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[alyinargentina-blog]

Signing Off

I think this is it, the last post I’ll make on this blog. I’m home, I’m done with exchange, and I don’t know quite what else there would be say on a blog titled “Aly in Argentina” if I’m no longer in Argentina. Coming home has been strange though. I thought I was very ready to be back in Wisconsin, back in Oshkosh, but I may have let my expectations get a bit too lofty. 

Before I sign out forever, I need to document the worst flying experience of my life, which was the trip back home. When you think about it, it’s fitting that the flight home from a city that had already posed so many challenges and probably raised my blood pressure past recommended levels was quite possibly the largest challenged of the past five months. A silver lining though: Claudia and I made up in the airport. Like sort of. We talked about what happened and about how the past semester went, and I think a lot of the anger stemmed from miscommunication, because Claudia had made a decision at some point that the best way to not be annoyed with each other was to just completely stop seeing each other. Which I interpreted (I think rightfully so) as her intentionally excluding me from things to make her life easier. Anyways, we talked things through which is great because we did end up sitting right next to each other on the two long flights, so imagine if we hadn’t. Yikes. I’m not really sure what the future holds for our friendship: we aren’t living together this year, who knows if we’ll see each other if we actually have to go out of our way to do so, but I am glad that we at least partially cleared the air. 

So after this weird argument/conversation that was definitely in front of like everyone else who was on our plane at the game, we get on the plane on scheduling. Boarding goes fine, we’re all in our seats. And then we just don’t move. After about half an hour people are getting a bit antsy because we haven’t even left the gate. The pilot comes on and makes a very vague announcement about a routine maintenance exam that they’re doing, and that we should be cleared in about 45 minutes. Which means we’d already be more than an hour behind schedule if the examination goes according to plan. 45 minutes later, and there are a lot of angry Argentine’s talking with the flight attendants, who realistically probably didn’t know anything more than we did at that point. The pilot gets back on the loudspeaker and says that, unfortunately, something didn’t go according to plan and that the illumination (whatever that means) isn’t working properly. No explanation as to what this means for those of us who have connecting flights nor about the future of this flight (would we be allowed to stay on this plane? Was there another one ready if we had to get off?). About an hour later, we’re finally taxiing to take off, two and a half hours behind schedule. Claudia and I knew that we also had a maintenance stop in Lima that was supposed to be about two hours long, which still needed to happen, so we were pretty resigned that we were going to miss our connecting flight from Miami to Chicago, but there wasn’t much we could do about that. 

The flight from Buenos Aires to Lima, once we actually got going, was fine. I watched the Black Panther finally, ate some dinner, drank some wine, wasn’t even that tired. But when we land in Lima, they tell us we have to go through immigration and security, which doesn’t make too much sense because we weren’t actually entering their country if we weren’t ever going to leave the airport, but whatever. So 3 am, we’re standing in line for immigration when Claudia and I realize that there are some people who were on our flight that aren’t going to Miami, they’re going somewhere else in the US. We were both under the impression that our flight only went to Miami, and that our maintenance stop meant that everyone got off and got back on the same plane, because we all had the same final destination. We were wrong. There was a group of about 20 of us who were going to Miami and, according to our boarding passes, needed to get back on the same flight, or get to the flight with the same number as our previous one. Of course no one at the airport knew what we were talking about. The worker in charge of security didn’t know anything about the situation, didn’t know if there was a plane waiting for us (because if this was a layover and not a maintenance stop, we had definitely missed the connecting flight from Lima to Miami), so he had to go get the LATAM workers. Who were about as helpful as the first guy. They ushered us through security first, and then we were off and running through the airport at 3 am, I didn’t had my shoes on, with our luggage hoping that our plane was at some undisclosed gate waiting for us. 

We get to the gate, out of breath and sweaty and very irritated. But the plane is there. Before we can get on, we have to go through this second round of security which appears to be a bunch of hourly teenage workers who wouldn’t let us have water on the plane, which resulted in Claudia and I chugging my full swell bottle because no WAY were these people confiscating my 30 dollar water bottle. Finally, we’re on our second plane, which doesn’t take off for what felt like at least another hour, also for undisclosed reasons. But the flight attendants reassured us numerous times that we were going to get to Miami at 8:30 with more than enough time to get on our 10 o’clock flight to Chicago. Two sleeping pills later and Claudia and I were knocked out for the next six hours. 

We landed in Miami a bit before 9, got through customs and immigration in a record 10 minutes, but then got stuck at baggage claim because whoever was unloading the plane decided that it made sense to unload the connecting passenger’s luggage after everyone else’s. About 20 minutes later, we have all of our luggage, and discover that we have to get all the way to the other end of this airport, which extinguished any remaining hope that we might make our flight. The next 25 minutes were pure, unadulterated torture. We’re both wearing sherpa jackets and leggings because A it’s cold in Buenos Aires and B they didn’t fit in our already very heavy luggage. So we’re already too hot, and now we’re dragging four bags each across carpeted floors while onlookers are probably wondering where in the hell we came from and why it looks like we packed our entire life’s possessions. We finally make it to the gate we need to be at, Claudia is crying, I’m incredibly sweaty, and we’re forced to wait in a very slow moving line to talk to someone who can get us on a different flight. Half an hour later, and probably the worst customer service ever, we’re on a 12:15 flight to Chicago, which only puts us about two hours behind schedule. Security is a pain, as always, and takes Claudia’s dulce de leche because it’s apparently considered a “gel” even though it’s most certainly a food that can cause literally no harm to anyone. 

The flight from Miami to Chicago felt like an eternity and a half. By then I was tired, crabby, way too warm, and dreading having to cart my luggage around O’hare in search of Bo. Thankfully, we got off the plane, got our luggage, and I was in the car on the way home without many complications. After all we went through on the first two flights, if this last flight had had any complications I would’ve screamed. 

Like I said earlier, being home has been weird. The rest of my family is in Europe, so I’m just home alone hanging out with Mojo. Which is great and all, but also I’m more than a little salty that I was gone for five months and my parents decided the week I came home was the perfect time to take a family trip. I also only am home for about a month before moving back into Madison, so the whole unpacking processes is a bit arbitrary if I’m going to have to box everything back up in three weeks to move again. It also doesn’t help that my dresser just doesn’t have room for all of my clothes. I guess Oshkosh is as anti-climactic as I knew it was going to be, but I didn’t really want to admit that to myself as I was sitting in Buenos Aires counting down the days until I could leave. Coming from a city that size to little ole Oshkosh has been almost comical, I can drive ten minutes and be across town, when 10 minutes in Buenos Aires barely got me to the subte stop. 

I guess this is it then, this is me signing off of what was the platform for all of my complaints and trials and tribulations of the past semester. I sincerely hope I can look back in five years at this and realize how ridiculous I was, because that’s usually what happens with anything I write. So, see you in five years!

[alyinargentina-blog]

Ciao BA

In T-2 1/2 hours I will be on a plane back to the US. As I’m writing this in the airport, I don’t really know how to feel, but I know that I’m sad and anxious and excited and it all amounts to my hands shaking too much and a vaguely nauseous feeling in my stomach which I hope is just the nerves because I also did eat way more than my stomach really was expecting to today. This morning I woke up and laid in bed for a while staring at my ceiling, one of my more frequent pastimes in BA, thinking about what lays ahead of me in this monster of a trip back to Oshkosh. When I finally dragged myself out of bed for breakfast, only grandma and Gisela were home, but they’d left me some tortas fritas and coffee, so I was content enough. I packed yesterday in record time honestly, but I guess it’s easier to pack things up when leaving somewhere than trying to cram all of the thing you think you’ll need into a suitcase when leaving for a new place. When Natalia and grandpa got home, they made a huge lunch of pasta and bread and wine and postre, which was not something I had expected at all. It was a great last meal (didn’t even need to salt the pasta!!) and they talked and I laughed, and then we said our goodbyes, I got in the taxi, and left.  

There are a lot of things that I’m not going to miss about Buenos Aires. It’s one of the most unorganized places I’ve ever been, which is really only compared to western Europe and America, so I suppose maybe I should’ve suspected that. The subte made me want to die most of the time, the colectivos were worse. Most of the time I didn’t understand what was going on with anything: why was everything closed (hint, it’s probably one of multiple paros), what are the protesting today, why don’t people believe me when I say that I can understand their Spanish? School was a train wreck most of the time, and I won’t actually know my grades until the middle of October. 4 phones and one wallet later, why is no one as angry as I am about pick pocketing? I also won’t miss the drama or the lack of a good group of friends, not that I didn’t meet great people through IFSA. But I won’t miss the feeling of being excluded from things or of wondering if I’m going to have to eat dinner alone on a Saturday night because my friends are gone or because they’ve made plans with Claudia, which means that I’m not welcome. 

There are also lots of things that I will miss about Buenos Aires, which I don’t think really hit me until I was sitting in the backseat of my taxi looking out at all of the buildings whipping past me. The liveliness of the city, the never-ending list of things to do, places to go, is so different than anywhere I’ve ever lived. The hustle and bustle, while not something I want to endure at 8 am on a Wednesday morning on the way to class, is something I want to enjoy when out for dinner with friends. Natalia and her family are going to be missed dearly. Grandpa is my pal, my wine partner, and someone who isn’t afraid of trying to explain the complexity that is Argentine politics to a foreigner who, five months ago, knew absolutely nothing about the situation. Lulu was a great dog, one of the best. And, as frustrating as Spanish is most of the time, being forced out of my comfort zone was the only way I was every going to improve and the only way that I could continue improving. 

So as I sit here in the airport waiting for the call to board, it’s a bittersweet feeling leaving, because I’m so ready to be home but I also know that I barely scratched the surface of all this city has to offer. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

Wasting Time

The past two weeks have been challenging in a lot of ways. After Igauzu I was 110% ready to hop on a plane that same night and head back to America for reasons that I don’t fully understand myself. Nothing changed in Iguazu: Claudia was still shitty, I still felt like Buenos Aires was a lot but not too much all the time, and I was ready but no more than I had been before the weekend away to be in a city where everyone could understand me and where I didn’t have to clutch my backpack to my chest at all times. The week after Iguazu was our last week of school and of assignments. We were supposed to have our makeup class for derechos humanos but that didn’t happen because no one went. Sorry Juan. On Wednesday we had our last castellano class, which was our presentations for the UBA professors. 

Honestly have no idea how mine went, felt okay about it at the time but also my literary analysis of a play that I really understood about 2/3 of could’ve been completely off the mark and I would’ve been none the wiser. But the UBA professors were not theater specialists, so they probably had little to no interest in what everyone’s presentations were about in the first place. The entire process of the presentations and then little interviews with the professors we had to do afterwards was pointless, and sort of demeaning, but it also was the end of ever having to participate in Argentine academics in person again so I was pretty happy about that. Because of Juan’s failure to email us the consignas for the final essays on time, the due date got pushed back to last Friday, so I still had to write those after the presentation. Accidentally wrote a lot more than Juan probably wanted us to, most of which was probably rambling, but I’m not entirely convinced he’ll read them very closely nor that we’ll get bad grades on them because it would make IFSA programs look bad if students came out with bad grades. 

Nevertheless, we won’t actually know what our grades are until October, because that’s when IFSA is finally going to get around to sending us our grades, which I think is ridiculous. I understand that our IFSA professors have other jobs and have social lives and things, but so do professors in the US and they absolutely don’t take three months to grade the single assignment we had in a class. But this also just reinforces my opinion that IFSA is not going to give anyone a bad grade, and if they were going to, I think they’d have to inform us of that fact prior to October. 

