Surprisingly Amazing Academic and Professional Experiences

I'll be the first to admit that I did not come to Buenos Aires with the intention of spending all of my time doing homework and building up my resume. I was definitely anticipating most of my formative experiences here happening outside of the class room, and while that has definitely happened, I've been very surprised by some of the incredible experiences I've had through my classes. A huge reason for this is that university professors in Argentina are almost always professionals who teach on the side, so they always have a lot of really interesting current experiences to bring into the class. This was especially evident in my Gender Studies class. We had two professors for this course; one of them has written probably half of all the published works on gender studies in Argentina. The other one  is a senate advisor on all matters gender-related and is a really well-known figure within the gender-equality movements in Argentina. Needless to say they had some pretty interesting stuff to bring to the table.

Activists campaigning for the Law of Gender Identity

The first time I realized just how big of deal they were was when we got an email from them saying that our usual class had been cancelled and instead we were all going to meet outside Congress to sit in on a debate over the proposed Law of Gender Identity, which was under discussion. I figured that it was going to be some kind of open forum full of people but it turned out to be a pretty small room of people who were only allowed in with special permission. It turns out our prof had gotten us in through her connection as a senate advisor. So crazy. None of us had any idea of just how big of a deal it was that we were in that room. The proposed law under discussion dealt mainly with the rights of people who identify as transgender/transexual/transvestite. This population is hugely discriminated against in Argentina to the point that the majority can only find work as prostitutes because no one will hire them. A big reason for this (or excuse for this) is that if their ID cards don't match the identity that they present in person, they are basically denied all rights that every citizen should have. The main point of this law that was being proposed is to make it much easier for trans people to change their official documents to present the gender and name that they choose so that nobody can us the ID issue as an excuse for discrimination. At this debate we heard testimony from about 10 different people, the majority of whom were trans. They talked about the discrimination they've faced, the barriers that they are up against and also the symbolic importance of this law; it's not just a matter of practicality, but also of having their own identity recognized and respected by the government. A couple of weeks later the senate overwhelmingly passed the law by a vote of 55-1. Argentina is the first country in the world to pass a law like this, so it's kind of incredible that I was in the room where it was being debated. The following link has more information on the law. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/argentina-gender-identity-law-takes-effect_n_1570830.html

I was totally there!

About three weeks after going to that debate, we got another email from our professor saying that class was cancelled and we were, once again, meeting outside Congress, this time to sit in on a hearing over different proposed law. This law proposes defining femicide (the murder of a woman specifically because of her gender) as a separate offense from generic homicide. The sentencing wouldn't be much different, but the point is once again the symbolic acknowledgment  of issues of gender inequality. When we met up outside the Congress building I was expecting a similar debate as before; fairly casual with a lot of people giving their personal testimonies. Instead we found ourselves in an unbelievably ornate room full of video cameras, senators, three expert witnesses and no one else. It was extremely formal and I don't think I've ever felt so scared to sneeze in my life. However, it was once again really interesting. They ended up tabling the bill because they said that many pieces of the bill were very unclear to the point that it could actually end up harming women's rights. The bill is currently being reworked in both the Senate and Congress, so we'll see what comes of that. But again, I can say I was there!

The last crazy experience that I had through my gender class once again has to do with transexual rights. For our final project in the class, we had to do hands-on research on a topic related to what we had been studying in class. My group decided to look into this high school called Mocha Celis, which was created specifically for trans students. It was created because the majority of trans people in Argentina don't graduate from high school because they are extremely discriminated against by students and teachers and because they usually get kicked out of their homes at a really young age. We ended up getting in contact with one of the teachers at the school and went to visit it. It was incredibly interesting seeing the space and getting to talk with the people there. At the moment they don't receive any federal funding so they run completely off of donations and all of the teachers are volunteers. It's also a completely cooperatively run organization. There's no president or principle and the students are really involved with the running of the school. The other interesting thing is that a lot of the students are adults who never finished high school and are coming back after 15 years or more. Apparently one of the students commutes three hours there and three hours back every day because it's the only school where she feels safe and accepted. Again, it was a big wake-up call for me because the issue of transexual rights is hardly ever talked about in the US and I know for a fact that there isn't any sort of school like Mocha Celis in the states.

