Beginning of the Lasts

It's my last week here in Argentina, and I'd say I'm ready to go home, but I also weirdly want to stay here. Possibly this is because of the fantastically awesome weekend I had. Even though not everything went right, it all worked out in the end. Like a four hour delay getting to fly to Iguazu that ended up being a bonding time with Kat and Nick, then raining during our mate plantation that turned into wet muddy fun.

I guess I should explain how the weekend went.
I woke up at the ridiculous hour of 4:15 in the morning so I could make sure I had everything before getting a taxi at 5 in order to get the airport at 5:30, for a flight scheduled for 6:30. Then we got on the plane at 7 only to sit there for an hour because the weather in Iguazu was bad. We got herded off the plane, given free breakfast and spent the next four hours bonding and talking about life. Arriving in Iguazu, we visited a Guarani (native people from the area) village, then ate dinner at a cute hole in the wall place where a really nice grandfather-type guy cooked us steak and chorizo for dinner.

Saturday, bright and early at 7 in the morning, I got a real breakfast! Probably the best start to a day I've had lately, then bused over to the falls which quite frankly blew my mind.  We started out seeing some amazing falls that we all thought were huge and amazing and awe inspiring, but every time we turned a corner, there was a new, bigger, more awesome waterfall.  Lots of pictures were taken, and fun was had by all. 150 pesos poorer, I rode a boat into the mist at the bottom of the falls and (sort of) went to Brazil. As in, the river is the border and our boat passed onto the Brazilian side a little bit. Soaking wet, exhausted, and feeling extremely content, dinner at the hotel, and a very good night's sleep made for a happy Meredith.

Even more bright and early, at 6, was yet ANOTHER awesome breakfast and a 3 hour bus ride, which meant nap time considering how early it was. Then a meat-filled lunch were we ate 'animal' which turned out to be lamb, toured a mate plantation in the mud, and severely enjoyed ourselves.

Now, we're all back in Buenos Aires and counting our days left. I've got until 4 on Saturday to try and squeeze in everything I have yet to do. Like go to Tortoni's cafe, possibly visit the zoo, possibly take a ferry over to Uruguay, and buy boatloads of alfajores to take home. Only one more day of class; Wednesday being a holiday really helps me get everything done before I go home. Then two days of finals, a farewell lunch, and homeward bound I go by way of Dallas and Seattle.

Things I'm going to relish when I get home:
BBQ
Bacon
Peanut Butter
My bed
My car
KNOWING THE LANGUAGE
Hulu
Dollars (not pesos)
Unlimited sleep
Quiet
Mountains
Simply being home

Things I'm going to miss about Argentina:
Medialunas
Pomelo soda
el Subte
Submarinos
Iguazu

My new found friends (who need visit Idaho...Kat)

Two Weeks and Counting

Ok, fine. So I haven't exactly been keeping this blog updated, which means that unless I've been regularly skyping you (i.e., if you're not my parents) you probably have no idea how my adventures have been going so far.

So to start off, I'm going to list off some of the things that are the same here (not very many), and the things that are very very different (a whole lot), and the things that I'm starting to get used to (sort of).

Same:
Not that much. I'm assuming there would be a lot more similarities if I'd ever really spent time in a big city state-side, but I haven't, so all the big city stuff is new to me as well. But other than that...



The food. I was expecting to have awesome new tastes, and be trying new things. However, the only new things I've really tasted is a fried piece of thin steak (very similar to weinerschnitsel) and Mate. The fried meat thing is really popular here, and they put it on sandwiches, eat it like a steak, the works. Mate, is this tea type drink that almost everyone here drinks. They drink it how Americans drink coffee. Every day, all day. It's basically a bunch of plant bits (made from some kind of evergreen or grass or something) stuffed into a bowl type cup almost to the top, then very hot water is poured over it to soak the plant bits, and you suck the moisture out with a filter/straw. I tried it and I'm not a big fan. It tastes like when you leave a bag of green tea in the water for half an hour because you forgot about it, and no matter how much sugar you put in it you can't get rid of that over steeped bitter taste. Other than those two things, it's a pretty heavily Italian diet here. Basically you've got your Italian, and your empanadas, which are good, but I've had them, and I can get them at home. Although they do have this really good thing called a submarino. You can find it at just about any little corner cafe, and it's not exactly a new taste, since I've been making myself essentially the same things at home for years, but it's still good. Basically, they bring you a cup of really really hot milk, and a hunk of chocolate, and you stir the chocolate into the milk where it melts and becomes really rich hot chocolate. Mmmmm...

