profoundly upsetting

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enjoyed the closest thing we have gotten on our "vacation" in El Calafate. our professor had scheduled some radio interviews with local Patagonian stations. now much like all of the rest of our trip, we had no idea why were were here.

this wasnt like the radio station we visited in Serbia, discussing the conversion to free speech, and their involvement in the overthrow of Milosovic.

this wasnt like our tour of the Radio Free Europe (or whatever it is called nowadays).

this wasnt to talk about how we are dialoguing with different civilization, about being American college students in a foreign country.

this was an opportunity for claudia to plug the dog shelter that we had volunteered for.

we crammed into 2 different radio studios so she could give her talk, and briefly talk about why we were there, however both stations thought we were specifically down in Patagonia to help the dogs.

little did we know the dog situation

we were released for lunch, and returned to the front of the hotel for the bus ride to the dog shelter.

first we were taken to an empty lot, that had a big square wall in it, with empty space within, and we were told that this was going to be the new shelter, it was clearly unfinished, but its winter, the ground is frozen, i know how that works. ok, cool, time for the old shelter.

now, claudia had told us to "bring clothes you dont mind maybe getting dirty/throwing away"

i certainly own clothes that i am willing to part with, i even have shoes i would be happy to toss, but i can tell you i would never pack unnecessary shit for a 5 week trip, nor will i pack that kinda shit on a sub-trip where all i have is a backpack.

so, to Argentina i brought with me like 8 t-shirts, 2 button-downs, 4 pairs of jeans, a pair of khakis, 18 pairs of socks + 1 black pair, a dozen pairs of underwear of various types, and the shoes on my feet.

on our "long weekend" in Patagonia, i brought 4 shirts, 2 pairs of jeans, 5 pairs of socks, 5 pairs of underwear, and the shoes on my feet.

ok so you see my wardrobe is limited, i cant willy-nilly decide to toss my shoes and pants.

i figured she was exaggerating about the need for disposable clothes, this is the lady that calls for us to meet at the airport 6 hours early, the lady who suggested our parents come with us to the airport to be introduced to her before we leave, who wears more layers of clothes than a viking raider on the Danish coast.

she was completely and utterly understating the nature of this "dog shelter"

the buses took us into the municipal sanitation headquarters (read: the dump) and as we came on what appeared to me to be a shanty town, we saw the roving dogs outside the fence.

when we pulled up and got out we were assailed by the smell of 80 some unwashed, unloved dogs.

upon beholding the sight before us, 2 of our number got back onto the bus, i regret with every fiber of my being not getting back on that bus.

(i say there are a few times in my life where i have truly, genuinely not wanted to do something, namely my trip to El Salvador, this was very much like that)

i am not a dog person (cats fit my personality much much better {read: apathetic}), but neither am i particularly frightened of dogs. on this occasion i was unsettled by the number, proximity and health of the dogs around me.

i was tasked with a few other kids to clean up some of the shit in one of the pens.

let me describe this for you as best as i can.

this is a shanty town, the fences are made up of part barbed wire fence, part mattress springs, and part shipping palettes. the meager shelter the dogs had within this pens was made of up everything from 55 gallon drums, to more palettes, to political slogan signs. the floor, at least in our section, was not a floor, but a layer of frozen mud/shit.

you know how when your dog (or baby) is sick, and it shits real nasty? imagine that, but it never gets better, it just keeps shitting in the same 15ftx15ft area, and that instead of one sick entity, its 15.

also it had rained, so even the most solid of poops was rendered into a slurry mess of what was most likely disease ridden offal.

we were given a bucket to put garbage bags in (and fill with shit), a shovel, a garden rake, and a broom.

with these tools we were to clean the pens.

there was not a single square inch of the pen that was not some form of dog shit, best case scenario you were standing in 50/50 mix of foetid mud and identifiable dog shit.

we did the best we could, and i walked away. i couldnt do it, these dogs would have been better off living freely in the semi-wild of Santa Cruz province, and dying to larger predators or cars than living in the squalor they were.

i tossed my gloves and wandered into the dump.

i was more comfortable walking into a dump, than dealing with four score mangy (and i literally mean mangy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mange) fucking dogs.

that is a view across the dump to the mountains.

i was humbled by this entire day, i will admit. this dogs had an awful life, and as claudia (the prof) said, we are responsible for our pets, and somewhere that chain of responsibility was tragically broken. everyone of those dogs deserved more than a hovel, a 40 square foot pen floored by frozen dogshit, and dessicated cowbrains to eat. but i personally am not the person to rectify their situation.

furthermore, 25 american kids, who at this point are effectively on vacation, are not the appropriate volunteers to better these dogs lives either.

much like the time before this (and as i write this retrospectively after this) we had no idea what the fuck we were getting into. our professor did no accurately describe what was going on. considering this was one of the very very few things we knew about before coming down here, it seemed to be if not mandatory strongly encouraged.

i am deeply upset that we were, as a group of Northeastern students on a dialogue for language learning, brought to this hellhole and encouraged to help these animals.

however i am even more upset that it has contributed to the awful taste in my mouth Northeastern is leaving me with.

i write this now, quite literally on the verge of the verge (yeah the verge of the verge) of tears because i am so disappointed in how accurately this trip has summed up my entire college experience.

