two in two days

Hello world, I finally bought some leather boots! Sadly, they are short. Happily, they are beautiful and cost less than $60, are made of genuine argentine leather, and I am currently wearing them while laying in my bed.

Some funny things I thought I would share with you all:

1. Argentines try to exchange email addresses in lieu of phone numbers when you are at the bar/club. Bizzare.

2. There is a Buenos Aires pub crawl that happens about 2 or 3 times during the week where you get an hour of unlimited pizza and beer and then 1 shot at every bar for 60 pesos, ~$15. Whata bargain! It's overrun by foreigners, but there are a lot of countries represented and some natives do go.

3. Flowers off the street from a vendor cost less than $2 a bunch, and it's winter, so I guess they get even cheaper in the summer. I have plans to always have fresh flowers in my room.

4. Leather boots are not comfortable until they get broken in.

5. I may never come home!!

night life

Hey everybody, it's been a few days since I've had the motivation to write on here, so I decided I should sneak a post in while I have a few minutes.

Buenos Aires is awesome, it's winter right now here, so I've been wearing a fleece or two every day, but the weather has been ridiculously nice the past two days (17C!!). This week and the past week I've mostly been sitting around in an really old and enormous Argentine mansion with the other 144 kids from the fall program and getting lectured to in Castellano. It gets prettty boring and tedious, some kids have no common sense and need this type of orientation, but for the rest of us, it's torture.

In the evenings and on the weekends I have time free, but this Sunday it rained so I didn't do too much. I know the weekends are the most exciting part of the week, so I'll describe this past one. On Friday, we got out of class in the evening, around 7 and then everyone went their separate ways and had dinner with their host families around 9-10PM. Around 11:30PM-12AM is when everyone starts texting each other (we all bought dinky little pay by the minute cell phones down here) and deciding how and where to meet up. I went with three other girls from Madison and 1 Mexican girl from Colorado to a bar around 12:30 and then a dance club/boliche around 2:30AM. It seems ridiculously late, but that's the normal time for things to get going around here. In the US (or in Madison) bar time is 2AM. In contrast, here, ladies get in free to the dance clubs UNTIL 2AM, then they have to pay the ~$5 cover and bar time is extended until ~5AM, its not too strict.

That was fun, and we all danced and talked to Argentines and around 5AM we realized it was 5AM and decided to all hop in a cab to go home. Luckily my host mom sleeps until noon every day, so it's not weird for me to do the same. Saturday consisted of a full day walking around the Rural, which is a farm exhibition similar to the MN State Fair, and eating a HUGE hunk of meat at the restaurant there. I will post a picture of it later, because it was ridiculous! I was with 2 girls from Madison there, and then Julie and I decided to walk about 2 miles along Santa Fe, the road I live on, and shop for leather boots. It's a much harder task than it seems, as you have to look for quality, price and a good fit.

We were pretty exhausted by the time 7PM rolled around so we stopped and got a coffee and then decided to invite the 2 boys from Madison over to eat dinner with us. They came and by the time push came to shove none of us were hungry so we just split a bottle of the most amazing Argentine red wine and then wandered around the quaint bars of the city until around 230AM when I decided I really would rather be sleeping so I took a cab home.

Cabs can be a dicey thing here, so we have the number for 3 safe companies programmed into our phones and we know which logos are safe to take off the street (they need to say Radio Taxi and have that written on the top of the cab). And now it's time for me to go do my homework that is due this afternoon for my Spanish class (I have to orally describe four photos that I took and I have no idea what I want to say).

If any of the Rothe's feel like it, I would love to hear how Door County has been. Hint Hint. Until next time folks.

photos

Here are some photos for those of you who are curious, you can see the extremely large size of my room and one picture from a park near orientation.

okay, this isnt working. ill work on it later.

the argentines

I'm starting to actually learn a little bit about the Argentine people and the city, Buenos Aires.

First, they drink a WHOLE LOTTA coffee - and I think my teeth are going to be brown/black by the time I come home in a year. For example, this morning I had instant coffee with my host mom around 10:30AM and then I took the underground to orientation, where I had a 5 minute oral exam and then I went and ate an empanada and drank a coffee with frothed milk (which is how they always serve coffee with milk here) around 12:30. I then went back to orientation and had another break after only an hour and a half and I went to a different cafe and drank another cafe con leche. You'd think that after 3 cups of STRONG coffee in one morning/afternoon that a girl wouldn't be able to sleep - but this is not the case. I walked home from orientation with a friend, approximately 35 blocks, and as soon as I got home I fell asleep for half an hour before I woke up at 8:45 to eat dinner. I think thinking/speaking/listening in Castellano (the type of Spanish they speak in BA) my brain gets incredibly tired and it's easy for me to fall asleep regardless of caffeine stimulation.

