One Week Down...

Ah, the past week has been absolutely crazy.  It's been a big mix of traveling as a group and exploring our neighborhoods on our own, but it's been a blast.

But before I begin, I have one more concern to add to my list of things that are incredibly weird here: Dog poop.  Everywhere.  People seriously need to learn to pick up their dog poop here, but I guess that's just the culture.  The street that my school is on reeks of the smell and its horrendous. But I digress...

 We had our orientation on Monday and celebrated Gita's birthday.  I don't think there's any way I'll ever be able to adjust to the way of life and going out here. Most places don't get crowded until 2 AM, and apparently its socially acceptable to just sleep the entire next morning/early afternoon away.  It's obviously an adjustment but we're working on it!

On Tuesday a few of us headed down to see the Plaza de Mayo and Puerto Madero areas of the city. Man, I could spend all of my days down there with no complaints whatsoever.  Our first adventure was walking the wrong way out of the subte but that lead us to El Obelisco which is absolutely beautiful.  It's pretty much a much smaller version of the Washington Monument, but it gives the same effect.  El Obelisco is set in the middle of a street with God only knows how many lanes, but it's wonderful!

Our group at El Obelisco

Me at the plaza!

After that, we continued to walk in the wrong direction, which eventually lead us to a really pretty park with a fountain with a statue of two dancers in the center, where we did typical tourist things like pose with them.  After we realized it was the wrong way, we turned around and headed back towards our subte stop.  We then headed down to La Plaza de Mayo, and it was beautiful! It was a beautiful park area in the center of some very busy streets.  There were little kiosks of vendors trying to sell touristy-type things, but that's to be expected.  There were two major highlights of the plaza.  The first being the Pirámide de Mayo in the center, and the second being La Casa Rosada.  

El pirámide

Part of La Casa Rosada... it's very big!

So after we explored the plaza are, we headed down to Puerto Madero, where I decided I could live for the rest of my life.  The water is lined with boats and restaurants where you can sit outside and enjoy the beautiful weather (Though, the people here think it's FREEZING!). While waiting for a few of our other friends to meet us, we stumbled on a museum on a boat that was only 2 pesos to get on to.  So we took an hour or so to explore the levels of the boat and climb around inside, and it was actually pretty cool! We sat down for our lunch, and all did the very american thing of ordering hamburgers, but sorry we're not sorry.  One thing I'm never going to get used to here is that there are no free refills, and you always have to pay for water.  All drinks here come out of a bottle... never a tap. So because of that, if you order a coke, you'll pay about 16 pesos but if you want more, it's another 16.  It's very frustrating because I would prefer to just have free water, but that's just not the way it works here. 

We did have our first super awkward begging experience while at that restaurant.  First, a man and his young child came up to our table, and asked if he could have the rest of our food.  Since none of us expected this at a nice restaurant, we chose to ignore him and continue with our meal, but he stayed and didn't move from our table and repeated the same thing over and over again.  Eventually, his wife and another child came up and were literally hovering over us asking each of us individually about our food. One of the girls gave them the rest of her french fries thinking they would go away, but they didn't.  The most peculiar thing about this entire experience was that the wait staff didn't do a single thing to stop it.  It really put a damper on the dining experience for all of us, and made everything incredible awkward.  After telling them we wouldn't give them anything else, and them being less than appreciative, they finally left and we were able to move on. 

The boat museum!

So we let the restaurant and headed to walk around a bit, and Puerto Madero is just so beautiful! That was pretty much the end of that day.  The only major things since then were our dinner and dancing with our program director, and our city bus tour on Friday.  We went to dinner a salsa/milonga/tango club, where they teach different levels of the dances while you have dinner.  It was incredibly fun and I had an absolute blast.  We got to watch our teachers put on a show and let me tell you... tango is the most beautiful thing I've ever watched.  The dancers are just so strong and so good at improvisation. Its something I need to learn how to do, or at least try to before I leave! We had our city bus tour on Friday which was pretty boring because we were stuck on a bus, but we were able to visit La Boca for about a half hour, and it was beautiful! I'll put up pictures of La Boca soon, but for now, it's time to nap! ¡Adiós!

- Meagan 

We've Arrived!

What a crazy couple of days it has been.  We finally arrived in Buenos Aires after over 24 hours of travel-related madness. We had a really late flight out of JFK (11:05 PM!!) and I expected that I would get a little sleep on the 8 hour flight considering it was overnight... I was wrong.  I swear I've never been on a flight where so many weird things happened.  Some of the best included: 1. A middle-aged gentleman in front of me watching the Justin Bieber movie in Portugese.  2. A screaming baby for a few hours. And finally, 3. An elderly man collapsing in the aisle right next to my face and needing complete assistance and medical attention to help.  (By the way, that last one happened in COMPLETE silence so all the people who were asleep missed it.)

We arrived in Lima, Peru around 5 AM their time, and we had a 7+ hour layover from hell.  We all pretty much passed out in the terminal on the chairs and periodically checked to see if our flight had a gate yet.  As we all woke up, we passed some time by reading Cosmo out loud and finding food.  Sorry, I'm not sorry, but I had a chicken caesar wrap at 7:30 in the morning.  I've never been so bored waiting for something to happen.  A few of us decided around 10:30 that we would go to the little restaurant near the gate and have some empanadas to get a little food in our system.  However, the chicken empanada I ordered was also filled with olives, raisins, and god only knows what else... I guess I'll stick to the seriously delicious empanadas here in Buenos Aires. Once we boarded our second flight to Buenos Aires, I pretty much immediately passed out, but I did get to catch all but the last 20 minutes of the Hunger Games before we landed.  LAN Airlines has EXCELLENT choice in movies and television.

