guia-T-clutching extranjeras who just want to get to a stupid class. Anyway, I can do colectivos now, more or less.
...class!
My first colectivo ride deposited me right in front of the building I needed to be in for my first class here. Perfect, right? And I was early, too. That is, until I tried to find the classroom. Eventually I found myself in a group of four confused Americans shuffling up and down the stairs until someone cleared things up for us ("Yeah I know it says Aula 152, but that´s just Mondays! See how it also says Sala D? Claro...") and we bumbled in ten minutes late. The class itself was interesting (psicología de la adolescencia), and I´d say I followed about 60, maybe 65 percent of it.
...day trip!
Having a friend in this city who´s been here for a semester and knows what she´s doing (and also is awesome and fun to hang out with) is really great. Eliza finished up her semester a few weeks ago and came back to Bs As at the beginning of this week after some traveling around the country. Yesterday, Liana and I went with Eliza on an adventure to La Plata, a city about an hour south of here. It´s the capital of the province of Buenos Aires (don´t ask me why Bs As is not the capital of Bs As), and it´s much more tranquilo than here. We wandered a bit, checked out the cathedral, and went to the bosque, which was basically a big park with a pretty lake. It was nice to be somewhere else for a day, and it was both weird and nice when I was exhausted at the end of the day and glad to be "going home" to my resi in Buenos Aires.
*I gotta credit Liana here; this "baby´s first" business is completely due to her influence.
I took my first colectivo successfully on Tuesday morning. Now, it´s probably impossible for someone who has not been to Buenos Aires or tried to navigate using a Guia T (little book with maps of parts of the city) to fully comprehend what a difficult task it is. There are literally hundreds of different buses, with different colors and numbers and routes and ways to screw you over. I am not even going to try to explain the process one must go through to decide which bus to take, let alone how to find where the bus will stop. Or should stop - since, you know, sometimes they decide to change their routes, seemingly for no good reason except to confuse angry Guia-T-clutching extranjeras who just want to get to a stupid class. Anyway, I can do colectivos now, more or less.
...class!
My first colectivo ride deposited me right in front of the building I needed to be in for my first class here. Perfect, right? And I was early, too. That is, until I tried to find the classroom. Eventually I found myself in a group of four confused Americans shuffling up and down the stairs until someone cleared things up for us ("Yeah I know it says Aula 152, but that´s just Mondays! See how it also says Sala D? Claro...") and we bumbled in ten minutes late. The class itself was interesting (psicología de la adolescencia), and I´d say I followed about 60, maybe 65 percent of it.
...day trip!
Having a friend in this city who´s been here for a semester and knows what she´s doing (and also is awesome and fun to hang out with) is really great. Eliza finished up her semester a few weeks ago and came back to Bs As at the beginning of this week after some traveling around the country. Yesterday, Liana and I went with Eliza on an adventure to La Plata, a city about an hour south of here. It´s the capital of the province of Buenos Aires (don´t ask me why Bs As is not the capital of Bs As), and it´s much more tranquilo than here. We wandered a bit, checked out the cathedral, and went to the bosque, which was basically a big park with a pretty lake. It was nice to be somewhere else for a day, and it was both weird and nice when I was exhausted at the end of the day and glad to be "going home" to my resi in Buenos Aires.
*I gotta credit Liana here; this "baby´s first" business is completely due to her influence.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
Really, Buenos Aires isn't as big as it seems, now that I'm starting to get a decent mental map of it. Or maybe that's just what I'm telling myself to excuse my fear of the bus system. 
Here's a picture of the view from my balcony:
Not bad... my room faces north and I took this photo facing east, toward the centro and pretty much everything I've seen of the city so far.
What I'll probably remember most from orientation is sitting around on the entrepiso, a floor which consists of four computers and three big comfy couches--perfect for lounging during the awkward times between orientation workshops. A highlight of orientation week two was a workshop on Aspectos Culturales, in which we got talk to local college students about what it's like to live here. It was interesting to hear what they had to say about cultural norms, school, gender roles, preconceptions about Americans, and more. Besides that, we mostly dealt with registering for classes, which was a complicated ordeal. Because I'm taking classes from two or three different institutions, they all start at different times: some this week, some next week, and some the week after. It's kind of nice because I can gradually figure out my schedule (at the moment I'm registered for 10 classes so I'll be dropping at least half of them), but it's going to be confusing to figure out the "shopping period" (drop/add, basically) for each one.