A. i (or my parents rather) paid way too much for me to learn relatively little

B. i was lured by promises, and surprised by shit-circumstances (literally and figuratively)

we were taken home on the bus, i went for an aimless walk around the tiny town of El Calafate, returned, and (i know i usually craftily word this) drank an entire liter of beer in the shower, and finished my journey towards getting hammered with shitty vodka and shittier orange juice.

alcohol is a terrible coping mechanism, i know, alcoholism and drug induced escapism is bad. but after the dogs, i really needed a drink.

dinner was fantastic, and the company i kept were equally upset by the day, so we managed to not talk about it.

the party started up again in my room, i hung out for a while, and went off with those same girls i had wandered the glacier park with the day before. had a good time talking to them, and managed to rid myself of the initial shock of what i had been "encouraged" to participate in.

if Hoth and the Endor moon had a baby

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a slightly less early morning, started with basically the same breakfast, scrambled (potentially) faux eggs, toast various pastries, and then we piled onto the tour bus to go to the Glacier National Park proper, using their gate and everything, reading all the signs to maintain the contamination (spanish doesnt have a word for pollution so they say contamination) free nature of the nature.

unfortunately it was very foggy, so the busride was a little lacking in fantastic vistas, and the subsequent boat ride to a different face of the Perito Moreno Glacier was also made a whole lot less interesting. here are a bunch of pictures of that stuff anyways.

the fog was actually pretty cool, it cut visibility down to like 50m. this boat got real close to the edge of the Perito Moreno glacier, if you compare the pic there of the glaciar face, you can see it is very similar to one of em from yesterday.

after the boat ride we were dumped back on shore, saw a fox, and rode up a mountain overlooking the glacier and walked around a bunch of raised pathways, and took a shitton of pictures as the fog cleared

i walked around with a group of girls that i previously had little conversation with. as i had suspected the homestay situations caused the cliques to develop based on location, and ultimately they were rather heterogeneous and nonporous.

here are more pictures

also, here is one of those oh so rare pictures of me

the walk was fantastic, seeing the glacier from above like that, hearing it moan and creak and crash as it warmed up unevenly and broke and shifted, in one of those pics you can see a huge recent break, unfortunately we were the other side of a hill and only heard it. that is clearly multiple dozens of tons of snow, even being probably 1km away, and around a rather large hill we heard this crack and fall off, and it was on par with the loudness of standing atop a subway grate with the train running beneath you.

this trip ate up almost all of the day, we returned, napped, at dinner, and partied again in our hotel room. the cards against humanity game ( http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/ ) i had printed up in Buenos Aires was a hit, and i handed them off to a freshmeat girl who im sure will have at least one fun game out of it back home with her roomates before they destroy the cards.

luckily with all our hotel shenanigans, nothing bad happened, no broken furniture or fixtures, no one getting in trouble and no over-imbibing to the point of potential injury

hey look, more ice

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early morning, ate the heaviest breakfast ive had in country, (continental buffet) scrambled eggs, toast, a very thin watery drinkable yogurt and various pastries. we hopped a bus to the glacial lake Lago Argentino. the catamaran we were on was big and heated, and took us to the three major glaciers down here, the Perito Moreno ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perito_Moreno_Glacier ), Upsala ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upsala_Glacier ) and the Spegazzini.

here is a pic dump of that 8 hour boat ride

the glaciers down here arent all that old on the geologic timescale, but they are pretty big, all of them are fingers of the Patagonian icefields, creeping through the mountains wearing them down, so in a few dozen millenia there area will look alot like the Great Lakes Region in the States. The biggest one, the Perito Moreno glacier is like 250 sq km, which is pretty damn big, making it alone one of the largest reserves of freshwater on earth.

this took pretty much all day, we got back exhausted, napped, ate a fantastic dinner at the hotel, and then partied in my room again, plenty catz, cards, laughing yelling, handstands good times overall.

