Saying hi from Santiago

So to answer the question that the blog's URL asks, I am currently in Santiago de Chile. So why am I blogging? Because I'm waiting for Liana and Jenny to finish showering so we can go out and there's free internet in our super cute hostel. First impressions of Santiago: it's pretty tranquilo, has charm, and is pretty much nothing like Buenos Aires--more like some of the cities in Ecuador and Peru. Flying over the Andes was awesome. Meanwhile, the Chilean accent is nearly impossible to understand, so so much for my confidence in my Spanish.

Two weeks from now I'll be flying home!

DONE!?!?!?

I am done with school for the semester. Technically I have been done since last Thursday at 12:30pm but I didn't know it because I was waiting to get my grades back. In two of my classes, I needed to get a certain grade to avoid taking a final, so I found myself briefly in this awkward/stressed position of not knowing if I was finished with everything or completely screwed (if I'd had to take the psicología social final, it could've ruined my already-planned Chile trip).

But DONE! It seems so strange but it's true. Which means I have little to do this week beyond soaking up the city and getting ready to go away. Then Chile on Saturday!

It is getting really hot and humid here. I whine about it but I can't believe it'll all soon be replaced with Northeast winter. I hear the snow has begun...

To clarify:

I do not, in fact, have a mullet. I have very short hair and the back was, briefly, awkwardly longer than made sense. Said situation has since been rectified by the hand of Hannah. Trevor's mullet has also been fixed; I don't think I did too bad a job, either.

Also, I hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving. I celebrated in the most festive and American way I could. Pictures soon.

WARNING: MULLET ATTACKS

I feel it is my duty to inform the world of a startling phenomenon that is taking place in Argentina as well as, I fear, in many other countries outside of North America. The situation is this: the mullet*, which in the United States is generally considered either extremely outdated or extremely ironic (do you know a hipster who can pull it off? Maybe. It's still not a good idea, though), is here not only acceptable but COMMON. Normal! There are mullets in suits walking around Microcentro. Mullets in aprons frying milanesas. Mullet couples sipping Fernet colas in bars. Mullets on the subte, mullets on the dancefloor, mullets on TV. Business in the front, party in the back, and ridiculousness all over.

You can talk all you want about cultural difference, culture sensitivity, blah blah blah, but there are some issues on which I simply do not wish to be open-minded. And the mullet is one of them.

But what's really problematic is the fact that the mullet is spreading. You can tell me that Halloween in Argentina is cultural imperialism but what's REALLY cultural imperialism is the Argentine-style mullet striking down upon me and my American friends without consent. The first victim was Hannah, who somehow acquired half a head's worth of bangs and valiantly fought this mullety outcome with a 'fro, a.k.a. a rock-star-awesome perm. Then it was my turn, and my requests for "no more layers, as long as you can leave it, all the same length" left me with what I regret to admit was an extremely short MULLET (Hannah trimmed the back for me, rendering it slightly more acceptable). And now Trevor too has been subjected to this; he didn't heed my warnings and now he will have to live with a somewhat dire party in the back situation until I find time to attack him with a scissor.

I should probably get back to the scary psych paper that's due tomorrow, but this alarming situation just could not wait.


*If by some chance you are not aware of the mullet phenomenon, I recommend Google image search or Argentine telenovelas.

What's left

• two weeks of school (two papers and a final)
• one week of waiting
• ten days of traveling (Chile then Mendoza)
• about four days back in Bs As
• plane flight home the night of December 22 to get me home early the morning of the 23rd

So the family visits, which involved a lot of fun, shopping, delicious food, and great wine, have come to an end. And now I find myself facing a few weeks of academic misery before my semester essentially ends. Already? Yeah. Went fast, no? Wish I could just jump over the finals stuff and right into the travel part, but I'll try to make the best of my last few weeks in Buenos Aires.

What else is new...

• My dad and Melanie got fake bills from a taxista.
  
• I got my hair butchered by a scissor-happy Argentine.
  
• Spring in Buenos Aires is beautiful and full of purple trees.
• Apparently my Spanish really has improved a lot here.
• Probably a lot of other stuff.

But I gotta go deal with my psicología social paper.

Uruguay

On Thursday afternoon, Trevor and I hopped on a boat to Uruguay. Fifty minutes and some odd customs/immigration checks later (a Uruguayan and and Argentine sit next to each other and pass my passport along and I'm done? All on one side of the river? Ok...), we were in Colonia. Lonely Planet calls Colonia "charming and quaint," and they pretty much hit the nail on the head. While there wouldn't be much to do there for more than a day, it's very cute, full of historical sites and solid restaurants, and worth seeing. Highlights include the view from the lighthouse and the beautiful colonial architecture in general.

