Me llamo Clara

Since coming to Argentina, I've increasingly realized that it's very difficult to understand/say my name. You would think that being only one syllable and four simple letters, Beth wouldn't be that hard of a name to understand. However, most of the time when I need to give my name for something, whether it be when I call for a taxi or take my laundry in, my name winds up sounding like Betrhgrgfgnfjvg. Even when I tried to spell it out to the woman at the laundry place, she still did not understand. However, when I said she could instead use my middle name, Clara, she instantly preferred that. It turns out Clara is a very common name here. (My host-mom's mother name is Clara, as we well as the academic coordinator of my program.) Thus, I decided that the women who work at the laundry place will know me as Clara.

This past week was really nice overall because classes have only begun at one of our universities. I'm only trying one class there, so this week I only had one class, Latin American Contemporary Art. Overall, I liked it but the university is really far from where I am, so it's inconvenient to get to. Although I liked the professor, I didn't like the environment of the school that much. I thought it felt like a high school. (This is the Universidad Católica Argentina). We'll see how my classes go next week. Hopefully, I'll like them as much or better. Although I only had one class this week, it's been really stressful trying to figure out which other classes I want to take, when/where each one meets and what each university requires of their foreign students. Some universities require a Spanish exam to enroll in certain courses, but it's not always clear which ones do/how you go about taking the test. A bunch of us went to UBA (Universidad Buenos Aires) on Tuesday to take their Spanish test, and I passed! This means I'm allowed to enroll in classes there.

In between figuring out classes, I did some fun things in and around the city. For example, I went to the zoo! I went with three other girls on my program and it was so much fun walking around and looking at the animals. One major difference about the Buenos Aires Zoo compared to zoos in the U.S. is there were animals just walking around with the people, not in any sort of enclosed area. Granted, these weren't animals like lions or tigers (which they did have, but those were not walking with the people), but rather these really really cute creatures that look like half-deer-half-bunny, or as I like to call them, bunny-deers. Here's a picture of a mother and baby bunny-deer.







On Saturday, I went to El Tigre, an adorable town on a river about 50 minutes from Buenos Aires. I went with my friend from the program, Charlotte, and we had a lot of fun walking around the town. We didn't actually leave Buenos Aires until the late afternoon, so we only had a couple hours there before it got dark, but we both really want to go back since it's super easy and cheap to get there. They also offer boat rides and bikes to rent, which we both want to do next time.



This next week is going to be pretty hectic because classes begin at UBA and USAL (Universidad de Salvador), as well as the classes with IFSA, my program. Since we are all starting out by trying way more classes than we intend on taking, it's going to be a bit insane running around trying to get to eight or nine classes in one week, not to mention in a city where I haven't totally figured out the public transportation yet. It's going to be an adventure!