Project Glacier

This week I was in Patagonia! For those who don't know, Patagonia is basically home of glaciers, hiking or "trekking" as they call it here, animals and lots of other outdoorsy stuff. It's also absolutely gorgeous everywhere you look. I went with two girls from my program, Charlotte and Lindsey. We got there on Tuesday around noon and went to our hotel in El Calafate, the main town in Patagonia. Since our plan was to go to the Perito Moreno glacier the next day (the main glacier/tourist attraction around there), we decided to take it easy Tuesday and hung out around Calafate. We were all really enjoying being out of the city and breathing in the fresh, clean Patagonia air.

Wednesday morning we got up to hit the glacier bright and early. It's an hour drive from Calafate to the glacier. When we paid for the hotel, it included transportation to and from the glacier so we had a car come pick us up. We stopped at one point to get out and take pictures because it was just so beautiful.


When we got there, we decided to take a boat ride that takes you up close to it. The boat ride was full of tourists but it was still incredible. I was amazed at how blue the glacier was. I guess I didn't know what to expect but it was full of all different shades of blue.


After the boat ride, our car took us to the "balconies," a series of stairs you can walk on that take you to different views of the glaciers. I'm pretty sure this wasn't still Perito Moreno glacier, but a bunch of different glaciers.


The next day, we decided to go horseback riding! I hadn't really been horseback riding before so I was a little nervous...ok, a lot nervous. But overall it was really fun and SO beautiful.




Anyway, that was my trip to Patagonia in a nutshell. It was really nice to get out of the city for a few days and be in such gorgeous scenery. Now, as I'm sure everyone that's reading this blog knows, my parents arrive today! They will be here today, Monday the 5th, through the 17th. I'm so excited!

Cultural differences

Having been here for over a month, certain cultural differences have really started to stand out. For example:

-Tap water is never given in restaurants, even though for the most part tap water is safe to drink here. When we (American friends and myself) ask for tap water in restaurants, the waiter either gives us a dirty look and reluctantly gives it to us, or they tell us they don't have that.

-Mate, basically the national beverage of Argentina. It's a very strong kind of tea that is a huge part of Argentine culture. It's traditionally served with a group and comes with a set of rules for how to serve it, as well as very specific Mate equipment, such as a special mate cup/straw, for serving. From what I've seen, Argentines drink Mate all the time and often bring it with them places, complete with a thermos for hot water and the fancy cup/straw. It's pretty amusing seeing people on the subway juggling their mate equipment. Also, if you go to the beach or a park in the middle of the day, literally every group of people will be drinking mate. I don't think there's really an equivalent custom in the States. Here's what it looks like:

-You don't tip in taxis.

-When greeting someone, everyone gives kisses on the cheek (or more like touching your cheek to someone else's and making a kissy noise). For example, if someone is meeting up with their group of friends, that person will go around and kiss everyone in the group. Although this is sort of time consuming, I think it's a really nice cultural norm because it's an obvious and friendly way of acknowledging and greeting everyone on the group.

-Pedestrians do not have the right of way. Cars never yield for pedestrians. Ever.

-Traffic lanes might as well not exist.

-People go to the gym but they don't really work up a sweat. They walk on the treadmill or do some light weight-lifting. This is a little more true for girls, but also applies to most guys. When I go to the gym and do my usual routine (which naturally makes me sweaty, as going to the gym should), I can't help but feel awkward when I leave after working up a sweat.

Anyway, this past week was a lot of fun and I think I've figured out what classes I'm going to take. They are:

-Taller de Radio at UBA (Radio Workshop - It's in the Communications school and I think we make our own radio shows in groups)
-My mandatory Spanish class through my program, but I'm in the section focused on theater in Argentina.
-Sociedad y Estado de Argentina (Argentine Society and State), an optional class through my program.
-Psicología de la Interacción Social y los Pequeños Grupos (Psychology of Social Interaction and Small Groups) at USAL.

Other highlights of the week included:

-We have another girl that's living with my family! She's Venezuelan and is going to be here for two months working. She's 24 and is super friendly. It's really nice having someone my age to talk to in Spanish and to hang out with. We went to the movies the other day and she came out to dinner with my friends on Saturday.

