Hydration comes at a price.

Hola mis amigos!

It's been a while, but nothing has been worth blogging about just quite yet. Until today.

Today marks my very first day at my "pasantía" and it could not have gone better. Jordan was nice enough to play "mom" for the day and take me to work. Or so she thought. As she dropped me off across town and we said our goodbyes, I pleasantly approached the door of my new office. However, like many of my past adventures here, something went wrong. I was, of course, in the wrong building. After a few words with the portero, I finally realized the mistake and booked it to the following block.

My first day could not have gone better. Eduardo, my supervisor, took me under his wing and agreed to speak "muy despacio." I took a tour of the office, met the team, found my desk and chatted some more with Eduardo. I will be working every week day for the rest of the summer, but it will fly by knowing I have such a helpful group of co-workers.

Following my first day, I attempted the colectivos for the first time all by myself! I quickly found the 130 bus and hopped right on board. I found myself hanging on for dear life (and I found a lady hanging on to me, as well) as the bus took off without even closing the doors. We flew down Libertador and before I knew it, I was home. In one piece, once again!

There should be more to come as the internship goes on, but for now I plan on posting some lessons that I learned in my short time here. Here's a few, for starters:

1) Dinner is cheap, but you better hope you don't want to wash it down with an ice cold soda or water. Drinks here can cost you a pretty penny, often less or just as much as "vino" or a "cerveza."

2) Argentine's use a lot of different vocabulary words and also pronounce their "double l's" differently. (For example, llamo would be Jha-mo). Not to mention, they have a completely new and different verb use of their own: the "vos" form.

3) I actually DO like green olives afterall--we will see if this continues in the states.

4) Skeleton keys look way cooler than they actually are. I learned this after attempting to open my apartment door for 30 minutes one night.

5) False money is everywhere. This was discovered the hard way when I came across it for the first time as I tried to buy a ticket to see “El Plan B” (The Back-Up Plan) on a rainy afternoon. Turns out I had fake money. Scary thought: even ATM’s can spit that stuff out...

6) Coins are hard to come by. The secret is to buy a delicious “café” from my school’s vending machine. It is always willing to spit out change :)

7) Coffee, drinks and food are always enjoyed sitting down. Food is sacred here and waiting for precise preparation is a must. Patience is most definitely a key asset.

8) On the subject of dinner, no one eats dinner earlier than 10 pm, which usually makes for late nights here.

9) Stray dogs are everywhere. Dogwalkers are also a very important job. Thanks to one of my geeky tourist books, I learned that it is illegal to walk 15 dogs at a time, but 14 is okay. Well, I have DEFINITELY seen dogwalkers getting pulled by a solid 14 dogs since being here...

10) Facebook is way more fun in Spanish.

Until next time....Besos!

Thoughts of the week.

Hola mis amigos!

So, it has now officially been over a week here in Argentina and it already feels like I have packed so much into such a short time. Here's the update since my last post:

Like I previously mentioned, this weekend marks Argentina's anniversary of it's fight to freedom. Considering on an average workday there are about 9 million people in the city's center, my group members and I estimated that there had to be at least double that or more here this weekend. Needless to say, things got a little crazy.

Crazy is the only adjective I can use to describe the chaos of this weekend. After hitting the town with my American friends for a week, we decided to head over to Tigre on Monday (a nice change from B.A.'s tall buildings and massive amounts of traffic). We arrived via train early that afternoon, walked around a bit, and enjoyed an hour boat ride along the river. The language barrier did us wrong again and we were tricked into thinking that the ride would only cost 5 pesos. Our dreams were crushed and it was a bit more expensive, but we were able to see entertaining sights along the river, including the thrilling theme park, and it took us away from the pace and pollution of our home in B.A.

I know, I know. Not too crazy, but today ensured craziness. We headed over fairly early to the "bicentario" to celebrate with the rest of the Argentines. The day was filled with parades, fighter planes, decorations, street shows, music, and a variety of food. It would have been nice to see more of it, but most of our day was spent fighting the crowds. Assertion was key when trying to make your way through each street and there was no room for shyness. Even the children knew how to fight through the crowd. It reminded me, at times, of a few mosh pits I've witnessed at Warped Tour back in the day (Oh, my middle-school punk days...). It was a great way to see the city, though, and definitely a once in a lifetime event. My group members and I calculated that we walked about 5 miles throughout the city. Of course, in a roundabout way. (We're still learning!)

Tomorrow we start another eventful week full of Spanish classes and meetings (ugh, back to reality after that nice long holiday!). I will be working for the weekend as we are headed to beautiful Montevideo on Saturday! Uruguay better be ready for such an exciting group!

Hasta luego!

Bienvenidos a Buenos Aires

After a 14 hour 2-flight extravaganza (including being hit on for the full 3 hour first flight), all ten of us finally arrived in the wonderful city of Buenos Aires on Monday morning. Why am I not posting until Saturday evening? Well, this is just the first problem we ran into. No internet. FINALLY, after waiting for 4 hours for a technician yesterday (who has yet to show up....in true laid-back Argentine fashion), Ann (my super nice roommate) and I were blessed this morning with Marcelo, who unplugged a few things and got us back in touch with reality.

My apartment is fashionably decorated, and by fashionable I mean I feel like I am coming straight out of the jungle. Our place is fully equipped with a Zebra skin rug with matching pillows (How did they know that I love zebra!?), a bamboo couch, and artwork of various exotic animals. However, it doesn't stop there. Accommodations include a flaming heater (our landlord Aida, or Nancy as we like to call her, told us whatever we do DO NOT touch the flame), a Bidet in the bathroom, a washer that fits about 3 garments, and Mr. and Mrs. pillows in the bedroom. Sounds worse than it really is, and I do have to admit that the view over one of the largest streets in our ritzy town of Recoleta is quite a treat.

