...and they lived happily... ever after

The Dream

2009-03-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

Last night, I stabbed myself in the heart twice, between my ribs on both sides, and then I cut all the way around it. But I didn't do it with a knife; it was with an arrow like the kind you use at a shooting range. Then I lay there in my trench coat and watched my Merrells fill up with blood because I was on an incline. However, at some point I had to get up and do something... I didn't die, I was just tired for a while. and slowly my scabs turned into scars. I said, "I don't want to die," and my mom was glad.

My Life

2009-03-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

I've just created the organization that I will build starting now and continuing indefinitely. Dance for Life: Building communities of communication, connection, and celebration. This is what I will do.

Best News Ever

2009-03-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

The thesis that I was sadly behind on but would have finished (kinda) by the deadline on April 1st is actually due at the end of June!!!! Because I'm not taking the credits until this summer! YAY!

The End

2009-01-07T10:58:00.000-08:00

The end is looming. 16 weeks. 2 week-long breaks. 12 more weeks. Thesis. Graduation. Packing. Moving. Then goodbye for a long time. And who knows what else. A beginning. Life.

: D

2008-11-14T13:50:00.000-08:00

It snowed today... yay!

GGGGHAAAAAAAAA!!!

2008-11-08T12:24:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to start setting my final choreography for my choreography II class since the middle of September... Guess how much of it is set... NONE OF IT!!! You know how much longer I have to set it? I have 4 weeks to set an 11 minute dance on four people who can never come to rehearsal. You know what this is doing to me? FREAKING ME OUT!!!

You know what else is freaking me out? I was supposed to register for spring classes on Wednesday. Know why I can't? I don't have my registration pin number because the stupid student designed major people can't get shit done! I'm going to end up not getting in a class that I need to graduate because they can't communicate with each other. This is my time and money they are jeopardizing and when I ask the director about it she gets pissy with me!

I feel like I'm blaming my problems on other people... but I frickin have no control over these things. None. My dance is going to be sub par because they won't have enough time to get the intention of the movement. I'm going to end up with 8 am classes my last semester of school and that's CRAP! Oh the pointless hoops! So I end up worrying about this shit instead of working on my thesis proposal which is due in 4 weeks too. whoops...

Sunday

2008-11-02T10:50:00.000-08:00

So Miranda's Nightmare is finally over... now all I have to do is take three tests this week and get rid of this blasted cold. But if feel very happy and relieved at the moment. I just wanted to share my sense of peace with you... AND CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!! I am soooo excited!!!

You turn me...

2008-10-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

into, somebody loved.

sometimes you will see sadness and turn you back on it, uninterested

but it is fiendish and creeps up on you from behind

it slips into your chest to breath up on cracks in your soul

then slowly it seeps in...

and minute by minute it becomes you

you will wonder

why do the leaves shake so happily in the sunlight?

how long is ever after?

2008-07-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

Royce and I are reading The Amber Spyglass out loud to each other. It's such good fun.
Last week of dance classes. Last two weeks of summer classes. Last four weeks of summer.
Learning about nutrition makes me feel like I should try harder.
Learning about psychology makes me feel like I'm making the right choices.
I hate honors.
I wish peaches were still 1.99/lb.

Biology is my life.

2008-05-21T10:38:00.001-07:00

period.

Everybody's Free

2008-05-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be IT.

The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

You are NOT as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's. Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings; they are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography in lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

~written by Mary Schmich in 1997

A world of "NO"

2008-04-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

No, I don't know what I want so STOP KILLING ME WITH YOUR HATRED AND IMPATIENCE.

April 4

2008-04-04T10:56:00.001-07:00

I found a house!!!

It's a basement but has south facing windows so it gets adequate light. It's being completely remodeled and will have new paint and sheet rock and windows and closets and cabinets! Probably the best thing about it though is that it is $500 per month total including utilities and a washer and dryer!!! SO yay not spending money! It's really close to the music building... unfortunately neither Katiana nor I have any classes there. Oh well. YAY!

April 2

2008-04-02T09:43:00.001-07:00

I think I should try to go back to working out in the morning 'cause I was so positive in my last post. Well... about a week ago everything was fabulous and slowly falling into place. Unfortunately, well laid plans often go astray. My summer internship fell though and now not only do I not have a job lined up I will probably end up with a lot less money than I had anticipated. I also have to choose a different experimental option to complete my honors recs. My savings account is smaller than I thought it would be. More money issues. And my house hunt for next year is proving to be more of a problem than I thought it would be. The lady who I thought would be moving out... isn't, or doesn't know, or is looking for a roommate... or something. So, sigh, I have three viewings today and hopefully I find something perfect. On a more positive note, dance is going great. I have auditions for a company on April 20th and if I get that... That's lots of free training! Also, my mother surprised me a couple weeks ago with a long forgotten agreement that if I didn't get in a car wreck before I turned 21 she would reward me with $2,000!!!!! How amazing are my parents.