Second, the prices.  Some things are cheaper, and some things are more expensive, and from where I'm staying, it pretty much levels out to being the same.  Only thing is, I seem to be going through money like it's water.  I'm not even really buying stuff! I've really only been buying food.  My family gives me food (more about that in the different sections), but I seem to get insanely hungry during the day, so I buy food.

Ok, now for the different:
Ohmygosh, what can I say, it seems like everything is different, yet the same at the same time. But I'll just start.
The money. I mean, obviously they have different money here, they use the Argentine peso, but how people treat money is different.  For starters, the largest bill that exists is the 100 peso bill, but that's only about 23 American dollars, so I want to treat it like it's a 20 dollar bill, but no one likes to give change for a 100. They treat accepting 100's like people back home would treat getting a 100 dollar bill. Another thing about money, everyone expects you to have exact change.  Say, if I go to Mcdonald's and my order costs 26.50, and I only have a 5, 10, and 50 in my wallet, I have to give the 50 to the person. Then they give me this funny look, ask if I have 50 cents, which I don't, and totally confuse me in the process.  Then finally, after I show them that all I have in coins in a measly little 1 peso coin that wouldn't do any good, they reluctantly give me my 23.50 in change. And, lastly about money, you need to watch out for fake money here, specifically from taxi drivers.  I fell into the classic tourist trap, just how ISA warned us, and ended up getting jipped out of my money by a taxi driver giving me fake money.  The thing is, if you actually take the time to look at the bills, it's very obvious to tell whether it's fake or real, you just have to look.

The schedule.
The normal daily schedule of someone my age:
9 or 10: get up and go to work/school. Done by 6 or 7. Nap time for a couple house before dinner at 9 or 10. Get ready, go out at 12 or 1 to a bar, to the club at 3, home at 6 or 7, repeat. I have no idea how they do it.  I'm very lucky and family that eats dinner "really early" at 8, so I'm not having to really stay up late to eat my dinner.  I, however, could never keep up the schedule of a typical Argentinian, so I've NOT been going out every night. In fact, I've really only gone out twice, both times I didn't get home until 4:30 (you might say this is really late, but here that's just when the party really gets started).

hydrating/health:
Obviously I've already done my bit about the time schedule and when they eat, but now I going to talk about  when they drink, because, from what I can tell, they don't! I honestly don't know how people here stay hydrated or healthy unless they're secretly chugging water behind closed doors.  I almost never see anyone drinking any sort of liquid unless you're at a bar.  So yeah, no idea how they stay healthy when they never hydrate, only eat carbs and protein (there's a serious lack of veggies here), and don't sleep EVER.

The Language.
I mean, it's obviously going to be different than home because it's Spanish, except it's not really Spanish, it's Castellano. This really screws me up a lot of the time, mainly because the normal double l "y" sound that I'm used to and how I learned Spanish is pronounced as a hard "sh" sound here. So instead of "me llamo Meredith" sounding like "me yamo Meredith" it sounds like "me shjamo Meredith." It's weird and screw me up, and people in shops and restaurants don't really want to slow down for you so you can understand. It's a miracle when you find someone who knows a little bit of English, because suddenly, they want to practice on you.

Ok, that's all the ranting about differences for now, so we move on to things I'm (sorta) getting used to.
1) My crappy mattress. Just sitting here on it I can feel 3 springs pressing into my foot and legs. But I've finally managed to sleep without getting a ginormous backache. I think sort of surrounding myself by these ginormous decorative pillows is helping, and also probably my exhaustion and learning where on the tiny bed it's safe to lay without a spring digging into my ribs.

2) The money. Like I said, sorta. I'm learning to realize that, even though it seems like I'm handing over 10 dollars for a red bull, it's only 10 pesos, which translates to about $2.25, or how riding the subway costs 2.50, which seems extremely expensive, but it's only about $0.60. Also, I've learned to start checking my bills to make sure they're not fake.

3) The doors. I'm so used to the doors always opening out back home, that I've found myself automatically wanting to pull a door on the way in, and push on the way out (because it's fire code, that if there's a fire and everyone crowds against the door trying to get out, you won't get stuck trying to pull it in against a crowd of people) here, no such code exists, so the doors are about half and half. I've almost stopped trying to pull doors that say 'empuje' and push doors that say 'tire.'