National Conference on Drug Policy

Besides my Gender Studies class, I've also had some really interesting experiences with the internship I got through my Service Seminar class. For the last three months I've been working twice a week at an NGO called Intercambios that deals with issues of drug policy and social assistance programs for drug abusers. The organization is based out of Buenos Aires but they have links with other NGO's around the world, so my main job has been to translate all of the documents that go onto their web page into English. It's been a much more challenging experience than I'd originally anticipated but I've learned so much. I've found that translating is a lot more than looking up the words you don't understand on google translate. There's so much cultural stuff that goes into translating that makes it really complicated but it also means that I've had to really study all of the information that I'm working with in order to be able to do accurate translations. The biggest event that I got to be a part of through Intercambios was definitely the National Conference on Drug Policy, which took place on June 7th (my birthday) in the National Senate. So once again I got a free pass into a big important government building. The conference was put together by Intercambios with the help of a bunch of other NGO's and government organizations. The main point of the conference was to discuss what's needed for a new Drug Law, which various politicians are currently working on. It was a full-day conference with various panel discussions by important people from all over the place. Another situation where I didn't realize just how big of a deal it was until I was there.

Ann Fordham (left) and the other speakers at the "International
panel"

The Intercambios team was busy the whole day making sure the conference ran smoothly, but I had a special job. I was assigned to accompany Ann Fordham, the executive director of the International Drug Policy Consortium, who was one of the international panelists and who didn't speak a word of Spanish. They hired a simultaneous interpreter for her official presentation, but for the rest of the day I was her personal translator. The conversational stuff was fine, but the real challenge came during the hours of panel discussions before hers that I had to whisper-translate for her in the audience. I think I can count that as one of the most challenging and stressful experiences of my life, especially because the panels were dealing with fairly complex legal jargon. Translating every word was absolutely impossible so I basically just tried to give her a rapid summary every minute or so, which was still difficult. As hard as it was, I don't think I've ever felt prouder of my Spanish abilities, and it's definitely something I'll be putting on my resume. I've also become really interested in the type of work that Intercambios does; they really focus on the human rights and public health side of drug policy as opposed to the punitive focus that we tend to have in the United States. It's something that I'm definitely planning on pursuing in my public health studies once I get home.

The Intercambios team

So there you have it. It hasn't been all traveling and relaxing. I've actually been learning stuff too! Really interesting stuff at that.

Uruguay (part 2) and Jujuy

So it's probably obvious from my complete lack of blog posts for the last two months that my life has been pretty busy here. Traveling, studying, working, socializing - there's been a lot going on. And now suddenly I only have three weeks left here! I can't fathom how time has been flying. 

Instead of attempting to do a chronological account of everything that's happened in the last two months in one mega-post, I'm going to try group my next couple posts thematically. I haven't traveled much in the last month but that's mainly because I drained my travel funds/energy reserve for a while after my last big trip in May, which was incredible. 

By a stroke of luck and several conveniently placed federal holidays, I ended up with 10 days without classes at the beginning of May, which I took advantage of to go on two very different but equally memorable trips. My first trip was to Uruguay to visit Cata's (host/roommate) family. Her family is actually all from Argentina but her stepmom has a vacation house in this really small beach town in Uruguay between Montevideo and Punta del Este and the family was celebrating Cata's dad's birthday there. 

Cata and I took a very long and somewhat tedious trip together on Sunday via taxi, boat, bus #1, bus #2, and car and finally arrived at her parent's house in the evening. It was rainy and cold but that made for a very cozy evening eating Italian food (her stepmom's family is all Italian) and reading by the fire.   