the ends of the earth

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got to sleep in a bit, and head to the Buenos Aires domestic airport Jorge Newberry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroparque_Jorge_Newbery ), being that it is a relatively small airport, and there arent all that many catz flyin around midday monday we got through security quickly, i didnt even have to ditch my shoes or pull out my computer. also i made a concerted effort to finish the vanilla vodka-espresso liqueur-dulce de leche liqueur in the morning, so i had a very pleasant airport experience. being that Claudia is chronically afraid we are going to be late to something, we showed up to the airport 3.5 hours early, with ticketing and security talking all of 30 minutes, we had plenty of time to kill in the airport. most of the hours were whittled away by blank staring out the window and stealing other peoples jackets for sleeping.

the plane ride was uneventful, we got a sandwich, which most people didnt like, so i had like, 4. the descent was beautiful, the little bit of it i could see, i was on an aisle seat, with two of the girls between me and the window.

it was kinda like Iceland, in that it was all craggy and scrubby, but there was alot more, and alot larger mountains, and subsequent snow.

its winter down here now, so there is snow on the ground, and the mountains are particularly white. it was indeed chillier here, but in all honesty, it wasnt as jarring as the temperature in Buenos Aires, i guess cause it seems more like winter down here?

a bus took us to our hotel and we got all signed in, rooms distributed, me and evan one of the OTHER undergrad graduees got the double, however, it was a doubgle with a king, everyone else had triples with three twin beds, me and evan got to share a bed, i mean its whatever, the bed was so big that when he started talking in his sleep i couldnt flail and hit him without actually moving in the bed.

this is the view outside my window

our group of twenty-odd kids descended upon the little gorcery store to pick up sandwich and snack materials for the lunches we would need during our various outings, and drink for the nights spent in the hotel.

our room wound up being the hangout room, meaning each night we had like 20 kids in there, luckily our bed could easily fit like 12, and there floorspace in the corner could comfortably hold another 10 (meaning even when EVERYONE was in there, there was ample space). there wasnt too much late hangouts on the first night, as lots of people were wiped from the flight, and we had an early morning for a boat ride the next day.

Graduation day!

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soo we are done with class, so no more boring posts about class. we had about an hour of hanging out in class, talking to Jonatan (who i have since friended on Facebook) then we had to give our presenation on the conflict, which went awesome by the way. the presentation immediately before us was about wine, so we all got samples, and luckily there were a few left over at the end, so me and mike had a few extra styrofoam cups of wine to calm the nerves before/during the presentation. we rocked it, i did my normal make it up as i go talky-talk bit, Claudia seemed satisfied that i wasnt reading off the slides (though it was ok for mike to do so) and still manage to be articulate with my spanish. again this whole class situation reminds me very much of middleschool, it is about the same level of spanish on my part, and then the presentation and lectures were about the same as that (similar topics as well)

after this was the fantastic graduation ceremony, we were handed our "diplomas" and grades, i did ok? im still not sure how that rubric worked, but i got like a B maybe? then we got to eat food, various types of empenadas (including a cheese and fig empenada that was not very good), luncheon meats, including liverwurst, or whatever it is called here, i spread that on some buns, and ate prolly half of the liverwurst while elliot (the other undergrad-graduee) ate the other half.

we headed to a bar to watch more Olympics, much of the group went to a pirate bar accross the street from the irish bar our friends got their shit stolen from. i and a few others however, went to the irish bar, which was cool, cause it was pretty much the 5 of us, and the bar owner who let us watch whichever channel we wanted of the Olympics. we ent up watching field hockey, and basketball highlights.

mike and i made it home for dinner and chatted with our homestay guy and his girlfriend, and went out to a bar we had tried to get into earlier on the trip but had a group that was too large. 6 of us made our way over there, and went upstairs to sit down, running into a group of 3 girls from our trip in the process. they were dirnking delicious raspberry mojitos, and having a grand ole time, i managed to steal a bunch of peanuts from them, as the waiter was taking forever to get to us. we had a beers and good laughs and an absurd amount of shelled peanuts.

we went home relatively early to prepare for our trek to Patagonia

miles to go before i sleep

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another lazy day, alot of people went to a club after congo, i did not (surprise surprise) but by all accounts everyone had a great time. we woke up pretty late,
we got a phone call suggesting we meet up with a few people at a bar in Palermo to watch the Olympics and eat very good food. i opted to go on a wander around the city. i had no real direction, i just meandered about with my ipod watching the people, and the traffic, and store fronts and whatnot, until the late afternoon, when i happened upon a busstop to a line i recognized would get me to the plaza in Palermo that would get me close to the bar catz were at. unfortunately i rolled into the bar at the precise moment the kids there were wrapping up their bill, so we chatted for a few moments before we broke, and i managed to get myself and mike lost looking for a bus. ultimately my getting lost got us to a BETTER bus that dumped us of closer to home.

