First entry

Hey everyone…

Well I arrived in Buenos Aires on Tuesday. The airport is about 30 minutes outside of the city, so the school had a van to take the 4 of us that were on the flight from Dallas to the city. Three of us, Erika, Megan, and myself all live in La Residencia Mayor (the main dorm building), and the other guy, Ross went to an apartment. The two girls are really good Spanish speakers: Megan had been to Buenos Aires before as well as Guatemala and Spain and Erika is Mexican-American and speaks fluently. That was a bit intimidating for me at first and I didn’t talk much on the van.
Buenos Aires is a very big city (14 million people). The majority of the buildings are apartments. It’s a bit dirtier than I expected, a lot like New York with graffiti and stuff. Once we got into the city it took us about one hour to get to our building because of all the traffic, small streets, etc. It was cool out the first few days, about 45 or 50. People here are wrapped up in scarves and winter coats. People walk with a purpose just like New Yorkers. People have been looking at me, but I don’t feel like I stand out that much. Many people here look exactly like (white) people at home do; it’s impossible to tell if they are from here or somewhere else until you hear them speak. The women are very pretty, but differently than I expected.
Our dorm building is nine levels up and two across. At this point I don’t have a roommate, apparently he’s Argentine and is on vacation. My room is pretty small, similar to mine freshman year, without carpet but I have a bathroom. I have a nice balcony that looks over a courtyard and other apartment buildings (I’m on the 6th floor). I keep thinking how nice, easy, and fun it would to be a smoker in this city. One can smoke in almost every place: the mall, restaurants, Internet cafes, our building. My room is really loud though. It’s directly next to the elevator, which is one with a cage door and another door that you close and locks very loudly. The street is kind of loud too, and when my refrigerator kicks on it makes a lot of noise. I probably only slept 5 hours in the first two days because of excitement mixed with nervousness and noise. I’ve been sleeping better the last few nights because my mind and body are so drained.
It seems like most people in our building speak really good Spanish. Many people have been living here for a while, some people years. My Spanish at this point is alright, sometimes better than other times; I’m just a little shy at this point, and I like listening to everyone else.
There are four different workers who work in the lobby of our building 24 hours a day. Every time we leave, we have to leave our keys and be buzzed in, same on the way in from being out. I unloaded some of my things when we first got in the first morning around 9am, tried to take a nap but couldn’t. I went for a short adventure, but didn’t go too far so that I wouldn’t get lost. I ended up going to an Internet café and emailing mom and dad and Dan. I got really lonely at this time. I felt really overwhelmed by the whole thing (huge city, language barrier, totally different system of doing everything) and I was really tired. Then my two friends came in and I felt a lot better. We went for a long walk around the city, and bought some small things. Megan was tired so Erika and I continued by ourselves. The shops in the area we live in are mostly small, family owned shops: lots of convenience stores, cafes, Internet cafes, shoes stores, etc. We walked for quite some time, stopped and ate, shopped, and finally made our way to a park (our destination).
The park was similar to those in other big cities I’ve been in (iron gates, benches, fountains, etc.). The park had a whole lot of wild cats running around. It seems as though the people feed them because they looked healthy. There was a man and his little girl near us as we were leaving. Erika asked him knew where the president’s house is (la casa Rosado) and he gave us an explanation. He was very interested in us, and rushed through his response as to where the palace was so that he could ask us about ourselves. He asked where we were from, and was happy to know that we were from the states. He asked us what we thought about Buenos Aires so far, and why we chose it. He was really interested in our studies and us. He asked for our emails and gave us his phone number. He told us that he worked at a church and if we ever needed anywhere to stay we could call him. There was a group of thirty or so older men sitting at about 5 tables playing different card games, it was quite a scene.
On Wednesday we had orientation at 9am. We took a bus to school which is about 25 blocks or so. There is no campus at USAL, just about 10 buildings spread throughout the city, most of which are within a ten block radius. Orientation was long and confusing. The Castellano Spanish here is very Italian sounding: everything runs together with “sh”, it’ll take me awhile to get used to. After orientation we did some more exploring around our school which is in the “downtown” part of the city. It’s a lot like Times Square, but doesn’t have as many neon lights, and the buildings are more European looking. There are a whole lot of high-end shops, and sadly many McDonalds, Burgerkings, and Blockbusters. We were really tired on Wednesday night and had orientation again on Thursday morning so we didn’t go out.