Family dinner our first night there

The next morning the sun came out, though it was still pretty chilly, so we bundled up and had breakfast outside and then Cata and I went for a walk on the beach and took a bike ride along the coastal roads and through the neighborhoods. It was the perfect kind of day after my last few hectic weeks of school in Buenos Aires. It was also really nice to have a chance to spend more personal time with Cata and get to know her family better. The two of us definitely got along well from the start but our schedules are both so busy that we would often go for long stretches without really spending any time together, so I really enjoyed just spending time with her in a more relaxed environment and feeling more like we were friends than roommates. 

Claudia (Cata's stepmom) and Nico (stepbrother) enjoying an open-air breakfast

Cata and I relax in the sun after our bike ride

That same day we had a huge asado (an Argentine BBQ) with Cata's dad, stepmom, stepbrother, and two of their neighbors, an older Uruguayan couple who they've known for years who were some of the sweetest, most hilarious people I'd met so far. It was really nice to feel like I was getting integrated into a family again. That afternoon we went for another bike ride with Julio, of the neighbor couple, who was apparently a professional cyclist for Uruguay in his day. That evening Claudia, Cata's stepmom, set up hammocks out on the porch and put out a bunch of lanterns and it was just the most beautiful, relaxing thing ever, even though it was freezing. 

Bundled up in fairyland 

The next day Cata wasn't feeling too well so I had a lot of time to myself to wander along the beach, read, and nap in a tree (they had an excellent napping tree there). So I had a very lazy, relaxed afternoon soaking up the beauty of Uruguay, and then in the evening the five of us packed into a car and drove the 8 hours back to Buenos Aires. 

My napping tree

After getting back I had approximately 26 hours in Buenos Aires before hopping on a 6 AM flight with 40 other Americans to Salta up in the north of Argentina. This second trip was part of the CIEE exchange program. They do it every year with the students as a way of showing us a different side of Argentina. We were in the north for four days, mainly in the province of Jujuy. It's much more of a desert climate there up along the borders with Chile and Bolivia. I completely fell in love with the region. I don't think I saw a single cloud in the sky the entire time that we were there and the mountains and rock formations were absolutely unbelievable.

Our hotel in Tilcara

Hiking among the cacti 

All 40 of us stayed in the town of Tilcara this really cute hotel with separate cabins for rooms. The north is known for its textiles and hand crafts and there was an artisans market in short walking distance of the hotel. I ended up buying way more things than I'd expected but the prices were so good and everything was absolutely beautiful. I got the requisite llama sweater, several tapestries, and various souvenirs for friends and family. The food in Jujuy is also fantastic. Buenos Aires tends have fairly bland food. That's not to say that it isn't delicious, but they definitely go more for pizza and steak and empanadas and rarely venture into the realm of strong flavors or spices, so Jujuy was a pleasant change. The food there is a lot more spicy and just generally more flavorful. One of my favorite points of the trip was finding this tiny, non-descript restaurant with a couple a friends that turned out to have some of the best food I've had in Argentina. We stayed there for hours, continuing to order more food and wine. I even tried llama meat! At one point in the evening a group of andean musicians came into the restaurant and serenaded us with their pan flutes for half an hour.

Enjoying our delicious dinner

Since the trip was all arranged by our exchange program, we had a pretty structured and full schedule, but after all of the traveling that I had done before where I had had to struggle with planning the logistics of hostels and transportation, it was actually really nice to just do what I was told and enjoy being a tourist. We had a couple archaeologists from the University of Buenos Aires who were our tour guides during our day excursions. We spent most of our time outside taking in all of the incredible natural wonders of the region. 

The highlight excursion was definitely the salt flats. If you look at this picture below without having any idea where I was, you'd definitely think that I'm in the snow and inappropriately dressed, but all of that is salt. It was such a cool thing to see, even though I don't understand how the geology/chemistry works to make something like that occur in nature. 

Doing some yoga on the salt flats

On our way back from the salt flats we stopped at the tallest peak in Jujuy. I can't remember the exact height was, but it was enough to make me out of break after walking up a baby hill for about a minute and a half to take a picture. Luckily, we had coca leaf tea to help with the altitude sickness. 