Next stop: Montevideo, a city which I'll admit I knew nothing about and made me think only of memorizing Latin American capital cities in high school Spanish class. And... it's one of the weirder capital cities I've visited. I think maybe a day and a half wasn't quite enough to understand this place, but from what I've gathered, it's a smallish city in a quiet state of crumbling decay with bright spots of activity here and there. The part of the city I liked best was the old town, the Ciudad Vieja - old buildings, narrow streets, lots of vendors, plenty of cafes and bars - the only place that seemed to have anything going on at night, even on a Saturday.

Another highlight of Montevideo is the Mercado del Puerto, which, strangely enough, is a collection of bustling restaurants--mostly parrillas (grills)--crammed into a wrought-iron building of sorts. Unique atmosphere and, at least at El Palenque, where we ate, great parrilla. Sensory overload, though: voices, clattering, various wandering street musicians, crowds, the smell of meat cooking, etc. It's also home to Roldó's, a cafe that's been there since 1886 and is known for serving medio y medio, a mix of sparking and white wines--which, I might add, costs 25 Uruguayan pesos a glass... about $1.25 US.

Late Saturday afternoon, a relatively expensive cab ride took us across the city and up to El Cerrito, site of the Museo Militar, and more importantly, a great view of the whole city and a panorama of everything around it. As usual, the photo doesn't do it justice.


Now I'm back in Buenos Aires and excited to spend this week with my mom and aunt Lisa, who arrive tomorrow morning, and then the week after that with my dad and Melanie. And then the semester's kind of almost over...!?! Never a dull moment...

brave?

This morning on the subte, smooshed in by people on 3 sides and a wall on the other in my usual commute to class, I started thinking about how many things I've done since I got here, from the daily trials of living in a foreign city to all the trying, unpredictable obstacles and issues. And the good stuff, too, of course. And it made me feel tired just thinking about it (the Halloween party I went to last night and left early--at 3--probably didn't help)--and I thought, "Wow, if I had known it would be like this, would I still have decided to do it?" I remember before I left for my high school semester in South America, people kept telling me how brave I was, and my response was, "Brave? All I did was send in an application." But I'm starting to think it actually does take being kind of brave to do this stuff. And I'm kind of proud of myself for doing it.

I gotta get back to class. And then get to Uruguay this afternoon. Chau!

3 down, 2 to go

I love spring in Buenos Aires. I also love only having classes Tuesday through Thursday now that my intensive Spanish class has ended. Other than that, not much to tell. Yesterday we hit the three month mark, and I'll be home in two more...

Weekend: Rosario, Santa Fe, and Paraná

After a harrowing week of taking parciales (midterms), Trevor and I got on a 4:3opm bus from Buenos Aires to Rosario on Thursday. Rosario, which is four hours away, is Argentina’s second biggest city. Which isn’t saying much. Compared to Buenos Aires, it’s tiny, and muy tranquilo – in a good way. Highlights include:

• beautiful Parque de la Independencia. There’s just something about well-designed urban green spaces. The park is also home to the Museo de Bellas Artes, which has an interesting collection, although it was mysteriously near-empty on a rainy Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend.
• the impressive Monumento a la Bandera (where General Belgrano raised Argentina’s flag for the first time in 1812). While we were sitting and taking in the monument, a huge, gorgeous rainbow appeared over the river.
  
  
• the Río Paraná – especially gazing at it while I ate a huge, fresh, delicious alfajor.
  
  
• boat trip to Vladimir Island, where there is a pretty beach and a few bars. It must get bustling in the summer. As it was, we were there on an absolutely beautiful Saturday and it was mysteriously empty. I just don’t know what Rosarinos do on weekends.
  
  

…then we moved on to Santa Fe, an easy 2.5 hour bus ride away. Well, if we thought Rosario was tranquilo, Santa Fe was muy muy MUY tranquilo. Not to mention refreshingly short on tourists, especially other Americans. I’ve never been asked where I’m from so many times in one day. Apparently we’re a rarity around there. My favorite was a girl who must’ve been about 14, selling wax roses in a plaza for four pesos (about $1.30 American). When we started talking to her after her adorably impassioned and super fast spiel about what the colors of roses meant what, she asked us something that essentially translates to, “Where are you two from with your tone that sounds so strange?!” Naturally, Trevor bought me a silly wax rose. We couldn’t resist.