Now that I’m free, academically speaking, I’ve had a lot of time to sit around and do nothing and feel guilty for it. It’s been difficult to motivate myself to go do things because of a few factors: I don’t really want to be in Buenos Aires anymore, I have a limited amount of friends who I can go do things with and they either are already busy, are traveling, or don’t want to go do things when I want to, money, or interest in the things I probably should be going to do. Last week, when Katie was still here, we went to a few different cafes, we went to the San Telmo market again, and we went to the ecological reserve in puerto madero and ate incredibly oily sandwiches. It was all fun, but I felt like we were also doing things to pass the time instead of doing them because we actively felt like we couldn’t miss seeing them before we left. Her mom and grandma got here Tuesday, which mean stat since then I’ve been either doing things alone or not doing anything, except for yesterday. 

Tuesday I laid in bed all day because I had eaten a spinach tart that my stomach mysteriously rejected very quickly. I was in a bad mood all day, aided by the fact that the rest of my family is in Spain right now watching soccer and drinking fun cocktails and going to the beach, while I am laying in a bed in a city that is very overwhelming trying to will the days to go by faster. If Tuesday was good for one thing, it was that it basically forced me to find things to do so I didn’t burn through 8 House episodes in one day and get worried looks from Natalia. Wednesday, I went to the MALBA by myself, which I’m actually very glad I did. It’s weirdly empowering to do things by myself, I can do things when I want, go where I want, and not feel like I have to spend four hours in an art museum when I really only want to spend one hour looking at the paintings. The MALBA was the perfect size, the art was all super interesting, and the exhibit descriptions were surprisingly liberal and very into differentiating Latin American art from European standards and I loved that. I also got to see a Frida Kahlo painting, as well as a Diego Rivera one, and I was very happy about that because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out from the MALBA website if they had Frida paintings in their collection or not. After the MALBA, I tried one last cafe from the list of cafes I had found prior to coming to Buenos Aires, and it didn’t disappoint. There was so much brie on my sandwich that I could barely fit it into my mouth. I’m still not entirely sold on eating meals alone, I’ll forever feel awkward doing that I think, but I’m glad I got to try one more flat white in this city. 

Yesterday I toured Congress with Charlotte because Gisela was adamant that Congress is a must-see in Buenos Aires. Our tour was thirty minutes long because we were accidentally the only two people there for an english tour, and two of the biggest rooms were closed for reconstruction. But we did get to go into both the House and Senate rooms where they vote, which was pretty cool, and the building was very pretty in general. Afterwards, we went to an amazing Peruvian restaurant where I discovered that I actually love ceviche and it doesn’t taste or feel like gross raw fish in the slightest. We headed back to the Plaza de Mayo to see the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo march, which was a really powerful experience. It blows my mind that they’ve been protesting every Thursday since either during or right after the dictatorship and the government still hasn’t acquiesced and provided at least a little bit of information about the whereabouts of the desaparecidos that they’re still looking for. Some of the women there were so old, it was hard to watch. Finally, we went to this ornate shopping mall that was way out of our price range, but that had some pretty cool architecture and is on all of the tourism websites for the city. 

I do still feel like I’m going places or doing things just to fill my last couple days, but maybe that’s just inevitable when you’re getting ready to leave a place and have no real obligations to fulfill before leaving. A part of me really wishes that I could’ve traveled to Peru or Chile during these last weeks, but I also know that those are vacations that I should save until I have the resources and the time to fully experience a place, not rushing through them to say I saw them and to take a couple standard pictures to show people. I also sort of wish my family could’ve came to Buenos Aires to have some context of things I talk about when I get home and need to tell them what I did for the past five months. But it is what it is. 

Although I normally start packing egregiously early, I have yet to start packing up my things for the trip home, and I’m very stressed out about weight limits and about the amount of things I’ve acquired over the course of the semester, because I definitely told myself before getting here that I wasn’t going to buy a lot. I think I’m going to start the process tonight, but I also know I have a weird amount of time on Sunday before I have to leave for the airport that I’m going to want to fill with something. But if I wait until the last minute to pack I’m going to lose my mind. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

Texas or Iguazu??

Iguazu falls looks like it’s fake, the pictures of it don’t do it justice but seeing it is like seeing something that would only exist in a Disney movie or a bad action movie that needs a cool set to make up for the mediocre acting. Katie and I left Buenos Aires Thursday morning, and sat at the airport getting live updates from her mom about the sentencing of Alec Cook, the UW student who sexually assaulted numerous female students in 2016. He was charged with five felonies and several other additional crimes, with a maximum sentence of 40 years. He got 3. Our justice system is so screwed up it’s revolting. Our flight there was painless, as was the ride into town. Our hostel, from the outside, looked nice enough, it had a lot of cool murals on the walls and our bedroom seemed clean. We hurriedly threw our bags down and retreated into the living room to watch the Argentina world cup game against Croatia, a seemingly meek opponent who turned out to look a lot better than Argentina ever did. 

A painful 2-0 loss later, Katie and I found ourselves with little else to do than go track down a very early dinner. We found a mexican restaurant on google maps and headed there, only to be told it doesn’t open for another hour. We tried entertaining ourselves by shopping and browsing the little markets outside but the town of Iguazu has about as much entertainment as the Wisconsin Dells downtown area, which let me tell you is about zero. There were lots of the same tourist stores filled with overpriced knick knacks, clothing stores with more graphic tees in one place than I’ve ever seen, and a surprising lack of bars where we could sit and sip a beer before we devoured some tacos. Thankfully we found a bar at the end of the main street, got some beer and cornnuts!! and wasted way an hour until dinner. 

The Mexican place was an experience if nothing else, one that involved very little real mexican food. Katie and I have decided that people generally like us: the waiter at the restaurant gave us a huge free plate of chips and dip with more to come later. We ordered some passionfruit daiquiris, which apparently are VERY different than margaritas according to the same waiter, and then our food. Turns out “quesadilla” to an Argentine means a flatbread ham and cheese sandwich, which is not quite what I had in mind, but oh well. The other two tacos we got were good, both of course needed something picante but we can’t expect Argentine sauces to provide that at this point in our semester, that would be asking way too much. After the food, our bestfriend (the waiter) came out with free tequila shots, which we were really not expecting but which were not nearly as deadly as I remember tequila shots being. By this point, Katie and I were sufficiently liquored up, and headed back to the hostel. 

We decided to shower, which in theory is a relatively easy process. False. I ended up falling and severely bruising my hand and elbow because wet tile steps are not a semi-drunk person’s friend. The rest of the night was spent icing my hand and complaining about our professor who had just decided to send the prompts for our final essays that night, two days after he said he was going to and after having the last class be cancelled without any prior notice because the professor decided she had better things to do and “didn’t have time” to text anyone about it. Juan rescheduled the class for this Tuesday, directly in the middle of a very important soccer game, so I will not be attending. Sorry Juan. We went to bed relatively early because no one was at the hostel and there was nothing to do, but nothing in Argentina can go smoothly. In this specific instance, both of our beds were horrifying. As context, our bunk bed was positioned right outside the bathroom that did not have nearly enough ventilation for a sewage system that did not allow for used toilet paper to be flushed down the toilets. The toilet seats were also cushioned, which has nothing to do with the bed situation but is just gross in general. Katie’s bed had patches that smelled very concerning, one of which was right by the pillow, so she got very little sleep. My mattress started leaking fluid, am assuming it’s water because don’t want to think about other possibilities. I didn’t realize this until I moved around to try to get warmer and realized that an entire side of my shorts were drenched, and that my shirt had some wet spots also. I very quickly decided to change beds after that incident. 

Friday was waterfall day! We woke up, had some rice and beans for breakfast, and then walked to the bus terminal to get a ride to the national park. The park entrance was surprisingly inconspicuous for such a big tourist destination, and the entire place really wasn’t too busy, which could have something to do with it being a week day. We got into the park and made our way to the Garganta del Diablo first, which is the biggest waterfall that literally looks like the earth just fell away and there’s a gigantic hole where the ground should be. You can hear the rushing water about twenty to thirty minutes before you can see anything. The trail to get to the walkway out to the waterfall is a gravel road next to the train tracks that transport all of the park’s old visitors to the flatter, easily accessible wire walkway over the river. When we got to the actual walkway, there were more people, many of whom were on guided tours that identified their members with fun matching hats. The walk out to the falls too about twenty minutes. The first thing you see is water seemingly being sucked away, and then the closer you get the more mist you see, and then the falls come into view. Definitely a “wow” moment: you can’t even see the bottom because the water hits with such force that the mist obscures it. It honestly looks like the earth disappeared and the water doesn’t ever hit a bottom. 

After this path, Katie and I decided it was lunchtime, so we headed back to one of the eating areas and attempted to make our sandwiches. However, there was a small blip in these plans thanks to animals called Cuatí. Cuatí are little rodent things that look like a mix between anteaters and raccoons, completely with weird snouts and a long tail that terrorize the tourist at the park and try to steal every single item of food they can get their clawed paws on. Katherine loved them, I hated them. The one time we decided to sit at a table and assemble our lunches, they swarmed, at least ten of them, and almost ran away with our bag of bread. I was horrified. Lunchtime turned into a detour to the only indoor food court in the park so that we could eat in relative peace. 

After lunch, Cuatí free thankfully, we did the lower path at the park, which was gorgeous, and gave us the stereotypical pictures taken at the park, with all of the waterfalls in a row and the rainbow glinting off of the spray from the water. This path was infested by this huge group of what seemed like an extended family on vacation, who would run on the walkway with all of the children, and then stop and take 20 minutes worth of pictures in the middle of the walkway because they apparently all needed a picture at the exact same place. Katie and I thankfully could bypass them, and get up to the last trail, the higher path. This one took us on top of the waterfalls we’d seen from the lower path, and had some cool panoramic views of all of the waterfalls with the Garganta del Diablo in the distance. This was our last trial, so we headed back to the park entrance behind a group of chanting geriatrics led by a man with a can who was zoom-walking and hitting signs with his cane aka an old man gone rogue.

We got back to our hostel to find it infested with a huge group of students from the University of Texas who were in Iguazu for the weekend, and in Buenos Aires for five weeks studying business management. None of them spoke spanish, or were making an attempt to learn it, they had never taken the subte or the colectivo (in fact they knew what neither of those things were), they spent the majority of their time at boliches and bars, and then had the audacity to question why Katie and I were a bit worn out by Buenos Aires. But they also turned out to be very entertaining. Matt, the first Texan that we met, took Katie and I to this light show overlooking the intersection of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, which turned out to be very cool.  He parted ways to go meet his 35 Texan friends at a restaurant that serves Milanesa, something Katie and I get more than enough of with our host moms, so we headed to an outdoor burger place that had some pretty large burgers. 

We got back to the hostel and expected it to be empty: all of the Texans had said they were going to this ice bar that is literally made of ice, and where 300 pesos buys you unlimited drinks for 30 minutes, aka you’re buying the death of your liver. Boy were we wrong: Texas was in full force in Igauzu. They’d taken over the small bar area and were continuing their binge drinking, so Katie and I opened our bottle of wine and retreated to the quiet of the small patio by our room. About ten minutes later, Matt invited us to play Never have I Ever with their group, which got rowdy real quick. We learned more than we needed to ever know about many of the boys in this group, all of whom were freshman which contributed to the absurdity of the entire event. By the end of the night, most of them were absolutely hammered, one of them was asking me why his friends wouldn’t share weed with him, another was not wearing shoes around the hostel, another was defending his decision not to give oral to his girlfriend of 2 1/2 years. 