we went to bed early, as monday we had to celebrate our graduation from the Bridge classes, as well as present our presentation on the Melvinas War/Falklands Crises

my pessimism is showing

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slept in fantastically late, it was great, me and mike made our way to that same market we went to the first week after the cemetery, to meet up with some of the other people, and wander around. luckily i love shopping, and especially shopping for tourist garbage, so i had a great time, after wandering around for a few hours, we decided to find a bar that was inexpensive, and had the Olympics on tv, ultimately we settled on an expensive restaurant, that had crappy music videos on tv.

yeah, we went to the hardrock cafe Buenos Aires, in the hopes that they are "International" enough to have the Olympics on, and they only had it on at the bar, which we couldnt sit at, and they had more crappy beer for way to many Peso. so it was kinda shitty.

we broke for a nap and dinner before going out. we decided to go to the bar we found last weekend, the Congo place, with the outdoor-ness and the firepits. i was mad tired, so i sat watching the crowds and nursing a beer for much of the evening.

im looking forward to just sitting around the hotel and drinking in Patagonia, because we can start that at like 8, have 5 hrs of drunken shenanigans and still get to sleep before 5am. the bar scene here doesnt pick up till like midnight, and goes till sun up.

our party split up, a bunch of girls, and my roomate wanted to go clubbing, while the rest of us went home (i went home at least, i dun really care bout everyone else). apparently mike had a bunch of fun at the club, there were fewer creepy assholes at this place than the last place, so he wasnt stuck fighting off douchebags the entire night. i vaguely recall him coming home, but i was sleeping very hard.

so yeah, this weekend was aright, i PROMISE when we hit Patagonia ill have interesting shit to talk about, glaciers and nature n shit. this dialogue is just alot less culturally exciting than my previous ones. my post-dialogue writeup will be very long, i just need some time for all this shit to coalesce, between my bias towards Europe, this being the very end of my undergrad career, and my obstinate anti-grammar nature, this dialogue will leave me with things to say beyond character analysis of the girls around me.

revolutionaries and drunkards^2

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friday, the last friday of classes, so its clearly a sweeter friday than next friday will be. class was aright, we watched the last segment of the Motorcycle Diaries, which was sad, because it was when Che realized life sucks, and only through (communist) revolution will Latin America be not shitty (as you know from history, his dreams were never realized, as he died in the basement of a campesino school at the hands of a drunkard Bolivian Army officer, in '67).

we also discussed the Olympics some, broadening our vocabulary with names for all the obscure sports, and positing who will win the most medals.

after class we wandered around that neighborhood looking for a bar with the Olympics on, for the opening ceremony. unfortunately, no matter how many times i will bitch about sitting at giant tables of 20 American kids in a bar, and how many people will agree with me exclaiming "youre right Dan, these unwieldy tables serve to isolate conversation and complicate the bill, we should indeed sit at different tables, the cliques develop at the big table anyways, you are so smart and great, and super awesome, we should always listen to you" (or something like that) we STILL WOUND UP WITH A LONG TABLE OF AMERICAN KIDS.

anyways we watched the opening ceremony on a 24 inch tv from 10m away, while the screen struggled to put us all into a seizure, drank more crappy Argentine beer, and ate peanuts and those salty fried things they always give you at bars here. we cut out to go home for dinner, hung out and planned for meeting at the Karaoke bar.

luckily this bar was in our neighborhood so we could walk there, and drink some, i never got drunk enough to sing, or dance for that matter, so i held down the fort and made sure no lil gypsy kids snuck in and stole anyones shit, unfortunately the guy who got his backpack jacked, and his phone stolen, and almost robbed again, managed to lose his jacket, with his wallet in it. so yeah, this asshat has nothing but his US passport, no jacket, no backpack, no wallet, no credit/debit cards, no cash, its actually pretty funny. he kinda put himself in the situations in which his shit got gone, so you neednt worry for my safety.

the girls in our group were the most excited to sing, and managed to turn the ENTIRE bar against us when they sang Beyonces "Single Ladies" they didnt let us up there anymore after that.

houses of culture

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once again, a day of little note, mike and i did ran to catch the train this morning, meaning we got on without paying the .80ARS consequently contributing to the city's massive debt. we did not have to run as we still got to class 20 minutes early, we just did not want to wait around for the next train to come in 6 minutes. class went by, and we were released for lunch.

today was the day of the graffiti tour, it was optional, and more expensive than i thought it would be worth, but after hearing reviews from people that went, i regret my choice in afternoon activities. the street art tour was awesome by all accounts, i thought our professors "fixer" would be running it, but it turns out it was this chick that knew a bunch of the artists and had inside stories and whatnot.

