Lions and Llamas in Lujan

November 1^st was a weird day. It marked the beginning of my last month in Buenos Aires, and that was terrifying. I decided I needed to start seeing the things I hadn’t gotten a chance to as of yet, so that day I went to the Museo de Armas, which was a museum of old military weapons, filled with every kind of sword, bayonet, dagger, pistol, cannon imaginable. I even had a private tour guide who gave me all the fun facts about the museum and the country’s military history.

The day before I had been down in San Telmo for the weekly Sunday fair, and as I made my way towards home I passed Plaza de Mayo, where the entire plaza was covered with flowers, banners, and cards for the president Kristina Kirchner after her husband’s passing a few days before. Former Argentine president, Nestor Kirchner died of a heart attack just before we left for Mendoza. Over the weekend there was a massive march of people in honor of Kirchner that stretched for probably about 20 blocks from Plaza de Mayo and the Pink House. I happened to be with my tango group practicing the morning that it happened, and I was very surprised to see how much people’s reactions to this news differed. My Argentine friends, for example, just shrugged and said “Oh, well” and we continued practicing. Some, I heard, even went out for celebratory lunches, while others were deeply affected by his death and took it very hard, watching the news on tv and listening to the radio all day. It was very bizarre. They are just as much of a controversial family as the Perons were back in the day, of which I was unaware.

On a less interesting note, with the first days of November came the first few, huge doses of reality, with registration for winter quarter classes approaching several days later. This was accompanied by calls to Chicago regarding my living situation for the year, considering that until that week, it was very possible I would be couch hopping or living in a box this year.

That first Friday I spent my day at the Lujan Zoo. A city 2 hours out of the city, it has, what I came to find out minutes before leaving, the most dangerous and controversial zoo in the world. I googled it. As interesting as it was to experience it, it was definitely a very shady place. The zoo was literally just off the highway on an unmarked dirt road. The entrance was nothing more than a single sign on a wooden post, and as we entered we received a zoo map, which looked like somebody had made it this morning on Microsoft word and added clip art. The main attraction of this zoo is that the visitors are allowed to enter the cages and hang out with the animals. I’m pretty sure that all these animals are given an offensively large amount of drugs to keep them tame, which is extremely sad and makes me a hypocrite for going to see them, but I would be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy myself. Not only did I get to ride a camel, and feed the elephants (who loved me, naturally), but I got to feed a lion and play with a lion cub. Not many people get a chance to play with Simba, so I had a great time. In addition to lions they had tigers, bears (oh my?), sea lions (whose Spanish name actually translates to “sea wolves”), goats, emus, and my favorite, llamas. Oh, and they had a tractor museum, about a hundred old tractors lined up out on the lawn. It was one of the main attractions.

Saturday morning we had another one of our tango practices in preparation for the final presentation. That day was especially enjoyable because after we were invited to stick around for lunch at our porteña friend Melanie’s home. We had homemade pizzas and chatted about the differences between the States and Argentina in terms of their education systems. Their system is really interesting in that their public schools are actually much better than their private schools. However, to get into the best public school, which is in fact Unviersidad de Buenos Aires, or UBA for short, you have to pass a very difficult exam. For this reason, many aren’t able to get into UBA and go to private universities. Counterintuitive? Certain universities require you to do a variety of classes before you start anything related to your career, unlike us when we get to pick and choose and take care of graduation requirements as we go. To make things more difficult, many times a class that you have 3 days a week will be held at 3 different times, which causes lots of conflicts with other classes. If you can’t make it to those classes and you end up not passing it, you can’t take it the next semester, you’ll have to wait a full year until that class is offered again in order to fulfill that requirement, which as a result, sets you back in terms of time for graduation. Lots of differences and very interesting to hear their opinions.

The following Monday, we had our last practice before our final tango presentation. Marcelo, not to our surprise, did not give us much direction, sat down, and proceeded to fall asleep in the middle of class in his chair. Really?

The next several days were spent registering for classes, catching up on TV shows, and writing papers in order to free up my schedule for Mom and Dad’s visit! I even sent them a word document with a detailed itinerary a week before their arrival.

Mendoza

Wednesday evening we headed out to Mendoza! Finally. It had been such a long week…Somehow something had gotten mixed up with the buses, no surprise, so we actually got upgraded to the first class seats, which meant huge, leather la-z-boy type seats. I slept like a child. This bus did have some entertainment, however. We played bingo. Correct me if I’m wrong, but bingo means you get all 5 numbers in a line, and then you yell bingo. So, I got 5 numbers all in a row, and I yelled. Apparently, this version of bingo required you to get all the number on your mini number board. So that became awkward, and the bus steward looked at me, sighed and shook his head, as if it was just one more bad mark against my being American. I don’t know what this new version of Argentine bingo is about, but I do know that wine bottle should have been mine.

