So just a few more updates on general stuff happening here. I got placed in the intermediate 2 class, and while it isn´t the "advanced" level, ISA told us that the standards are different in Argentinian language classes and that intermediate 2 is basically at the same level as advanced Spanish in America. Also, this means that during the semester, I get to take the advanced course. Except I swear, it´s crazy because I have forgotten tons of stuff, and I keep mixing up ya and todavía (one means still like "I still have it" and the other means still like "I still don´t have it" or yet). But, I think I´m using the direct and indirect object pronouns more correctly, so yay!
Nobody here understands me, I´m not sure if I just don´t enunciate or if it´s because I pronounce stuff like a Mexican or if I just don´t talk loudly enough. But I´m pretty sure that what I say is grammatically correct, but everyone still has trouble understanding what I mean. Argh.
My teacher is Paola, so that´s cool. I´ve been getting homework, but it´s all pretty easy. My schedule is pretty well set in stone now:: wake up at about 7:30-8:00, meet Ana and Maddy (two girls who live down the street) at the empanada place on the corner, take the subway and get to school, then I have about an hour to do whatever I need to do, then class from 11-4, then stay out until about 7 or 8 when I eat dinner and do homework. I figure that when I get more settled in, I´ll also add going out at about 9:30 until whenever.
See that´s the thing about porteños (people who live in BA): they can easily stay out all night, and pretty regularly do. Like they hang out at restaurants and bars until about 2 in the morning, then from 3 to 7 when the streets are really dangerous they go to dance clubs, then hang out or eat breakfast and go to work. I finally found the secret: CAFFEINE. Seriously, these guys drink coffee, but it´s not like they chug whole starbucks cups like in America, they have itty bitty cups that manage to keep them perky the whole day.
Speaking of itty bitty, serving sizes here are incredibly small. No, that´s a lie; it´s just that if you want to save money, you can´t order a big hamburger instead of someting nutritious, the only way to save money is to order something very tiny. That´s something interesting here, is that junk food is more expensive than healthy food (probably because it´s all imported from America). But really, I´d been getting a majority of my calories from the dulce de leche that I ate with my apple, until María found out and was all "that´s so unhealthy, you shouldn´t eat that every day!" Btw dulce de leche is basically caramel, only spreadable. One final thing about junk food: the McDonald´s here have McFlurries with Milka chocolate bits in them. Milka chocolate is this pretty good chocolate brand, but they have chocolate with dulce de leche... so good, and I absolutely MUST get one of them before I leave.
Today I went to Plaza de Mayo (I incorrectly called it Plaza de congreso or something...) and got pictures, which will be uploaded when I don´t have to wake up at six in the morning, like I do tomorrow. Then, we went to Calle Florida, which is basically an upscale shopping street. But, it´s ridiculous how similar buenos Aires is to chicago. Even though all the stores are different, there are still the stupid chain stores that are EVERYWHERE and outcompete the small businesses despite having higher prices. There were three Pharmacity´s (the equivalent of Walgreens) and one Open 25 Hours (the equivalent of CVS) on only five blocks. Pics of those tomorrow, along with my trip, la Casa Rosada and also the tango class I´m taking tomorrow.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
pictures part 2
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| Me and Sarah, a few days before I left (just want to get it off my camera and too lazy to figure out how to put it on facebook) |
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| My going away party, with Jayne, Matt, me, Sarah, EB, David and Cat |
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| This is in María´s house, the very neat modern-style steps, and the flags are from when she went to Tibet. |
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| This is on the second floor toward the front of the house, I think it´s supposed to be a family room, but another girl is staying there. |
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| not sure why I took this pic... oh yeah, the last one was from the top floor to the third, and this is from the third to the second. |
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| The big flight of stairs leading from the ground floor to the second. The front door is in front of that, and Murdock sleeps under the stairs (you can see a bit of his tail there, the pic I took had bad lighting, I´ll get one another time) |
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| her back porch and garden |
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| The ivy growing on the railing, and part of her jacuzzi |
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| a better picture |
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| her kitchen. Notice there´s no dishwasher, I have to wash everything by hand in the sink. |
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| Her fridge and cabinets. From one yellow kitchen to another... |
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| A more colonial/American style home, I think. It just looked different than the rest, so I took a picture. |
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| I didn´t realize how crappy this picture was. But here is the license plate of Argentina: the only thing you can´t see is that on top in lighter blue it says ARGENTINA. also, they don´t have vanity license plates. |