but alas, i decided to hit up the Ateneo bookstore that Claudia recommended. me and a couple of girls decided to check the place out, as she made it sound fantastic. after getting a little turned around and walking probably twice as far as necessary we came upon the place. now, we were told that this cool old bookstore was built into a rehabbed theater. and claudia went on to recount tales of being taken to this theater for operas, and ballets and all kinds of cultural activities.

so when we walked in and the foyer was about as impressive as the Barnes and Noble in the Pru, i was a little let down. after making our way further into the store, it got a little more interesting.

there was a hoe in the floor that took you to the basement for the kids books, the stage and backstage area was converted to a cafe, the main floor had shelves, the balconies had shelves, and yeah... that was about it, my spanish is good enough to read well past a highschool reading level, but that doesnt mean i enjoy it. so a bookstore in a foreign language forfeits its largest draw: books.

so yeah, after this i hopped the subway home, the wall-to-wall-people-in-contact-with-everyone subway car, and then laid around waiting for dinner and sleep.

lame ass

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i am starting to feel really bad that i have nothing interesting to post on here. the highlight of my day was the kitten walking around my shoulders as i made my morning tea. the train was (thankfully) uneventful, spanish class was also not particularly exciting. we went to a crappy sandwich place for lunch, that literally drenched my sandwich in either mayo or a butter-mayonnaise mix, which i also over payed for. the other class was slightly more interesting, a lecture on Argentine literature, led by some academic of literature. we are never really introduced too thoroughly with out presenters, and if we are i miss it due to the language barrier. anyways the guy was young and seemed cool, basically a classic English Major (though i suppose here it would be a Spanish Major) turned teacher.

we went through the three major phases of Argentine literature, from the José Hernández Gaucho period to Borges with his fantastical short stories, to more modern avant-garde stuff.

and after this lecture we went home to work on our projects, mine was on the Falklands Crises/Malvinas war, i threw together a powerpoint presentation for use on friday or monday.

i managed to get to sleep early.

sneaky latin-asian fusion

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yet another boring day, but this one was even less impactful (that's a word right) on the academics front, and far more so on the gastronomic front.

class was as normal, all be it a little slow, but we are all now comfortable with each other and the teacher so it is pretty fun. after class we were released to work on our projects, so of coarse, i went to go eat than be proactive and work on something ahead of time. me and a buddy went to the Peruvian place i have walked by nearly everyday on the way to the bus/subte into the city. the place was called Cocoroco, which is the onomatopoeia of the sound Spanish chickens make (cause animals make different noises). anyways i orders the Chaufa Mixto, and Chicha, not knowing what either of those things were. before our food was done came my Chicha ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicha#Peru ) which was far better than i ever could have hoped, apparently it is made of purple maize, and the stuff i had tasted like cinnamon, it was not overly sweet, or overly cinnamon-y but delicious and perfect. also we got some toasted corn, which is apparently called cancha, its like three quarter popped pop giant kernel corn with some kind of sour cream like sauce or green spicy sauce.

with the chicha coming out and being surprisingly delicious i was excited for my chaufa, it came out and it immediately reminded me of fried rice, and then i tasted it, and it was definitely a Latin American version of fried rice, which is fine, because fried rice is awesome. i proceeded to eat all of it, feel full and satisfied for the first time in a while. evan had basically a bunch of fried chicken, which im sure was delicious, but after my food i was unable to eat any of his, anyways, afterwords we parted ways, i went home and proceeded to nap.

after the nap i cleaned up my blog, and subsequently posted the Day 2 of Central Europe (apparently i had never actually posted it, its a good post, go back and read it), and then started digging up info on the Falklands Crises/Guerra de las Malvinas.

pictured below: my chicha

guilty

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monday, once again a not very exciting day, woke up for class, rode the train to class, attended class, and completed class. for lunch myself and a number of other kids went to the California Burrito Co. (quite authentically Argentine right?) and all of us paid with 100 peso bills, which is what comes out of the ATM here, but instead of being the equivalent of a twenty dollar bill, businesses treat it like a hundred. i mean, my burrito costs 35ARS you should easily be able to break a hundred, even if the five people before me also broke hundreds.

anyways after lunch we reconvened for classes, it was the last class with the cool history professor guy, and it was about the economy of Argentina over the last century. while i have previous knowledge of pretty much all that was discussed, it was very interesting to see it from a locals' prospective. everyone is very cynical of the government and its fiscal and monetary policy. they do not have confidence in their leaders or their Peso, considering the inflation that today's generation witnessed, this is no surprise. the professor claimed that the people, particularly in Buenos Aires are very sensitive to the global market and currency prices. he also explained why the currency Black Market was so healthy; the Argentine people are betting against the Peso. Today the government sponsored exchange rate is 4.57ARS to 1USD, but on the black market you can easily fetch 6.5ARS to the 1USD, this is because people are betting against the Peso, they are willing to pay a little extra to buy a safe currency (the USD). a few people had a hard time understanding these concepts, unfortunately at least one of them was an International Affairs major, and i was subsequently embarrassed.