To make things even more interesting, the bus steward puts on the movie for the evening…The Witches of Eastwick, with an all-star cast of Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Cher. Shoot me. It may be one of the top 5 worst 80s movies of all time, which is an achievement in and of itself. But you know those things that are just so awful that you just can’t look away? It was like that. For those of you who haven’t seen it, don’t. You may never be able to eat cherries again.

Thursday morning finally came, and we dropped our things off at our hostel, Mendoza Inn. We realized that pretty much every hostel that we stayed at was part of Hostel International. The best advice I could give people looking to study abroad is to get a Hostel International membership card. Though paying the whole $11 USD is not really an issue, you could still be paying something more like $2.75 per night, which is just absurd. That afternoon we signed up for a “wine and bike tour.” Yes, we rode bikes from vineyard to vineyard. We were shocked when asked to sign a waiver, because to be honest, that is rare in South America. Our trip began at an organic, family-owned bodega, or winery, called Familia Cecchin. Our tour guide, Andrea, showed us around the fields for a bit, explaining that the variety of trees they had planted around the land, among them peach, orange, olive, and nut trees, was to block the vines from bacteria in the wind. She later took us into the buildings to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how the wines are made and taught us how to correctly taste wine. My father would have been so proud.

We had a beautiful, sunny bike ride to our next destination. Though I thought we would be riding on some smaller path, we drove alongside the main road, which had miles of big trees lining each side. Beyond the trees were endless fields of grapes. Our second winery was called Vistandes, a much more modern-looking set up. It almost looked like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory at first, because when you first walk in, the lobby is a gigantic room of white and black tile with a huge wall of windows that faces out into the fields. Our tour was again informative, describing the different methods of preserving wine, whether it be in barrels, tanks, or cement chambers; it all depends on the type of grape. This winery was particularly interesting, because there was a room in the basement that seemed to be carved out of the ground. The walls were made of actual dirt, so when you walked in you not only did you feel like you were an ant living below the ground or something, but it had this very strong smell of earth. It was very bizarre. There was a large table set up where people could rent out the room for a dinner party.

Starting to sway a little on our bikes, we trucked along to the third winery. This was very much California-esque with more modern architecture and a restaurant on a beautiful terrace overlooking the vineyard. Here we were allowed to look around on our own without a guide and enjoy a large glass of rose. Because of the distance, and probably also for safety reasons at this point, our guide loaded up the bikes and we took a van to our last destination, a chocolate factory. We were all pretty content at this point, and on the ride over we spent our time singing all the American songs on the radio, which is about 95% of what’s played, and passed around wine bottles that were provided our very generous, new Argentine friends.

This chocolate factory made chocolates (obviously), a variety of liquors, marmalades, and many different kinds of dulce de leche. We were able to try some chocolate and one shot of a liquor of our choice. I chose dulce de leche with banana and it was delicious, it tasted like a banana split. They also made absinthe here. So, just for the sake of trying it, I took a sip. Besides the fact that I almost passed out, it burned the roof of my mouth. Like, as if I had been drinking a hot cup of coffee. THAT strong. It was also green. Never again. Before I left I grabbed a container of dulce de leche mixed with chocolate; I couldn’t resist. And with that we headed back to the hostel, staying up long enough to have some empanadas and chips and guacamole at the Mexican restaurant across the street.

Friday morning we had a 9am start for our trekking/repelling/mineral baths adventure. Though very pretty, the morning was cold and the trek was HARD. From the top we took a few pictures and strapped ourselves into our repelling gear. Unaware to us, we had to go down half the mountain before we started repelling. The land there is very desert-like, so cacti were abundant. You already know how this is gonna go. We all took turns sitting on a cactus, losing our balance and falling into a prickly bush, or getting a mild concussion after wiping out because of rock that had gotten loose from the dirt. I had some really pretty scratches. We finally started repelling which was very fun. We repelled 3 times, the last one being the tallest, around 150 feet.

After repelling we headed to the mineral baths. Perfectly situated in the mountains there’s a really pretty mineral baths/water park. There were probably over 20 different baths of different temperatures, along with a lazy river running along the outer edge of the cliff. We relaxed in the baths for the rest of the afternoon until we headed home. That night we went to an outstanding restaurant called Praga. Seafood was their specialty, a nice break from all the meat in Buenos Aires. After dinner we stopped at a local bar that was having a Halloween party, of sorts. Everything was very well decorated, and the staff was all in costume, however the people in the bar were kind of all over the place. Some were dressed, others were not, and others had awkwardly thrown on a pair of cat ears for the hell of it, I guess. Anyway, it was great people watching, and after an hour or so we turned in for the night.