Second, it is a very machisto (male dominated) culture - if you're walking alone or with one other girl down the street there are guys who whisper/say all sorts of things. Some whistle, some comment on your body or face or general appearance, or else they ask if you wanna "blah blah blah" with them. Typically I just ignore them (chances are that if I'm not paying attention to the person speaking I'm not even going to understand what they are saying). It doesn't bother me too much because I don't know what they're saying but it is annoying to have creepy old men trying to talk to you on the equivalent of the subway. I dunno if this guy this morning was just trying to be nice but I felt like he seriously invaded my space, so I went to the other side of the underground car - and obviously no one is going to bother you in a seriously crowded subway car if you move away.

Third, I have serious issues with the bathrooms here. My toilet in my bathroom (the one with the bidet, remember) has a button above it on the wall for flushing and for some reason I don't have the magic touch of my host mom Sara and every time I try to flush the toilet, the water runs. So I try to let it mellow if it's yellow, as the rule goes, but my host mom also cleans my bathroom and bedroom every day, so it doesn't really work, since she just flushes it. As far as the other bathroom issues go - I think the plumbing is very sub-par because in all of the other bathrooms I've been in, I've seen signs asking people to put their used toilet paper in the trash instead of flushing it. Anywhoo, I can't really complain because I'm just glad that traveling didn't mess up my digestion for too long and I can happily report that I have been having healthy poops every day!

Hmm, lets see...

My first real day here (Tuesday) I took a bus with my host mom to the "Italian Circle" where I have orientation and our colectivo (the word for bus) got into a very minor accident with a motorcycle. I can tell you that I learned a lot of good swear words in the 5 minutes of bickering that ensued.

They serve huge sized beers in the bars, and strong ones at that. I ordered an Argentine beer last night at the bar and they gave me one that was 500mL and 7.5% alcohol (kinda a lotta liquor for ordering one beer) - and that's all I drank in the two hours that we were there and then I took a taxi home with some other girls.

Future plans - buy a pair of knee high leather boots this weekend! They're very in right now in Argentina and they have wonderful ones EVERYWHERE for CHeAP CheaP CHEAP! I have Saturday and Sunday free so I'm going to the zoo and botanical gardens, which are next to my apartment building, also there is a rural exhibition in the building immediately next to mine. I'm for sure going to have to check that out, since I guess its realllly fun. Other plans consist of going to a dance club for the first time tomorrow night and just walking around the city - which is great exercise.

p.s. I think that Argentines don't sleep and they also don't really eat (only 1 real meal per day)

Hi from a different continent this time. I made it into Buenos Aires this morning, around 9:15 AM local time (7:15 AM Minnesota time) on about 3 hours of sketchy airplane sleep. Luckily my host mom Sara, who is hilarious and speaks 100mph, has been either serving me cafecitos (little cups of coffee) or taking me to meet the neighbors, who also serve me cafecitos, all day long and I'm still awake. It's a little bit cold here today, around 50F and rainy, but the city is awesome. My neighborhood, Palermo, is one of the nicer ones and Sara and I walked to the corner store to buy a plug convertor so I can use my computer and other electronics in Argentina. We also strolled down by the zoo but today is probably not the best day to explore, since my nose felt like it might fall off after being in 90F Minnesota weather for the past few months.

My room is really little but more than sufficient as I brought hardly any things and I also have my own little bathroom (with a bidet I might add). I'm just starting to settle in and orientation starts tomorrow. So far I've mostly shown Sara family Christmas photos, which she loved, and met another boy who is staying in the other cuerpo (tower) of my apartment building with a hilarious host mom named Christina. There's a dog but I haven't even attempted to remember its name and one of Sara's four children, Guillermo, is currently living in the third bedroom as he is in the process of buying an apartment.

Mom, Sara loved the chocolates, honey, blueberry jam and wild rice. She's not too sure what to think of the maple syrup since I did a really poor job describing what pancakes are to her. I told her that I will just have to teach her how to make them and she can judge it then. (She originally pulled tortillas out of the fridge when I tried to explain what pancakes are, thinking that's what I meant. As if I wouldn't just say tortilla if that's what I meant.)

I'll write more in a few days but I just need to settle in now - and I'm glad I made it alive and didn't lose any luggage since a boy from Madison lost his only suitcase.

P.S. Guillermo just turned off "Telephone" by Lady Gaga and Beyonce and left the apartment.

Getting ready for a year away from home

Hey everybody,

There has been a lot of pressure put on me to start a blog (I'm not too sure why anyone would want to know so much about my adventures but I'll give it a shot). I decided it might not be too bad of an idea to blog as a cop-out for keeping a journal, which I have tried to do numerous times in the past dating all the way back to 3rd grade. I never get beyond 5 entries before it tends to trail off and die. I am hopeful that this will be a little bit more successful and long lived.

Right now I am unpacking the things I remembered to bring home from my apartment in Madison before I repack the things I am not taking for storage and the few things I am bringing as luggage. Only 11 days until I am in the air on my way from Atlanta to Buenos Aires (Argentina for all of you who may have forgotten where I am headed).

More to come (maybe) once I actually get out of the country.

*I switched to this blog because I think it will be easier to manage*