-I tried out for the choir at USAL and I think I got in! I say I think because at the end of the audition she told me that I can start next week, but at the same time, I'm supposed to have an interview with the coordinator of the music program. I'm not really sure what that's about, but from what I can tell, I can join! I think that would be really fun and hopefully a good way to meet Argentines.

-On Saturday, I went back to El Tigre, the cute river town about an hour away from BA. We went kayaking!

-On Sunday, after a delicious brunch of savory and sweet pancakes at a famous pancake place, my friends and I went to Tierra Santa - a Bible-themed theme park. Yes, that's correct. Kitchy is really the only way to describe it. There weren't any rides but they had shows and lots of exhibits depicting Bible scenes with figures. The shows included some that were just fun music and dancing, but then there was one about the birth of Jesus. They also have a giant Jesus statue that gets raised up every half an hour that's supposed to represent the resurrection. The whole experience was bizarre but pretty funny at the same time.

Since this week is Semana Santa, it's a long weekend and I'm going to Patagonia tomorrow! I'm super excited because from all the pictures I've seen it looks absolutely gorgeous. There are a lot of glaciers there and you can go walk on them and do "ice-trekking," which makes me sound super outdoorsy and hardcore. Yep, that's me...

PS. I wanted to upload a picture of mate and some pics of Tierra Santa but for some reason, Blogspot is being weird and it's not working. Hopefully I can put some up later.

One-month anniversary

Happy one-month anniversary of being in Argentina! A part of me can't believe it's already been a month, but I also feel like I've been here for a year. During the first couple weeks, we did so much in a day, that each day felt like four days. I'm glad that things now are starting to be a little more relaxed since our days are filled with way less orientation and more just figuring out classes and getting into a rhythm here.

This past week, I intended to try out a bunch of new classes. (Notice how I say intended.) Although I did successfully go to two new Argentine classes this week, I intended to try two additional ones at UBA, the gigantic public university. However, both times I went to an UBA class, the other students and I (Argentine students included), ended up waiting outside the classroom for an hour before someone came and told us that the class does not begin until the following week, (whereas it says online that these classes were supposed to begin this week). Needless to say, I was pretty confused/frustrated/angry. At first, I thought that maybe I just missed the memo because I'm foreign, but that clearly wasn't the case since there were plenty of Argentine students there, too. I was confused about how a university can run on such complete and total lack of communication and angry that I had just wasted hours of my day (one of the buildings I went to took about an hour on public transportation for me to get to). Oh well, I just kept telling myself to go with the flow. That seems to be the name of the game around here.

Anyway, of the two classes I went to that did actually take place, one I liked and one not so much. The one I liked was a psychology class at Salvador (one of the private universities we can take classes at), called Psicología de la Interacción Social y los Pequeños Grupos (Psychology of Social Interaction and Small Groups). I was relieved to find out that another girl on my program, Emily, is in the class, too, so we were able to try and figure out what was going on together. The class had about 50 people in it and during the break Emily and I talked to some Argentine students who seemed friendly. The professor seemed nice and interesting and didn't have too difficult of an accent (a crucial factor in my decision-making). Nevertheless, I still had a hard time understanding what he was saying a lot of the time but I'm hoping my comprehension will improve over time.

On a more fun note, I had a great weekend! On Thursday night, I went to see the play Agosto (August Osage County), which I had seen in the states a few months ago. I absolutely loved the play when I saw it in the states, so I was really excited to see that it was playing here. I got a group of friends to go and we all had a really good time. Although it definitely helped having known the story already, I was surprised at how much of the Spanish I could understand, especially when they spoke on the slow side.



On Friday night, I went to El Teatro Ciego (Blind Theater), where you sit in total darkness and listen to a play happening around you. It was cool at first, but after realizing how much more difficult it was to understand Spanish without seeing faces, I zoned out for a lot of it. Afterward, we went to another famous parrilla called La Brigada. We got the special fixed menu for tourists where they just bring out a bunch of stuff for you to try, including mollejas (sweetbreads a.k.a. glands), another odd intestinal part, and two different cuts of meat. We were all very adventurous. In all the guidebooks, it says that at La Brigada the meat is so tender that you can cut it with a spoon, and this was in fact true. See below.