Saturday morning we hopped in a van and headed to the mountains for paragliding! We spent a half hour going up the rockiest, most dangerous road I’ve ever been on. It didn’t have railings, naturally. We met our guides at the top of the mountain at an altitude of about 4,800 feet. My specific instructions from Hermán, my guide, were to run off the mountain when it was time. After asking him if he knew what he was doing, he answered, “I hope so, because if I die, you die.” Sidenote: I didn’t sign a waiver for this one. So when he told me to run, I ran. Once we were in the air, everything went silent, and all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. I was in the air for probably 20 minutes in total. After some bonding with Hermán, he suggested to try some acrobatic exercises. I agreed, though not quite sure what that meant. I came to find that it basically meant a rollercoaster ride in the air. He started maneuvering the parachute around and making huge dips, and at one point my parachute was below me, as opposed to above me, where it should be. It was SO fun, I wish I could have been up there longer! I’ve found that the best strategy for doing extreme activities is to tell your parents about it after you get home, because they can’t get mad at you when you come home alive.

That afternoon we walked around the city, which is so beautiful and quaint, yet still very lively, especially at night. We walked around to one of the parks and took a stroll past the venders at the usual weekend street fair. In town I had Ferrero Rocher flavored ice cream. HEAVENLY. Later we went to a wine bar to do some more wine tasting before we decided on bottles to buy. For $20 USD we tried 2 Malbecs and 1 Sauvignon Blanc and got 2 big platters of bread, olives, and an assortment of cheeses. I’m personally not a big fan of olives, but they had one kind that was green olives with an almond in it that had been soaked in sugar. It was unbelievable, so I bought myself one container to bring home along with my wine. Our great waiters gave us a free bottle of champagne before leaving and wished us a safe trip home. The people of Mendoza are extremely generous and friendly, even more so than Buenos Aires. The mood was always carefree and they were always willing to help when asking for directions or recommendations. I would love to retire there someday. After the tasting we headed back to the hostel, packed up our things, and headed to the bus station happily full on wine and cheese and ready for an overnight ride home.

Graffiti, Castles, and the Census

So, it’s November…and I’m officially freaking out. My program officially ends in 22 days and I am boarding a plane home in 29. Cold, harsh reality is slowly coming back. What I thought would be an incredibly long time to be abroad has absolutely flown by. Thus, these next 4 weeks will be my effort to soak up the last days in sunny Buenos Aires and to visit the many places that are still on my list.

Since I last wrote, life has been great, per usual. Going back to the week of October 18^th, classes went normally as usual, starting the weekend on Wednesday evening, as usual.

Wednesday afternoon our urban history professor took us on a tour of Palermo Viejo, a neighborhood farther west. Palermo actually has 4 different areas because it is so huge: Palermo Viejo, Palermo Hollywood, Palermo Soho, and Palermo Chico. If you’re young and hip, you live here. The variety of restaurants, especially in Palermo Viejo, is incredible, along with great shopping in Palermo Hollywood/Palermo Soho. Palermo Chico is mostly a residential area with extremely nice houses. Possible retirement destination? During our tour we were able to see the first residence of famous Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges, who spent most of his childhood reading books in his father’s massive library in Palermo until he began writing on his own. I know this because I learned it in my Argentine poetry class- proof that, regardless of what you think, I am using my brain here. Palermo is also really interesting because of its large amount of street art. It’s essentially graffiti, but it’s not illegal here and very much accepted as a form of expression. Many use it for political expression as well. In fact, many well-known graffiti artists from all over the world periodically come to Buenos Aires to make creations on the walls of restaurants or certain buildings for different occasions, or for no occasion at all. There are daily walking tours of the many areas in Palermo that have interesting street art. I’ve added a few pictures for your convenience.

Our tango professor, whom I’ve somehow forgot to mention before, has assigned us a final project that requires us to create a 5-7 minute choreography including tango, milonga (a faster Argentine dance, similar to tango in some ways), and waltz. Thus, Thursday morning our group met for our first practice. As much as I’ve come to love tango, our professor really puts a damper on it, because he’s a terrible teacher. It’s remarkable that I’ve found this one, recurring type of professor in so many of my classes in the past: one who is undoubtedly good at what he does, yet is unable to affectively teach the basics of it to beginner students, because he is too far advanced to dumb it down. And on top of that, though he has been teaching college kids for over 20 years, his dislike for them is blatantly obvious. This is something I will never understand. But nevertheless, we have been making progress, and considering I have a wonderful group with 2 friends from IES and 3 very fun porteños, I really can’t complain.

I spent the afternoon eating lunch with some girlfriends at a great restaurant in Palermo that had quesadillas and guacamole, 2 things that I’ve been DYING without here. Mexican restaurants here are limited, so when you find one, it’s a great day. After lunch we walked around to burn off our food in order to have more food. We found a bakery that sold cupcakes. Mine was cheesecake with peanut butter. Need I say more?