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| A very good example of a baffling phenomenon: some trees lose their leaves, and others don´t. Also, a nice picture of the bags of garbage lying on the sidewalk. They apparently don´t believe in cans or dumpsters. |
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| I like the cool three story with terrace houses for some reason. |
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| Pretty sure this is aloe vera, definitely some kind of aloe, which surprised me because those are desert plants |
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| These two pictures don´t do justice for how bright orange this flower was. I don´t know what the plant is, but they´re everywhere. |
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| A bird. I was pissed though because this morning as I ate breakfast there were all these really cool birds in her back yard, then when I got my camera they were all gone. |
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| crazy tree root formation on the sidewalk |
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| Budin de pan-later I found out that it´s bread pudding, and is distinctly different than flan. Also, it came with a tiny little Mexican flag. |
Monday, June 27, 2011
pictures part 1
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| This is the house across the street from mine, and is basically the same as mine. Note the wooden shutters that don´t open, the brick, and the gate. |
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| Some graffitti on the corner near my house |
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| Much better graffitti across the street from my bus stop |
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| the No Parking signs here are No estacionando signs, and instead of Ps have Es |
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| Palm trees? In a temperate climate? |
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| typical architecture of buildings that aren´t normal brick buildings |
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| Apparently this is French Influence |
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| my bed of my room |
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| See how narrow the room is? That window only has two panes. That´s the same side table as in the first picture. |
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| All the keys here are awesome and rounded and old fashioned like this, not the flat keys of America |
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| This is on the other side of my bed, and the doorway. It´s a pretty small room, but I like it. |
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| Even though I can´t see out my own window, this is the view I get when I go into the hallway. |
Sunday, June 26, 2011
First night and day in Buenos Aires
I got in okay to Buenos Aires and met my host mother, María. She's very friendly, and her house is very awesome. It´s urban, so it´s 4 floors high, about 20 feet wide and super long. My room is on the top floor.
I only have ten minutes until dinner, but here´s a list of awesome things I saw/did:
1. The cemetary (I´m way too tired to remember the proper name of it), that has basically everyone important from Argentina buried there, and is laid out like a city with all the mausoleums as buildings. By far the coolest thing I saw today.
2. La Boca, which was the original port town or something
3. A street vending fair about five blocks long, I need to take my mom there
4. A very neat church
5. La Casa Rosada (The pink house, their equivalent of the White House)
6. Puerto madero, which is the posh part of town
7. various plazas
8. the safe neighborhoods around belgrano
9. I had my first empanada, and it was delicious but very greasy and fried.
And, I´m proud to say that I understood literally every single thing the tour guide said. But, she knew we were foreigners and talked pretty slowly.
The dog is hilarious, I need to interact with him more, but his name is Murdock. :D
also, I met the other girls who live right down the street, and we´re meeting for empanadas tomorrow morning. Or, at least, outside the empanada place.
Funny story: María took me on the subte (subway), and I figured I would take it on the way back, but then they closed it because one of their soccer teams didn´t make it to the next level of competition, and the subways were afraid of people rioting and breaking stuff. Also, we went to a restaurant, and it had the equivalent of CNN on the TV, and all they were showing were clips of people running through the streets, and being carried away in ambulances, and police sirens. Speaking of which, something cool about here: they have different colored lights. In America, the lights that businesses have outside are either white or yellow if they´re old, but in Argentina they have blue, red and green lights (I like those the best). Also, the ambulance lights are greenish-blue, rather than the red and blue of America. Yup, I go to South America and I notice the lights. xD
Also, the other major thing I noticed (aside from the driving) was that they have the billboards like in the US, only they´re oriented vertically (they´re higher than they are wide). Also, there are all sorts of signs and billboards on various buildings. The thing I dislike the most so far is that the street signs are often very difficult to find because they are attached to buildings, are far back from the road, kind of small, and not every street corner has one (and when they do, they only have the name of one of the streets, usually the one I already knew).