There are three other girls, Bridget, Amelia, and Jordan, that live about 2 blocks away, the closest apartment to ours, so I pretty much camp out there a lot when Ann is at class.


What have I done so far? The list goes on and on...


Day 1: We were pretty much unleashed and forced to find our way around on our own, which led to a little frustration and a lot of fun. First lesson learned the hard way--passports are essential in this town. We had trouble exchanging money at the mall down the street (again, how did they know?!) and even trying to get our super swanky (kidding.) go-phones working. We headed over to get a bite to eat at around 10pm (normal dinner time here), where we found ourselves indulging in empenadas and vases upon vases of vino. mmmmmm. All for less than 10 American dollars. Did I mention I love this city?

Day 2: Finally, we met up with Juliana (an up and coming comedian in this part of town) for our city tour. Might I mention that we were picked up about an hour late (I'm starting to get used to this, but I don't know if I will ever be truly happy about it). I snapped tons of photos like a true tourist until my camera ran out of battery. We hit up all four major parts of BA, and each part had a different twist on the city. It almost felt like I was in four completely different cities. Our tour stopped at famous monuments, parks, and sites such as La Boca's "caminito" and La Casa Rosada (Their version of the White House, except it is most definitely pink), Plaza de Mayo, and 9 de Julio, a street so large it seems that you may never make it across, especially since Argentina streets seem to have no rules, speed limits, or lanes and red lights don't really seem to matter.

Day 3: We started the day with our first Spanish class. My group decided to take a cab there and we were quickly reminded why we needed to leave a whole hour early for class. We passed three massive demonstrations that literally took up multiple lanes of major streets. We yet again learned the hard way and have been taking the "Subte" (Subway) to class ever since. Class isn't as hard as I thought, although Mariana, our fashionable teacher loves to assign a hefty amount of homework. Aftewards, we headed to the Subte, which was an adventure in itself. A women was screaming "Policia!" before we even got on and we ran in and out of a train for a reason I am still unsure about. A young girl came by during our ride and handed us three trading cards (which I still don't know what they said) and then proceeded to take them back. This was by far the craziest subte ride we have had so far, as we are slowly getting the hang of things.

Day 4: So now that we have the Subte down, we decided to adventure out onto the buses after class. We busted out our Guia "T" (the mini-map to the countless buses here in B.A.) and finally got the courage up to feel confident in our bus choice (number 152, which was sure to go back to Recoleta, right?!). We hopped on only to find ourselves the last ones on the bus 5 blocks later as the bus was strategically parked in a bus garage. Funny, right? We thought so, too, until we realized we were in La Boca, equivalent to Chicago's Capbrini Green. Uh-Oh. After clutching our purses, walking a mile or two, realizing we had no "moneda" for the bus, and being chased by a midget we made it into a Radio Taxi (the only trusted taxi in the city). The only problem is that this very same radio taxi was one that we saw broken down a few blocks earlier. Double Uh-Oh. All is well and we made it back in one piece, but we will NEVER make that mistake again.

The rest of the trip only gets better. We encounter at least one American a day (making me feel a little more at home), which always lead to helpful friends or a nice point in the right direction. The phrase of the trip seems to be "where are you from?" every time we hear an American accent. Last night, we naturally went out at 2am, common for "porteños" and danced the night away (with a few Argentine snickers) at a local 4-floor club in Recoleta. The night was filled with learning how to salsa, thanks to two Argentines and danced among the 14 year olds that flooded the club. What a different world it is here.

Today was complete with a trip to Plaza Francia, which is basically in our backyard. It is filled with arts and crafts on the weekends, so naturally we got to see some pretty cool stuff. We got some Dulce de Leche after lunch, which is a must in this town, and we were off to explore some more. Monday and Tuesday mark a national holiday due to the country's bicentennial, so this town basically shuts down for a few days. It is basically a 4-day long party to celebrate the beginning of their independence, which was declared 6 years later.

This post could go on forever, but I will spare my readers. I am certainly out of my element, but in the best way. People here are extremely friendly and I could not ask for much more out of my experience so far. Starting our internships will be both exciting and scary, but I am ready to get started nonetheless. I will post pictures and updates soon of all the great places I have seen so far.

I can tell, after only being here for one week, that this is the beginning of a great thing. A very great thing.

Ciao!

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

Well. Here goes nothing. Tomorrow starts my journey to South America. My mind is racing, but I truly don't think my emotions have caught up with me yet. It still seems so surreal.

Never have I ever experienced something like this. Well, I guess I can also say that I have never truly left the country. Or for that matter, I have never really left this bubble.

Which brings me to this quote:

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

Up until now, I have been so caught up in my concerns that "I must come back to the states fluent in Spanish" or "I have to succeed in my classes" or "If I don't see this sight, my trip will be ruined!" While these thoughts won't be put to sleep, tonight, just hours before I set out for the airport, I realize what I really want to get out of going abroad. I cannot wait to open my eyes to this totally upside down world I am about to enter. I don't think I ever have really opened my eyes.

*Disclaimer: This is a bittersweet post, as I am stepping out of this bubble, I am going to miss so many people and my lifestyle. My 901 Richmond bubble (shout out to my Dolly Deltas! Lylas!). Or my "Action Heights" bubble. Bubbles I don't know if I am ready to break, but here it goes....