The next morning, they had to wake up at 7 to go on their guided tour of Iguazu, which meant not only that Katie and I got woken up when all of their 20 alarms went off in our room, but that we got to hear their shouted-whispers about how they were still hammered, had gotten into literal fist fights with their friends the night before, and had no idea what to bring with them to Iguazu. Katie and I stayed in bed for a while longer, ate breakfast, watched some soccer, and then headed to the airport to fly back to Buenos Aires. 

The airport in Iguazu is literally falling apart. It’s partially under construction to “modernize” it but I think that basically means they’re tearing it down bit by bit because it’s barely functional and only has one gate. We got there about an hour and a half before our flight, because according to the guy that worked at the hostel that’s all we needed. But, as per usual in my experiences flying in Argentina, about five families had ten suitcases each, and proceeded to take at least 15 minutes checking them all and arguing about if they could have them in the plane or if they needed to be checked. It took forever to get our boarding passes, but thankfully security took very little time, and we were at the one gate right as our plane was supposed to start boarding. Except it didn’t start boarding for at least another half hour, in which two lines formed, frantic Asian women were asking everyone they could find which line was for Andes Airlines (they both were) and then not believing any of the answers they were given. We eventually got on the plane and flew home, with quite a bumpy landing, but the entire boarding process was a mess. Although Beatriz tried shaming Katie into staying another day in Iguazu to visit these jesuit ruins that turned out to be like on the other end of the province, at least a five hour bus ride away, Katie and I both agreed that one day in the town was more than enough to see the falls and head off to bigger and better (hopefully at least cleaner) places. 

Speaking of bigger and better places, I only have two weeks from today before I fly out and home to Wisconsin. I am very ready to leave. Buenos Aires has been an experience that I think will ultimately be good for me, but right now I basically want nothing more than to be back in a city that I don’t have to worry about getting stolen from every minute, that doesn’t go on strike every other week, that has my dog and my bed and my car and a phone that can do more than one thing at a time. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

Vamos Argentina!!

This week the world cup started, which translates to this week everyone in Argentina collectively lost their minds for the next month. Although the national paro that was in the works this past Thursday never ended up happening, and the people who were potentially going to strike had very legitimate economic reasons to do so, rumor has it that the real reason for this paro would’ve been to gear up for the first matches of the world cup. This morning, Argentine played their first match against Iceland. Yesterday, after many hours of searching, I finally found a jersey in a small enough size: apparently the general population wiped every single sporting goods store clean out of small jerseys in the days leading up to this game. Katie and I had decided to go out last night, and after a short six hours of sleep, my alarm went off and dragged myself out of bed to get ready to sit outside and watch this game at Parque Centenario. Four layers of clothes later, I was out the door, headed to the bakery to buy some medialunas for sustenance. 

Katie and I were pleasantly surprised to see that the screen was set up in the amphitheater that’s at the park, meaning that we got to sit the whole game, the sun was blocked, and it was not just a crowd of rambunctious men yelling obscenities at Messi and drinking beer at 10 am. We broke out the mate, which realistically neither of us actually like but it felt right to be drinking in this situation, and settled in for the next two hours. The game started off well, Argentina looked good, they scored, the world was calm. The amount of cheering was about what was expected: lots of “dale” and “aye” and “Messi” yelled at the screen, but nothing too alarming because we were winning. 

The tables turned when Iceland scored, and Messi proceeded to miss a penalty kick. The cheering got a bit more desperate, as did the players, who were railing off shots that had absolutely no chance of landing anywhere near the goal. Messi, as much as I admire him, did not have a great game, which is disappointing because I would absolutely love for Argentina to finally win a world cup. During the midst of the turmoil that was the second half, Katie and I made friends with the woman sitting next to us. Susanna was probably like 45 but she thought we were hilarious: we took lots of selfies with her, exchanged phone numbers, and at the end of the game, she got us an interview on literal live Argentine television. I decided, against my better judgement, to say that Messi had a bad game during this interview, which is true but also maybe shouldn’t be using my limited Spanish knowledge to insult the national hero. 

After the Argentina game, Katie and I went back to her apartment to get cash to go back to the Caballito feria, which is always an experience. We ended up buying a decent amount of things, most of which were bought by Katie. We also went back and watched the second half of the Peru Denmark game, which was also very fun because Denmark is my heart and soul and the Peruvians watching the game were very enthusiastic. Am very happy we ended up going to the game this morning even though were tired and it was theoretically cold, because it’s one of the best days I’ve had in a while. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

My Personal Hell (maybe this is a bit dramatic but sticking with it anyways)

The beginning of June has been a lot. But I guess that’s sort of been a theme this entire semester: everything is just a lot. School has hit peak disorganization and I am not one who does well with disorganization, hence the drastic spike in stress. We had a parcial last week in international human rights that ended up going better than I thought but that was a literal disaster in the moment, we had a presentation today in the same class and a paper due Tuesday, I have a parcial in my history class this coming Tuesday, we have a 15-20 page paper due this coming Wednesday and a presentation about it the same day, two short essays for human rights due the 20th, and our castellano presentation and paper due the 27th. Realistically it’s manageable but the fact that it’s all happening during the same three weeks when we’ve had relatively little homework for the past three months is a bit frustrating. 

The group project for international human rights that we presented today was hands down the worst group project I’ve ever had to work on. We picked out groups forever ago, before there had been any real problems between Claudia and I. So from the outset of when we actually started working on it, I knew there were going to be some questionable moments because things are definitely not great between us, but I did think they had been improving somewhat after Mendoza. Unfortunately, I was wrong. We were all supposed to have our part of the written portion of this project done the 26th. Katie, Claudia and I all had them done. Alex did not, and was ignoring all of the messages being sent in the group chat. We let it go, assuming that she’d get it done before her and Claudia went to Chile for the weekend, coming back Monday aka the day before the project was due. Sunday night rolls around and there is still no word from Alex: no work has been done to the knowledge of Katie and I, so we decided to edit the project. I wrote Alex’s part before meeting Katie at a cafe, where we spent three hours fixing and finishing the ten page essay. 

Claudia’s part sounded like she had slapped an already poorly written English essay into google translate and copied and pasted that equally horrific translation into our essay and called it a job well done. It also seemed like she had just taken my notes on the case and put them in paragraph form. Either way, it was a hot mess that Katie and I had to fix. Alex’s part was just nonexistent, which was really frustrating because realistically it would’ve taken her two hours max to write it before they went to Chile, but apparently two hours is too much to ask from her. After we had finished the paper, Katie sent a message to the group chat essentially calling them out for not doing their work/for doing their work very poorly, to which Alex, for once, decided to reply. In short, Alex said that she didn’t understand why we were so stressed out and why we felt like we had to do their parts for them, because they were coming home Monday (again, the day before this 10 page paper and presentation were due) and were going to do it then. She basically got angry at us for calling our her irresponsibility and then started talking about our lack of communication (?) and arguing that she’s not in a good mental place and couldn’t do her homework. Which fine, I understand she’s not doing the best, but first off that’s something you maybe mention to people when you figure out that you just actually can’t bring yourself to do your homework/before 24 hours before the deadline because it’s a group grade and someone needs to do it and second sorry but lack of communication isn’t a sufficient excuse when you were the one ignoring messages about the project in the first place. Claudia said nothing throughout all of this. 

So it’s tense, it’s always been tense, but like this escalated things to the point where Tuesday, during a field trip to another centro clandestino Claudia and Alex were literally talking about me to Katie as I was very much in the vicinity. Which fine, whatever, but are you really that petty? But then they also had the audacity to complain about getting real grades and worrying about their GPA on the bus ride home, which either isn’t true because they obviously are putting almost negative effort into their school work or is true and they just really think that if they wait long enough people will do things for them and hand out good grades like they’re candy. And today, when we actually presented, Claudia didn’t know what she was talking about because of the incredibly minimal effort she put into the project in the first place. After class, we had to make some edits to the paper, and Claudia didn’t say a single word, didn’t look at me, and added a grand total of zero to what Alex and I ended up writing because she was “editing grammar” which probably means online shopping or looking at flights to Peru because, in case she hasn’t told you 36 times, her and Alex are going to Peru this month. 

I’m being pretty flippant about all of this but not only was I incredibly irate in the moment and am still pretty irritated about the whole thing, but I’m pretty upset about it too. First and foremost, I don’t think that I deserve to be the one who’s taking the brunt of the blame for making them feel bad about not doing their work, because if they had just been responsible students in the first place none of this would’ve happened. I shouldn’t be the one who has to hold their hands and send them daily reminders to do their homework, and I also shouldn’t be penalized for wanting to get a project done prior to the night before the due date. If it’s a group grade, everyone should put in at least some effort so that the grade reflects everyone’s contributions, not just the contribution of half of the group frantically piecing something together in the absence of the other two members. Secondly though, I think it’s incredibly immature of them, especially Claudia, to be so blatantly disrespectful towards after the fact. Fine, you can be frustrated, whatever. But you certainly don’t need to act like we’re in middle school and gossip about me to my friends, to your friends, and openly talk about how angry you are with me when I’m right there. It’s getting to the point where I legitimately don’t want to be in the same room as those two because it’s tense and I know they’re judging me and I know that they’re going to leave and talk about me, and I think it’s very unfair that they’re having this much of an influence on how I feel about being in Buenos Aires. 

If I had known that Claudia’s idea of studying abroad with a friend was hanging out with me for a month and then ditching me for bigger and better things, I would’ve definitely reconsidered this semester. Obviously not just for this reason, there have been a lot of other things that I haven’t exactly loved about the program and about the city, but this ridiculous and petty drama has really not helped things. At the beginning of the semester we had a good group going and it was fine, and then Claudia started getting really into partying and drinking and boys and drugs and like fine, whatever, but you can’t use those things as a reason to be a bad friend and that’s exactly what happened. By the time Katie and I realized that half of our friend group only wanted to party, it was a bit too late to jump ship and find a new group to hangout with.I don’t know if it’s a phase, or if this irresponsible and basically just mean version of Claudia is here to stay, but I’m not entirely interested in finding out either way. I do still have to fly home with her, unless she’s changed her flight and just not told me about it, which I wouldn’t put past her. If I am still flying with her, God help me get through those 20 hours. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

Hermosa Mendoza

I have decided, after a blissful but still somehow stressful six days in Mendoza, that I could never, in a million years, live somewhere where the trees don’t change colors for at least a little bit in the fall. Katie and I arrived in Mendoza relatively late on Wednesday night, checked into our hostel without a hassle, and went to a kiosco down the block where I took a lovely picture with the biggest bag of corn puffs I’ve ever seen. They’re all the rage in Argentina, and we really have no idea what they are, but they’re sweet and a weird texture and they remind me of the puff corn I had to eat in middle school when my braces prohibited the consumption of real popcorn. 