Bliss

We were there for two full days with a travel day on each end. I wish I could have stayed there longer. If I had more time after my program ends and more money in general I would love to go back and explore more of the region. But I can't complain too much. In a couple weeks I'm packing my backs for the Iguazu Waterfalls and then straight on to Brazil! For now, though, I'm going to enjoy the last couple weeks that I have in Buenos Aires. 

Semana Santa Travels

El Parque Centenario

I got back from my week of traveling last Saturday and I'm just now getting a chance to sit back and relax a little bit after a week of frantically trying to catch up with classes and homework. This morning I woke up relatively early for a Sunday and just felt a desperate need to move, so I went for a walk/run to/in El Parque Centenario, a really gorgeous park about 15 blocks from my apartment that I kind of stumbled upon a few weeks ago. I've been absolutely terrible about exercising here, so it was really nice to get out in the fresh air and move a little bit, even if I only actually ran for about a 5th of the time. I'm now sitting out on our balcony with an iced coffee enjoying the sunshine. Not a bad Sunday so far.


So as I said, I got back from my week of traveling last Saturday. We had most of the last week of March/first week of April off for Holy Week (or la Semana Santa as it's referred to here) so a group of us decided to just skip the couple classes that were still being held and take off from Thursday, March 29th to Friday April 6th. Most people left on Wednesday night, but Natalee and I both had classes on Thursday so the two of us started our adventure together on a microbus at 10 PM on Thursday night. It was a 14 hour ride to Mendoza but luckily our bus had really cushy reclining seats so we were able to sleep pretty comfortably for the majority of the bus ride. We arrived in the morning and met up with the rest of our group (Jon, Marie, Judy, Hannah, and Cheri) at our adorable hostel. Unfortunately they didn't have the capacity for all 7 of us for our whole stay we moved to a different hostel the second night.

The lounge of our first hostel

And the upstairs patio

Mendoza is best known as wine country, so our first activity as a group was obviously to verify for ourselves if the wine was a great as everyone says.  Our second morning there we started off bright and early on a bike tour of three of the bodegas (wineries) in the area. The first one we went to was a family-owned organic winery called Familia Cecchin. It was literally paradise on earth. I don't know if I've ever seen something so absurdly picturesque. I just wanted to stay there forever. Our guide was a young woman from Colorado who had somehow landed herself a job living at the bodega, giving bilingual tours, learning how to make wine, and just generally enjoying life. My new life goal is to be her. I'm just going to flood this blog with pictures of the bodega because words won't do it justice.

P.S. Those are the Andes in the background.

The woman whose job I will one day have

Hannah and I  test the wine out for ourselves

Famalia Cecchin also dabbles in the olive oil business

After tasting several of the wines (highly recommended, and they export to the US...) and wandering around the vineyard for a while with our mouths hanging open in awe, we hopped on our bikes and visited two other vineyards. One was for a large, national wine company (not nearly as pretty) and the other one was another small vineyard that provided us with very generous samples. Needless to say, we were all ready for a nap after the tour was done. 

For the rest of the afternoon and part of the next day we took it easy and hung out in our new hostel getting to know the people there. We immediately made friends with the hostel manager, Walter, as well as several other fellow travelers. The hostel was linked with a bunch of tourism/excursion companies so on Sunday Cheri and I decided to do the "Sunset Horseback Riding Excursion." We took an hour-long bus ride into the foothills of the Andes and were then led by a bunch of Gauchos on a two hour trail ride, concluded with a hilltop "asado" (BBQ).   

 

The next day was pretty uneventful. Cheri left to go back to Buenos Aires and several of us went for a hike through El Parque San Martin, this huge park on the edge of the city of Mendoza. There's a big hill there and from the top you get an incredible view of the surrounding area, including the Andes.