Now that it's been two weeks and I'm about half way through my trip, I'm starting to count the days until I come home.  It's fun and exciting being here, but I'm getting tired of the constant noise of the city, awkward dinners trying to talk to my host family, and everything being in Spanish everywhere. I want to be able to walk down the street and go into a cafe to get a coffee without being afraid of making a complete fool of myself because I can't really speak Spanish. This has been my wonderful adventure so far. I am, however, looking forward to my last week here. I've got planned a trip to see the Iguazu falls, which are supposed to be amazing, and a ticket has been bought to go see the opera at the Teatro Colon, one of the most famous opera houses in the world.

On the bright side, right across from my university it a house where Albert Einstein lived for a month when he came to Buenos Aires! 

Going Out?

After a seriously long, but awesome tour yesterday, I went home and managed to get about half an hour of sleep before dinner.  After dinner, I went over to Bry´s to hang for a while, because just sitting around my host families house didn´t seem appealing.  I wasn´t planning on really going out, but once I was at Bry´s, a bunch of people were posting on facebook how they were meeting up to go to some bar.  So at 11:45, Bry´s roommate hailed a cab and told it where to take me.  We were meeting on the corner of two streets, and I was the first one there. It was pretty scary because there was almost no one around, and I had to wait about 5 minutes for the other people to show up. BUT, they did, so I ended up ok.

We basically just starting walking up the road hoping to find a bar we wanted to go into, and some guys that were sitting at a table outside of a bar heard us speaking english and asked if we were looking for something to do.  Not like super creepy Argentine guys, but a couple of guys that originated from California.  They live down here now and work as guides for a pub crawl. We sat and chatted with them for a couple hours and had a drink, then they took us to this club called QuiQue or something like that.  We had another couple drinks and had fun dancing.  Especially when the go-go dancers got on platforms around the room and danced :P.

We ended up not leaving the club until about 4 in the morning, so after walking home, I ended up back at 4:30. This probably wasn´t the best idea considering I had a test at 9:45 this morning, but it worked out.  I actually wasn´t all that tired getting up and taking the test.  It wasn´t until about one this afternoon that I really started getting tired.

This morning we took our Spanish placement test, and I ended up getting stuck in the basics class, which I don´t understand because the girl who doesn´t even know left and right in spanish got put in the intermediate group.  Oh well, I guess it´ll be easy at least.  So then we wandered around to find a restaurant for lunch, which was really good. I got this yummy rice/chicken/veggie bowl that was pretty good. A bit more wandering and now we have our academic orientation coming up. After that I really need to go home and sleep for a long bit. If I don´t get at least 3 more hours sleep before nine o´clock, there is no way I´m going out tonight.  I like my sleep too much.


Plus, I´ve only got the equivalent of like 5 dollars left in pesos. It´s amazing how fast 100 dollars goes!

Day Two

I´ve officially been in Argentina for over 24 hours, and so far, I like it.  My host mom is really nice, and tries her best to communicate with me (cringe) and made wonderful food so far.  Some things are kind of odd, like how the bathroom light doesn´t turn on every time you hit the switch, but you just have to keep clicking it until it turns on, and I use the toilet in one bathroom, but the shower in another.

I´ve officially mastered the subway, or Subte, and managed to get to the ISA office all my myself this morning. Yay Bry for giving me awesome directions (i.e. look at the McDonalds and turn right). Cora gave me a Subte card that apparently only Argentines can get so I could put money on it and use it while I´m here. Apparently foreigners need to go stand in line for hours at some place to get a refillable Subte card instead of buying each ticket individually.

I went to Bry´s apartment last night and got to take pictures of her awesome "river" view and eat strawberries from a little veggie-fruit seller.  We went into the supermarket too and I saw brain packaged right next to the ground beef and steaks.

I came early to the ISA office this morning (we needed to be here by 10AM) just in case I couldn´t find my way, so I have time to post this, then we have our orientation that´s supposed to last 3 hours, lunch, and a city tour.  I´m really glad that the city tour is going to be on a bus because my new rainbows are still getting worn in and they´re making the bottoms of my feet slightly sore.

I Made It!

I'm here! From the last time you heard from me...

My room here at Cora's

I managed to get a super late checkout from my hotel, so I didn't have to leave there until four. Then I took the shuttle over to the airport and used up my last two meal vouchers from the airline.  As I was lining up to board the plane, I noticed a girl with the ISA pin on her backpack, so I went and introduced myself.  Her name was Sara.  Then, on the plane, I met Alexis, who was sitting next to me.  We got served two meals, lots of beverages, and I had to lovely experience of having to pee while trapped in by a sleeping person.  I managed to almost completely climb over her without waking her up, but jostled her at the last moment. Oh well..