On Friday I had the pleasure of meeting a lietuvaite, Agata, my first contact with Lithuanians in South America. We met at the main square, Plaza de Mayo, and from there we walked through the streets, until we reached a café and sat down for a long conversation. It was a very strange dialogue, because it wasn’t Spanglish, nor was it a mix of Lithuanian and English which I do when I get lazy at home (which I know my mother loves), but instead a mix of Lithuanian and Spanish. It was the most bizarre conversation I have ever had, but it was great. I had gotten in contact with her through friends that had met her in South America this past December for Jaunimo Kongresas, a.k.a. Lithuanian Youth Conference. I found that we had much in common, and we spent much of our time telling each other about our lives, what we plan to do in the future, and how much we love being Lithuanian. She is incredibly sweet and very interesting, and being able to speak lietuviskai was a little dose of home that I had really needed and missed. Before we knew it, we had been talking for over 4 hours, and the sun had already set. We decided that another hang out session was necessary, so I look forward to seeing her in the coming weeks before I leave.

Saturday morning was an early start, as we had a day trip to another “estancia” named La Candelaria in Lobos, a small city outside of Buenos Aires. The weather here has been getting more beautiful by the day, and this day was no exception- sunny and mid 70’s. Like any other estancia, we didn’t do much. With so much noise and smog in the city, it’s nice to get away and enjoy some fresh air and Argentine countryside. We were greeted with empanadas, quite possibly the best welcome ever, and from there we could wander around as we pleased. There was a pool, soccer field, and volleyball net if you wanted to be active, or you could be like me and simply lounge around on the many cushioned lawn chairs and sip coffee. Polo practice was also taking place, so many of us went to watch the players and to hang out with the ponies. Before lunch, we headed through the forest to see the main attraction of the estancia, the castle. This beautiful, French-inspired castle was built in 1894 and sits on a 245 hectare plot of land. Unfortunately we were only allowed to see part of the castle, because the upstairs was roped off, but nevertheless, it was very pretty.

After the tour of the castle, we sat down for a big lunch, and as we ate we watched a traditional, Argentine gaucho performance. Certain dances were with couples, however others consisted of either swinging swords or just fancy footwork. Some of our friends were lucky enough to be pulled up from their tables to dance in front of everyone with the gauchos. After lunch we wandered around some more, drank wine, ate dessert, and in the evening headed home.

The next week was rather pointless, because by Wednesday night we were out of BA and on our way to Mendoza, Argentine wine country. However, we did do some things before leaving. Monday I bought my ticket for Mendoza at the bus ticket counter and made friends with the man working there. Though he was very entertaining, I realized that we had been standing in that store for over 35 minutes while he continued attempting to crack strange jokes in English and guessing my nationality (which he guessed was Greek because of my last name, surprise). I have to say, one thing I will NOT miss about Argentina, is the unbelievably slow service. This ordeal should have taken 6 minutes, tops. Luckily I got a giant alfajor (one of Argentina’s delicacies- a dessert consisting of a thick layer of dulce de leche in between 2 cookies), or else I could have gotten sassy with him. Before leaving, my friend realized her name was misspelled on her ticket and asked if he could reprint it for her. He responded with, “I really wouldn’t worry about it. The people who drive those buses can’t read.” Whether or not this was actually true, I couldn’t help but feel slightly anxious as I handed the driver my bus ticket to Mendoza two days later, hoping we wouldn’t find ourselves somewhere in the middle of Patagonia the next morning.

Tuesday morning we had a mandatory tour of Jewish sites in the city instead of grammar class, which I thought would be really interesting, considering there’s an entire barrio/neighborhood known for its flourishing Jewish community, called Once (as in the Spanish number). Unfortunately we had a painfully dull tour guide who, though was a really sweet, old man, had an extremely dry presentation. Even our Spanish professor who had come along on the trip was struggling. Instead of seeing more of the area, he pointed out obscure buildings as we drove by and made us get out for several, very anti-climactic sites. So anyway, that was too bad. But we did get to see a very pretty Jewish temple at the end, which I enjoyed. Needless to say, I could have visited more and more interesting places on my own time instead of killing half the day. Oh well.

October 27^th was the national census. Did you know that literally EVERY, single establishment is closed? That was a fun surprise. Even the kioscos were closed. I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned them before, but there is at least one kiosco (kiosks), sometimes 2, on every block. They are God’s gift to Argentina. They have everything you may possibly need during the day. They are the one place you can buy a beer, a granola bar, more minutes for your cell phone, a sandwich, and glue in one place…I needed glue for my tango shoes…

Spring Break Round 2, part 2: Rio

And now for Brazil.

