I want to turn this failed cliché study abroad blog into a failed cliché photo blog.
The above photo pretty much sums up the past two months back at home.
My recently cured mother and my little sister. My people.
More shyt from the past month and a half!
From the past couple weeks around Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, and TACOS RICOS (perhaps the source of Jenna’s food poisoning)
Oh mai gawd do I try
I can add this blog to the ever-expanding list of things that I don’t follow through on. We’ve been here for a month and a half now and I’m very happy to say that things feel pretty normal now. But, that will all change because tomorrow or Friday (????) I have my first real class here in Buenos Aires and I’m sure by the end of the two hours in class I will confused and/or reduced to tears. Thank god it is only a class with other international students. I don’t start to take the vomit-inducing “classes with Argentines” until next week. I’m taking Literatura de España with ze Argentines in order to please the mistress of Spain herself back in NE, Lola Lorenzo. I am very pleased to report that I’ve discovered since my arrival in South America that, contrary to the beliefs of the UNL Spanish Department, Spain, in fact, is not the center of the Spanish-speaking world. Hallelujah.
I’m still having a lot of trouble adjusting to the time differences here. Maybe time difference is not the right way to put it, but bear with me because everyday I spend here my English deteriorates. I will be unable to hold an intelligent conversation upon my return. But, I can never fall asleep before 3:00 a.m. and have only been awake before 10:30 a handful of times. Naps are an almost everyday thing here and I’ve really taken it upon myself to adopt this Argentine custom. Basically, I’m a big piece of shit here. My days revolve around eating, coffee, laying in parks, reading, drinking beer, shopping, and empandas. It is a nice change of pace though, I will admit. I can’t imagine what a fully functioning life here is like.
I’m very accustomed to the three barrios that we frequent and the busses are really easy for me now. Which was important step for me personally because I like going places alone and I didn’t want to have to rely on anyone to help me get around. I feel like a lot of the ISA kids have really stuck to the subte because it’s so easy to navigate. But I hate the subte. It’s expensive and it smells. If you take the subte on a humid, rainy day you might as well cut off your nose beforehand and bathe yourself in bleach afterwards. Bleh.
A couple weeks ago Jenna, May (our new loverly friend from Tokyo), and I went to Mar del Plata for the weekend. MDP is a fairly large city about five hours away from the capital on the Atlantic coast. I was initially weary about this trip because Jenna planned for us to stay at the beach house of some guy she met at a bar. I had met them too, once or twice and they seemed really nice. A few of them worked for the government so I told myself that killing us and disposing of our bodies would be too big a career risk for them to take. It ended up being a really fun weekend full of Spangish and Fernet. We frolicked on the nice, but windy, beach, ate Argentine parrilla (COW LIVER IS GOOOOOOOOD), and drunkenly debated politics—which is easily one of my favorite things to do with people from other countries because usually if I talk fast enough they have no idea what I’m saying so they cannot disagree with me and I feel like I’ve won.
The next couple of weeks should be fairly exciting. Alix my sweet angel’s 21st is on Thursday and the beer festival is this weekend. Hopefully the next weekend we’re going to Uruguay and I’m praying (hehe) that I can spend the Semana Santa in Mendoza drinking the blood of Christ, a fitting way to celebrate Easter.
I’ll put up some random fotozzz.
(Taking photos here is stressful because everyone keeps telling me that I’m going to get my camera stolen. I weirdly feel safer out taking everyday photos with my iPhone because a lot of people here have them. But GO AHEAD AND TAKE IT ALL ARGENTINA, I have an insurance policy that I recently found out about and I’m tryna get sum new shit.)
This was probably Golden Wok grade Chinese food. I plan on heading back to China Town soon and, through vigorous eating with Keels, eventually find the Ming’s of Buenos Aires. But it definitely won’t be as cheap. Side note: second photo of Keeley eating. I’m on a roll.
My Life Blood
The next photos I’m about to post are probably the most important/relevant photos I will ever post on this blog that I never update. After spending almost three weeks without it, we finally found some. When we finally had it, it was like…like coming home <3 <3
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I’m OBVIOUSLY talking about Chinese food. If you know Keeley or me at all, even solely as acquaintances, you’ve probably heard us talk about Chinese food at least three to five times, a week. So on Tuesday, the last day of the Carnival holiday break, we trekked over to China Town (which Keeley lives suspiciously close to) and we conseguir-ed us some Chinese food. It was really strange hearing/seeing Asians speak Spanish, but I guess that’s just another reason I enjoy this city so much. It is hard to tell who the hell is an Argentine and who is a foreigner. Okay, well that’s not completely true. The ultra tan, skinny girls with super long hair who wear platform sandals—those girls are sickeningly Argentine. And the men with the perfect five o’clock shadow that just stays there perfectly on their face 24/7? Probably not American tourists. But, that’s beside the point. This really is a city of immigrants—not only from Italy and Spain contrary to popular Porteño belief—from all over Latin America and the rest of the world.