Thursday we decided to stay in the city, walk around a bit, and try to get our shit together for the next week in terms of planning and grocery shopping and making sure we had modes of transportation to get around. Our first stop of the day was the visitor’s center, where we found out that the Mt. Aconcagua base camp hike that we wanted to do was closed because it’s “winter” here. When we asked if there was snow on the trail, we were told that “no, there’s no snow, it’s just cold”, which to Argentines probably means it’s like 30 degrees. For people used to living in the frigid, snow-covered midwest, 30 degrees is basically a heatwave. We also found out that all of the best wineries were 100 km outside the city in Valle de Uco, which meant that our plans for doing our own, self-guided wine tour, were not looking so feasible. 

Our second stop of the day was a company specializing in wine tours recommended to us by the visitor’s center. We were told that there was a wine tour for around 25 dollars that went to Maipú, another wine region much closer to the city. It sounded too good to be true: cheap, lots of wine, supposedly similar views to Valle de Uco. Katie and I decided to explore our options a bit more, and headed three doors down to another wine tour company. After almost an hour long conversation with a woman who had the patience of a saint, Katie and I decided that an incredibly bougie, incredibly expensive, private guided wine tour in Valle de Uco was the route to go. When in Mendoza I suppose. 200 dollars later, we were all set for three vineyards and a five course meal the upcoming Sunday. 

The third stop of the day brought us to the grocery store, were we successfully bought ingredients for hostel meals that did not include sticky spaghetti and possibly fermented oatmeal a la Patagonia. After the grocery store I ate possibly the largest hot dog this earth has ever seen, with about four different sauces on it. Not entirely sure why I decided this was a good lunch, because 99% of the time I hate hotdogs, nor am I entirely sure how I managed to eat the entire time, but am sort of proud of this accomplishment. However, this hot dog was quite possibly the messiest thing I have ever eaten and I really am not a huge fan of finger food in general, so it was a struggle. 

Harry had told us about a hike that he’d done in Mendoza that had really good views of the city, so Katie and I decided to set out for that and try to get to the top by sunset. We had a bottle of wine, our sube, and our bottles of water full. Assuming it was going to be a 20 minute “hike”, I wore pants and a sweater, deciding to throw on tennis shoes at the last minute just to be on the safe side. As seems to be the theme in Argentina, we were wrong. This hike was at least a two hour ordeal one way, was very steep, was very in the middle of nowhere, and involved a lot of potentially wild horses. After about an hour of hiking, we ran into a herd of horses just chilling. Unsure what to do, we attempted to go around them, only to be promptly stopped when two of them started literally fighting. We stood there for about 20 minutes watching the horses (I pet one) and taking pictures, just very confused as to what was going on in general, before we decided to turn around and head back. 

Friday was our alta montaña trip, which we thought would include lots of hiking, or at least lots of being outside in cold temperatures, because that’s what the internet had told us to expect. Another lesson from the Mendoza trip: the internet is probably going to be wrong when it comes to even semi-touristy things in Argentina. The bus picks us up at 7:30 in the morning, we settle in, I have a good queue going on, and Katie and I sit and watch as the bus makes stops at these luxurious hotels to pick up four consecutive old couples, all dressed in real clothes, women in full makeup and hair. After all is said and done, Katie and I are the youngest on the bus by at least 40 years, possibly more, save for one couple who was maybe late twenties. The tour guide spends the entire first two hours of the trip telling us the history of the region, explaining the mountains, which was nice but also it was very early and the queue was beckoning. Our first stop was potrerillos, which was pretty but lasted about ten minutes. Second stop, a little town where we got some much needed coffee and saw a military manifestation. This is when, in theory, our trip was actually beginning: we were getting to the good stuff. Stop three was the Puente del Inca, a natural bridge that the Incas had traversed on their travels through the Andes that somehow produced hot water. Around the bridge there was a market which turned out to be incredibly dangerous for my wallet. Three alpaca sweaters and a coffee mug later, we were ready to keep going. 

Stop four was Mt. Aconcagua, the tallest mountain the western hemisphere. It was tall, it was a mountain, not much else to say about it. The final stop on this tour was supposed to be a statue on the border between Chile and Argentina that had been constructed to commemorate the peace after a long period of tension between the two countries. Online, the website we booked our tour through sad that tours went to the statue unless there was snow, and I can promise you that there was not snow, it was probably 60 degrees out aka a heatwave. When we got to where the road to the statue was, our guide told us it was time to get out and eat lunch at this restaurant. Katie and I asked about the statue, and he said that it was closed except for from January to March, which has got to be the smallest window of availability for a national landmark that exists, and was also nowhere to be found online when looking for information about this tour. So we were sort of salty, because the statue and the views around it were a big part of why we had booked the tour. After a two hour bus ride home, we concluded that the entire day had been fine, not what we had expected, and maybe not worth how much it had cost. But we got to spend the day in the Andes which, when all is said and done, is pretty darn cool. 

Friday night I got into a relatively heated debate with this English man named Elliot, who hit the triple whammy of 1. Supporting Trump, even though he claimed he was only playing devil’s advocate 2. not “believing” that transgenders are real or that they should have rights 3. arguing that gender is not a social construct and that there isn’t inequality in how women are treated. Elliot needed some serious education, and maybe to be smacked once or twice, but thankfully Katie got me out of the conversation relatively quickly. After a night of drinking, I was pretty beat and also pretty sick. When I got back to the room, I changed into my pjs and, after looking in the mirror, realized that I had bed bug bites all over my chest, on my face, and on my arms. 

Deciding to ignore the problem, I went to sleep, and woke up on Saturday covered in bites. Unfortunately, Saturday was when we had decided to go to the hot springs, so these bug bites were in full display the entire day. I decided to tell the woman who worked at the counter, and she said she’d have the sheets changed, which is fine and dandy but that doesn’t change the fact that I literally had bites on my face. Another hour and a half long bus ride got us to the hot springs, which were once again not quite what they’d been advertised to be online. Half of the pools were closed, which really makes no sense because if it’s natural water where does it go, don’t know if it can just disappear? There were also just a ton of old people, who knows if it was like retirees get in free day or something but there were massive groups of old women who would take turns lowering themselves into the water, propping themselves up on two other equally as old women which was a very stressful spectacle to watch. We had about five hours before our bus ride back, three of which we spent in the water relaxing and taking an inordinate amount of pictures, and two of which we spent wandering around the little market outside the springs. Returning to the hostel after the hot springs was like walking into a war-zone: our bunkmates were back and found out pretty quickly that I had bed bugs, and proceeded to demand that everyone be moved rooms immediately, which was a big preemptive considering no one else had gotten bitten. I felt horrible, I did not want to be the root of all of this commotion, but these girls were relentless. Eventually, it was decided that they would be moved hostels, and Katie and I would get moved to a private room, which was honestly very ideal but was still a very stressful experience. After that debacle we decided to go out dinner at an Arabic restaurant that Charlotte’s friend who is studying in Mendoza this semester recommended. It was good, worth the walk, had good hummus which is really my only requirement of middle eastern food. 

Sunday was wine tour day, and wow was it one of the best days of my life, definitely the most lavish day. They picked us up at 8:30, we were to the first winery by 9:30, tipsy by 11. The first winery was my favorite: the tour lady walked us around the vineyard which had amazing views of the grapevines changing colors and the mountains, and then took us through where the wine is made, and we tried some right from the tanks where the wine is mixed and fermented. Then we went into this SUPER classy tasting room, where we tried three different wines paired with cheeses and a trail mix while she explained how they were made, what they should taste like, and what they’re paired with. The second wine we tried, Paso Doble, was the best wine I’ve ever had in my life. It was gorgeous. It smelled like fall and had a great taste, and paired so well with the cheese they gave us. After basically five glasses of wine at vineyard 1, Katie and I were feeling pretty good. I bought Paso Doble for Lucas’ parents, in hindsight I should’ve bought at least one more bottle from this place but also glad I didn’t because I really don’t have room in my luggage for it. 

The second vineyard was called La Azul and it was this tiny place in the mountains that is owned by an Argentine family and only makes Argentine wine. We had a table set up outside, and we tried probably six wines while we sat around and chatted with the two Australian women who were on the tour with us. It was very nice, Katie and I were definitely drunk at this point, but it was a good drunk. Would like to think that we stayed relatively classy throughout all of this. The final vineyard was Domaine Bousquet, the site of our five course meal and another 7 glasses of wine consumed. They started us right off the bat with some sparkling wine, which goes down so easily and is very dangerous for someone already drunk. The glasses of wine just kept coming, as did the food. We started with this corn thing that was very good, then we got some bread and empanadas, followed by the main dish which I elected pasta for, then a plate of cheese and nuts, and finally some flan with dulce de leche ice-cream. Very good, so much food. We ended the tour with a cup of coffee outside in the mountains, sufficiently wine drunk. Katie and I got back to the hostel around five and spent the next four hours sleeping/laying in bed. I may or may not have thrown up, am more convinced that it was from the food and not the wine, but that could also be me refusing to accept that my body really doesn’t like me when I put a bunch of wine in it. 

Monday was our last day in Mendoza, and we decided to sleep in a bit and try to do an olive oil tour the next day. We knew that most of the olive oil factories are in Maipú, which is close to the city, so we found a bus to get us there and figured that we’d plan the rest of it when we got there. We ended up getting off the bus 5 km away from the olive oil place we wanted to go to. So we walked. It was fine, we just weren’t really expecting it. But the views of the mountains and the trees were gorgeous, and by the time we got to this place we were ready for some bread and oil. Turns out, you’re supposed to taste-test the olive oil without bread, otherwise they’ll all “taste the same”, so we had to pour it on spoons and try it. They all tasted the same anyways. Overall, the tour and the tasting took about half an hour. We spent another hour waiting for the bus to take us back to the city, and decided to get ice cream to treat ourselves for all of the mishaps we’d had with public transportation up until that point. 

Our flight was at 7 on Tuesday, so we left the hostel at 4:30 after getting about two hours of sleep, if that. The flight was fine, the taxi ride home took forever, and waking up from the nap to go to derechos humanos was incredibly difficult. But we both made it.Overall, I think Mendoza was the perfect trip to take at this time of year, and at this point in the semester. I needed a break from Buenos Aires, I needed to see some leaves changing colors, I needed some wine that didn’t cost two dollars in my life. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

The Insurance Battle Continues

This week has been sort of a rough one so far. I’m hoping it gets better over the weekend: tonight we’re going to a cajun restaurant with chicken nuggets and tomorrow there are tentative brunch and market plans, both of which are sure to improve my mood. But as of right now, I’m vaguely sick, have a lot of homework, am sans-phone for the third time since being here, and am embroiled in a weird passive-aggressive relationship with Claudia that is aggressively taking a toll on me. 

Tuesday I decided I was not mentally equipped to be the only person in my history class, so I slept in and headed to IFSA for the human rights class, which turned out to be one of the better lectures we’ve had. Lucas’ letter that we thought had been lost was also magically recovered in the second basement of some building on corrientes that honestly looked like an abandoned garage. Now I’m one letter and one pair of socks closer to being convinced that Minnesota is one of the best states. Also found out that Minnesota has cafes with portraits of Obama hanging on the walls so honestly it’s not going to take much more than that to convert me to a fan. Tuesday was also the day that my host mom’s sister Gisela went to the hospital because she was having stomach pain. I’m not sure entirely when Natalia got home, but it was not until Wednesday at some point. 

