oh Dios mio

Where to start. I think this post is just going to be a recap of the ridiculous night I had last night (before dinner).

To set the scene, my host brother, Guillermo (30) is out of town and he is the proud owner of our 6 year old border collie, Shiva. By out of town I mean he is in SPAIN with his Dad (no big deal) for 15 days, and that leaves Shiva alone at the house with me and Sara. Sara is truly Argentine and doesn't like going out of the house without 5 sweaters/jackets on - so I offered to pitch in on bringing Shiva out. We live on the 8th floor of our building and have no balcony, so there is no alternative for her to go to the bathroom. We have to bring her outside and take her on a walk.

Last night around 7 I asked Sara if I could have a friend over before she and I (my friend from Madison and I) went out to dinner at 10PM, and she said yeah, of course! Do you want to walk Shiva over to meet up with your friend and then you can both walk back here together? So that's what I did, it's only a 15 minute walk or so to get to my friends apartment. I thought it seemed like an awesome plan because what I miss most about Madison and Minnesota is being able to have friends over, not for any specific reason, just to hang out in a relaxed setting like home. Let me tell you, things can get awkward prettty quickly.

Yesterday I had gone on a walk so that I didn't sit in my room doing homework ALL day, and I ended up in a grocery store, just looking for some basics, and walked out with 2 bottles of Santa Julia Malbach (red wine). It was Santa Julia brand, I had to buy it, and I had been looking to buy a bottle of wine for my host sister to congratulate her on getting tenure at her job anyway. So 1 bottle went to her as a present and the other stayed in my room, just asking for us to drink it when my friend came over. Now Sara had given me permission to have a friend over, but I'm not really sure that extends to drinking wine clandestinely in my bedroom. Either way, we thought it wouldn't do any harm, so we (mostly I) tried to use the bottle opener I found in the kitchen and failed miserably. The cork was all shredded up and eventually ended up inside the bottle, with little chunks floating everywhere.

And the story would be all great and funny if those were all of the details, but no. In the process of trying to jam the cork down into the bottle (because damnit I paid $4.50 for that wine and there was no use throwing it out) little bits of cork got strewn around my room, not a big deal. Then, when I wasn't really paying close attention, my friend somehow managed to ram the whole cork into the bottle. Awesome, SUCCESS! NO NO NO. Red wine sprayed EVERYWHERE in my room, it was on 3 of 4 walls if that gives you an idea. 3 of 4 WHITE walls, 1 brand new tan colored shirt I was wearing, my freshly changed white bed sheets, a huge puddle on one of my blankets, and all over another white Urban Outfitters t-shirt as well as my white North Face fleece. (Potentially hundreds of dollars worth of clothing/bedding ruined.)

I managed to wipe the walls off, put my shirts under some cold water and find them in decent condition this morning, and salvage 2/3 of my homework/ books that got sprayed. The sheets are the most complicated matter, as I poured dish soap on the stain on my blanket and let it sit overnight and am bringing it to a laundromat today. There is no inconspicuous way to take off my sheets and get them washed. They, however, are not too badly marked. Needless to say, I have left my mark on this bedroom, and I will never clandestinely drink wine in here again.

On the up-side, the wine was great (yes, we drank some of it after all of that hard work to get it open). I am currently wiping little wine splatters off of my keyboard as I type this, and hoping that this doesn't lead to an extremely awkward moment with my host mom, as I haven't seen her yet today and she came into my room last night and left me a little note on my desk asking about what time I took Shiva out.

That's it for now.

1 Vacation Down, Many To Go

So it's Saturday night and I'm just taking a little rest, hanging out in my bedroom. On Friday morning Julie, Rachael, Brady and I all took the train to El Tigre, a city/suburb of Buenos Aires. It was a pretty expensive train ride, 2.7o pesos round trip. (We were expecting to pay at least 40 pesos each way, not realizing that people who live in El Tigre often work in Buenos Aires and take the train to work every day so it makes sense that it only costs ~75 cents US round trip.) It was awesome! We got there Friday afternoon (its a 40 minute bus ride and when I say we left in the morning I mean we let around 2PM, since we had all gone out until ~6AM the night before). We spent Friday dropping our stuff off at a gorgeous hostel, that cost $15 a night and then walking around and ending up at the Yerba Mate museum.