But other than that, I was surprised how much it looked like Chicago. Same sort of buildings, similar looking houses, ... I can´t think what else, and the more I think of the excepts, it makes it seem a lot less like Chicago. Because one thing I noticed is that there were a lot more factories mixed in with residential areas, and you can´t tell the ¨good areas¨ from the bad ones because there´s graffitti everywhere. The best was that someone had graffitti´d a statue in Plaza Congresa (?), right outside the government building. Funniest I saw said ¨Wanda soliciitado¨, basically the equivalent of ¨Wanda´s a whore¨. Also, there was a website with some guy´s name, and underneath it said ¨Free sex!!!!!!¨ Also, on a different topic, the trees here don´t all lose their leaves. There are palm trees (huh what?) and lots of ficus(?) trees, and not too many conifers or pine trees. But, I saw a glimpse of the botanical garden, and they had those awesome trees from the rainforest that have the super huge buttress roots. I´ll have pictures eventually, when I go there again. In Buenos Aires, there are a fair number of stray dogs (but not as many as in other countries, and most of the dogs were pets on leashes), and in the cemetary there are tons of stray cats. Go figure, of course the cats would hang out with the dead bodies. They´re all pretty tame, and some of the kids pet this dog in La Boca, but I didn´t in case of fleas or specific dog-diseases that Murdock might catch. My prediction of him was right, by the way: he doesn´t care about me. xD In Plaza Congresa there were literally hundreds of pigeons, and the tour guides gave us this Argentinian chocolate treat with dulce de leche, and kids were feeding them to the pigeons, who would fly up and land on your hand to eat. Locals were doing that too. I have never seen more spoiled pigeons in my life, they´ll just fly right at your face and zoom up at the last second.
I wish I took my camera today, but everyone pointed out that we´ll be going back there again, so expect awesome pictures. Also, expect pictures of María, her house, Murdock, and other cool stuff. There´s no way I can blog about everything, I´m realizing now. But, those are the highlights that I remembered from today.
I only have ten minutes until dinner, but here´s a list of awesome things I saw/did:
1. The cemetary (I´m way too tired to remember the proper name of it), that has basically everyone important from Argentina buried there, and is laid out like a city with all the mausoleums as buildings. By far the coolest thing I saw today.
2. La Boca, which was the original port town or something
3. A street vending fair about five blocks long, I need to take my mom there
4. A very neat church
5. La Casa Rosada (The pink house, their equivalent of the White House)
6. Puerto madero, which is the posh part of town
7. various plazas
8. the safe neighborhoods around belgrano
9. I had my first empanada, and it was delicious but very greasy and fried.
And, I´m proud to say that I understood literally every single thing the tour guide said. But, she knew we were foreigners and talked pretty slowly.
The dog is hilarious, I need to interact with him more, but his name is Murdock. :D
also, I met the other girls who live right down the street, and we´re meeting for empanadas tomorrow morning. Or, at least, outside the empanada place.
Funny story: María took me on the subte (subway), and I figured I would take it on the way back, but then they closed it because one of their soccer teams didn´t make it to the next level of competition, and the subways were afraid of people rioting and breaking stuff. Also, we went to a restaurant, and it had the equivalent of CNN on the TV, and all they were showing were clips of people running through the streets, and being carried away in ambulances, and police sirens. Speaking of which, something cool about here: they have different colored lights. In America, the lights that businesses have outside are either white or yellow if they´re old, but in Argentina they have blue, red and green lights (I like those the best). Also, the ambulance lights are greenish-blue, rather than the red and blue of America. Yup, I go to South America and I notice the lights. xD
Also, the other major thing I noticed (aside from the driving) was that they have the billboards like in the US, only they´re oriented vertically (they´re higher than they are wide). Also, there are all sorts of signs and billboards on various buildings. The thing I dislike the most so far is that the street signs are often very difficult to find because they are attached to buildings, are far back from the road, kind of small, and not every street corner has one (and when they do, they only have the name of one of the streets, usually the one I already knew).