I was very out of the loop as to what was happening for most of the first like three days Gisela was in the hospital, which is obviously fine, they have way bigger things to worry about than whether or not their American exchange students knows what’s going on, but I don’t think I saw Natalia until Thursday morning maybe. I eventually was informed that Gisela had emergency surgery that cut out a part of her intestine, because it had twisted and part of it was literally dead. So it was pretty serious. Wednesday morning I woke up not having slept much, I think I was subconsciously very stressed about this whole not knowing where anyone is/when they’re going to be home thing, and then had to go to castellano at 9 in the morning. To my surprise (I guess I wasn’t too surprised considering how often this happens) and horror, I woke up to a message from Katie that the subte lines A and B were down for the day because of strikes, shocker, and that we would need take a colectivo to line D and go to IFSA from there. Needless to say, we were going to be egregiously late to this class. Thankfully, almost half of the class had problems getting to class because so many people rely on all of those subtes so our teacher was very understanding, and we ended up just watching a documentary anyways. It could’ve been a lot worse honestly, but the entire process was exhausting and so frustrating: with the amount of strikes the subte workers go on people here have just become accustomed to finding alternative routes to work to the point where the strikes don’t actually achieve anything other than mildly inconveniencing people. 

Wednesday night Katie and I went out to a bar by our house (for once!!) with Harry, who we thought was the worst but actually is like mildly okay minus a few bouts of mansplaining, and Nick, and it was actually super nice. There’s a street very close with a ton of nice-looking bars with fairy lights and good papas fritas, which is basically all I need out of a bar. 

Thursday was a day. We had our international human rights class and the professor actually gave a real lecture for once, which was refreshing and like much needed considering we have a parcial in two weeks and have learned a grand total of nothing. But afterwards was a disaster. I can’t really explain entirely why the rest of the day was such a disaster because nothing super big happened, it was just little things that made me want to not be anywhere close to Claudia for like at least two months. Prior to Thursday, there had already been some issues because the case we had originally picked was like 300 pages long. Considering we only have to write a maximum of a 10 page paper, we probably didn’t need to read the entire thing, but Claudia insisted that we did. So then we had to switch cases, but I had already read like 40 pages of the original one, so I was a bit salty that no one had responded earlier so I could’ve saved myself an hour and a half of work. But we switched, that was settled. 

On Thursday, first and foremost, no one wanted to decide on a meeting time, so we finally did: Bote Cafe 4:30 after Katie’s last class. Fine, cool, I stayed at the cafe for the time in between and did homework, finished reading our case, and was doing some other homework when Claudia showed up. She like vaguely says something to me and then asks where we should sit, because I’m at a two person table. I said we could move to the big table and claim the end, to which she responded “I’ll just sit here” and proceeded to sit with her back to me at the table in front of me, and then like sort of try to ask me what she should order. When Katie got there we moved to the big table, and she started basically ignoring me and only talking to Katie, which like fine whatever, but also like why is this even happening? Alex is late, as usual, and when she finally gets there and orders and like calms down, we start trying to work. Except NO ONE else has read the case, knows anything about it, or has done like anything at all to prepare themselves for this meeting. Which is super ironic because Claudia was the one who not only said that everyone should have the case read by the time we met, but also complained that the other case would be too much to read and made us switch. And then to show up without knowing anything about the case? You can’t try to organize and lead a group project if you’re not going to put in any effort yourself to be prepared. 

So I had to explain the breakdown of the case, the background, and basically make everyone’s decisions for them because no one else could have an opinion about a case that they knew nothing about. And the entire time I was the one who felt shitty about it because I felt like I was being patronized or seemed like I was trying to hard or whatever else because I was actually prepared and had done my part of the work. And that’s completely unfair, I shouldn’t be the one who feels bad, I’m the only one who actually held up their end of the bargain. This was just sort of a side issue though, like I expected something along those lines to happen, and I expect moving forward that things aren’t going to be done on time which is going to be stressful but also as long as I’m doing my part I can’t really control what they’re all doing. The real issue was just in how the interaction went I suppose: Claudia barely talked to me and when she did it was low-key very hostile, I can’t even explain it but she just always tries to undermine what I’m saying or tries to assert herself as knowing more about something that she knows actually NOTHING about. Her and Alex were also making plans for their night right in front of us without any shame or any like “hey you guys could come if you want!” offer, which I think is rude no matter who does it. 

And then to top it all off, the end of the group meeting was filled with “I just really need a drink/to get drunk” statements, or “let’s come to the cafe before our presentation and get coffee and put my liquor in it” type deal, followed closely by lots of comments about how people are bored and want/need to hook up with someone random. First off, not into the whole “I need to get drunk” rhetoric at all because realistically it’s becoming a mechanism to cope with issue that should maybe be dealt with sober, and also if you’re only spending time with friends when you’re drunk you’re not really friends with them, I’m sorry but like in order to have an actual friendship with someone you need to like them sober or be able to do things that don’t involve intoxicants. And this whole obsession with hooking up with people is exhausting to listen to because it’s another way of coping and validating their self worth and it’s also not something I’m interested in talking about all the time because that’s not how I feel at all, so it’s just another barrier between resolving any of these underlying issues. The icing on the cake was that the subte wasn’t working again and Katie and I had to walk an hour home. 

Friday was also not a great day, but for very different reasons. I woke up thinking that it was the day I was going to finally be able to get this cellphone that I bought like the second week here with insurance, because I wanted to be safe and prepared in case it got stolen which, lo and behold, did happen. The insurance lady had told Natalia on Tuesday that, after 72 hours I would be on the list in the system and could go to whichever Fravega I wanted and get the voucher for the rebate and new phone. So I go to the Fravega on corrientes close to my apartment, and nothing: am not on the list, they don’t have any record of the purchase, and I’m told that sometimes insurance “takes a long time”. Well, sir, it’s been 2 1/2 months, I’ve sent them all the documents they need multiple times, have called twice, have been told everything should be settled, and it’s not. At the end of the day it’s just a phone, and I should be able to get it sometime next week. I was more frustrated about the fact that nothing seems to work the way I’m told it’s going to work here, and no one who’s from here seems bothered by it. Subtes/all modes of public transportation shouldn’t just stop working numerous times a week. Professors at the universities should give real lectures, answer their emails, make the homework actually available to all of their students. Insurance shouldn’t take 2 1/2 months to put a name on a list. I hesitate to criticize the general way of life in other places because I know that I only am observing it this way because I’m foreign and the things that I perceive are different are only different because I was raised in a different way of life. People come to America and thing we do so many things in a strange way: our toilets have an excessive amount of water in them, all of our food portions are about three times too big, we don’t use public transportation hardly at all. But I also get incredibly frustrated with the perceived lack of organization here sometimes, and with how blasé people seem to be about it. I by no means want to imply that the US has everything figured out because we certainly do not, but I do think that things are more organized and there is an expectation by Americans, whether good or bad, that things be ready when they’re supposed to be and that there’s a certain degree of routine to daily life. 

Friday night I went to this palace that definitely wasn’t a palace but that had a super nice view of the city. I went with Katie and her host mom Beatriz at sunset, and the pictures we got were amazing. Beatriz is actually insane though, hands down couldn’t live with her but feel like she’s very amusing in small bursts. The first thing she said to me when she met me was that she hates La Izquierda Diario, so off to a good start. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

Red wine disaster

This week has been a long and busy one, as they all are, but I think this one takes the cake. First and foremost, it rained almost the entire week. Not just showers or a drizzle: there were thunderstorms at least once a day for probably four or five days straight. The sun was nowhere to be seen, leaving Buenos Aires dark and damp and dreary. Tuesday I had classes, the first one which consisted of a lot of low-key arguing with my professor about being able to find the 13 books we need to ready by the 31st online. They’re not online, I have spent many minutes trying to find them, they don’t exist in pdf form. Nor, according to the other girl in the class, do they exist in the fotocopiadora, where we’re supposed to be able to get our class readings in print form. After about a ten minute discussion, my professor told us to email her a list of the texts we couldn’t find online and she’d email them to us. It’s been almost a week, still no email, no response, no readings. The test is in two weeks from tomorrow. Moral of the story: guess I’m not doing the reading. We also had our derechos humanos class, which was fine but not great, Juan interrupted the actual lecturer about once every two minutes to go on his own tangents and so the entire time we were jumping between two different ideas of where the lecture was going. Tuesday night we had our evaluation dinners at Mario’s house, which was good but by then it was raining and we had to get home late and it was far away. But man we had some good pasta, it was like these huge cheese filled shells with different kinds of sauce, and then some pastries for desert. Made up for the hike home for sure. I think it was a good idea to have an evaluation of sorts by students, but I’ve talked to a couple people and we sort of feel like it might’ve been an empty conversation. We’re not entirely sure how much IFSA is going to take our evaluations into consideration, especially because no one was recording or taking notes or anything. We also didn’t really have a dialogue between students, and so it was more of just little blurbs about everyone’s time rather than a conversation that builds and allows people to more accurately and fully express their opinions. 

Wednesday was relatively relaxed, I had class in the morning and then went to a cafe to finish the homework for my intl. derechos humanos class which took WAY longer than necessary and involved a lot of wikipedia learning. We have a group project coming up in that class and not only am I worried about working with someone of the people in my group, but I’m worried that we aren’t starting early enough and we’re going to get back from the long weekend when we’re all going to be traveling and all of a sudden have to spend hours cramming for this presentation. I’ve said something in our group chat about starting it soon, but was met with no response, and I don’t want to have to act like the mom like guiding these people through this project and getting them to even start thinking about it in the first place, but I would also really rather get it out of the way sooner rather than later. 

Thursday was a day. It was pouring, but I had to go to a meeting at La Izquierda to edit our latest article. I make it to the subte stop but by that time I was absolutely soaked, and as it turns out, so was my phone, which now doesn’t work. The screen did a fun little display of colored lines, and then the phone got really hot and hasn’t turned on since. So phone number three is a goner, which sucks because that was my real phone from home, and it had a lot of pictures and stuff on it. But I’ll survive. Am currently trying to figure out Argentine insurance bureaucracy because it’s been two month since I filed a claim about my second stolen phone and I still haven’t gotten the voucher for a new one yet. There’s also a chance that Matt has an extra phone that I could potentially use or buy, which would be great because really just want to listen to music when I’m walking places. 

The meeting with La Izquierda turned out to be completely pointless, which made the whole phone situation even worse because Tomas had like four edits that could’ve easily been done virtually. But whatever, it’s fine, think the universe is trying to tell me that I really don’t need a phone or just shouldn’t be allowed to have technology at this point. Thursday night we went to the opera at Teatro Colon, which was every bit as extra as it sounds. I think everyone went into it thinking that this was going to be a serious opera, because I guess I was under the impression that all operas were serious. False, opera was not serious. It was this strange like satirical comedy that had the most over the top costumes ever, including men dressed as women that we’re not entirely were supposed to be men or women. If I knew more about opera I think I would’ve enjoyed it a bit more, but really just went for the experience, have no idea if the singers were good in relation to other opera singers. The theater itself is absolutely gorgeous, and from what I could tell the acoustics were better than normal but again, I’m not an expert in theater acoustics. The bus ride/walk home afterwards was atrociously wet, rain was pelting me from all directions, my jumpsuit was plastered to my legs, pretty sure my suede boots still have puddles in them but I just refuse to check. 