Although the meat was good at La Brigada, I think so far, in the competition for best parrilla, La Cabrera beat out La Brigada, (see earlier post for La Cabrera).

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!

Carnaval, clases y el cine

This weekend, a group of us decided at the last minute that we wanted to go to Carnaval, since it was the last weekend it was going on. Although Carnaval in Argentina is not nearly as big as it is in Brazil, Argentina does have its own big Carnaval celebration in Gualeguaychú (say that five times fast), a town three hours away from Buenos Aires. The trip overall was super fun but exhausting at the same time.

We got on a bus early Saturday morning and drove to Gualeguaychú. Since Carnaval doesn't start until nighttime, the bus could take us to either the beach or a pool area where we would spend the day, and then the bus would pick us up to take us to Carnaval. We chose the pool because we had heard that the water at the beach isn't clean and it's not very good for swimming. (Gualeguaychú is on a river that's borders Argentina and Uruguay. My host parents explained to me that there are "papeleras," paper factories, in Uruguay next to the river that are contaminating the water and a lot of Argentines are upset about it. When we were there, we saw people with signs protesting the papeleras.) Anyway, we spent the entire day by the pool sunbathing and relaxing.

That night we were taken to the stadium for Carnaval. I really had no idea what to expect. At the Carnaval here, it was like a show where you have assigned seats and watch what's going on. It was kind of like being at a sports game because you have a seat but people are making tons of noise and you can leave the stadium to buy food/beer/souveniers. The "show" started at 11pm and did not end until 4am, and by "show," I mean a giant parade. It was basically one gigantic parade with over-the-top floats and people in outrageous costumes dancing. It was really fun and exciting for the first two or three hours, but after that it got a little old. They also played the same four songs on repeat which were super catchy and fun to sing along with/dance to, but after five hours of hearing the same songs over and over again, it got to be a little much. Plus, most of us had gotten 3-4 hours of sleep the night before, since we left so early, and by 3am were having trouble staying awake. However, it was definitely an experience and unlike anything I had ever seen. We got back to BA at 8am when I promptly went home and slept for the rest of the morning/early afternoon. Here are some pictures!








Of course, since my semester abroad can't be all about going off to Carnaval for a weekend and eating great steak, I thought I'd update a little bit on classes. There's not much to say yet since classes haven't really started. With the program I'm on, I can take classes at four different universities and each one starts classes at different times. Although we will be taking 4-5 classes, the program encourages you to register for as much as 15 classes so you have room to choose ones you like. Only one of the universities I want to take classes at has had registration so far and they start classes this week, so I'll have my first class on Thursday. The class is Latin American Contemporary Art and it's one of their classes meant for foreign students, but will still be in Spanish. The rest of the universities start class in a week or two and then I have a while to decide which of those classes I actually want to take. Realistically, I may not know my official schedule until 3-4 weeks from now.

The third part of this post is about movies. Today, I went to the movies with Michelle, a friend from my program, and we went to see "El Secreto de Sus Ojos," a popular Argentine film that I think is nominated for Best Foreign Film. In fact, as I type this post, I am watching the Oscars. The movie was a drama/thriller and I'm sure was really good, but to be honest, it was pretty difficult to understand what they wer saying. I was able to catch words/sentences here and there, but for the most part I figured out the plot using means other than listening to the words. Nevertheless, it was good practice for my comprehension and it was fun going to see a movie that's so popular here. As I said earlier, right now I'm watching the Oscars, or should I say, "Los Premios Oscar," and it's dubbed in Spanish. I assumed that the Oscars would be shown with Spanish subtitles, but they actually have a Spanish language track on top of the English. It's pretty funny seeing people like Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey onstage speaking Spanish. Honestly, I'm doing my best to tune out the Spanish and listen to the English underneath.