Thursday’s orientation was a bit shorter, so I was finally able to take a nap. We brain and body are so tired here from all the mental adjustments, language translation, culture shocks and changes, and all the walking… we probably walk at least a few miles each day, I’ll be toned by the time I get back! Wednesday night we went out a bar in Belgrano, a two barrios over with Ross, the kid from my flight and a Canadian guy from the international program. There were two guys playing a tribute to a famous Cuban guitarist at a small bar. It was really good music and the place was fun. People from Buenos Aires typically don’t go out until 1am, so we North Americans are a bit behind in our schedule and only stayed out until 1 or so.
I slept in yesterday until about 10am, and then went over by where school is to try to find some more of the buildings. I walked around for about 2 hours searching. It was fine; it was warmer yesterday (about 60) and I had my ipod to keep me company. The real reason that I had to go to campus was for an oral proficiency exam at 230 to determine if I was eligible for a few classes. With my Pieces mentality I thought I’d get there early so I could get ahead of the other 100 students or so. So I got to the building around 130 and no one was there. I decided to go across the street and chill and eat a sandwich. I went back again around 2 and no one was there, so I just kind of mosied around the building and ran into my Canadian friend from the night before. We chatted for a while and finally found the room. When we got into the room, there was a professor. We sat down and made small talk with her as other students came in. The small room began to fill up and we were a bit confused; the professor told us we were waiting for the instructors to come to administer the exam. When the room filled up we moved rooms because it was too full. Around 315 they started calling names. I was called about 530, three hours after the scheduled exam! The exam consisted of me reading three paragraphs of a story and then telling a woman what I read, it took about 3 minutes.
I got home around 630, watched a few episodes of Chapelle’s Show and tried to take a nap, but couldn’t because I kept getting interrupted by phone calls from a few of my friends who didn’t take the exam and wanted to go to a bar party that was sponsored by our international program. So we went to the bar around 830, it was pretty close to our building (a 6 peso taxi ride). We got to the bar, so some friends, drank some Quillmes (Argentina’s equivalent of Miller Lite) and met a few Argentina guys who were in the bar. Megan, Erika, another American Maggie, the two Argentines, and myself left and went to go get pizza a few blocks away. The two guys, Nacho and Esteban, were 18, really nice, and pretty into the girls! But, there were fun guys and very knowledgeable about a variety of stuff. We talked about American and Argentine politics, American music and film. We went back to the bar and had one more drink and then went home around 1am. When we returned to our dorm we were all very tired, the lobby was full of kids just getting ready to go out….
We are all matched up with an Argentine student from the university to be our buddy, someone who can show us around the city, etc. Today, Megan’s buddy took us to the touristy part of Buenos Aires. We saw la Casa Rosada (literally the pink house) which is the president’s palace. Directly in font of the palace is the famous la Plaza de Mayo where all of the protests for the Dirty War and the crisis went on. It’s an incredible place; I could feel all of the history. It was extremely easy for me to visualize that plaza in chaos.
Today, in the plaza, there was a memorial for the 193 people (most of which were teenagers) who died in a fire in at a concert in a bar in December (more than 700 were injured). It is called the worst tragedy in Argentine history (aside from the Dirty War, of course). A flare that was shot at the ceiling started the fire. Most of the exits were locked because the club wanted to prevent people from sneaking in, however the capacity of the club was 1,400 and over 4,000 were inside. In the months following the fire, the owner of the club, five government officials, and three police officers were charged with manslaughter for taking bribes to continue to allow the club to let so many people in. There were huge protests in la Plaza in the ensuing months; the people wanted the mayor to be overthrown because he continually turned his head to the lax safety standards and corruption within the police and fire departments of Buenos Aires. Two government officials stepped down, but the mayor refuses.
There is an obvious social and political conscious among the people of Buenos Aires; it seems to be in there blood after all of the corruption for the 70s and 80s. It seems strange to me that little has been made of the Brazilian “terrorist” who was shot in London. I also wonder what would happen if that was an American. Would people protest, march?
On a lighter note, we walked around the city a lot today. We went to a lot of tourist places: malls, etc. We saw a lot of Europeans and heard a lot of English, which was kind of annoying. We also went to a huge church were the mausoleum of Jose de San Martin (liberator of Argentina, Chile, and Peru) is.
All in all, things are good. I’m getting used to many things, some things are coming more slowly. I hope to make updates to this site once a week or so. Hope all is well at home, keep me posted…