Friday was also a day. Katie and I went and got bagels again, because why not? Got the egg, bacon, and cheese one and damn was it good. We got exactly zero work done there because we were too busy devouring these bagels, so we headed to a cafe afterwards and did some homework. Friday night was Nathan’s birthday extravaganza, which meant that we were going to get drunk in a park, sing karaoke, and theoretically go to a boliche. Unfortunately, I did not make it to the boliche part, barely made it to the karaoke. Our pregame in the park turned into a pregame in a plaza because the park was closed for renovation maybe? But we programed in the plaza, everything was going fine, was taking my time with a bottle of red wine. But then Frankie messaged from home saying that her phone was stolen, and she was going to head right to the karaoke bar but didn’t have a way of contacting us. Which meant that we had to finish our alcohol, because we couldn’t bring it into the bar obviously. So naturally, we decided to finish what we had brought. About 20 minutes into karaoke I think, I went outside with Katie and, next thing I know, I’m puking out all of the red wine onto the sidewalk. Some nice women gave us a ride back to my apartment, where I promptly proceeded to throw up again, into the trash bag that I later had to carry discretely out of the apartment. Not one of my best nights, I’ll say that. From what I’ve heard though, the rest of the night was sort of a hot mess anyways: creepy men at the boliche, Alex got chased down by someone from the karaoke bar, etc. 

Saturday, thankfully, I didn’t have a hangover. I felt a little funky, but nothing too bad. Katie and I went to Parque Centenario and did homework for a bit, then ended up running into Harry and smoking with him. Turns out he isn’t quite as terrible as we thought. He’s still not my favorite human being, he’s very white, very male, but he was fine enough to talk to for a bit. He lives in Caballito too, so we might try to go to some bars with him and some other people who live close to us, because he was saying there are some good ones around us that we just never go to because people always want to go to Palermo or Recoleta. Saturday night we went to the Patio de los Lecheros, which is this old train station that was repurposed by people in the neighborhood into this place with food trucks and vendors and live music. It’s only open on the weekends but it is actually SO cool. Katie and I both got food from this Italian-esque cart, which was for sure the best move. Mine was some super tender lamb in a literal bowl of bread with an herb and cheese sauce and some ham, which was one of the best things I’ve eaten since being in Argentina. I also got papas fritas which were stellar. 

After the food trucks we went to Lara’s friend’s apartment and had a little house party/hangout. I don’t really know what to call it because there were only five of us, but it was super chill. Lara’s friends both play guitar and sing so we just sort of sat around and talked and listened to music, smoked a bit, tried playing drinking games but were very bad at them, and then listened to more music. The two guys were definitely very into themselves, but they were nice, very patient with our spanish capabilities. We tried going to a bar, and we did end up at one, but it was like 2:30 by that time which is way too late for the bars, so we went to this old man’s bar that was Irish themed and had a way too intense conversation about if humans are instinctual or not. We didn’t get home until 4 am, but did potentially get a place to pregame before going out this weekend for my birthday, so hopefully that’s still a thing come the weekend!. 

Sunday I was dead, was tired, had a headache, needed to actually be productive and do homework. I dragged myself out of bed around 2 in the afternoon, proceeded to read 53 pages about LGBTQ healthcare and write a page long “essay” with the prompt “terrorism is the cancer of the world” so we’ll see what the professor thinks of my very shallow answer. Today was, as most Mondays are, devoted to writing a new article for La Izquierda with Charlotte. This one was about crisis pregnancy centers, feel pretty good about it. Katie and I also tried the new cafe that finally opened by us, give it about a 6.5/10 honestly, the fries were good but the sandwich had zero sauce, sad amount of pickles, and the bun was low-key hard. 

Hoping this week will be another good one, T-nine days until Mendoza!!

[alyinargentina-blog]

Ramen Slurps

So the same thing happened when I tried posting this blog post: tumblr quit working and all of my text was deleted. And I’m angry, because I liked the blog post, had written a lot of insightful/really not important things at all but still, had spend an ample amount of time on it. Also remembering all that I do in a weekend is hard work, so had to spend time remembering what day I did what.

Natalia’s dad was here all week because she’s working at the Feria del Libro and doesn’t have time to cook/isn’t home basically all day. So he was here to putz around the house and do chores and cook me food and hangout with Lulu, which actually turned out to be great. The first morning he was here I didn’t know he had arrived, so I rolled out of bed looking very rough, and stumbled into the living room to see this old man speaking rapid-fire Spanish. I managed to eek out “hola me llamo Aly” to which he responded with his trademark phrase: MUY bien, emphasis very necessary. Grandpa turned out to be quite the character: he managed to drill three holes through the living room wall into my bedroom, he made some amazing soup, liquored me up at dinner every night, and lent me a book about politicians and their lies, so I’d say we bonded pretty well. 

This weekend was one full of lots of food, most of which was good, some of which was spicy for the first time since being here basically! Thursday we finally had our international human rights class, which I have determined is basically a waste of time to go to. One of our professors is good, and seems to actually know what she’s talking about. But the man spends two hours jumping from the genocide in Argentina to supposed American concentration camps after 9/11 to Trump and his gun control issues, but have no idea what we’re really supposed to be taking away from these lectures because he never seems to stick with a theme throughout the two hour class. We theoretically have a test coming up on very normal international relations topics, like the structure of the UN, but we have never actually learned about any of these things in class. So basically I’m going to be studying material I’ve found on wikipedia and hoping that it’s what’s going to show up on the test, which is absurd. If I’m learning more off of wikipedia than I am for the professor, something isn’t right. 

Friday was a good day. Katie and I went and got bagels from this place called Sheikob’s Bagels, which is a store run by this American named Jakob who decided to move to Buenos Aires have studying abroad here. I don’t know if he decided to open a bagel shop here or decided after living here for a while and realizing that there is not a single good bagel shop or any real cream cheese in this entire city, but his decision was a good one because wow were these bagels good. I had the class salmon one and my mouth was incredibly happy after the first bite. Katie got this weird celery agua con gas that I expected to be horrifying but was actually delicious, and I’m still conflicted about liking water that was vegetable flavored but whatever. After the bagels Katie and I were going to go to a cafe to talk about planning a trip together, but we got very sidetracked by this vintage store that had some really good, surprisingly cheap clothes. I had a mid-life crisis over buying a pair of pants that are admittedly probably the most extra piece of clothing I’ve ever owned (I decided to buy them) and the we headed to the cafe and accomplished a grand total of nothing. Friday night we ended up going out but it was very low-key, we just went to a couple bars, drank some mojitos, smoked a bit, chatted. Liked it a lot better than going out with people who are solely looking to get drunk before going to a boliche, definitely not a fan of that at all. 

I’m also glad we went out Friday because at home it was the End of Semester party for the Herald, and I was pretty bummed that I couldn’t be there for it. Would’ve loved more than most things to get to celebrate the year’s work with all of the people at the Herald, and to get to say goodbye to the seniors because honestly won’t see them until next year some time, if even then. I also am just a bit stressed out about how close everyone seems to be getting at the office. Like I love it and I think it’s amazing how close the Herald brings people, because without the Herald I don’t know how I would’ve met literally one of the most important people in my life, but I’m also just very jealous that they’re becoming so close this semester and I’m not able to be a part of it. Because I’m worried about coming home and everyone’s relationships with each other will have changed and I’ll have to relearn them and make new ones and meet all of the new people who I don’t know but everyone else does, worried it’ll be different. Realistically though it’ll all be fine and I’m so glad that everyone is getting close, just sad I can’t be there for it right now. On a happier note, Lucas and Yusra took one of the most precious pictures together at EOS, have showed it to everyone at least three times.  

Katie and I did end up buying our plane tickets yesterday though, and we’re officially going to Mendoza the 23rd to the 29th! I’m very excited to get out of the city and back into the mountains, drink some good red wine, sleep in a semi-questionable hostel for a few nights, and hopefully do some hiking that doesn’t make me want to chop my legs off afterwards. There’s this one hike that we’re definitely going to do to the base camp of the tallest mountain the world outside of Asia. We can’t really tell from the online forums if this hike is difficult or like pretty standard, all we know is it’s 18 km long which really isn’t terrible, and that the view at the end is actually spectacular. We also really want to tour a vineyard, but all of the tours we’ve found online so far are mad expensive, so we’ll see what we find once we’re there. Overall hoping that this trip is pretty low-key, going to be undeniably beautiful, happy about it, feel very lucky that I get this opportunity honestly. 

Saturday was a wild day. First and foremost, Katie got robbed on our way to the Casa Rosada: some girl ran up to us and tried yanking Katie’s necklace literally off her neck, but then like missed and didn’t actually get it. It was a strange experience, Katie felt very violated and rightfully so, the girl literally tried to steal an item of clothing off of her person, like who does that? The tour that we were supposed to take of the Casa Rosada got cancelled because of the protest that was happening on Plaza de Mayo, which turned out to be a demonstration about the legalization of weed. So naturally that’s where we headed. Bought a lot of stuff, smoked a bit, and then wandered off to Palermo to meet Alex and look at the markets there. Katie and I ended up going to a happy hour in Palermo after everyone else left because we wanted to get ramen for dinner but didn’t want to walk all the way home. 

By the time we go to the ramen place we were both feeling sufficiently good: two pints of beer and a bit of other intoxicants and the noodles were about to taste amazing. The menu said that there was a spicy option, but naively I didn’t believe them because there has not been a single spicy thing in Argentina since being here. I was wrong, the noodles were very spicy, my mouth was on fire. Also, turns out a gigantic spoon and chopsticks are NOT conducive utensils for consuming broth and noodles, so that was a challenge. 

Sunday was uneventful, was in a weird mood, didn’t accomplish much. Today was the opposite, accomplished quite a bit, talked to Lucas for a while, in a good mood. This coming week is going to be a good one, a busy one, but am excited for most of it. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

Week in review

I attempted to write a blog post yesterday. Had it all written out, only had to add the pictures, and then for some reason, tumblr stopped responding and I lost all of my hard work, which basically just consisted of me complaining about classes and then a summary of all of the memorable things I did this week. Hopefully second time’s the charm. If there ends up being a third time, there just won’t be a post.

I think that most people right now are in sort of a weird, mid-program lull. A lot of students have been talking about things they miss from America, or missing their families/friends/boyfriends. Part of this might stem from the fact that a lot of families have just visited over spring break, and I’m a pretty firm believer that saying goodbye a second time is harder than saying goodbye the first time. It could also stem from the fact that a ton of people have big trips planned for the end of the program, which means that the trips are approaching and they’re excited for people to come visit and to go travel in Peru or Chile or wherever else they’re going. It’s hard to be in the moment if you have such a big trip with someone you haven’t seen in a while looming. Thankfully (maybe?) for me, I don’t have a big trip looming or any visitors planning to come to Buenos Aires, which means I’m feeling pretty good here in the city. No mid-program lulls for this girl. But also no super exciting/basically trip of a lifetime waiting for me at the end of the program either.

This past week has been pretty good. Some of the friend problems from last week have been vaguely mitigated, but also still sort of salty about a lot of things. I’m just trying to not think about them, trying to spend more time with some other people, it’s fine everything is fine. On Tuesday I decided not to go to class in the morning because the commute on a crammed subte to go sit in class for three hours learning about politics just didn’t sound like something I wanted to do. After my other class Katie and I went to a cafe and I got this strange carrot cake that made me feel very not human because all I had eaten all day was sugar and caffeine, which turns out to not be a very good combination.