My 5am alarm went off Monday morning, and I struggled out of bed to make our early morning flight. Observation: for some reason, for every flight passengers are loaded onto a bus and then transported maybe 300 feet over to the airplane from the gate, and from there they board. Same goes for landing- we land somewhere in the middle of the runway and a bus transports us back to the terminal…it was just a huge waste of time. There’s also no order or organization to how you board the plane, it’s more just a stampede of people, followed by 30 minutes of falling over chairs and scooting past each other to find your seat. This is when I realize how much I take US airport organization for granted. After a 25-minute flight (literally), we have a layover in Montevideo, Uruguay. We proceed to take a 2.5 hour flight to Sao Paolo, Brazil, followed by a shuttle ride to the omnibus station, followed by a 8 hour omnibus ride to Rio, followed by a stressful yet successful attempt at a Brazilian pay phone in order to contact the apartment renter, and finally a cab ride that got us home at around 12:30. And then I remembered I had woken up at 5am that morning, and how so, so far away that seemed.

After our long day of traveling, we were relieved to find that our apartment was very nice. Two floors, 4 queen size beds for our group of 8, a kitchen (though smaller than we would have liked), and a big terrace. The terrace was obviously the best part, with plenty of space and a pretty view of those big, green mountains of Brazil. We decided to save money by buying groceries and making dinner together at the apartment every night, which worked out very well with the table we had out on the terrace.

We were barely 2 blocks from Copacabana (yes, like the song) beach and only about a 15-minute walk from Ipanema beach, which was absolutely perfect. From Copacabana beach you could see Sugar Loaf Mountain, a very famous peak that is supposed to have a beautiful view of the entire city, especially at sunset. Unfortunately, I think that we were there at the end of their rainy season, so every day it became cloudy by the mid afternoon and we wouldn’t have been able to see the sunset if we had gone. But luckily we got some great weather each day we were there, and the mornings were the best. Ipanema had a huge surfing competition that week, so that was fun to watch. On the beach they had one of my favorite drinks called agua de coco, or coconut milk. There are stands all along the beach that have this, and it’s simply a coconut with a hole at the top and a drinking straw, and it’s delicious. The other favorite drink of the week was the traditional Brazilian caipirinha, made with essentially vodka, sugar, and lots of lime. To be honest, almost every day was spent on the beach doing the same thing: lying in the sun, swimming, watching the surfers, making friends on the beach, and sipping caipirinhas. So I really don’t have much to tell except that it was fantastic.

We had a friend studying abroad in Rio who had befriended some Brazilians, so a few nights out of the week we went out with them to a few local spots over the weekend. One of them was called Baixo Gávea, essentially a park where everybody was just socializing, with a traveling Tequila shot man who made a lot of business. There wasn’t much to it, but for that reason, it was great, just to be in a local place instead of a touristy club. Another night we went to Lapa, a neighborhood in Rio that’s known for its nightlife but also for its historical monuments. We obviously didn’t get to see much of those, but there was some interesting architecture, like the Arcos da Lapa, an old aqueduct. There was one long street that was basically the main drag, with tons of bars and clubs all in a row. There were lots of restaurants and also tons of colorful graffiti covering the walls of the buildings. The same can be found in Buenos Aires (they even give graffiti tours, which I hope to do before I leave), so it was interesting to look at the differences between the two. If anybody has seen the video for “Beautiful” by Snoop and Pharrell, you may remember that it was filmed in Brazil. You may also remember that they sit on a long flight of really colorful stairs. Well, those are in Lapa, and I got to see them. I am the coolest.

A very common fruit in Brazil is the acai berry. The only time I had heard about this was through all those acai berry diet infomercials in the States, but in Rio, they have restaurants dedicated to acai berry smoothies. On Sunday morning, we all went to get smoothies, and they were amazing. They were dark purple in color, and you could add other fruit to it to give it a different flavor. I chose mango, while others chose strawberry or left it plain. After smoothies, we made our way to the train station that would take us up to the Christ Redeemer statue. Forgetting that it was a Sunday, there were about a million people in line, and the wait was over 2 hours just to go up. Luckily there were also van companies that drove people up, so we hopped in one of those and made our way without waiting in line. The statue was incredible. Many people were there to pray, while others were there to take pictures. In order to get a full shot of the statue, it is very common to completely lie down on the ground to get the picture. Thus I found myself climbing over people and avoiding limbs in order to make my way around the lookout. The view was absolutely spectacular. From the statue you could see the entirety of Rio from all different sides. I would imagine it’s even more beautiful at nighttime with all the lights of the city. Sunday night we headed out to the bus station to make our way back to Sao Paolo for our early flight home the next morning.

I must have had a great time, because I got sick last week from lack of sleep. I spent the next several days relaxing (after my vacation?), however this past Saturday I had a great morning. I was able to visit a small school in the southern part of the city as a volunteer opportunity. With around 8 other volunteers, we helped the children there with their English homework and also with making crafts for their mothers, as Argentina’s Mother’s day was this past Sunday. The children ranged from about 6 to 12 years old, and they were not only extremely friendly and entertaining, but very bright as well. In Buenos Aires I have been living in a wealthy area of the city, thus none of us ever really ever see the poverty of the villas (poor areas), which is very abundant. It was nice to get a real, cultural and eye-opening experience. Later that afternoon, I met some friends at the Recoleta fair. I think I have mentioned it before, but it happens every Saturday and Sunday in a park with food vendors, music, and a market that tons of great things like jewelry, leather goods, clothes, shoes, art, statues, everything. We spent the afternoon lying on the grass in the sun, listening to live music, and, my favorite, people watching.