For those of you who are uninitiated, Yerba Mate is a type of tea that is very very popular in Argentina, in the rural country regions more so than in the capital. At the museum we saw a huge collection of historical bags for the loose tea, historical mates (the name for the cups they drink it out of) and historical straws. We also had a demonstration on how to brew and drink the tea - everyone who was on the tour (about 10 people) then got the chance to share a drink out of the same mate. (mate is pronounced as mah-tae, not may-te as in friend) The culture that surrounds mate is almost more important than the actual tea, which is really caffeinated, and a lot of people drink instead of coffee. You drink the tea by filling your small mate about 3/4 full of herbs, then tapping the side until the herbs sit at a 45 degree angle. Once you are situated, you insert your straw and then pour water over half of the leaves - avoiding the straw so it doesn't get hot and leaving some leaves dry so air can circulate. The water should be 80 degrees Celsius, no hotter, and maybe 5 degrees colder. AKA NOT BOILING, although in some places they do drink it with boiling water. There is a small amount of water in the cup because the cup is pretty small, typically, and once you finish one round of water you pass the mate on to the next person and they re-fill it and drink 1 cup. It's a very social tradition and its an acquired taste - I bought a bag of mint flavored mate for $1 US and they also gave us a free bag after we left the museum. I am convinced that I need to get accustomed while I am here.

After we left the museum we went grocery shopping and got wonderfully fresh red and green bell peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes, avocados, steak, chicken and pita bread. We then headed back to our hostel and made DELICIOUS fajitas. Never have I ever enjoyed cooking a meal so much as I did last night. It was amazing to be able to relax with friends and cook and then enjoy a meal and not have any obligations. We made guacamole, cooked the onions, peppers and meat as fajita stuff and toasted the pita bread in oil to eat all of it on. It was just a great meal - I could probably go on and on for a long time. (All of the food we bought ended up being around $5 per person, amazingly cheap)

The hostel we stayed at was great, they had bikes for rent but we spent our time walking around and on a boat tour. (The city is situated along the river and connects to a huge delta system.) The backyard at the Hostel Tigre was beautiful and had 2 cats begging for milk. We ate a breakfast of coffee (not instant), frosted flakes, and french bread with dulce de leche out there this morning. We then went to a fruit fair, where I didn't actually see any fruit for sale... and then took a boat down the river delta system for about an hour before we got dropped off at a parilla. I don't know if I explained before, but parilla is literally the word for grill, and they always have DELICIOUS grilled meat at parillas. We were all complaining about the expensive prices before we realized that we were at a fancy restaurant, outdoors, sitting along the water, eating $20 steak meals. We had to catch the boat back to the city and then we got dulce de leche ice cream and sat along the river to watch the sunset. Once that was over and done with we hopped on the train to head back to the city.

The past week:

To jump back to the things I've skipped at this point, since I know you're all going to demand a daily account - I now have a fixed class schedule. I have "Argentina in words - Literature of the 19th and 20th Centuries" on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:10-4:40PM, "Latin American Literature 2" on Tuesday mornings from 10:30AM-12:45PM, "Literature of Latin America and Argentina" on Wednesdays from 2-4:30PM, "Argentina's Cinema of Fiction" Wednesdays from 9AM-12PM, and "History of America 1" on Thursdays from 6-9:25PM.

Pretty awesome, I know. Classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I have a 4 day weekend EVERY weekend - you should ALL be jealous of that. I can't think of anything else really awesome to report, other than that I am falling in love with this city. On Thursday night I went to a bar to meet up with some girlfriends where it's pretty American and you can play beer pong - which was GREAT! Then we went with some Argentine guys these girls knew so that we could get into a dance club for free, around 1:30AM - we got VIP bracelets for free. Pretty wicked. To sum this story up, as it's getting rambly and repetitive, I had an amazing time dancing until 6 in the morning, and went home as the club was thinning out, rather than out of exhaustion - I'm becoming a PORTEÑA.

