10 Days and 150 Photos Later

I will always try to start off with a good story and today I have an “ok” one.

In Argentina it is a custom to kiss another person on the cheek if you are meeting them for the first time or if you are familiar with someone and walk into a room or leave a room that they are in. I have been hanging around a lot of Argentines lately AND am living with a host family, so I’ve gotten quite accustomed to this kissing thing. I started school yesterday and am taking specific classes in spanish for international students; so there are no argentine students on the floors where my classes are. Today at school, I saw this guy Siye, whom I had randomly met in Buenos Aires last week, and who also happens to also be an international student at my university in some of my classes.  My automatic reaction when I saw Siye, forgetting that I was now amongst a bunch of international students, was to kiss him on the cheek. Now Siye is not familiar with the Argentine customs as he has not been hanging around many Argentines, so when he went to give me a hug (an American custom), he received a kiss and his reaction… “uhhhh?” and then looked around to see who was watching, leaving for a bit of an awkward situation and some explaining, or rather teaching to do.

Now for the “real” stuff.

A lot has passed in the last 10 days. I’ve met some more really cool people, went to my first bar…at the age of 19, stayed out till 4:30am (must you remember, I’m used to working the 9-5 sleeping), drank lots of Mate (a super bitter, weird looking drink that is similar to tea), started school, watched a live tango dance in the streets, tried to get one of those weird looking soldiers to try to move (those guys really don't budge) and have apparently been able to blend in as an Argentine quite well.

Alex (one of my roomates) & I drinking Mate and eating argentinean biscuits
- a typical tea time around 5pm

Today I had my first rowing practice in Tigre. I still have an injury with my upper right back muscles and ribs, so I can’t go all out 100% yet, but today (for the rowers reading this) I did an 80 minute piece going from 10 minutes on the erg at a stroke rate of 18, keeping my heart rate below max to 10 minutes on the spin bike, again measuring my heart rate, and then worked on legs and abs afterward...feels good to be back. Practice starts at 8am but I have to leave my house by 7 to make it to the train on time, which I then take for about 40 minutes and then run 2 miles from the train station to the boathouse. The boathouse is HUGE. Besides having boats, locker rooms and a full gym, it has a restaurant, a pool, a”rest” room (which has a tv and couches in it and is where we watch the Olympics before/after practice), and the boathouse even has their own dog named Horquilla, which is the spanish word for oarlock.

Horquilla - the boathouse's dog

the restaurant IN the boathouse

 

As far as classes, I got into all the one’s I wanted  and am taking Latin American Culture, Contemporary Argentinean Art, Tango the Expression of Buenos Aires, Latin American Literature and Latin American Cinema. So far all is good. I can understand my professors quite well and they all seem really chill. It takes me 25 minutes to walk from my house to the school and I actually have to go through El Barrio Chino aka “China town” to get there. Chinese people speaking spanish kind of threw me off for a bit, but overall it is a nice walk. China town is a bit smelly, yet so far it is the only place I have found peanut butter.

More things about Argentina you should know…

1. They eat LOTS of sweets here...especially for "breakfast". Actually, I’m pretty sure all Argentines have diabetes by the age of 30, even though they’re not overweight due to the mass amount of walking they do here.
2. Argentines start eating dinner around 10pm
3. Clubs don’t open till 2am…AND STAY OPEN until 7am.
4. NOTHING is free here and there is no such thing as complementary water…not even at McDonalds. (oh yea…and if there HAPPENS to be toilet paper in public restrooms, you have to pay for it).
5. The garbage man comes at 11pm rather than 5am
6. Dog Walkers are EVERYWHERE. (Other than in the movies, I've never actually seen legit dog walkers before, and here they walk about 20 dogs at once!) Dogs walkers get paid about 200 pesos per dog to walk them for 2 hours twice a day.
7. Yet do to the last comment, there is dog poop EVERYWHERE...all over the sidewalks (so you pretty much have to look at the ground while you're walking, since there is at LEAST 1 doo doo per block).