I'll probably have to adjust my habits a bit now that classes are starting. My schedule Wednesday through Saturday has been, more or less: go to orientation or out to do something else, come home and take a nap around 7 or 8pm, wake up and go to dinner around 10pm, then go out from there and come home between 4 and 7am. The naps are pretty key to getting through the day/night. Liana and I joined a gym this week, so we've started adding in gym trips between napping and dinner. Going to the gym is making me feel more at home here, and it's nice to be working out again.
This past week I met a few more of the people living in the resi(dencia), and I've gone out with some of them, which has been fun. I've had my first several clubbing experiences, and it's more fun than I expected. The clubs play an interesting range of genres, from electronica to Latin pop to 80s and 90s American hits. On Friday night at Pachá, they played the Final Countdown and I was so happy that fellow Arrested Development lover Liana was with me to appreciate how amazing it was.
On Saturday, we had an asada (barbecue) at the resi, so I ate lots of delicious meat and hung out with a bunch of the kids who live here. Afterward, I went with Liana and Hannah to the Museo de Bellas Artes. We only covered the first floor because it's pretty overwhelming and since it's free to enter, we can go back as many times as we want. I saw a lot of stuff I really liked, including a really interesting exhibit of Alejandro Sirio's work.
Sunday was a lazy day that didn't begin until after 2pm (pretty typical for a weekend day here, even among the adults). Liana and I went over to Hannah's host mother's house and the three of us baked chocolate chip cookies. The cookies turned out kind of awful (we made a few substitutions that didn't quite work out) but we had a good time just hanging around. Just being in a home instead of a dorm was nice for a change.
Interesting random sidenotes:
Here's a picture of the view from my balcony:Not bad... my room faces north and I took this photo facing east, toward the centro and pretty much everything I've seen of the city so far.
What I'll probably remember most from orientation is sitting around on the entrepiso, a floor which consists of four computers and three big comfy couches--perfect for lounging during the awkward times between orientation workshops. A highlight of orientation week two was a workshop on Aspectos Culturales, in which we got talk to local college students about what it's like to live here. It was interesting to hear what they had to say about cultural norms, school, gender roles, preconceptions about Americans, and more. Besides that, we mostly dealt with registering for classes, which was a complicated ordeal. Because I'm taking classes from two or three different institutions, they all start at different times: some this week, some next week, and some the week after. It's kind of nice because I can gradually figure out my schedule (at the moment I'm registered for 10 classes so I'll be dropping at least half of them), but it's going to be confusing to figure out the "shopping period" (drop/add, basically) for each one.
I'll probably have to adjust my habits a bit now that classes are starting. My schedule Wednesday through Saturday has been, more or less: go to orientation or out to do something else, come home and take a nap around 7 or 8pm, wake up and go to dinner around 10pm, then go out from there and come home between 4 and 7am. The naps are pretty key to getting through the day/night. Liana and I joined a gym this week, so we've started adding in gym trips between napping and dinner. Going to the gym is making me feel more at home here, and it's nice to be working out again.
This past week I met a few more of the people living in the resi(dencia), and I've gone out with some of them, which has been fun. I've had my first several clubbing experiences, and it's more fun than I expected. The clubs play an interesting range of genres, from electronica to Latin pop to 80s and 90s American hits. On Friday night at Pachá, they played the Final Countdown and I was so happy that fellow Arrested Development lover Liana was with me to appreciate how amazing it was.
On Saturday, we had an asada (barbecue) at the resi, so I ate lots of delicious meat and hung out with a bunch of the kids who live here. Afterward, I went with Liana and Hannah to the Museo de Bellas Artes. We only covered the first floor because it's pretty overwhelming and since it's free to enter, we can go back as many times as we want. I saw a lot of stuff I really liked, including a really interesting exhibit of Alejandro Sirio's work.
Sunday was a lazy day that didn't begin until after 2pm (pretty typical for a weekend day here, even among the adults). Liana and I went over to Hannah's host mother's house and the three of us baked chocolate chip cookies. The cookies turned out kind of awful (we made a few substitutions that didn't quite work out) but we had a good time just hanging around. Just being in a home instead of a dorm was nice for a change.
Interesting random sidenotes:
- I have never seen so many mullets in my life. By the time I get back to the States, they'll hardly faze me.
- The McDonald's here are surprisingly snazzy. They have these McCafes with decent coffee (so I'm told) and pastries and things, and they generally have an ambiance unheard of in US McD's.
- I saw a Kiosco in the mall today with a sign that said "OPEN 25 HOURS." If anyone can figure out what that means, let me know.