after this class we split up and went home, now, i will admit i feel bad that i am not getting much of the cultural tourism done as i would like. but when we get out of class at 333-400 pm, and my commute home is another hour, not only am i a little tired to traipse around this very large city and find museums (which in themselves are 20 or 30 minutes away from class), but i think a lot of them close by 5-6 at night anyways. i am sure my senioritus is kicking in too (thank the gods i was able to stave it off for this long), but as the afternoons and weekends free up, i will certainly try to hunt down some culture.

markets and people, and being right

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managed to sleep in late (but not too late) after the fun-having of Saturday night. I made myself a peanut butter, nutella, and dulce de leche sandwich for breakfast. and then me and mike headed out to meet up with people at San Telmo Market ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Telmo,_Buenos_Aires ), we took the bus, the bus we always take, and it was great, and easy, it just took like 80 minutes. so the bus took us right to the square which has the antiques stalls, which was Plaza Dorrego ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Dorrego ), but the rest of the group we were trying to meet were literally at the other end of the Feria de San Telmo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feria_de_San_Telmo ), which is a good 1500m long. so mike and i ducked and darted through the crowds to meet up with them, and believe me, the crowds were thick with tourists and locals so it took us a little while.

we finally ran into them as they were wandering into a parking lot, which had a grill for choripan, everyone purchased choripan, and everyone exclaimed how good they were, and praised me for suggesting such a fantastical gastronomic experience. this constituted pretty much the highpoint of my day.

we then wandered around the market, i got separated from the main group with 3 girls, who were fortunately meandering through the market faster than the rest. we got to the end, and then hunted for a coffee or some such thing.

after getting kicked out of one place for not having a reservation (which is a funny story in itself; we very slowly and obviously moved over towards a table, i made eye contact with at least 2 employees gesticulating at the table as we were to sit down, and after sitting for about 3 minutes, they came and told us to leave because the table was promised to someone else) we found our way to a pleasant place that had excellent coffees, I had an irish coffee, and their version included cinnamon on top, which was interesting. the cinnamon did not improve the coffee, but it certainly didnt improve it either. the two girls we were with got a coffee drink with creme de cacao in it, which was equally delicious.

hopped the subte home, and did nothing until i fell asleep.

palindrome

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despite our carousing last night we had to wake up early to head out to Tigre ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigre,_Buenos_Aires_Province ). Tigre is a town in the greater metro area of Buenos Aires, and its pretty cool. it is built up on the River Paraná Delta, so it is a city made up of a series of small islands, and many people use boats to get around, in the delta area of the town, even the supermarkets are waterborne, bringing the goods door to door for the residents to shop for their groceries n whatnot. we were taken on a river cruise, and there was a tourguide, however the public announcement system was crappy and i was unable to hear much of anything. here are some pictures of our route.

here is an example of the houses on the delta islands, a dead boat, and a fancy museum thing, but beyond that i know very little, due to the crappy sound system on the boat.

after the boat ride we were taken to the Puerto De Frutas, which was supposed to be this really cool shopping/market area. our fixer promised us you could find anything you wanted, i was sorely disappointed, there were probably 100 stores and stalls, however there were really only like 5 different stores; the tourist trap leather stall, the home decor store, the tourist crap vendor, the cheap toys for children seller, and the wicker basket provider. not only was this place lacking in interesting things, but we were allotted 3 hours here, which including lunch was about 2 hours too long. me and a handful of other catz ate some food, and then wandered around, managing to cover nearly the entire grounds in about 25 minutes, then we sat in the sun on the pier for an hour, and then we sat on a bench for an hour, and then we went home.

yeah, so that sucked.

last night we went to this very cool bar, which was very much more my scene than the bars/clubs we have been going to. the back area was open to the sky with fire pits, fire is always good, and inexpensive drinks. there were at peak about a dozen of us so it was a good time standing around and joking and chatting and whatnot. afterwords my roomate, myself and another dood in our neighborhood hopped a cab home. the cabby was awesome, talking to us (obviously in spanish) about all kinds of stuff, asking what we thought of the global economy, and how we liked Buenos Aires, and how corrupt it was, and politics, and obesity, it was neat.

we got home and promptly fell asleep.

tonight, we will eat at home and likely go out again to (i hope) a similar bar.

