La Feria de Mataderos

This week was the first week I've gotten sick, but I must say...it pays to live with doctor's. Jose retired 2 years ago but Alicia works out of the house. She has her own consolatory in the first floor, which is quite convenient for both her working and for me, being sick. So being sick, not much happened this week

 My host parents always take their host students to La Feria de Mataderos (a flea market in the barrio of mataderos in buenos aires) and buy them a Mate gord and bombillo. The flea markets here are really cool to walk through and are always packed. This particular flea market puts on a show every sunday which includes a flag ceremony, music, horse races and lots of dancing. El Matadero in english translates to "the slaughterhouse" and is a place where meat is processed and sold. El Matadero is also the name of a very important literature work by Esteban Echeverria which takes place in this city and was critical in the construction of the nation. El Matadero talks about a tragic encounter between a young Unitarian (which represented civilization) and a band of federals (which represented the church and government) who assassinated the Unitarian in el matadero. The story represented the voice of the public in that era and showed the passion and spirit they had for their country as argentina at that time had just separated from spain and was trying to gain their own identity. (I know all this because it was the first work of literature that we read in my Latin American Literature class and was the topic of the essay which I had to turn in on my birthday).

 

 El Matadero

Choripan is VERY popular in Argentina and VERY good.

The people on the left taught me how to dance El Gato, a traditional dance of Argentina. My host mom also had fun dancing as can be seen on the right

Besides the history/literature lesson it was really cool to go to this feria because it was right in front of the original matadero in which the story took place. The flag ceremony was also cool to watch because all of the people surrounding me were screaming out the national flag song with a passion that I don't see often in the united states for our flag. The amount of passion and pride that these people have for their country amazes me and makes me want to take part in it. No matter what happens in their government, these people will always love the land of their country and things they represent.

.

As I had stated in a previous blog, Mate is a traditional bitter Argentine herbal drink that is similar to tea and has a ton of caffeine in it. You will see Argentine's drinking Mate EVERYWHERE and they usually will bring a thermis with them to keep the water hot which they pour into their mate. It is a custom that if you are drinking Mate and are in a room with someone else that you offer them some. While I was drinking Mate this week, I spilled the "right off the stove" hot water in the thermis on my hand, causing it to blister up, resulting in a pretty bad burn.

Also I will no longer complain about having to pay 2 dollars for a load of laundry anymore as here, it cost me 100 pesos ($20) to do this duffel bag full of laundry.

Until next time...CHAU!

The Week of August 16th: Birthday Surprises/Cordoba

 Well, it's been 2 weeks since I last blogged and due to the mass amount of events that has happened in the last few weeks, I will do this blog in 2 parts: Birthday Surprises and Cordoba.

Part I

This week has definitely been the most hectic week I have experienced in Argentina yet at the same time, it will probably be the week that I will remember the most. For those of you who didn't know, my birthday was this last Thursday on August 16th. This is the first year that I had school on my birthday, the first year that my birthday has fallen in the winter and the first year that it has rained on my birthday. So all in all, I wasn't expecting to have much of a birthday this year and was actually quite stressed out as I had 2 essays due (which my professor had assigned 2 days prior) and 5 hours of class. It had been a long day and right after school I had decided to accept my friend John's request from the day prior to spend the weekend in Cordoba with him. So right after class I spent 2 hours trying to book my micro (bus), which ended up not working and therefore I had to go to a travel agency in person that night to set everything in stone.

So I get back to the house feeling groggy from the day and sat down on my computer right before I was going to take a shower when my host mom asks for me to come into the kitchen. Now usually dinner is at 9, so I was thinking that I did something wrong since it was only 8:15. When I entered the kitchen I heard a loud "surprise" and found a table full of some of my friends that my host mom (being the sneaky person she is) had got in contact with to throw a surprise party for me and I must say it worked because I have never been so surprised in my life.