Then, getting off the plane we met up with 3 other girls, went through customs, etc... Then had to sit around for a few hours while our ISA representative waited for a few other flights to get in.  Overall, a sweaty long day, and I was extremely ready for a shower.  Once we had everyone we loaded onto a bus and drove to the university, where our host families picked us up.

I have the lovely fortune to be staying with Ms. Cora Halpern.  It's a wonderful apartment in Palermo, where she has one cat, a son, a daughter, and I'm assuming another student named Olivia (haven't met her yet) living here.  I connected to the internet, called home, unpacked, and go to take that blessed shower and brush my teeth. Now it's to be lunch, Bry's coming to visit, then we head over to the ISA office for orientation at four.

Almost there!

Well folks, this is going to be my last post from the good old U.S. of A. It's been a long night and and even longer day, but it's only about 20 minutes until I board that plane that'll take me on a 10 hr and 20 min flight all the way down to Buenos Aires. By the time I get there, I'll have been traveling for a grand total of 45 hours, approximately. I still need to use my last meal voucher that the airline gave me for screwing up my schedule, so I'm off to get myself a snack for this insanely long flight. See you in Argentina!

Flight Status: DELAYED

Well, here I am sitting in the Boise airport. My flight got delayed, so instead of leaving Boise at 10:05, we're now leaving until 11:15 (Update: looks like we're not leaving until noon, so I won't be making my flight). Which means I don't get to Portland until 11:45, which isn't very good for me because my flight from Portland to Dallas boards at 11:30 and leaves at 12:15.  The lady at the desk thinks that I'll be able to make my connection, but we'll see.  Then, if I miss that flight in Portland, there's no way I'm going to make it to Dallas to make the flight to Buenos Aires, so I'd be spending the night in Portland and making my way to Buenos Aires a day later.  This would actually work out well for me because I booked my flights for a day early on accident anyways.

However, I'm just starting to get excited for my trip. Buying the awesome new purple luggage didn't do it, packing didn't do it, but apparently sitting in the airport hoping I make my flights will get me all excited.  I keep getting this feeling that I left something at home that I'm going to need, but I think I've thought of everything.  I've got cookies for a snack, and water bottle for filling, two different cameras in addition to the one on my phone, chargers for everything.  I should be set. I really hope I didn't actually leave anything behind.


UPDATE: I definitely missed my flight from Portland to Dallas, so after over half an hour talking to the people at the Alaska desk, I'm not booked on the 3:10 out of Portland to Dallas, I'll stay the night there, and take the 7:30 to Buenos Aires, which is perfect for me!

T- 2.5 weeks

I'M GOING TO ARGENTINA FOR FOUR WEEKS!!!!!!!

 Ok, now that I've got that out of my system, I can explain fully.
Approximately a few months ago, my father decided that I should study abroad this summer and learn Spanish.  He wanted me to go to Spain, but realistically, I thought that South American Spanish would be more useful to me. I found this awesome program in Chile that would allow me to learn Spanish and ski in the Andes, and it was super cheap.  This seemed too good to be true, so I met with one of the advisers in my school's study abroad office and found out that A) the program might not be legitimate and B) it wasn't an accredited university anyways, so I wouldn't be able to get credit for my time there.

So...I was back to page one, looking for a study abroad program in South America to learn Spanish for the summer, preferably in Chile.  Well, after much research, I found out that the programs in Chile were a combination of studying Spanish and Anthropology. I'm not really all that interested in Anthropology, so I didn't want to spend time studying it when I could be exploring Chile and skiing. AND, the programs in Chile were slightly expensive

Then, I remembered that HEY! Bryanna is in Argentina right now, maybe I could study there, and besides, Argentina isn't that far from Chile, plus the Argentina programs tended to be a bit cheaper than Chile. After (realistically not that much) research I found this lovely little program that is going to allow me to study in Buenos Aires for four whole weeks and get 8 credits of Spanish for it.

After a lot of paperwork, money spent, and a very expensive flight bought, I am planned to depart Boise, ID on May 24, and arrive in the Buenos Aires EZE International Airport at 7:55 AM on May 25.

With only two and a half weeks until my departure date, I am frantically saving money, researching fun places to go, and trying to survive through the last week and a half of my regularly scheduled semester.