GOTTA GO OUT, now that its 12:00AM, its porteña time!

Nearing a Month (time flies)

Hola a todos-

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2048302&id=1280460131&ref=mf

Thought I'd post the link to my new photo album on here, so that you all can get a taste for what I've been getting into the past few weeks.

I went to the zoo today and I have to go back with a camera, because it's too bizarre to try and explain. There were about 250 muskrats just wandering around as well as 500 little rabbit/deer thingers and a buncha species of ducks. Wait until I can take photos - because I really CANNOT explain it.

Dunno why I'm awake, it's 1:44AM and I'm just bumming around in my room. May have something to do with the fact that I went out until after 4AM last night, 2:30AM the night before and 5:00AM Thursday, so I am accustomed to staying up late.

I'll post a FULL new post tomorrow after I get some winks. i love cats and trees.

Friday the 13th

I survived a second week of class and the only school updates are that:

1. I am either going to take a second history class or a political science class, the international political relations of latin america.

2. I made some friends in my history of America 1 class, and one of them lives a few blocks away from me, and he got my number. We took the subte home from class together and then we made plans to hang out next week after class and he said he'd let me know if he did anything really cool this weekend. You gotta know that porteños are all about making plans and not following through on them, so we'll see what happens.

Updates about my life... hmm..

Last night was Thursday (obviously) and I went out to a bar called "The Spot" with my friend Brady, another Madison kid. It's owned by a guy from Boston and everyone who works there speaks english, so that was annoying when we got there around 12:30. There were a whole bunch of kids from our program hanging around because Thursdays are spicy wing night (1 peso per wing, about 25 cents) and its the only place here I've actually found spicy food. By about 2:30 all of the annoying Americans filed out and porteños started to arrive and Brady and I ended up having a really fun night just hanging out with random new Argentine friends. At the end of the night we had a hilarious conversation outside the bar with an English guy who was looking for a lighter. Can you say drunk!

This coming week two other girls from Madison and I are going to plan some type of trip for either the coming weekend or the one after. We'll take an omnibus (the cama [bed] style ones lay down flat, serve you wine and other refreshments, dinner, breakfast and have dvd players). Considering we'll probably be on the bus overnight and for at least ~10 hours its definitely worth it to pay 600 pesos to take the cama bus over the semi-cama, where you can't lay all the way flat. The destination is still under discussion - so an update will come once we've made set plans.

Current options include wine country (Mendoza) or the waterfalls on the border of Brazil (Iguazú) or just somewhere in the center of the country so we can get out of the city. It cracks me up that they serve you wine and also let you bring your own on the buses because there is a clause in the ticket sale that says intoxicated passengers are not allowed on the bus. So I guess you are not allowed to pre-game the bus ride, but you can get as tanked as you want once you get on the bus. Wines here are AMAZING. Malbec is a wine made in Mendoza and I've had the cheapest bottle available at a cheapy restaurant to a very expensive one at my host sisters house and they've all been pretty darn good. I was never a fan of red wine but Malbec has really grown on me, and I'll make sure to get a few bottles back to the US in my suitcases next year. Maybe even send a few back with every visitor who comes.

There is a study abroad 2010 Fall kick-off tonight hosted by the Buenos Aires pub crawl, an organization run by americans. It's 15 pesos for girls to get unlimited beer from 10-11 (which is realllllly early by buenos aires standards) and then there are free give-aways all night (including a 1 year membership to the pub crawl, which happens every night in different neighborhoods). That would be a pretty awesome prize because it costs 60 pesos for a night on the pub crawl. I've realized that I need to start holding clandestine english lessons so that I can bring in a little money rather than build up debt with my parents.