On Tuesday or group parted ways with Marie, Hannah, and Judy returning to Buenos Aires and Jon, Natalee and me taking another overnight bus, this time to Córdoba. It was kind of a spontaneous decision on our part to do Córdoba, but we'd already decided that we wanted to take advantage of all the time that we had off from class, so why not see a different part of the country. We stayed in a hostel in the city of Córdoba, which is the second largest city in Argentina after Buenos Aires. The city is known for its Jesuit architecture and the surrounding province for its beautiful hills and countryside. We spent the first day exploring the city (we actually did one of those ridiculously cheesy city tours in a red double-decker bus) and getting to know some of the people in our hostel. There were two people there that Jon had met in Patagonia earlier in the semester, so that was a fun little reunion. 

An example of the classic Jesuit architecture

 

Neo-gothic cathedral

And some slightly more modern stuff 

On the second day we got out of the city and went to Villa Carlos Paz, a really gorgeous town about an hour outside the city. It was a little more touristy than I would have liked but we managed to get away from a lot of that with a two hour hike through the hills. After that we lazed around by the lake and treated ourselves to an evening paddle boat ride.

A hilltop view of Villa Carlos Paz

The next day was our final day of the trip. We spent it wandering around the city some more and relaxing in the hostel. By this point all three of us were pretty travel-worn and you could definitely tell we were all ready to get back to Buenos Aires and our own beds. We did another all-night bus ride back and arrived home dazed and exhausted at 7:30 AM at which point we all went to our respective houses and slept for the rest of the day. 

I've spent this past week catching up on homework, going to class, and taking care of all the things I was ignoring for the past week of travel. As much as I love traveling, it's actually been really nice getting into a routine and finally feeling more settled here in Buenos Aires. I started an acting class that Cata is teaching on Wednesday nights and I've found myself a conversation buddy through my volunteer job who wants to practice her English. I also spent all of yesterday working on a group project for my other acting class at IUNA. It was exhausting but really exhilarating to be working with my Argentine peers on something productive that I can actually contribute to. 

I think I'll cut it off there since this post is getting ridiculously long and I still have yet to shower and change out my running clothes. 

¡Chau!

Madres que Marchan

This last week has been a bit of a roller coaster of emotions. Based on all the handy pamphlets I've been given about the different stages of culture shock, this seems to be par for the course and right on schedule to boot. Knowing this doesn't make it any less frustrating, though. I've basically been oscillating between really exhilarated and energized (usually when I'm in the midst of some cool new experience) and really antsy and bummed out (usually when I'm sitting alone at home with nothing but homework to do). The homesickness has started setting in a little bit too, which is also to be expected. Luckily the cool experiences this week have scored high on the exhilarating scale and I've been feeling less down in the last few days, so hopefully I'm moving out of the roller coaster stage of culture shock and into whichever stage comes next...I can't remember what it's supposed to be. I'll have to check my pamphlet.


The main exciting-experience-of-the-week was La marcha del 24 de marzo. It begins with a brief history lesson. From the mid-1970's to the early 80's Argentina was under the control of an extremely oppressive military dictatorship. Anyone who opposed the government (or seemed like they opposed the government, or appeared to be friends with someone who seemed like they opposed the government) ran the risk of silently disappearing off the streets. And it happened to a lot of people. It's estimated that approximately 30,000 Argentine civilians were "disappeared" during this period. Considering the circumstances, showing any signs of opposition ran a serious risk, but one group in particular took this risk and fought back hard. This group was made up of the mothers and grandmothers of the "desaparecidos" or "disappeared". They started occupying El Plaza de Mayo (the main square around the capital building) demanding to know where their children had gone. They became known as Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and they didn't end their efforts after democracy returned to the country in 1983. To this day the Madres gather at la Plaza de Mayo every Thursday afternoon. At this point, almost 30 years after the end of the dictatorship, their expectation isn't so much to find their lost children as it is to make sure people don't forget what happened. Their was a big push after the dictatorship ended to not talk about the previous 7 years and just move on with life, but the Madres have made sure that doesn't happen. Because of this, March 24 is the official day of remembrance of the dictatorship and tens of thousands of Argentines gather in the city center every year to march in honor of the desaparecidos and their families.