Chavez and pizza

20712

another day of class, and this one was no more interesting than the last. i did however discuss the politics of Venezuela with the teacher. our class know is comfortable with everyone to poke fun at eachother, ive already been pegged as the know-it-all asshole, (which is a slot i easily fill) so they were hassling me about challenging the teacher. i was talking about the elections in Venezuela not being "free and fair" and he thought we were just believing the anti-Chavez rhetoric, i tried to explain that there are indeed elections, but there is only like 50% voter turnout, and it isnt exactly "free and fair" he thought i was saying there are no elections, i was just saying the elections were a little dodgy. anyways class ended, and we were taken out for "the best pizza in the world" by our professor and her friend-fixer.

the pizza was pretty good ill admit, too heavy on the cheese, and a little light on the sauce, but plenty of dough (which i find the most important part of a pizza). this was kind of a clusterfuck of a celebration, partly for one of the girls' birthdays and partly for Dia de Amigos here in Argentina. after piling out of the pizza shop all twenty-some of us dispersed and went our respective way home. our homestay guy prepared food, and then dipped out to go celebrate Dia de Amigos with his amigos. right now plans are haphazardly being slapped together for the evening, we will see, if youre lucky youll get a latenight post from me.

be aware of your surroundings

19712

another boring entry, morning language class, and then nothing, the tour of the theater was moved so we would "have time to work on our projects." the language classes dont lend themselves to discussion here, so i really have very little to say, we spoke some spanish, watched some of the motorcycle diaries, and thats it. we were cut loose at 1, i scarfed down some choripan, and met with a handful of other kids at a bar (actually yet another Irish Pub) and hung out for a little while. i did not have any beer, as they were too expensive, and not very good. i headed home around 630, the commuter rail was packed, but i managed to find a seat. got home, ate alone, and went to sleep early, building my strength for the weekend/next week, as i plan to have all kinds of fun in El Calafate.

i woke up this morning to facebook posts about two of our number being robbed, in fact, twice. at the bar their backpacks were stolen without their knowledge, probably by the little gypsy children who cased us earlier in the afternoon. and later in the night one of them had their phone out, chillin, in the grass? bad call on his part, and someone yanked it. basically it wasnt violent, or scary, just shitty, they admitted that it was mostly stupidity that led to their misfortune.

so yeah, midweek lame blog posts, deal with it, read my weekend posts, they are better with pictures n stuff.

im sorry

18712

nothing special today, language class, where we practiced more conversation, and i got to drop some International Relations knowledge, watched a bit of Diarios de Motocicleta ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318462/ ) picking through the dialogue for grammar and vocabulary purposes. i followed a bunch of kids to the pay by the kilo Chinese buffet, and was subsequently unimpressed, i should have gone with the Choripan again. it was pretty much the same price, i got a bunch of noodles, and chicken, but it was lukewarm and had the classic cheap Chinese MSG taste. ill be sure to chase down more choripan tomorrow.

after lunch we finished our last history lesson with the professor (whose name i still forgot to get). this session went from 1955 through to today. and we talked more about Peronismo, and how its not a party, more of a vague ideology, and then we talked about Peronismo, is not a party, its something people claim to follow, and then he explained that Peronismo is not a political party (i say that because we talked about it many times, people had a hard time understanding the concept of a nonpartisan leader). we talked about the Guerra Sucia, and the financial woes of the 1990s, all very interesting stuff. fortunately we will be having the same speaker for the economics presentations as well, and i look forward to listening to him more, i should also remember to ask him questions about the Malvinas war as well.

again boring day, im sorry

sandwich of the gods

17712 another rather boring day, had spanish class, then a movie. the highpoint of the day was lunch, which i will get into in a second. i like this spanish class a lot, it is much more conversation based, and he corrects me as i go, which helps me more than any grammar chart ever has. today we started to talk about why there are differences between the United States and Argentina, as far as development is concerned, and i found it was easier for me to convey my ideas about this in spanish, than making up sentences about how i went to the store, or what i buy a good friend for their birthday. after class me and evan found a restaurant that served grilled stuff. you need to understand, this place was basically a step above a street cart (if we had found a street cart we would have gone there), there was no front wall, there was a huge grill with sizzling meat on it, a counter where you pay, a refrigerator with drinks, and a handful of tables and chairs, the place was kinda grimy but it only lent itself to the character. we had choripan, which is chorizo en pan, sausage on bread, the grill a sausage, slice it lengthwise (which i do to any sausage i eat anyways) grill it a bit more, and slap it in the middle of a half a loaf of bread. all of this for 12ARS. they hand this to you on a small plate, and i proceeded to cover it in diced onions and tomatoes, and some kind of salsa which i have yet to identify. it was absolutely fantastic, one of the best sandwiches i have had, and probably the best meal i have yet had in the country. i plan to go here as frequently as possible.