I actually didn't know what to do so I said "un momento", shut the door, ran upstairs, changed out of my clothes, washed my face and then came back down only to find a confused bunch of people wondering why I had just left. It ended up being a GREAT night. My host mom had made carne empanadas and pizza bits and had provided lots of red wine and beer. After stuffing ourselves, Alicia, my host mom, brought out a delicious cake with a tall skinny girl on top with oars in her hand (which she had made from coffee stirrers) since I am rower.

my host parents Alicia y Jose

So 12 o'clock rolls around and of course when I'm feeling about ready to crash in bed and have a good night's rest, my friends decided that I needed to go out for my birthday, so we met up with some other people at a fancy bar, then went to another bar (Sugar Bar, the one I had eaten "pancakes" at as mentioned in the previous blog) and then at 3am left for the Boliche (club). When we arrived to the boliche, a guy who was passing by in a car (as I think he heard us speaking english) told us it was closed. One of the guy's then asked if he knew of any that were open and after talking with him for a bit we found out that this guy works at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires and was actually from LA. After Alex and I had said we were from Long Beach he finally gave into the request of one of the guys, asking if he could take us to a Boliche.

Now I've never gotten in the car with a stranger before but being that there were 5 other people (half of them being guys) and it was a guy that works at the U.S. embassy, I decided it'd be ok. So he took the kids seats out of the back of his car, put them in the trunk and drove us around. Because the next 2 Boliche's were closed, he took us to a place of his friend's in which the only way you could get in was if you knew somebody. This place had 2 bars, one upstairs and one downstairs, a dancefloor and a nice outside resting area. Angel, the friend of Jermaine (u.s. embassy guy), who worked at the bar then told us that if we are friends of Jermaine then that place is our house and we're welcome any time. Angel then kept making us free drinks (to both the guys and the girls) for the rest of the night. Jermaine then talked with a lot of my friends who are international studies majors about connections to jobs in the Embassy. When we left the bar at 6am it started pouring down rain on us and of course, being umbrella-less we ended up getting soaked.
Overall, I think this was definitely the best birthday I've experienced yet.

Part 2

Cordoba is  a beautiful providence (like most in Argentina),  which is well known for their beer. Actually every year in the 1st week of october, they have a festival of beer called Octoberfest, which is also celebrated in Germany. The city of Cordoba has a large German population and German influence. I originally was planning on going to Octoberfest just to have the experience of going, yet when some of my friends invited me to go this last weekend, since we had a 4 day weekend, I decided to just go now instead since 1. I'm not a huge drinker 2. It'd be less packed 3. It'd cost less to go now 4. HIKING...of course 5. We'd be staying outside the city in a chill town called Villa Carlos Paz outside the city and 5. I wanted to get away from the rain that Buenos Aires was going to have that weekend. So of course the night before I left, I booked my ticket and was set to go. My friends actually left on Thursday yet because I wanted to be in Buenos Aires for my Birthday I decided to leave on Friday.

Getting there...was HORRIBLE.

If you ever decide to take a micro in Argentina, you DEFINITELY should go with someone who's done it before. Getting to Cordoba was quite hectic 1. because the city of Retiro in general, where the buses leave from is caotic, 2. It was pouring down rain outside when I was trying to find the place and 3. My ticket said the bus could arrive anywhere from platform 15 to platform 54 in which you need to listen to the person speaking over the microphone (in castellano -the spanish that argentine's speak- amongst all the background noise) for when and where your bus arrives.
As soon as the bus gets there and loads up the people, they're gone, so it can be quite easy to miss your bus.
To give you a small sample of what Retiro and the bus station is like I have provided a link to a youtube video below, only imagine it with double the amount of people in the pouring rain and flooded streets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2pGVlj8cqc
Luckily for me though, I found a really nice young couple who helped me out and walked with me back and forth searching for my bus until it arrive (20 minutes late!). Once I was on the bus all was good. I paid for the cama bus which had large, comfortable seats that decline 160 degrees and provide movies to watch, although everyone mainly just sleeps.

Cordoba itself was BEAUTIFUL.
The first day we went on a tour all over the providence where we visited Che Guevara's house, saw this huge lake with house boats which some people live on, went sausage and sweet wine tasting (the BEST meat I've ever had) and visited the main city, Cordoba where Octoberfest is held and where we stopped to eat. That night we had an Asado with a bunch of Argentine's around our age that we met at the hostile, where I had the BEST carne, short-ribs and chicken that I have EVER had in my life.

 The German-influenced City of Cordoba.