Spring Break Round 2, part 1: Oktoberfest

HELLO. After my long leave of absence for my Spring Break 2010 Round 2: South America edition vacation, I have returned. And I have a lot to tell. I have broken up my two trips, Cordoba and Rio, into 2 separate posts for your convenience/sanity.

Since I am, after all, trying to be thorough, I will briefly cover the few days in between Bariloche and spring break. These would be the days of September 25^th-29^th. We only had 9 days at home after Bariloche before we were to venture out again. To be honest, they were not very interesting. I spent the following weekend resting from the previous trip and also starting (or pretending) to study for my upcoming midterms.

The highlight of my weekend was Jesus, obviously. Jesus was, naturally, getting ready to go out with her girlfriends on Friday night, when she walks into the dining room to see me on my computer, attempting to write up notes for my midterms. She asks me, “Diana, you’re going dancing tonight, yes?” I respond, “No, no…not tonight.” The facial expression that followed in response to my answer was a mix of both confusion and pity, and as she made her way to her silver tray of liquors, she insisted I take a shot with her before she left for the evening. It’s done, she officially thinks I’m antisocial. I’m pretty sure whenever I go into my room and shut the door she thinks I’m furiously studying, as opposed to dabbling on Facebook for hours, having numerous Skype dates, and catching up on Glee, Gossip Girl, Jersey Shore, and Modern Family. Oh well. The name on the bottle was Llave, and it seemed like gin to me, but she said it was different, but I think that was a lie. Well, anyway, as I sniffed the top of the bottle and nearly passed out, Jesus threw back her shot like a champ, grabbed her cell phone and fur coat, and left me with a “Chau, linda!” as she walked out the door. What a diva.

My midterms went quite well, I think, or at least I hope. Wednesday was terrible, I had 3 midterms in a row, though after that I was done- huge relief. Thursday morning was a personal day. I got a mani/pedi before leaving for my spring break extravaganza later that night. While at lunch at Tea Connection, I decided to challenge myself, and I was actually fully able to read the Argentine edition of Glamour magazine. Small victories.

After a restful day, I packed up my things and headed out to the bus station to catch the 11:45 pm bus to Córdoba for Oktoberfest. The festival runs for about two weeks straight, starting October 1^st, the day we arrived. Córdoba is about a 10-hour bus ride northwest of Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, we woke up to a very rainy and miserable Friday morning. Our day plans of exploring the city were pretty much obsolete, so instead we hung around the bus station for another round of café and medialunas.

We were told that the Oktoberfest was actually held in the small town of Villa General Belgrano, however we were not aware that this town is a full 2 hours away from Córdoba…where we had booked our hostel. After calling multiple places in Villa G. Belgrano, and by some stroke of God, we found a little place called El Rincon just outside the town that had room for all of us 7 girls. A miracle, considering almost everywhere else had been fully booked for the festival even several weeks earlier. We caught the next bus out to Villa, figuring we might as well start Oktoberfest early and not waste time. This Oktoberfest, according to the internet, is the 3^rd largest Oktoberfest after Germany and Brazil. The area of Córdoba apparently has a large community of German immigrants that settled there a while back.

Oddly enough there were signs at the Villa bus station directing us to El Rincon. After trekking through the mud for a few minutes, following other janky, painted-on, wooden signs, we got to the entrance of the hostel’s property, and I thought I was about to enter a horror film. The dirt road led us to a trail (definitely not qualified to be a road) that wound far into the forest, with no building in sight. Having survived a similar situation like this with my family on vacation in Homer, Alaska, which had included a terrifyingly large, bald man and a pitbull in the front seat of his pickup truck, I figured this could only have a happy ending as our other trip had; a beautiful log cabin with an incredible view of the mountains. Luckily, I was right. Though we didn’t discover anything like mountain peaks, it was the most quaint and cozy Argentine hostel ever. A small wooden building with a large fireplace in the living room and homemade food, it was better than we could have ever imagined. Our room was huge, with 5 bunk beds and plenty of extra space. For dinner that night we had pizza, milanesa (a traditional Argentine food- fried, breaded chicken), and a zucchini pie, all made of organic ingredients and all homemade. The family that owned the hostel was very warm and helpful as well. Everything was SO wonderful.