More inviting than Santa Fe for intangible reasons was its twin city on the other side of the río (in the creatively named province of Entre Ríos), Paraná. Entrerrianos, due to the relative insularity of the province, are friendly and even more tranquilo than Santafesinos. By far the highlight of our day trip to Paraná was walking along the river. The whole waterfront was flooded with people when we got there around sunset – it was suddenly abundantly clear that the rest of the city had seemed quiet not, as we’d suspected, because people just stayed in on Sundays, but rather because EVERYONE was down by the river: walking, talking, eating ice cream, watching dancers, enjoying the day.
So that was my weekend... it was fun, somewhat relaxing, and a great way to celebrate surviving parciales.

In other news, I am now living with Juliana, a 27-year-old chica, in a little apartment about 6 blocks form the resi where I lived before. The pluses: my own room, and Argentine to hang out with and speak Spanish with, a place where my friends can come hang out. Also, seeing Calexico here was awesome.

And now... it is suddenly mid-October and I feel like for weeks I've hardly had a moment to think. My lifestyle here in general leaves me feeling like I'm always running around or catching up and never really catching my breath, but I guess that's how one makes the most of a semester. Goals for the next few weeks: sleep more, breath more, gym more, enjoy.

I have no time to tell you why I have no time.

There's a whole list of things I should blog about, including moving (successful), Calexico (awesome), counterfeit money (keeping it as a souvenir), and school stress. But seeing as the school stress continues right up until I leave for Rosario tomorrow, this will all have to wait.

So for now: I'm alive, mostly well, about to take a scary midterm, and taking off for a long weekend in Rosario and Santa Fe. To be continued...

JUJUY! and other news

I spent this past weekend on our second FLACSO-run viaje, this time to the northern province of Jujuy. The trip was a bit more structured than Córdoba, as it was a seminar on "The Present and Past of the Andean World." It was still a lot of fun, and really really beautiful. Therefore I am posting five different pictures.
Lots of cacti.
Las Salinas, the salt flats. This used to be a huge lake that over time became this vast sea of salt. Very weird.
View from the bus as we drove back from the salt flats. Pretty amazing. Also note that there are a few houses and some farmland down there, definitely a good two hours or so from any town...
Beautiful Purmamarca. The colors of the land there were just amazing.
More Purmamarca. This whole hike was breathtaking. The land barely looked real.

Overall, the trip provided an interesting link between this semester and my high school semester in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Being in the Andes again meant the culture, land, and general feeling of Jujuy were much more like what I experienced in the other Andean countries than here in Buenos Aires. This city is its own little universe, so it was cool to see that a place like Jujuy exists in Argentina, albeit close to the Bolivian border.

Other news, to be expanded upon later:
1. I am moving out of the residencia soon.
2. I am seeing Calexico on Friday!
3. I hate parciales and will not have time to breathe until after October 12.

You know you live in Bs As when... (part 2)

• A hamburguesa “completa” means it includes fried egg and ham. In fact, pretty much everything involves egg and/or ham.
• The only place to get coffee “to go" is McDonald’s.
• The elevators only hold two people (and may very well flash red lights and beep and call you “SOBREPESO” if you try to fit three) and have doors you must close by hand. Which is thoroughly annoying on top of being weird... imagine that someone goes up to the 8th floor and neglects to close the door all the way, rendering the elevator stuck on that floor, and condemning you to a hellish, never-ending spiral staircase experience.
• Coffee is almost always served with a little glass of water, often sparkling, and some sort of little cookie or treat. But at the same time,
  
• serving tap water at a restaurant is unheard of.
• EVERYWHERE delivers, including ice cream shops. Now, how this makes any sense, considering waiters practically ignore you when you are actually eating inside an establishment, is entirely beyond me.
  

WILCO IN BUENOS AIRES AHHHH OH MY GOD

La banda liderada por Jeff Tweedy llegará por primera vez al país para mostrar los temas de "Sky blue sky" y se presentará en el Personal Fest que se realizará el 7 y 8 de Diciembre en el Club Ciudad. También están confirmados Fischerspooner, Coco Rosie y Hot Chip (el 2/11).

http://www.bsasinsomnio.com.ar/postp115841.html

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?! There are no words.