On our second day there we had planned on going hiking in the city we were staying at, Villa Carlos Paz. Yet when we tried to get on the trail after walking through a favela-like area, we found out from the locals that the trail had been shut off to the public and is now private property, so the only way to get there was to take a gondola ride to the top of another mountain which would cost 50 pesos and get on the trail from there. Another guy from the neighborhood then suggested we go to another place called Cerro de la Cruz and said that if we follow the river, there are some mountains that would be a lot more worthwhile hiking that the ones in Carlos Paz. So like usual adventurous and fearless college kids we took a bus about 30 minutes outside of town which dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. We actually encountered some girls at the bus station that were in our class at school, who then joined us as we went in search for the river.
After finding the river, we hiked through a bunch of rocks and discovered a really nice beach area where we then laid on the sand and rocks under the sun relaxing and eating our sandwiches for the majority of our time there.

Once we decided we've relaxed enough, we went on to search for some mountains that we could climb. On our way we encountered a stray dog playing with a man in the water who we were asking directions from. This dog was SUPER playful. If you kicked water at her, she would try to catch it and would go all the way across the river to fetch a stick and bring it back to you. When we left that spot the dog started following us EVERYWHERE we went.

We then got to a point where we needed to cross the river to get to the other side. At this point, 2 of the guys did not want get in the river and decided to try to find another way around. When we crossed the river, one of the girls fell into the water, dropping her shoes which the current then started taking away. She then tried to throw her jacket on the sand to free up her hands to grab her shoes, only the jacket didn't make it to the beach and fell in the water as well, along with her phone and camera that were in her jacket. She did get her shoes but made it out soaked and camera-less. After the guys had been gone a while, we decided to leave as we didn't know where they were at, had been waiting awhile and figured they'd be able to make it back home by themselves eventually. From here I will list a sequence of events that happened.
We...

Looked for the guys but didn't see any traces of them anywhere.
Came across a road that split into 2 directions.

Picked a direction (simply by the assumption that right is always right) and continued.
Found some Argentine's playing American Football (very rare).

Played Football with the Argentine's.

Found the guys we had lost while we were playing.
Found an ice cream shop with THE BEST ice cream.

Made it back home.
Went to a Jazz Festival at a bar for dinner. 

John ended up being the only guy left once we lost the other 2 guys after crossing the river.

This dog kept trying to beg for my ice-cream but I kept telling him he's too ugly for me to give in.

And so day 3 came.

We had ended up staying out quite late the night before and once we got up in the morning, we decided we just wanted to chill outside on the roof in the sun since it was a GORGEOUS day. So this next picture pretty much sums of the majority of our day.

drinking Mate, reading books, lounging around, listening to music and laying underneath the sun

After that we decided to play some ping pong in our hostel, then explore the city and get some empanadas to eat. We ended up finding an arcade game place in which we played pool, air hockey, and lots of arcade games.

Overall, I had a GREAT time in Cordoba in which I was able to meet some really cool Argentine's in our hostel, eat some AMAZING asado, take a break from school and the city-life of Buenos Aires and FINALLY absorb a bit of that warm "California" sun I'm accustomed to.

Me and 2 Argentine guys (Mateus y Paulo) in our hostel at "breakfast".

Rain, Pancakes, Movies and Starbucks

Well…I spoke too soon in the previous blog when saying the weather has been nice because this last week has been filled with rain, thunder and lots of lightning…and apparently when it rains in Buenos Aires, it POURS. Being from California, I’ve never really experienced a thunder storm before and the thunder has been so loud the last few days that it has caused me to wake up several times though out the night. Yet as much as I hate rain, I do have to admit that I find the sound of the raindrops pattering against the streets to be quite soothing and the freshness in the air after a good pouring to be quite nice. 