Which brings me to this Saturday and my "exciting experience" that brought me out of my slump. I know, this wasn't the most cheery prologue and you're probably wondering what happy direction I could possibly be going with this, but what I saw was pretty amazing. So one of the many reasons why I love the folks at FLACSO (my exchange program on the Argentine end) is that they do not subscribe to the general message I got from every piece of preparation material back home that I should in no way go anywhere near any kind of political demonstration in any foreign country. Instead, I got an email from the FLACSO staff inviting all of us CIEE students to join them in the march. So about 25 of us showed up to the designated street corner at 6 PM on Saturday afternoon. I was expecting a fair number of people to be milling around the area getting ready for the march. Instead I was met with deafening drums and people chanting and an ENORMOUS collection of people taking up blocks and blocks of several major avenues downtown. This was about an hour before the march actually started. These are a couple shots of how things looked when I first got there.

All of us CIEE students were pretty blown away by how many people were there. There were a lot of political and student groups, but also a lot of lay people who just  see it as their responsibility to keep history alive. It was all incredibly emotional and really amazing to be a part of, although I did feel a little strange being a foreigner at an event that was  about an experience that was so intimately argentine. Still, I feel very lucky to have been a part of it. We started marching around 7 PM and reached La Plaza de Mayo around 9 PM. One important aspect of the march is the banner that the Madres foundation created. It's a blue piece of fabric probably several hundred feet long with pictures of all of the reported desaparecidos. Volunteers carry the banner over their heads throughout the entire march and then lay it out at La Plaza de Mayo when they arrive. By pure happenstance, I was right next to the banner with a couple of my friends towards the end of the march when the crowd started getting swept in opposite direction and the suddenly the banner ripped right in half. Everyone in close proximity jumped in to pick up the loose ends that were now dragging on the ground and before I quite knew what had happened I found myself carrying the banner the rest of the way to La Plaza de Mayo. When we arrived we stretched the banner out on the street and everyone stopped and applauded. It was a really surreal experience but incredible experience.

I knew that there were going to be speakers and things once we got to La Plaza de Mayo and I anticipated it to be some kind of solemn candlelight vigil. Not even close. The plaza resembled a summer music festival more than a memorial service. A well-known percussion group was playing on a stage, there were food vendors everywhere, the city had somehow rigged up smoke machines and the entire place was lit with purplish stadium lighting. Leave it to the Argentines to turn a solemn remembrance march into a rockin' party. I spent the rest of the evening sitting with some friends on the grass, watching the percussion band, listening to the Madres speak, and drinking yerba mate. 

Better Late than Never!

Alright, so I've already been in Buenos Aires for an entire month and I've only now started my promised blog, but I'm considering it a good sign that I've been so occupied with my new life here that I haven't had time to document it. It's going to be impossible to write about everything that's happened so far, but I'll try to do a quick summary of the basics.

LIVING AND SLEEPING: I selected a homestay as opposed to living in a student residence hall, which has definitely been a good choice. My "host family" is actually a 25 year-old actress named Catalina (Cata for short) who runs her own theatre studio with two other people and is just generally extremely active in the arts community here in Buenos Aires, which is perfect for me. My first night here she took me over to a friend's apartment in Palermo (the hip, artsy neighborhood) to have sushi with a bunch of her friends. They're all actors or playwrights or photographers. It's pretty cool. A couple weeks later I started watching this Argentine sit-com called Ciega a citas and there was one actress in it who looked super familiar to me but I couldn't place what other movies or show I'd seen her in. I mentioned to Cata that I'd started watching the show and she goes "Oh! I love that show! Maria's in it. You know, my friend that you had sushi with your first night here." I've come to get used to little revelations like this around Cata.

She and I get along really well. She's extremely busy with her work so I have a lot of independence here, which suits me just fine. I get to do a lot of my own cooking and I can definitely make my own schedule, so that's been great. We live in a really cute apartment in Almagro, a neighborhood that's pretty chill and quiet, but centrally located so that it's only a short subway or bus ride to get to pretty much any important place in Buenos Aires. This is a picture from the balcony of our apartment.