After a long weekend of fun and ultimately strange house parties, I am sick. Nothing is worse than a cold in summer. Except for maybe…a cold..in summer…on the beach? That is potentially my weekend. And honestly I don’t even care. I haven’t seen the ocean in far too long and here’s hoping nothing will scare off creepy Argentine guys more than a pile of Kleenex next to my beach towel.
And I just realized I successfully posted my first photo of Keeley eating. I think this blog is really starting to take off.
It has now been over a week since I’ve been here in Buenos Aires and it feels like we’ve been here for a month. This week was the longest week of my life, and I mean that in the best possible way. I fell like I’ve done, seen, heard, smelled, drank, ate, cried, laughed, vomited, tripped, slapped, lost, found, and whatever else, more times in one week than I think I have in my entire life. I think it’s something about Latin America that amplifies every thing you do and feel. I am fucking exhausted.
Everything is still so new. I can’t imagine what it will be like when waking up to a city of almost 16 million people feels normal. Eventually it will though and I’m kind of looking forward to that. Feeling out of your element gets old after awhile. The city is absolutely beautiful in the summer. It tweaks me out when I look at the calendar and it says February. ITS 80 DEGREES AND SUNNY EVERYDAY. I usually HATE the month of February, I mean February and I have always shared a deep-seeded hatred. Nothing good ever happens to me in February. I think 96% of February 2010 was spent in the fetal position on our futon in Sandoz watching Will & Grace reruns on Lifetime. So far February 2012 has been pretty fucking swell y’all. Probably a sign of the impending apocalypse.
The host mom is a bossy ass bad bitch. She is the tannest woman I’ve ever seen and she has more sun spots on her chest than she has skin, I swear to god. But, I think Pipa and I will get along. I appreciate a woman who knows what she wants.The host dad is a silver fox, but far too silver for my tastes, so no worries here Pipa girl. Jenna is a good roommate, she always says funny shit and she makes the best faces when she thinks no one is looking. Having Keeley, Alix, Ashley, and Jenna here makes my heart swell up and burst out of my chest cavity—I love them all so much. This weekend was, like every first weekend I’ve had in a foreign country, both super strange and super awesome. Friday we did a pub crawl, which was essentially a bunch of drunk 19 year olds gettin’ it on. The pubs we went to first were fun and a bit more chill, but then we ended at this giant, GAINT club. I mean there were easily more than 1,000 people in there and it seemed as big as a football field. So, in order to ward off the claustrophobia-induced panic attack I was facing, we took tequila shots. And as I was crawling on the ground in search for the slip of paper that I dropped which allowed me to order said shot, I got lost from the group. I spent what seemed like hours to drunk me searching for the hot American girls I came with in a club…filled with hot American girls. This ended with me crying in the bathroom stall/planning my own funeral/dropping my phone in the toilet/crying. Eventually, with only minor complications, I found the hot Americans [ ;) ] I was looking for and proceeded to eat a cheeseburger with an egg on it from a street vendor at 4:30 in the morning. Solid first Friday out.
Saturday, I spent too much money on too much cute shit. Palermo is loaded with stores and amazing things that cost way too many pesos. And today we went to Tigre, which is about an hour away from Buenos Aires. We got sunburnt on a beach, ate pizza, and drank coke out of glass bottles. What else do people do on Sundays? This week I have class everyday and then this coming weekend is Carnival here in Sudamerica and we’re hopefully taking a bus to go to the second largest celebration in all of Latin America. These girls today told us we don’t need reservations at a hostel because most people just sleep on the beach. I think that sounds real nice.
Okay, caio.
OOOoOo and the photos are from today’s trip to Tigre!
God I suck at this.
We’re here! I think today I’m actually going to bring my camera with me somewhere. So sometime soon there should be photos. My room is like a child’s room, complete with creepy toys and a child sized bed. It’s fucking hot. My hair looks like shit. But, I am seriously in love with this city already. It’s only been two days, but it feels like I’ve been here for a month. **~MeAnT To bE__**
The Buenos Babes