Yesterday me and some friends in my Contemporary Argentine Art class were planning on going to “El Museo de Bellas Artes” to take a look at some art pieces for a project due next week. Yet, because it was raining “como piedras” (like stones) as my host mom has said, we decided that we would rather save it for another day and instead, go to an American Restaurant/Bar that has “American” breakfast served all day and has 2 large screens showing the Olympics. I know I had mentioned the whole breakfast ordeal in Argentina a bit earlier, but just in case you didn’t get that, I MISS BREAKFAST! In Argentina their breakfast contains a couple pieces of white toast with jelly and ducle de leche along with a few sugar-glazed coated pastries, which for me being an American AND an athlete is pretty much next to nothing compared to my usual 3 egg omelet, 2-3 bowls of cereal and a fruit/protein smoothie with greek yogurt and oatmeal. So believe me, the hardest adjustment to this country has been breakfast. The last 3 weeks I have been CRAVING pancakes and have been wondering where the International House of Pancakes is when I really need it internationally? After many google searches for restaurants that serve pancakes, I supposedly found one called “Sugar Bar” and was SOOOO exited to finally indulge in my cravings. Yet when my food came out, as I should have expected, the pancakes I was expecting were not American. American pancakes are thick and fluffy, yet in argentina, if you can even find them, their pancakes (called panquques) are extremely thin and have a different consistency. So if you happen to know a good American breakfast café or restaurant in Argentina, PLEASE do not hesitate in informing me about it.

This past week, I have gone to the movies twice. Once to see Batman (FINALLY, it was great…AND in English with spanish subtitles), and the other to see an Argentinean Independent film called Elefante Blanco (White Elephant) at a Latin American Indie Film Festival. If you know spanish or happen to be able to watch it with engligh subtitles, I would definitely recommend this movie; it does a great job of capturing the Argentine culture and displaying the importance of the things they stand for. Below I have included a link to the trailer for the movie on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2el1OiOR-c4

After watching Elefante Blanco we went to a bar in Palermo called Acabar, which has a lot of spanish board games and that night had a house special of 1 liter of beer or wine for 29 pesos ($6). We ended up playing a spanish version of Pictionary, which I was HORRIBLE at since I didn’t have the vocabulary that was required to know the words listed and was at a distinct disadvantage as I was with an Argentine, a Mexican and a Spaniard whom are all fluent in spanish. Even if I knew the English word for the picture shown, they wouldn’t give it to me because I “had” to say it in spanish since “it’s Argentina”, but it was still fun.

Today I did end up being able to go to El Museo de Bellas Artes and visited Plaza Francia as seen in the monument given to Argentina by the French below.

To end this blog (for those of you coffee addicts) I would like to inform you that YES there is Starbucks out here; actually, all the chalk that the professor’s use on the chalk board in my university is stored in Starbucks cups, which I find rather amusing.
Until next time, CHAU! 

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).

Recoleta and Good o'l Mac

 I know it’s kind of counterintuitive, but the first place that I went out to eat at in Argentina was McDonalds. Yup, I know what you’re thinking…but I can explain (and what a culture shock it was)!

My first full day in Argentina, one of the guys that lives in the house with me, Blake, invited me to go to Recoleta with him and his Argentine friend, Ariel. Blake is leaving on Monday to go back to Seattle and since he’s pretty much out of money, he asked if we were cool with eating at McDonalds. But, this McDonald’s wasn’t like any McDonald’s…this was an Argentine McDonalds and EVERYTHING in Argentina is “muy linda” aka nice. In fact, most fast food restaurants are 2 stories. The first thing I noticed was that the dining hall was super fancy; it had cool lights, artistic statues, lots of bright colors and nice, comfortable chairs to sit on, (even the workers were dressed up nicely). The second thing I noticed was the small amount of options they had and NO DOLLAR MENU! The food was very expensive for fast food, averaging at about 40 pesos or $9 for a combo and they don’t serve complimentary water L. I had a Big Mac, since Blake told me that the Big Mac is the cheapest thing to get at 25 pesos ($5.5), but it wasn’t on the menu because they don’t want people buying it because it’s so “cheap”. Everything else was over $7. I’ve never gotten my food faster at a McDonalds before and there were so many people there that we could barely find a place to sit.

After eating, we went to the Recoleta Cemetery, a very well known, historic site where lots of famous predominately Argentineans are buried. It had some BEAUTIFUL statues and we spent hours walking around inside. We then did some shopping in the flea markets and roamed around the city. 

 

Things you should know when “roaming around” Buenos Aires…

1. Pedestrian is not in their vocabulary, so watch out for cars because they WON'T stop for you

2. You have to go INTO the busy street and wave your hand around to get the bus to stop for you, the bus might start driving away when you're not even fully in it and they also might not stop all the way to let you off.

3. There are no lanes when driving and if there are lanes, NO ONE obeys them.

Donde está Renae?

Renae está atrapada en Nueva York…para 20 horas!