(not my picture) after this orgasmic gastronomical adventure, we returned to school to watch a movie, Valentin. ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296915/ ). it is a story of a boy being raised by his grandmother, with parents that are all messed up, and how he copes. the movie was cute, and in spanish, though it took place in Argentina, i did not feel like it was particularly "Argentine" but i appreciated it none the less. after class we made our way to a pub to have a drink celebrating one of the girls twenty-second birthday. i cut out of this early, as i was defeating the tail end of a cold, i went home, read my book, and fell asleep early.

Historians, cooler than you think

16712 today we had yet more class, which was unexciting, however after talking to claudia, i will be moving up to the advanced class. i described my predicament in my current class, that there is lots of grammar, and i believe i would better benefit from being treated like a child (learning the language from scratch, conversationally) than being shown grammar charts. my issue is i dont know the names of these tenses and forms in English, so i cant draw comparisons. charting a sentence as to where the subject and object and verb (those are all things in sentences right?) and identifying gerunds, isnt going to help, because i dont know what those are. however (despite my heavy use of slang here) i believe i have a better than tenuous grasp of English. if i were to speak spanish, and be corrected on the spot when using the wrong form/tense i would more quickly/comfortably acquire fluency (hence my being treated like a child, you dont show a Johnny 3 year old [or whenever you teach kids to speak] a grammar chart with the appropriate endings and conjugations when he says "i eated lunch today at school, and it was good" you correct him "no Johnny 3 year old, you ATE lunch today at school, and it was good" anyways, we will see how this class goes, if it goes horribly awry, i can always swallow my pride and drop down, ill probably never see these people again... after our normal language class we had a history lesson, this one covered 1880 through 1955. which goes through the modernization process (building of railroads, use of refrigerated boats to ship foodstuffs overseas) to the squalor that was the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the rise of Peron, and Peronismo. while the history is all cool n stuff, it can be easily found on the internet ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n ). but you cant learn about our history professor on the internet (probably, i dunno i didnt look very hard). he is actually an ethnic Hungarian, speaks Hungarian, Polish, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and i think he said something about a minimal knowledge of German too. anyways, he was quite knowledgeable, and after class i pestered him about the rise of Argentina (the whole becoming the breadbasket of Europe while Europe was busy industrializing/killing each other, in the last half of the nineteenth century), and the Argentine attitude during World War One, and views on US Imperialism of the late nineteenth century, and what the next lecture will be on. i may end up grilling him on the Falklands/Melvinas conflict as i believe that will be what my project will be on. after class we went to get a new phone, as the roommate managed to lose it in the 2 hours that he had it (literally the only 2 hours it has been in his possession it was lost). and the two of us wandered our way back to the commuter station, and happened upon two of the girls in our neighborhood, chatted on the train, and then in a pastryshop eating, you guessed it pastries, and drinking coffee. now im home, bout to go read more, sorry there aint no pretty pictures to look at, maybe tomorrow (but probably not)

Zoo

15712 after sleeping in for the first time in a while, we woke up and decided to meet some people going to the open air market we went to last week. however we got off the subte too early, because some people thought it was closer, it was not closer, so we decided to hit up the zoo. now i must say my only experience with animals like this outside of the United States, is the circus in Russia, which was kinda fucked up, so i wasnt sure what was going on here. entry was 47 pesos, so 10USD. there were some kids outside protesting the zoo, at first i just figured they were the treehugging type, but i was soon proven, they were kind of right. they had all the animals one would expect to have in a zoo, the Milwaukee zoo I would say is definitely better, this zoo is how i imagine zoos were in the United States back in the 1960s, lots of cages, like actual cages. anyways the only stuff i was really interested in was the more local critters, so i got some pictures of them.

there is a herd of llamas (yes a herd, i looked it up) fighting eachother for the pellets of food you can buy to feed the animals in the zoo (all the animals eat the same pellet thing) and some. and the other thing that looks like a llama, but isnt is a vicuña, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicu%C3%B1a ) its apparently the national animal of Peru. anyways there was nothing too awesome in the zoo, there was one point where i made eye contact with the camel, and i saw the deepest sadness ive seen in any animal ever, worse than those sara mclachlan ASPCA commercial kittens. after seeing the despondence in a camel i realized i wasnt emotionally prepared to see the apes. so we hurried through the rest of the place, and headed home. i was torn, i dont know if i should feel bad for supporting the zoo, or feel good for supporting the animals. like if people stopped going, and the zoo stopped generating revenue, what would happen to the animals? anyways, enough with such moral quandaries, class is soon, sleep time must start now.