SCHOOL: Haha oh yeah...that. I kind of forgot that I was going to have to go to school and...like...do homework and stuff here. Let's just say I'm still adjusting to that whole thing. The way it works with CIEE (my exchange program) is that we have the option of studying at 4 different universities/institutes in Buenos Aires. The least terrifying option is FLACSO, the home-base for our program where they offer classes in Spanish exclusively for American CIEE students. I'm taking one class there on Bodies, Gender, and Sexuality in Argentina, which is super interesting. I'm also taking an advanced Spanish Grammar class there and a service-learning seminar through which I'm now volunteering twice a week at an Argentine NGO that promotes HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention through publications, conferences, political advocacy. It's really interesting and perfect for my Health and Society major. The next option is a private Catholic university but I couldn't find any courses there that interested me. Then there's IUNA (the art school). I'm taking an acting class there, which is utterly terrifying due to the whole Spanish thing but I think it'll be really good for me in the long run. I've only had one class so far (all of the universities start at different times) but everyone was really nice and supportive, so that was somewhat reassuring. Then there's UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires). It's the huge public university and also one of the most prestigious and rigorous universities in the country. It's terrifying. I'm currently trying to decide between a course on population and reproductive strategies in Argentina or one on the mental health system of Argentina. Both are extremely intimidating and require massive amounts of heavy readings and final exams and/or papers. We'll see how all that goes...

DAILY LIFE: After a month I'm now finally starting to get the hang of life in Buenos Aires. Everything is very fast paced. The porteños (the term of people from Buenos Aires) all live a very busy, non-stop lifestyle. And this doesn't stop when the sun goes down. It's pretty normal to eat dinner at 10 or 11 PM (I've sat down to dinner as late as 12:30) and then hit the town until the sun comes up. I was kind of tired last night so I turned in at a modest 3:30 AM. At the moment I still have more American friends than porteño friends. I've become really close with a group of CIEE students. We've had fun in the last month exploring the city and figuring our way around the public transportation system. To the right are some of the prime players in this group. I'm also excited to meet more porteños. I feel like that's really going to be the key to feeling more integrated into life here and really becoming fluent in Spanish. The thing is, it's a lot harder than you'd think to make legitimate friends with people who speak a different language. My Spanish is definitely pretty good, but being able to keep up with an established group of friends when they're chattering away in Argentine slang is definitely not easy. I've made some headway, though. Cata is definitely a useful in, and I love hanging out with her and talking with her about life when she's around, but she's often at work. One of Cata's friends, Caro, was living with us for the first two weeks that I was here and she and I get along really well too. Caro's also great at recommending fun things to do in Buenos Aires. I also have a couple "pen pals"from the Spanish class that I took at Beloit last semester and I've met up with one of them here and should be meeting the other one on Sunday, so that's a good connection to have too. I'm also going to start taking tango lessons this Tuesday, so that should also provide some social connections.

TRAVEL: Oh man. There are so many cool places to travel to around here. I have to budget my time and...you know...my budget so it's not going to be possible to trek around South America the whole time I'm here, but I've definitely got some exciting prospects. I went to Uruguay this past weekend with Emily and Natalee, two of my CIEE friends. We went to Colonia, a small historic town right across the bay from Buenos Aires (about an hour long boat ride). It was so peaceful and beautiful. Exactly what I needed after three weeks of non-stop urban bustle in Buenos Aires. Below are some highlight shots from the trip.

One of the most incredible sunsets I've ever seen.

We just stumbled across this beautiful old car with flowers growing out of it

One of the guys who ran the hostel we stayed in recommended this hidden lake to us. So beautiful.

Next week is La Semana Santa, which means we have several days off so a group of us from CIEE are planning a trip to Mendoza in western Argentina. It's the province where all of the famous Argentine wine is made and it's supposed to be absolutely gorgeous. We're taking a 14 hour bus to get there and then staying in hostels. I'm incredibly excited. Now I just have to take care of all of my homework before then...

I think that suffices as a pretty sufficient summary of my last month in Argentina. I'm going to try to keep up with this blog more regularly so that my posts aren't 20 pages long each.

¡Hasta luego!