Our weekend was especially fun because we made a lot of new friends! Two of them were lovely ladies from Buenos Aires, whom I will hopefully be seeing this weekend, two boys from Germany, and two other travelers, one from the States and the other from Australia. We had quite a global team. We went out together Friday night to ring in Oktoberfest with the grand opening parade- lots of German music and people dressed in costume. I purchased my personal “stein”/mug and over-the-shoulder lanyard to clip it on for convenient travel. I was ready to go.

The actual festival was essentially a large field that had a stage in the center. Surrounding the outer edges of the area were beer stands where you could fill up your mug, and tons of venders were selling food- shiskabobs, grilled vegetables, meats, sausage, sauerkraut, ice cream sundaes, EVERYTHING. I somehow felt at home eating sauerkraut, though it had nothing on grandpa’s sauerkraut. Dieduko definitely wins.

While we drank and made merry, we watched the many folkdance groups performing on stage, some from Córdoba, others German and even Italian. If I were to say that I had to use all my mental stamina to stop myself from jumping up there and start polka-ing with everybody else, I would be blatantly lying. I felt a bit nostalgic at the sight of their folkdance costumes and accordion music filling my ears. To ease my aching heart, my friends and I started our own polka dancing off-stage. All was well.

The next morning, Saturday, we had a delicious breakfast with homemade yogurt, granola, and marmalade alongside fresh baked breads. The weather was gorgeous and we spent the morning and part of the afternoon soaking up the sun before returning to Oktoberfest. We spent the afternoon simply watching more of the shows on stage, enjoying each other’s company and the great weather. We couldn’t have asked for a prettier afternoon. That night was a little rough, because we had to catch a 6am bus back to Córdoba in order to catch our 9am back to Buenos Aires on Sunday; we had plans to fly out to Brazil on Monday morning. So we stayed up till 5, packed, and headed out. Lucky for us we’ve become quite accustomed to the Argentine nightlife, so staying up that late wasn’t much of an issue.


After a pretty cold and miserable bus ride back to Córdoba, we grabbed breakfast and jumped on the bus back to Buenos Aires, repacked, and passed out before my alarm went off at 5am the next morning for Brazil.

To be continued.

Bariloche: Argentina's Winter Wonderland

Whether you’re a high school senior in Argentina or a student studying abroad, Bariloche is a prime destination for sun, snowboarding, and cervezas. Apparently this is a hot spot for high school kids; I guess kind of like our spring break in Cancun. Not only is Bariloche famous for its skiing in the Andes, it is also well known for its many chocolate stores (see picture) and delicious food. During my 4 day visit, I seem to have conquered it all.

After this last trip, I’ve become very fond of traveling by omnibus. This trip was by far the longest, clocking in at just about 22 hours. We kept ourselves busy by watching some American movie classics; among them Harry Potter 4, The Italian Job, Mean Girls, and Love Actually. Much of my time was also consumed by picture taking out my window as we traveled farther into beautiful Patagonia (the huge southern region of Argentina). Having left Retiro bus station in Buenos Aires Thursday afternoon, we arrived in Bariloche around 10 the next morning.

Like in Iguazú, we stayed at the Hostel Inn. I have to say, it is almost offensive that I only paid $16 USD per night for what I got…Not only did we have our rooms get cleaned daily (this is a hostel, remember), we also got free breakfast and dinner and an absolutely STUNNING view of the Andes. There was a large patio with small tables and comfortable lounge chairs that overlooked the town and a large lake with the mountains behind it. It was absolutely gorgeous.

While others decided to be really intense and go for a 20 mile bike ride immediately after arrival, the rest of us found that sitting and having a luxurious lunch seemed like a much, much better option. Downtown Bariloche was very quaint, just like a ski town should be. The streets were lined with restaurants, chocolate stores, cafes, and cute little shops that sold warm, handmade sweaters (I got myself one, it has llamas on it).

After lunch, we figured we should be at least somewhat productive, so we decided to visit one of the viewpoints that we were recommended. When we arrived, the chairlift that we were planning on taking up was apparently closed…at 3:15 in the afternoon. So we decide we’ll hike up it I guess. Yea…nearly died. I felt like it was 90 degrees up the entire hour. BUT, we made it, and the view was unreal. We almost got in a fight with the chairlift workers to let us take it down. We had to argue with them until we finally just said, “If you make us walk back down that, we will die.” Apparently that one was legitimate enough.

That night we found our favorite bar, an Irish pub called Wilkenny. If you ever get down to Bariloche, try one of their signature brews- the Wilkenny Tostada. Later that night, a friend and I decided that we weren’t ready to go to bed yet, so instead we found a crack-in-the-wall bar and decided to explore. We met a few very nice Argentine girls who took up our foosball challenge. We played USA vs. Argentina, and we won. How embarrassing for them…we don’t even like soccer that much.