I haven’t even arrived in Argentina, yet like I said it would, a good story has come.
Let’s begin in the airplane in San Francisco.

After getting a grand total of 3 hours of sleep the night before, I entered the plane to the sound of 2 babies crying, walked to the very back where my seat was located, sat next to a man that strangely looked exactly like the flight attendant (except the flight attendant had grey hair), and began to wonder if I was on the right plane as the pilot said, “Welcome aboard on the flight to Paris”. My first reaction was, “aw man…how’d I happen to get on this flight”, until the flight attendant said, “We will be stopping in New York before Paris” (whew!).  So my flight begins to go out (we boarded early), and then we waited, and waited, and even waited some more. We ended up waiting an hour on the plane before finding out that there are extreme thunderstorms all over the East Coast and we would have to wait another hour, in which after that was up, we were told that we would be going back to the terminal and getting off the plane until they were told it would be ok to go. At this point I would have missed my flight to Buenos Aires, so I went to the customer service line to try to see if I can change my flight. 

After 2 hours of waiting, a customer service representative asked if anyone was on the flight to New York and then when I said I was, she told me that my flight would be leaving at 3:15 (which was in 20 minutes) and that they would connect me to a flight in Houston which would then take me to Buenos Aires. I then remembered my luggage was on that plane, so I rushed back to make it, only then to end up waiting 2 more hours before we finally left. Through all this waiting on the plane, I quickly found out that the toilets were broken and not flushing (remember those babies I told you about earlier, pee-yew!).

Now for the fun part.

When I arrived in New York at 2am “hoteless” and “luggageless” (as they would not give us our luggage), the customer service line had just closed and we were told that there would be no one to help us until 5am. I ended up meeting 2 other students who are going to be studying abroad in Buenos Aires, an Argentinean girl who was going back to visit her family and an extremely nice spanish professor who had studied abroad in Argentina when she was in school and was going back to visit. After lots of phone calls and holds on the complementary airport phone, I was told that the only flight going to Buenos Aires was going to be on the 20^th at 10pm. Right when I was about to cry just thinking about being in the airport with no luggage, no contact solution or case, no toiletries and no place to sleep for the next 2 days, the spanish professor came up to me, gave me some Ghirardelli dark chocolate with almonds, took the phone over and ended up getting me a flight on the 19^th at 10pm that was originally “full”. 

Afterwards all of us sat at a table conversing about various things in spanish such as futbol, grammer, the culture and funny spanish stories; for example the professor, Sarah, told us about a story when a girl accidentally told someone, “estoy exitada” when she meant to say, “I am excited”, but in spanish that would mean,  “I am sexually exited” instead of using “estoy emocionada”. Once she realized what she said, she replied by saying “estoy embarassada” meaning, “I am pregnant” instead of “I am embarrassed” like she meant. So for those of you English speaking folks, don’t just automatically assume that you can add an a or an o on the end of the English word to make what the word would be in spanish.

After about an hour or so we went back to the customer service line where there were several people sleeping on the ground.

We then ended up doing the same ourselves until the representatives showed up at 5:45am and got us our new boarding passes. Sarah, the professor, then brought us to the United Club in the airport as she happened to have frequent flyer miles and club benefits, where we were able to sleep comfortably on leather couches, get complimentary breakfast and snacks throughout our next 16 hrs of waiting, and even reserve shower appointments where soap, shampoo, conditioner and towels were provided in our own large private bathroom with hot water. In the end, everything worked out, even though my 18hr flight ended up turning into a 43 hour exhausting adventure. Now...We wait for our arrival in Argentina.

Early Thanksgiving

So I ended up with an A in my human physiology class and therefore have just started preparing for Argentina this last week, yet things seems to be falling into place. I found a host family to stay with through a friend who found them off a handy site called Craigslist as well as a boathouse with a competitive rowing team that I can compete with, called The Tigre Boat Club. To top that off, my parents even made me a thanksgiving dinner last night since I will be gone for thanksgiving this year...and it can't get much better than that. I am SO exited to be living in Argentina and so far, the only apprehension I have is that of packing...Tomorrow morning I will be on my flight to Argentina and I STILL HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED to pack :P!

Anyways, I hope to stop boring you with all this pre-departure information and promise you some good stores to come in the near future.