Money runs through my fingers here. I have had a lot of unavoidable expenses, like buying warm weather clothing since I brought really minimal clothing with me, as well as housing expenses such as getting my papers for my residence in line and buying lunch. Also, every time I have to do a reading for a class I have to either buy my own copy of the book at a random book store in the city or go to a pre-determined copy shop and get a copy of the reading. Which is really hectic and annoying because the vast majority of the readings aren't available until a few days before they are due/a few days after they are assigned. EVERYTHING HAS TO BE BOUGHT IN CASH which is driving me insane. Since I would rather use my credit card, but it's a little risky to bring it with me when I leave the house and things are often more expensive if you don't pay with cash, and most places just flat out do no accept credit cards.

Gotta go figure out my life for Friday the 13th.

keeping it regular

Howdy folks, I suppose it's that time again. Time to write a blog post... lets see... picking up from last time.

I've now have 1 full week of classes under my belt (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - if you can call that a full week of class). It seems as if I'm actually going to get my schedule to work out where I only have obligations 3 days a week, and I can use the other 4 to travel/ attempt my homework/ bum around Buenos Aires. Last time I wrote was Tuesday night after my first day of classes so lets jump back to Wednesday.

My second day of classes was pretty uneventful. My cold that I had been acquiring for a few days came on full force and I actually slept through the 1 class I meant to try-out, so I just ran a bunch of errands that had been piling up such as taking care of things for my residence in Argentina and trying out a Chinese restaurant (which was just REALLY bad American style Chinese food). Thursday was a little better - I returned to the two classes for foreigners that I had tried on Tuesday and had actually done the homework for my literature class, which turned out to be interesting as well as insightful into the politics of Argentina's past. I then went to a third class that was supposed to start at 6:00 at la Universidad de Salvador (History of America 1).

Let's start a new paragraph, because there is a lot to say about this class. First off, the class commenced ~30 minutes late, in true Argentine fashion (punctual is really not a word here). One other American girl from my program and I arrived early to the class and had a chat with the 1 Argentine girl who showed up in the first 15 minutes of class - she gave the Professor and the class a raving review, from her experience from the previous semester. Just to clear things up, its WINTER here folks, so it's the second semester and jumping into annual classes is a little dicey, but necessary. Slowly about 8 Argentines trickled in and then the professor, in a very fancy suit. We held class and reviewed the 16th century (which they covered last semester and luckily I also took a class on last semester) and then we had a break at 7:30. I was thinking GREAT, I can stretch my legs, go to the bathroom, eat the Oreos I have stashed in my backpack... NOPE!

The whole class got up together, walked 3 or 4 blocks to a cafe, and we got some drinks. Thank god there was another American girl there I would have thought they were just messing with me because I'm a foreigner. It's a tradition of the class to take a ~1/2 -->1 hour siesta at this cafe and drink. My professor and another guy in the class drank whiskey and the rest of us split 2 liter sized beers. Afterwards we made our way back to class and resumed for about 40 more minutes (trust me, keeping my ancient Spain and Mexico facts straight while getting lectured to in Spanish is a little harder after a beer). Needless to say, after this class got out at 9:15PM I decided I was definitely taking it.

Friday I ran more errands like buying a couple turtle-neck shirts (which are awesome, I will never go back to regular long sleeves), a jacket/pea coat type thing that makes me look less foreign, a scarf (more keeping warm apparel) and a surplus of black tights. The one time I have worn tights here they got cigarette burns in them at the boliche, so I decided to buy a back stock in case I ever needed a pair without runs and burn holes. The last thing I bought was a little coin purse made out of green, plastic snake skin and it cost about US$1. Then two other kids from Madison, Julie and Chris and I went to see Inception, one of the best movies I have seen in a LONG time. During the night I went out with a different friend from Madison, Lee, and her roommate here, Olivia. Olivia is a student from a different program who is living with the same host family as Lee (she's a Mexican who hails from Colorado so her Spanish is more or less fluent). We met up with a random acquaintance of Lee's and went to a pool/billiards bar and hung out with a bunch of porteño guys, which was really fun. (Remember that porteño is what people from Buenos Aires call themselves). We played pool, although I am absolutely horrid, and then the three of us called it a night around 4:15AM when they wanted us to all go back to one of their houses in a far away neighborhood to drink tequila. I was ready to go to bed.