Saturday morning we woke up to a lot of rain. I had planned to go snowboarding, but we decided to save it for Sunday, since the weather was supposed to be much better. Instead we took a ferry out to a National Park called the Parque de Arranayes. It’s a forest full of these bizarre trees that look like twisty breadsticks and have crazy, wavy branches that go off in every direction. It was a very pretty walk, after which we enjoyed our complimentary hot chocolate as part of the boat fare.

Sunday was our ski/snowboard day, and we had perfect weather. You can rent equipment and also ski jacket/snowpants/gloves/goggles/helmets. Very convenient. However, though the weather was great, the snow was not. Spring skiing was definitely apparent, so the snow was getting more slushy in the last weeks of skiing. We still had a pretty good morning, but then soon after we decided it was a better idea to go back down and eat chocolate. The rest of the day was very relaxing, and we checked out the ski resort area until a bus took us home. Another recommendation: Diez Empanadas. It is a restaurant that sells only empanadas and has a bunch of different flavors. Everyone must experience it.

Monday we spent our day in town. After a long lunch, we stopped at a few more chocolate stores, did some casual shopping, and made Jauja, an ice cream shop, our last stop before heading back to gather our things for the trip home. Jauja is claimed to be the best ice cream in Argentina, and I’m gonna have to agree. For 15 pesos I had a huge bowl of dark chocolate mousse, raspberries and cream, and pineapple ice cream. The best thing ever.

Monday afternoon we made our way to the bus station. The ride was, again, seemed much shorter than it was, because I had a lot to take pictures of on the way home. It was an absolutely wonderful weekend. I couldn’t have been more happy or more relaxed, and I spent it with a great group of friends.

So I started my week yesterday, Wednesday. I had 3 classes, and now it’s the weekend again.

Rough, I know.

GOOD NEWS:

1. I received my Brazil visa today. It was quite possibly the easiest government/document-related process I have ever done. Apparently in the States it takes a month to complete. For me, it was a 30 second conversation, followed by a trip to the bank and a trip back to the embassy today to pick it up.

2. We will be having a tango make-up class at IES this Monday, unless we get an email from the university saying that the strike is over. I’m also considering going to a tango class tomorrow evening to jump-start my tango skills.

Hope has been restored.

Becoming History Savvy

This was supposed to be posted before I left for Bariloche, oops! Didn’t realize it never went through:

Sunday morning we were supposed to go to a polo match that had been rescheduled from the previous week, however, there in fact was no match scheduled (poor planning, yet again, IES?). I was so ready too, sweater vest and all. No worries though, we were assured that we would be made aware of the next match. Instead, we headed to one of the biggest (and most wonderful) malls here, Alto Palermo, to go see a movie, Going the Distance. Definitely MUCH funnier than I expected, highly recommended. However, anybody over 40 would probably think it was a waste of time and money, not unlike many of the other movies I like.

Sunday night I received terrible news. As a result of the student strike at IUNA, my tango class was suspended until further notice. I felt like a part of my soul had died. Naturally, everybody else in the class was ecstatic not to have to wake up early the next morning, which I guess was nice, to a certain extent.

I actually had to do a substantial amount of work this week. I know, I was shocked, too. My friend Allison and I were to present a project on San Telmo, one of the barrios of the city, the one with the antique fairs on Sunday afternoons. We presented on Tuesday and it went great. Our professor, Mercedes, is a wonderful woman. She always gives us compliments after we give correct answers in our grammar exercises, just like in middle school. “MUY BIEN, Diana!” or “Excelente!” or “Buen trabajo, mi amor” or “Increíble, Diana. Muy bien.”

I win.

Urban History class has been very interesting. There’s a lot of reading, though. And I mean real reading, like 50 pages for each class in Spanish. That’s legitimate. Otherwise, it’s been great, because we get to go on field trips to explore different parts of the city. Since we’ve been around some of these barrios quite a bit, it’s nice to be able to actually picture the place that we’re talking about in class and then see how it has changed. We went on 2 field trips in the last week and a half, one to the famous Plaza de Mayo, which also has the Casa Rosada (presidential palace). The Plaza de Mayo is important for several reasons, most importantly because it is the focal point for politics in the city. It also is the home of the National Bank of Argentina and the cathedral. Many civic demonstrations occur there too. One of the most famous demonstrations is that of the grandmothers at Plaza de Mayo, who, to this day, have a peaceful march around the Plaza every Thursday. This march is in memory of all the disappeared persons of the Dirty War (la Guerra Sucia) that occurred in the 70’s, the result of a military coup that put Argentina under the dictatorial rule of Jorge Videla. The other was Plaza San Martín, an area characterized more by its many lawns and palm trees for afternoon lounging than historical landmarks. It is dedicated to José San Martín, an Argentine general and significant figure in the country’s struggle for independence from Spain.

Wednesday night we celebrated our friend Mike’s 20^th birthday. We went to one of our favorite bars, The Spot. It was hip-hop music night. Enough said.