But other than that, I was surprised how much it looked like Chicago. Same sort of buildings, similar looking houses, ... I can´t think what else, and the more I think of the excepts, it makes it seem a lot less like Chicago. Because one thing I noticed is that there were a lot more factories mixed in with residential areas, and you can´t tell the ¨good areas¨ from the bad ones because there´s graffitti everywhere. The best was that someone had graffitti´d a statue in Plaza Congresa (?), right outside the government building. Funniest I saw said ¨Wanda soliciitado¨, basically the equivalent of ¨Wanda´s a whore¨. Also, there was a website with some guy´s name, and underneath it said ¨Free sex!!!!!!¨ Also, on a different topic, the trees here don´t all lose their leaves. There are palm trees (huh what?) and lots of ficus(?) trees, and not too many conifers or pine trees. But, I saw a glimpse of the botanical garden, and they had those awesome trees from the rainforest that have the super huge buttress roots. I´ll have pictures eventually, when I go there again. In Buenos Aires, there are a fair number of stray dogs (but not as many as in other countries, and most of the dogs were pets on leashes), and in the cemetary there are tons of stray cats. Go figure, of course the cats would hang out with the dead bodies. They´re all pretty tame, and some of the kids pet this dog in La Boca, but I didn´t in case of fleas or specific dog-diseases that Murdock might catch. My prediction of him was right, by the way: he doesn´t care about me. xD In Plaza Congresa there were literally hundreds of pigeons, and the tour guides gave us this Argentinian chocolate treat with dulce de leche, and kids were feeding them to the pigeons, who would fly up and land on your hand to eat. Locals were doing that too. I have never seen more spoiled pigeons in my life, they´ll just fly right at your face and zoom up at the last second.
I wish I took my camera today, but everyone pointed out that we´ll be going back there again, so expect awesome pictures. Also, expect pictures of María, her house, Murdock, and other cool stuff. There´s no way I can blog about everything, I´m realizing now. But, those are the highlights that I remembered from today.
Friday, June 24, 2011
angry rant in Houston
Well, I’m stuck in the airport in Houston, TX. Chile, also known as the Iceland of South America, sent some ash toward the Buenos Aires area and our flight was cancelled until 7 AM tomorrow, the morning we were supposed to be picked up. But stupid United/Continental airlines was all ¨well, because it was an act of God, we´re not going to give you hotels or anything like that.¨ Last time I fly with them. So stupid. One of the people here has friends who were going to BA on other airlines, and he called them and they said they already had their free room reservations and had dinner and all that. United told us to go to the service center for toothpaste, then when we got there they were ¨too busy¨ to get it. I¨m not kidding, too busy to grab some freaking toothbrushes for us. Then five minutes later they were out of them. No cots, no tooth brushes, no food at all, and the guy telling me this gave me this look like ¨what the hell do you expect us to do, care about your welfare?” Freaking bogus. I´m too tired to rant and rave, but at the time I was thinking “you think you´re busy now, wait til I start wrecking this airport because you won´t take care of your customers, THEN you´ll be busy!” What ever happened to “the customer is always right?” Why do Americans let airline companies do this to them? Well, I learned my lesson, and frankly I´m considering trying to find out if I can´t fly home on LAN.