Wednesday I had castellano class in the morning and by about the halfway point I was irate. Our professor is incredibly condescending and rude, her in-class activities make no sense and don’t help us with our language skills, and if I get mansplained to one more time by Mike I am going to stage a mutiny. She also gave us sort of a lot of homework, which isn’t the worst thing for me because I’m home for the long weekend, but for everyone who’s traveling, it sucks. We had to watch these videos of like interpretive theater and I’m sure that’s exactly what our professor loves, but I actually hate it more than most things, it makes no sense and is really just people writhing around in colorful water for 15 minutes. We also went to the Parque de la Memoria on Wednesday and that was super interesting. I really was glad that we finally learned a bit more about the desaparecidos and the impact it had on the country because I feel like, even though people talk about it, they mention it in passing or talk about it assuming that we know all of the context and backstory, which is completely not true.

Thursday was my meeting with immigration, which was relatively uneventful minus me taking a slight detour on the way because I got lost. It just involved a lot of waiting around and not really knowing what’s going on. But now I have a visa, so that’s exciting. I went home and took a rare nap, because I got about five hours of sleep that night, and then we went to dinner with our Argentine friends. We really wanted to go to the noodle bar that everyone keeps talking about, but we couldn’t go in such a big group without having to be broken up, so we ended up at some bar that had pretty good french fries. So not too many complaints.

Friday I had a meeting with La Izquierda, and found out that Charlotte and I have quite a few edits to do on our article. But, barring any problems with our edits, it’s going to be published Tuesday. I feel like we still don’t really know much about what we’re writing about, like there are two very different sides to both court cases that we talk about it the article and we have no idea which one is actually accurate, but I guess that’s just what it’s going to be like. We also have spent way more than eight hours a week on this thing but, again, it’s fine. Katie and I also went to a cafe by our houses Friday, which turned out to be way better than we thought, and complained about men and about our flaky friends for about three hours which was cathartic and much needed. She's off in Salta with the aforementioned friends, hopefully she has more fun than we both thought she might have. Natalia’s dad is here right now, and we had quite the conversation at dinner. He talked a lot about Indian natural healing methods, because apparently he has a doctor friend who left Argentina to go learn about them for a few years. He also may or may not have mentioned not entirely believing in the desaparecidos, which is very problematic but I also maybe misunderstood him. Giving him the benefit of the doubt because my Spanish skills are admittedly not great.

Yesterday was a good day. I got to sleep in, finally go to the Eva Peron museum, and then come home and finish my netflix series about cults. I left for Charlotte’s birthday dinner at eight, walked for half an hour in heels in the rain, severely regretted my shoe choice. However, we FINALLY got to eat at Sarkis, the Armenian restaurant that we’ve been trying to go to for literally weeks. We had to wait a little over two hours to even get seated, and then a bit longer for the food. But it was worth every minute. I have never had better falafel or bread maybe in my life. We got so much food, so much wine for really pretty cheap. And it was just a good atmosphere, a good group, lots of fun. Very happy we waited it out. We went to a cool bar afterwards too, cool atmosphere, agua con MUCHO gas.

Today has been spent in bed, doing homework and watching netflix because it’s been raining basically the entire day.

[alyinargentina-blog]

This time the margs weren’t blended

The past couple of days have been exhausting in good ways and in bad ways and really all the ways in-between as well. I think the most pressing stressor has been with relationships and friendships that haven’t been going the way that I want them to be going. I do feel like a part of the problem could be me not being capable of reconciling who someone has been since I’ve known them with how they’re acting now. I fully can get behind someone changing and growing as a person, but I cannot get behind someone using their study abroad experience to get trashed and be irresponsible because they’re trying to be less “preppy”, whatever that even means. 

I don’t know, like I sound like a mom when I’m sitting here chastising someone for drinking too much or partying three nights in a row. And I’ve also done that myself, so I could be just a raging hypocrite right now also. But I think for me the issue stems not just from the behavior but how it’s affecting the relationships this person has, and how they’re treating us as friends. It’s becoming very apparent that their interests are different than mine, and that the only time they’ll put effort into making or keeping plans with me is when it directly involves something they want to do, or when it involves alcohol or other substances. This past week the situation escalated, and I was pretty upset about it for a couple days. The first night, Wednesday, I wanted to go to a cervecería in Palermo Soho, which is a pretty central location, one that has a lot of the best bars in the city. Our friends refused because it was too far away, even though the location of this bar is equal in distance from Recoleta to Palermo as from where I live to anywhere that we have gone in the past for the. In other words, they were too lazy to travel the distance that we always have to travel to go out with them. To make matters worse, I was not only interrogated about why I chose this particular place (it had good yelp reviews and the pictures on google looked nice, if one must know) but then they had the audacity to suggest we come all the way to Recoleta so that they only had to walk a block to the bar around the corner from them. 

Okay so strike one, was in a bad mood. Really just wanted a beer Wednesday, didn’t happen. Fine, so plans were made to have a picnic the next day in a park, location tbd. Now it’s Thursday and we don’t have class in the morning, nothing to do all day save for a meeting with the people at my internship. That gets done around 3:30, by which we have plans for the park we’re going to. Shocker, it’s in Recoleta. Not a big deal, we’re out and about, it’s not to far away from USAL, so we go. I wish I was exaggerating, but we sat in this park for 2 hours at least, waiting for people to show up to the plans THEY made, to no avail. They didn’t show, so we left. The icing on the cake, the route home required two packed bus rides, the last one dropping us relatively far from where we live. No apologies for their lack of attendance, it wasn’t even acknowledged. I was livid. 

Friday I had another internship meeting, which resulted in plans being made with a different group of friends who thankfully actually show up to the plans they make. We decided to invite everyone so that we didn’t seem shady, and they actually showed up. Caveat to this story: they were already pretty trashed, proceeded to question our choice of bar very loudly, and complain that they couldn’t get their water bottle of vodka into the establishment. Keep in mind that the rest of us are very sober, having just met up for a very low-key night of drinking fruity mixed drinks. We did our thing at the first bar, drank a drink, and moved on to the next place that was conveniently right around the corner, had an open table for us, and a very impressive cocktail menu. They decided to leave, tried to get us to come with them because they “haven’t seen us in so long” and then left so they could go sit outside at Temple and get absolutely plastered. I was horrified yet again, they were so blatantly rude. Not only did they want us to completely rescind our plans with our friends, but they wanted us to do so because THEY wanted to go somewhere else that was more convenient for THEIR plans about how they wanted their night to go. Thankfully we didn’t go with them and our night was very fun. 

Saturday was a really good day, sans much of the drama of the past couple days. By then, I had decided that I need to stop expecting anything different from them. If they can’t even make good on plans they make, I’m not required to try to include them in things I want to do anymore. And it’s shitty, because they're my friends and I would like to be spending time with them, but not if it involves getting hammered and talking exclusively about tinder boys. Instead, we went to Palermo and spent basically the entire afternoon at this place that is a coffee shop, a tattoo parlor, an art gallery, and a clothes store. I finally got the Denmark tattoo I’ve wanted for so long, am vaguely stressed about it right now because I spent too much time looking up tattoo blowouts on google today, but that’s a different and hopefully inconsequential story. The coffee was good, the atmosphere was amazing, so many feminist posters, 12/10 would recommend. 

Saturday night we went to a play that IFSA paid for, and I was pretty convinced I was going to hate it, because it was written by some old Norwegian guy in the 19th century and sounded, from the synopsis on Wikipedia, like an hour and a half of trivialities and nonsensical dialogue. However, I was wildly mistaken, and actually loved the play. The actors were so talented, the play was political in the best of ways, and I actually understand most of it, enough to know who’s side I was on and to have opinions about the characters. After the play, we went out for dinner with our friends who, for once, actually showed up to the plans that they made. 

Set the scene: Fabrica del Taco, 11:00 at night. It’s been a long but good day, feeling relatively better about the whole situation, but still don't really know how dinner is going to go. We order margaritas, can’t get a pitcher because the machine was broken, which apparently also means that they can’t make blended margs. So we’re drinking flavored tequila basically, but let me tell you, once you’re about halfway in the tequila flavor is long gone, you’re just drinking some passionfruit juice that makes you feel real good real fast. It was fun, dinner was fun. But also the topics of discussion that were posited were not entirely things I wanted to talk about, and it was pretty evident that they were only interested in rehashing their nights out, not really in what we had been doing with our lives since they had decided to ditch. Once again, they were pregaming going out, so they drank a lot and spent the tail-end of the dinner planning their boliche run, which is fine, but also I would really just love a night that didn’t revolve around getting smashed. With that said, after two margaritas I was a goner. Thankfully we were just walking home, we made a pit-stop for some ice cream that eventually destroyed my stomach. Pro-tip, do not eat a 1/4 kilo of ice-cream on a stomach already full of mexican food and alcohol. 

Sunday was another day of fruitless attempts to make plans or more accurately, someone making plans and then going AWOL and never showing up. Nevertheless, we persisted, and ended up at the Feria in San Telmo, which was a blast. It was literally endless, we walked for three hours and barely hit the end by the time the stands were closing. Most of the merchandise was fairly similar, lots of jewelry, clothes, and mate cups. I found some earrings with my favorite Frida Kahlo painting on them, so I bought those, but other than that we just walked and looked and tried not to bump into too many people. We also ate this wildly delicious pan artensal that was stuffed with roasted pumpkin puree and caramelized onions and mushrooms, so filling, so good, so difficult to eat. 

I know that complaining while living basically a dream life in a foreign country and getting to do new and exciting things basically whenever you want is sort of ridiculous. I also know that it’s naive to expect people to stay the same or to conduct themselves in the way you think the should solely because you think you know what’s best for them. But the past couple days, as good as they’ve been in reality, have been frustrating and I’m not entirely sure how to remedy the situation, because the little things are adding up, and they’re adding up quickly. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

Vida Cotidiana

I am currently sitting in what is hands down the cutest cafe I have found in Buenos Aires on a couch literally overflowing with pillows. It’s glorious. Only downside is said cafe is an hour walk from my apartment, which is a commitment that normally results in birkenstock blisters. The sacrifices I make for a good iced latte are ridiculous. 

These past couple weeks have been unremarkable in the sense that we really haven't done anything as exciting as going to Patagonia on a whim or getting drunk and seeing Lana Del Rey at Lolla. However, it’s been a hot second since I blogged, so I feel like my readership deserves an update. And by readership I mean Lucas and the people who accidentally stumble across this blog and decide that it’s worth reading. The last two weeks have been full of classes, homework, interviews for positions at real jobs and at the Herald, and the beginning of my internship with what could potentially be construed as a communist newspaper. 

Classes, on a scale of one to ten, have been about a seven in terms of difficulty, about a four in terms of interesting content, and about a 12 in terms of having too much homework. Like okay, I get assigning two 40 page articles for a class that’s taught in your own language. But 80 pages of academic Spanish is a bit too much. Our human rights concentration has been a let down this far, not because the themes aren’t interesting but because a lot of the lectures have been incoherent, unstructured, and pertained very little to the assigned readings or what we thought the lecture was going to be about beforehand. We had a lecture by a really respected feminist scholar/sociologist who’s been interviewed numerous times by the NYT, is very well published, the whole nine yards basically, and it was actually terrible. She was all over the place: she tried telling us that, because of evolution, our generation doesn't get side cramps when we run, which for starters is not quite how evolution works, but also is entirely untrue because I’m out of shape and you better believe I get side cramps. But also she just didn't talk about her specialties i.e. she didn’t really address feminism or women’s rights in the way that we all were expecting her to, and so I think that was really disappointing. 