Weekend in Córdoba

When one spends 12 hours on a bus, the ideal final destination is one with flawless weather, beautiful land, luxurious accommodations, and free and delicious food and drinks. Day one in Córdoba fell slightly short of these hopes: there was no sun, the land might have been beautiful had the views not been so thoroughly clouded over, the accommodations were charming if a bit rustic, and the food and drinks passable, though abundant and prepaid. But on day two, the sun came out, the land (picture the American Southwest but a bit greener) awed me, and I fell in love.

Our activities mostly consisted of venturing by bus or foot to pretty places, chilling and optional walks/slight climbs of varying degrees of difficulty, and frequent meals and meriendas. On the third and last day, we had a delicious asado involving beef, chicken, and some amazing baby goat. Really. I will refrain from putting up the photos of the meat roasting in case of squeamish vegetarians, but it was so so delicious.

The worst part of the trip was leaving on Saturday night to get on another overnight bus heading back to Buenos Aires. Who knew I'd be so disappointed to return to "real life" after three days of relaxing in the middle of nowhere? I had almost forgotten how much I love the non-city side of travel: breath-taking natural scenes, hiking, vast open spaces, local culture. I could easily have spent another day or two or three in Córdoba, but classes and reading and this life that somehow has belonged to me for two months awaited in Buenos Aires.

Mate y conversación

My 7pm psicología social class at UBA was canceled last night. And by that I do not mean that I received an email telling me so. I do not mean I got there and there was a sign on the door, or there was any kind of announcement. I mean that I sat their scribbling in my journal in Spanish (frustrated sentences along the lines of "parece que soy incapaz de hacer amigos con argentinos cuando estoy sola...") until 7:30, by which point about half the class had left. Finally I turned to a group of students sitting next to me and asked the obvious: "Piensan ustedes que no hay clase?" Their response: apparently not, but did I want some mate? Naturally, I proceeded to bumblingly mumble something along the lines oh, "Uhh no thanks I mean I'd like to but I've never had it before and I don't know the rules--" (Yes, there are rules. It's a ritual of sorts of here.) But they of course told me in five friendly and encouraging voices that it didn't matter and I should just try it. Would I say no to my first chance to try mate? Of course not. So I sat and talked and drank mate with a group of Argentines until 8 or so, and then walked happily, and with a heavy caffeine buzz, back to the resi.

birthday!

Birthday celebrations lasted many days and were pretty fantastic.
Here I am on September 4th after midnight, having my first ever would-be-legal-in-the-States drink. This "drink," which was lovingly purchased for me by a few devilish boys, is called el septimo regimento and I'm pretty sure contains nothing but a sampling of bad vodkas.
Here I am with Hannah on the night we super-celebrated at a bar in Palermo Viejo. We had this big area with a whole bunch of couches, and about 20-some-odd friends showed up. Later in the night, the bar unexpectedly turned into boliche (club), which was even better.
A shot with a handful of resi girls, plus Jordan and Kadhir. Chilling on the couches.

Now I am 21, happy, and wanting nothing more than to sleep for a few days straight. Celebrating my birthday here was more fun than I ever could have asked for, and it was great to see so many people I really like in one place. Apparently I've amassed a pretty awesome group of friends over the past seven weeks.

This week, I leave for Cordoba on Wednesday evening for four days of relaxing and seeing pretty sights while FLACSO pays for everything (...with the money we've already given them). It'll be nice to get out of the city for awhile.

Happy September, everyone. I'm envying you all for your New York September as the humidity creeps in down here. I suppose it's a small price to pay.

BAFIM, Boots, and the Worby Flip

1. Buenos Aires Feria Internacional de la Música: wooooooooo
I took this photo during Mimi Maura, who is Puerto Rican and awesome and worth getting out of bed for on a Sunday afternoon. Okay, so she wasn't on until 6:30pm. But Sundays are hard.

2. I BOUGHT BOOTS!
They fold down and they click-clack and I love them. This is the beginning of a new era.

3. My hair, having settled into its new length and with little to weigh it down, has suddenly acquired the Worby Flip (TM) -- yes, I am afraid I may be turning into my brothers.

To demonstrate, I give you this poorly taken shouldn't-have-used-a-flash vanity shot:


Guess that about sums things up. Apparently it's September now, so that's weird, and I'm going to be really old in a few days. Happy Labor Day to those of you up in the U.S. of A.

I will update this for real soon.

But until then:

• 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.
  

Hey, look what I did

Why, I could not tell you.

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.