So that's basically my life right now. I'm dancing all the time, and when I'm not I'm thinking about jobs and loans and living situations for the next year and a half. OR, spending time with Spencer or Emily or Royce and loving it. Maybe I'll just live here... I suddenly thought that it might just work... Love you!!!

March 5

2008-03-05T11:39:00.000-08:00

I went and worked out this morning. It makes me feel like a worth-while human being. I don't know why. My fitness doesn't really do anything for anyone else. or does it. My able body keeps me happy (and adds to the general human happiness) and able to do things for others. It's obviously not the only way to be a worth-while person but it works for me. I need to work on feeling worth-while just for being me.

I talked to Monte about getting a M.A. in choreography. He was kindof encouraging. He said most places don't accept you to the program unless you have work/teaching/choreography/ or performance experience. He worked for 2 years before going to grad school. I'm not opposed to that. I just need to find a place where I can see myself working. I can't really see myself teaching technique in a studio. There are things like dance therapy and such. I don't know what's required for that.

I have another interview with Swift next week. I hope they employ me soon! They sound like a fun company to work for and I think it'll do good things for my self-esteem.

I also talked to Monte about my thesis idea of spontaneous public dance events like improveverywhere.com. He looked excited for me to bring the subversive back into the UNC PVA community. I am also excited. I went right home and researched and started a facebook group and invited people. After 2 days I have over 40 members. now if I can just get them to come to rehearsal!

I stopped in at the Philosophy office this morning to talk to someone about completing my philosophy degree in one year. He said it was possible and that they would be willing to help me out. Nice people, philosophers. :D

I talked to a career counselor last Friday about my confused life. She asked me what I would do if I only had one day left on earth. I told her I would watch the sun rise, eat a big breakfast, go hiking, listen to my favorite music, dance all day, watch the sun set, and have a huge party. All with my favorite people. She suggested that since I am so passionate about dance that I might at least try to pursue it instead of living the rest of my life with that big what if. Sigh. But what if I fail. What if I get jaded on dance and don't like it any more. :( The thought makes me want to cry. But I've also thought about what I would do if something happened to me and I couldn't dance any more. I don't think the state of my body would suffice to define me as alive. So I'll do it. I can't not.

My birthday was amazing!

These days

2008-02-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

I am looking for an apartment to live in next year. I am planning my thesis and choreography projects. I am looking for a paid internship... I have an interview with Swift & Company. It sounds exciting. I hope it works out. I am stressing about trying to host a party on Saturday. sigh. There is an open mic. night at Margies tonight. I'm excited to go and watch. I wish I had more to say.

Valentines Day

2008-02-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

This Valentine's Day I did nothing more than watch tv episodes on the computer (heroes and west wing) and make food. Though Royce and I did act like we knew how to cook (ha ha) and made some very delicious chicken crepes. It was fabulous.

He got me a present. He wrote me a song. and played it to me. :D I feel like such a rock star. Or a rock stars girlfriend... which is basically the same thing. Kindof. YAY for love!

Money

2008-02-13T13:49:00.000-08:00

I've just realized... i think... that all this un-named pressure I am feeling, and the reason by I am endlessly annoyed by planning my future and trying to get everything done in a timely manner is money. I mean, I knew this before I guess. I've talked about it before using phrases like "I'm out of money" and "yeah, but that costs money." I guess it's just hit me. I hate the idea of working. It does not sound fun. I can't think of anything I really want to get paid for. But I am yearning for the freedom of being financially stable. wow. I won't be pressured by anyone because I can take my time and do what I want. Well, I guess that will be the case if I don't have a boss. Fat chance. Ha. Oh golly I hate money. Everyone I talk to about the future asks me if I'm going to teach dance. hmmm... I never seriously considered actually making a living in the dance field. I never thought I'd be good enough. I still don't think I'm good enough. But it makes me thing when others think I am and wonder sincerely why I never considered it. sigh. I just don't want any black marks of embarrassment or failure on that part of my life. But I guess that's just a state of mind. Anyway, no matter how I make money. I want to do it I guess. I'm starting to feel useless and a drain on society... especially since I can't decide what to study in school. I want to keep studying. If I liked my school and didn't have to worry too much about money I would just keep studying until I got sick of it. I can't do that here. So I'll just have to graduate so I can move on. Find a job. Teach some kids how to dance. And exercise my brain in morning classes. Sigh. Easy right?

Why the long face?

