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)

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.