Saturday I went to my host sister, Cande's, 46th birthday party. It was tea and home-made dessert type dishes. She also home-made Chai tea (from scratch folks) for me, and it was absolutely amazing. Around 7:45 I left to go to a dinner/tango show which turned into a dinner/flamenco show because the joint was empty when us gringos arrived at 9PM so we went nextdoor. And from there I ended up home, where I am now.

Today looks like it holds some outdoor flea market type shopping and soccer again tonight at 6. Until next time.

YOU CAN ALL SEE MY PHOTOS ON FACEBOOK AT http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=1280460131&aid=2047034

classes finally

Today was my first day of class, which is much better than sitting through orientation but also much more stressful. I am currently undergoing a "shopping" period (they call is eh-shopping in spanish) where I have to try out a million classes (16 to be exact) and then end up picking 4 that do not overlap and that I think I can enjoy, understand the professor, handle the work load, and get a good grade (since my GPA is going to transfer.. rough). It's most stressful since I crammed all of my classes into Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday so that I can travel on the weekends and be gone long enough to get a real trip in.

I was scheduled to try 9 classes today, of which I was actually able to attend 4. I went to the Catholic University for a 9:30AM literature class, integrated with Argentines, which was great. Only problem is the class meets for 1.5 hours every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday for only 3 credits!! (not to mention the Friday section starts at 7:45AM - it's basically asking students to stay out at the boliches until 7AM, get breakfast and then roll into class still tipsy from the night before.) My second class was for extranjeros (foreigners) as well as my third, but back to the second class. It's called An Introduction to Latin American Rights and the Professor is the bomb diggity. He told us that he studied abroad in Germany, so he knows that we are here to have a good time and therefore, he is not here to make our lives hard. The only assessments for the course will be 2 in class essays (each 2 pages at the end of September and October). He also told us that if its a sunny day out, we will most likely go get a coffee and sit outside at a cafe, rather than hold class formally. The best thing he said all day was probably that instead of meeting for 1.5 hours twice a week, we will at most meet for 50-60 minutes 2x/week (since talking for longer than that would puff up his ego).

My third class was a little bit more intense than the first two although it was also an extranjero class. It's called Argentina in the words of the 19th and 20th centuries. We will be reading a lot of historical writings as well as literary works from that period but once again, the class will consist of readings, writing 5 super short stories, and a LESS than ten page monograph (rough drafts required). Not too concerned about getting any of those bases covered.

The fourth and final class I was able to attend today (although I had to skip two other classes I wanted to try in order to attend it) was called Prehistory and Anthropology of the Americas - which has been intriguing thus far. Rather than the Catholic University (UCA - la Universidad Catolica) where I took my first three classes, this one was at the University of Salvador (USAL). It was a 2 hour and 15 minute discussion type lecture (from 8-10:15PM) with 5 Argentines who are ~my age --> ~my fathers age (he had gray hair and the same type of male pattern balding, and he may have even been older), 3 other American girls (only 1 from my program) and 1 German girl. The Professor seems very knowledgeable and she likes to make you think about the terminology used for EVERYTHING. (if it's suitable or if we really should be using another word - as in she told us that the class should really be called archaeology of the americas). I had a lot of fun in that class joking with the V.CUTE Argentine boy who is 22 and sat next to me, although I have a cold and kept making nasty snotty noises during the whole class period. We'll see if I've finally, independently, made my first real Argentine friend in the near future.

I just finished eating my dinner (an Argentine version of fish sticks and mashed potatoes) and I'm thinking of getting my flan out of the fridge for desert. It's only 11:36PM, I know, why am I eating dinner so early?!?! But I gotta go folks, gotta get up nice and early for my 8:30 seminar at UCA on Ancient Christian Lit. Ciao for now.

p.s. this damn cold winter weather gave me a cold, another girl from my program is home with a fever and a friend went to the hospital yesterday to get antibiotics for a cough. where the hell is summer! (the flan is delicious)