Once we danced our way through security and customs and got all of our bags, we met our director, Alfredo, where he had a van waiting for us.  Alfredo is possibly one of the nicest guys I've ever met and I have a feeling this group will have a lot of fun with him. It took pretty much forever to get to the Universidad de Belgrano because of traffic, but when we got there all of our host mothers were waiting on the sidewalk with hugs and kisses.  My roommate Jenn and I took a taxi with our host mom to our apartment, where we were pleasantly surprised to find we each had our own room. It's small, but it absolutely gets the job done!

My room!

Our host mother made us a pretty big dinner, but by the time we were done eating we were ready to pass out.  The next morning we had some orientation with Alfredo, and then it was off to the Exposición Rural. Basically it was a giant agricultural expo with animals and foods and anything you could imagine. But before I get to that, I'd like to make a comment on the sidewalks.  I don't know what crazy person is in charge of them here, but there has to be 500 different kinds of sidewalks... and none of them are good.  They're either made of tile and complete uneven, or they were paved but people or dogs stepped in them when they were wet.  I can now see why they told us not to bring high heels...

But back to the expo. There were real life gauchos dressed in traditional attire and we got to interact with them, which was awesome.  We also met two other students from California who are on our trip, and we all meshed as a group really well.  We got to try lots of different foods and drinks and it was all around an awesome day.  

Los gauchos

We tried a lot of food... and it was all delicious!

We ended up at the fanciest McDonalds I've ever been in my life for some coffee and snacks before heading off to a ridiculous all you can eat buffet dinner with a fresh pasta station.  The food here is excellent, and I really can't speak any more highly of it.  On a funny note related to the McDonalds, we also discovered that my cell phone given to me by my program has a "sexy" mode... We're all kind of afraid to find out what it does. 

My motorola piece of crap is bringing sexy back. 

After dinner last night we went out to just chill and have a beer to celebrate Gita's birthday! Today is her actual birthday so we're going to go out to celebrate some more, Argentine Style.  It'll be an adventure but so much fun! Other than that, we had orientation today with all of the International students at the university, which included taking our spanish placement test.  We'll meet with our advisors this week and then finally start our classes next monday.  I'm really looking forward to exploring the city some more and finally learning how to use public transportation.  My spoiled upbringing has made me completely oblivious as to how to take a bus.  Better start learning...

It's going to be an interesting week... ¡hasta luego!

- Meagan

Does anyone want to pack for me?

Packing is hard.  Like, really hard.

That pretty much sums up how this week has gone.  I think over the course of the past few days I've pulled out a pile of clothing each day and subsequently gave up and did something else.  Since I'm leaving tomorrow that doesn't seem like much of an option anymore...

The war-zone that is my bedroom 

But because of all the procrastination, I've spent a lot of time brainstorming how I was going to pack.  I think my most genius idea thus far is the socks inside of my new boots.  When you have to pack 4 months of your life into two suitcases, you have to save as much space as possible.  That's pretty much all I've come up with so far, but I'll take what I can get.

This is the best I could come up with

I didn't really realize how much I needed to do until yesterday.  There were a lot of little things I had been putting off which all hit me at once. Because of that, I had my fair share of mini meltdowns, but I'm more calm at this point.  With adding travel notifications to my cards and getting pictures for a visa, it's all just a lot.

Believe it or not, my flight leaves tomorrow night. It's finally started to hit me and sooner or later I've got to get myself in gear. We start our flying adventure at JFK with a 7ish hour flight into Lima Peru.  After that, we've got a pretty long layover where we're trapped in the airport, followed by another 5ish hour flight until we finally reach Buenos Aires that evening.  It'll be an adventure, but I know I'll survive through it.  Hopefully I can sleep on our overnight starter flight. I think the thing I'm most looking forward to is the weather. It's been ridiculously muggy and hot here at home, and the 50-60 degree weather when we arrive in BA is going to be fabulous.

That's really all I have for now, I'll post again next time I have stable internet/time once we've arrived and are settled! A jam-packed week starts on Sunday already.  ¡Adiós!

-Meagan

The Countdown Begins...

Hello everyone! This is the blog I'll be using for my study abroad adventures in Buenos Aires until mid-November. I'l try my best to keep this as updated as possible over the course of my time there. Along with taking a full course load at Universidad de Belgrano, be documenting my travels through BA and the surrounding areas, and hopefully doing some pretty fun stuff along the way.

So, I leave in 10 days.  Normally I'd be mid-panic attack at the mere thought of that, but the gravity of the situation hasn't quite hit me yet... which is both good and I bad, I suppose. I probably should be a little more concerned with packing and re-learning spanish, but for now I'd rather just pretend like I still have all summer at home.

The 12 of us from the University of Delaware going on this trip all got our home stay information yesterday (over a month later than we thought), finally! And, of course, the home that my roommate and I will stay in is the farthest from the university. Oh well, it looks like we're going to be in GREAT shape by the end of this!

Almost all of the students who went on this trip last fall recommended that we purchase the book "¡Che Boludo! A gringo's guide to understand the Argentines." Basically it's a small book completely dedicated to the... colorful... language of the Argentine people. There's a lot of slang used that can leave us Americans confused. For example, a lot of the spanish words we've learned mean completely different things there, and sometimes they can be inappropriate (like 'coger', look it up, I warned you.) The book also has a list of phrases with the literal translations as well as what they actually mean.  I think this will be some great plane reading (assuming I'm not completely knocked out.)

I'll try to update this at least once more before I leave when I'm in the packing process... that should be an adventure. But for now, I'll be spending time with my family, dog and friends and pretending that I have more than 10 days of summer left. ¡Adiós por ahora!

- Meagan