My classes at USAL have been a mixture of frustrating and really interesting. My history class is three people, including myself, and last week I was the only person there, so it was basically like having an office hours appointment with a professor for two hours. I thought it was going to be terrible, because she would for sure be able to tell when I didn’t understand a word that was coming out of her mouth, but it actually was really helpful and I learned a lot, because she could dumb things down for me without worrying about the other students. But the class after that, not only did she forget she had assigned me a legit presentation which took me four hours to research/outline, but she started talking about Peronism and boy was I lost. Perón is such an influential political figure both during his actual time in office and to this day, but he’s also very controversial, and none of us can really figure out if he’s conservative or liberal or really what is so controversial about him, because from everything I’ve read about him (which admittedly is a pretty small repertoire), he seems to have done some really important social work.

My other USAL class, international human rights and organizations, is basically just the beginning units of any International Relations class ever so far, and that is not something I really need to sit through again. And it’s also sort of infuriating because students will interrupt the professor all the time and get into this philosophical debates just to hear themselves talk, but they’re super hard to understand and it’s also hard to discern if they’re making an important point that we actually need to know, or if they just want to sound like they know what they’re talking about. It’s always these two guys who sit at the front of the room and just mansplain everything and I want them to just let the professor do the teaching, please and thank you. I’m hoping that the class will get more interesting as we progress past establishing the purpose of United Nations and get more into case studies of human rights and how they’ve been protected/infringed upon. 

Castellano classes at IFSA are actually the worst. I had to switch out of the one about music because it overlapped with our seminar about the internship, which was a hassle and also just wasn’t caught by anyone at IFSA until like two weeks into the classes, which was annoying. But this new class is about theater, which is interesting in theory, but we have about four people in our class of probably 12 who legitimately yell every time they have anything to say. The icing on the cake: the class starts at 9, which is too early for Spanish and much too early for Spanish being yelled by Americans butchering pronunciations. The upside: three of my good friends are in the class, so at least we’re all suffering together. 

The internship has been one of my favorite parts about the academics of the program so far. I’m working at La Izquierda, which is a newspaper affiliated with the leftist movement in Argentina and throughout Latin America. We’ve only had two meetings with people at the paper so far, but the vibe in the office is perfect: as soon as you enter the office you can tell how passionate the people working there are about their job and about the issues they’re covering and I love that. I’ve also desperately missed working at the Herald and being at the office, so this serves as a good placeholder for that. Because the paper is so leftist, they’re working a lot with the current fight for legalizing abortion here, and that’s one of the issues I’m most passionate about back home too, so getting to work on covering and researching the topic is perfect. 

It’s been sort of difficult to find a balance between going out until 6 am and spending money getting drinks and ubers all to go dance in a club full of men ranging from vaguely predatory to blatantly creepy and doing normal, everyday things like visit museums or get dinner or just get a drink at a bar, sans creepy men. A lot of the students in the program go out all the time, and consequently really only talk about their “fun” nights at boliches and how many guys they made out with or how drunk they were. And that’s fine, for them. But that is not what I am interested in doing here, especially four nights a week, or even really once a week. It’s too much. When I go back to Wisconsin, I want to have stories about my exchange other than clubbing or drinking. Nevertheless, there is major FOMO. There’s a part of me that wonders if I’m missing some major experience by staying in most nights, or skipping the boliches for a much more chill bar, preferably with some killer papas fritas or, best case scenario, chicken nuggets. I’m pretty sure I’m not, but there’s always that voice in the back of my head that nags at me to be more “adventurous”. 

Thankfully, most of my friends feel the same way about the night life culture within exchange students, and prefer nice Mexican dinners with some margaritas to staying out until dawn plastered out of our minds. This past weekend, we ended up going to a food truck fair, where we saw half of a cow carcass being carved into different cuts of meat. Was not quite expecting that to be a thing I saw in Argentina, but it was interesting, a little disturbing, and probably something that I can check off of some list of life accomplishments. We also took a myriad of pictures, which are interspersed throughout this post for the reader’s viewing pleasure. We also went to a ice cream place in Palermo that has ice cream infused with alcohol, which was another experience I didn’t know I wanted to have but did nonetheless. Pro tip: do not, under any circumstances, try Mint Julep flavored boozy ice cream. It tastes like toothpaste, and has the consistency of a weirdly creamy slushy. The amount of calories I consumed this weekend, between 1/2 kilo of ice-cream, enchiladas, margs, pizza, chips, and pastries, most of which were consumed way too quickly, is sickening. 

This coming week I only have two days of classes, have very minimal homework because, due to my relatively lax last week, I finished most of it in advance. Looking forward to finishing my podcast, hopefully drinking a lot of coffee, and maybe going to some museums. 

[alyinargentina-blog]

La Semana de Clare

Back in January, Clare bought tickets to come to Buenos Aires for spring break. Neither Claudia nor I really realized how early spring break was in our time here: one month away from home and already we’re responsible for showing our friend the best places in a city we barely know anything about, as much as we’d like to think otherwise. She got here on Tuesday, my day of two classes complete with an early morning and minimal breaks to regain any semblance of sanity after six straight hours of Spanish.

Thankfully her flight was relatively uneventful, no stolen luggage or panic attacks, two things apparently she was very worried about. Her hostel turned out to be really nice, although sort of out of the way for both Claudia and I, which is more my fault than anyone else’s. But it worked as nice meeting point for the two nights we went out, as it’s basically in the heart of Palermo Soho aka the place to be if you want beers and boliches. Our first night together we decided that Mexican food was on the docket. What we ended up getting wasn’t what I would call traditional Mexican food, or “Mexican-American” that we’re used to eating back home. Clare ordered quesadillas and I got a burrito and they were basically the exact same dish, except her’s were open faced and mine was not. But boy the margs were strong and big, which is exactly what I needed after a long day.

Day two for Clare was a day full of beers, dancing, tattoos, and too many hickies for everyone’s comfort. Katie ended up getting a tattoo of a pot leaf on her butt, which is very fitting for her and honestly she rocks it. We decided to go out that night, which means a very different thing in Argentina than it does in Wisconsin, and I’m not sure Claudia and I prepared Clare enough for this. We pre-gamed on Nathan’s rooftop, which was actually very ideal, felt like I was in some indie movie with a bomb soundtrack. Unfortunately, one of the neighbors thought we were up there too late, so we were forced to head off to the boliche a bit earlier than we had hoped, which turned out to actually be too late because the line for the club we were trying to get into was literally wrapped around the block. We ended up at Kika, some place that I’d never heard of but apparently Nathan knew pretty well. It was overall a fun night, everyone maybe had a bit too much to drink, there was a lot of dancing and making out with people they shouldn’t have or that turned out to be vaguely predatory because unfortunately that’s a big part of club culture here, and me just sort of chilling and platonically dancing with Nathan because didn’t want a stranger’s tongue down my throat. The night ended around 5:30 for most of us, obscenely late for my taste but relatively early here in Buenos Aires.  

Day three for Clare didn’t start until 3 pm, when Claudia and I showed up at her hostel to drag her out of bed. Because of our insanely late start, we spent some time in the Botanical Gardens and then headed home because we were all overtired and a bit crabby. Clare stayed in, but las chicas had a good time at Alysha’s, demolished a lot of Reese’s peanut butter cups, and had a very good laugh at the fact that this apartment was decorated almost exclusively with pictures of religious figures and frog statues.

Day four included a trip to Recoleta Cemetery, where we attempted but failed to find Eva Perón’s grave, only to find out that Clare didn’t know who she was in the first place so was very indifferent to the whole ordeal, followed by a walk through the market outside the cemetery. Clare bought a remarkable amount of souvenirs that are all a bit strange, but also make a lot of sense, like a hanging planter made out of dried gourd with random things carved into it. There as a man selling stuffed artesanal bread and you better believe Clare and I got a loaf, and chowed down on it for lunch. The afternoon brought us a quick trip to a very boujee mall that none of us could even being to afford, an equally as quick trip to this bookstore in a renovated theater that I thought was going to be cool but was basically just the Argentine version of Barnes and Noble, and a very disappointing cup of coffee at a chain cafe. Some people ended up going out that night, but Clare and I stayed in her hostel and were appalled at the fact that we were confronted by four middle aged men who were apparently Clare’s dorm-mates for the foreseeable future.

We walked into the room and these men all turned, in various stages of undressing or spraying themselves with Axe body spray, and watched us come in. Clare and I both immediately stopped in our tracks, because definitely thought hostels had either an explicit or implicit age limit? It was just the most bizarre thing, and they were also trying to go sleep so she and I just ended up half whispering in a dimly lit room while these old men wearing far too few clothing slept on the bunks around us.

Yesterday was a homework day for Claudia and I because we secretly have a ton of Spanish reading to do, which takes even longer than normal homework because it’s in a foreign language that we really don’t know too much of. And academic reading in english is difficult enough even knowing all of the words, now throw in a different language where words are all literally foreign and it’s a whole different ballgame. The cafe we went to at first was absolutely adorable, but it closed really early because it was a holiday, so we went to a different place and set up camp for about three hours before heading to La Factoria del taco for dinner, which is definitely as glamorous as it sounds. The margarita we got here was passionfruit flavored and in a literal bucket pitcher and was glorious. They had real salsas at this place with spice, something not too common in Argentine food, guacamole to die for, and tortilla chips aka the most important part of any Mexican meal. Overall great dinner, will never get tired of tacos and chips with some solid dipping sauces.

Today was Clare’s last full day in Buenos Aires, and we decided that we should take her to Tigre. The morning started off alright: Katie and I were on time, Claudia was at the station, Clare said she knew where she was going. False, Clare did not know where she was going, and ended up at Belgrano instead of Retiro, which is not an easy error to make and we definitely told her to meet us at Retiro. But, much to our surprise, the trains weren’t even running out of Retiro because of construction, so we all had to go to Rivadavia to get on a real train. Clare’s SIM card, however, wasn’t working, and so we waited at Retiro for an hour because the last message she had sent was she was getting on a bus to an unknown location, presumably coming to meet us so we could all travel together. Wrong again, she actually went to Rivadavia. So after an hour and a half of waiting and miscommunication, we finally all found each other at Rivadavia and started our day.

Tigre was super cool. The weather was nice, we had some decent food but some really pitiful churros, and I think we spent the perfect amount of time there. The markets were not at all what I was imagining when someone told me that they were what Tigre was famous for. It’s basically like a mixture of shops with interiors and stalls of homemade things, but the majority is like interior design shops that sort of look like the home good section in target. Which I’m a huge fan of, so no complaints there. I wish there had been a little bit more homemade jewelry available, because I was looking for some cool earrings, but most of the stuff we saw was really fun to look at. We also took a boat tour, which basically was an hour long boat ride looking at random vacation houses, which is also not at all what I was expecting but it was sort of relaxing. Did get splashed by a huge wave though, which was cold and very unexpected. We also didn’t have to pay for any of our train rides, which I don’t understand at all but not going to argue with free public transportation.

Tomorrow we’re getting breakfast with Clare before she heads back to Wisconsin. Very happy she came, very happy she survived her time relatively unscathed by Buenos Aires.