Also, the icing on the cake, we called the study abroad company to tell them, since none of the people will be there at the free pick-up time. So they were like ¨Oh that sucks, guess you have to pay to have us come get you, or get a taxi.¨
And I¨m SO mad at this airport because just as I start to drift off to get maybe like three hours of sleep until my flight, the stupid loud overhead thing says something, usually a prerecorded message like ¨For your safety, certain security measures have been taken. Any unattended luggage, and your personal belongings, will be treated as bombs. Also, don´t make fun of the TSA security or you will be arrested.¨ Only, really loud. And they don´t have free wi-fi, so I wrote this in a word document and copy-pasted. And I know the flight will be hell, and we´ll get there at like seven at night, and I don´t know if my señora knows the flight has been delayed or if she´ll freak out, or if she´ll even be there now when I show up with all my luggage.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Testing my camera
So now that I know that this works, expect scads of pictures from Buenos Aires. I'm going to try to get:
1. People I'm living with, their house, and their dog, and possibly view from my window (if I have one)
2. Anything that's different than in America (outlets, whatever else I find cool)
3. Interesting buildings/places I'm at
4. Maybe some other people I'm doing stuff with?
5. And because I'm a nerdy biology major, plants and animals. That's right; my first reaction to a giant centipede in my bed will be "WHERE'S MY CAMERA?!?"
That's all for now.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Info about Argentina
So a surprising number of people I've talked to don't know where Argentina or Buenos Aires is. (I'm looking at you, Sarah). Here's the basic overview, mostly accurate but don't hold me to that:
1. Big country in South America. If you look on a map at the southern peninsula, Argentina is the south-eastern and most of the central part. Go find a map, WAY too lazy to figure out how to post a picture here right now. Buenos Aires is along the little indentation at the top of Argentina's Atlantic coast, right south of Uruguay.
2. The name comes from the Latin Argentum or Silver because when settlers first arrived there they found silver. The area around Buenos Aires is La Plata Basin, which is the Spanish word for silver, and the main river in that area is Rio de la Plata.
3. They were originally a Spanish colony, blah blah boring colonial politics.
4. They have a history of having repressive governments, but apparently still increasing the quality of life. Juan Peron was a president, and his wife Eva is the one in Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.
5. National Reorganization Process is the group that was absolutely crazy in the 70's and regularly kidnapping and throwing sedated dissidents out of airplanes.
6. Fought over the Faulkland Islands with Britain (it's a little tiny piece of land with penguins), but this led to the downfall of their military regime and they started having free elections in 1983.
7. Almost everyone in Argentina was originally an immigrant, especially lots of European immigrants and/or people seeking political asylum. An overwhelming majority of the population considers itself to be of European descent.
8. The dialect spoken in La Plata Basin is Rioplatense, and I've heard from my sister that an Argentinian told her that using tu (the familiar you) is considered too formal. Wikipedia says they use vos, and oh my god that means I have to learn more verb forms.
9. Argentinians like tango!
Well, that's all the obligatory information. Seriously, if you're online you can just Wikipedia it. Here, I'll even help by providing a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina
1. Big country in South America. If you look on a map at the southern peninsula, Argentina is the south-eastern and most of the central part. Go find a map, WAY too lazy to figure out how to post a picture here right now. Buenos Aires is along the little indentation at the top of Argentina's Atlantic coast, right south of Uruguay.
2. The name comes from the Latin Argentum or Silver because when settlers first arrived there they found silver. The area around Buenos Aires is La Plata Basin, which is the Spanish word for silver, and the main river in that area is Rio de la Plata.
3. They were originally a Spanish colony, blah blah boring colonial politics.
4. They have a history of having repressive governments, but apparently still increasing the quality of life. Juan Peron was a president, and his wife Eva is the one in Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.
5. National Reorganization Process is the group that was absolutely crazy in the 70's and regularly kidnapping and throwing sedated dissidents out of airplanes.
6. Fought over the Faulkland Islands with Britain (it's a little tiny piece of land with penguins), but this led to the downfall of their military regime and they started having free elections in 1983.
7. Almost everyone in Argentina was originally an immigrant, especially lots of European immigrants and/or people seeking political asylum. An overwhelming majority of the population considers itself to be of European descent.
8. The dialect spoken in La Plata Basin is Rioplatense, and I've heard from my sister that an Argentinian told her that using tu (the familiar you) is considered too formal. Wikipedia says they use vos, and oh my god that means I have to learn more verb forms.
9. Argentinians like tango!
Well, that's all the obligatory information. Seriously, if you're online you can just Wikipedia it. Here, I'll even help by providing a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina
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