2008-02-08T18:43:00.000-08:00

It seems that everyone (and by everyone I mean a few, but they are cherished friends of close age and station) is a little emotionally lost. No one knows what they want or what to do or how to live or who they want to be. We barely know who we are. We are frustrated by personal failure... not even that, just personal imperfection, the less than the best feeling. We see ourselves grasping to reach our great potential, but confusedly fall short. I am saying we because I consider myself to be part of this group to which I am referring. The young and able in the time of opportunity. But instead of striding off in a purposeful direction to embrace life and find our fortunes we shrink back, afraid. Afraid that it might not be there. Afraid that we might see it but let it slip through bumbling fingers. Afraid to start and realize too late that we should have gone the other direction. Afraid that we will reach the end and find that it really all just meant nothing, that we went through everything to realize that we made no difference. We are the generation that is supposed to heal the world right. But most people my age are so confused and sad that we can't even consider taking the next step. And we blame ourselves. We understand that we should be happy and understand everything that's going on. We should be strong enough to carry the world in a new and better direction. But instead we dread getting out of bed in the morning because the world will be disappointed by our sorry efforts.

I was told that high school was supposed to be the hardest part of life with everyone confused and frustrated. High school was nothing compared to this. We are one the brink of stepping finally into the "real" world. Work, Family, etc. We're not acting ready. I'm not.

I say we.

I am part of these dearest of people. But I am not sad. I am thrilled to be back in Greeley and on campus. I feel empowered here. I feel like the small opportunity that UNC provides me is enough for me to grow and learn for the moment. And it's comfortable. And my friends are here. And the weather, crisp and chilly, is so beautiful. I've decided to be happy and enthusiastic. I feel like a nicer person! I say hello and listen to people and tell them when I appreciate something about them. But I am also frustrated by not knowing what to do. I am dreading, painfully, this time next year when everyone will be booking their plane tickets to different parts of the world and we will end up Christmas card friends. And I have no direction. But I bless my options. I know it will work out. And in the mean time the world is a beautiful place. These sad people make my life so fulfilled and happy. I wish they could see it through my eyes and realize how wonderful they are. How they have already made the world a better place. Wherever we end up, I will always love them. They have already made a positive difference in the world, especially mine. I would do anything to make any one of you happy. I hope you wake up to a brighter sunrise tomorrow. I don't know what else to do.

Finally Home

2008-02-07T14:50:00.001-08:00

I feel like I've accomplished a great feat. I'm relieved and grateful and really happy. I walked for a bit in the chilly air in my coat and scarf and breathed in the crispy sparkliness of winter. Greeley is the same as ever I guess, but for the first time I'm really happy to be here, in the familiarness. It's very exciting. Mind you I've only been here for about 26 hours so we'll see how soon I get bored. I don't really have any plans specifically. I have dance auditions in about an hour. Hopefully they'll let me dance even though I'm not technically a student right now. Then I'll sign up for the campus rec center and start yoga again, maybe lap swim too. Then I'll look for a job... and in the mean time I'll just get back in the swing of campus life. Oh how I love college.

The flights back to the U.S. were really smooth,... i slept the whole way from Bs.As. and... no fines. I actually think that no one ever checked how much my bags actually weigh. I was pleasantly surprised when CJ drove by to pick me up and Royce was in the passenger seat. I guess it was his turn to surprise me... :D It was great. Then we went to 3 Margaritas for enchiladas and rice and beans. MEXICAN FOOD!!!! It was glory. Then I basically sat on the rocking chair in Spencer's house waiting for him to come home because I couldn't think past the seeing him part of my dad. We went to the grocery store and spent a bunch of money on good food and had roasted lemon chicken and ravioli with Alfredo sauce. mmm... real food. I fell asleep at about 11:30 and woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep so I got up and made some tea and had a really long relaxing morning. Then I went to Royce's house and saw him for a couple hours. He's really busy these days because he's in tech rehearsal for his show... therefore, if I see him for a couple hours a day I'll be lucky.

but I am lucky :D

but things are a little off without my dear Katiana... and I anxiously await her return. :D

January 7

2008-01-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

YAY! My family got here this morning! And all in one piece!

It's great to have them around. But unfortunately it's so hot here that we all want to die so we are frantically trying to find a way out of the city. It's proving not easy.

In other news, I have never met so many rude, stand-offish, and unhelpful Argentines as I have today. I won't go into the details but I am seriously disappointed in the people. Maybe it's the heat. But really, come on. Anyway, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Everything seems frantic at the moment. Mostly we need transportation and lodging somewhere outside of this city.

Por Favor!

January 2

2008-01-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

Happy New YEAR!!!!!

I hope everyone enjoyed their new year! I spent mine eating Chinese food and watching Love Actually with Shahzad. It was very relaxed and enjoyable.

I don't really have much to say.

Yesterday I spent 13 hours braiding my hair and watching Ally McBeal episodes online. It was okay.

It is sooooo hot here. I feel like I'm melting and I can't even take a shower because the water in our house isn't working. Sigh.

I started my mission to become more well read by reading all the classics and read Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka the other day. It was really interesting. I'm a little proud and embarrassed that afterwards I went online and looked up the sparknotes analysis on it. I was so well trained in high school... :D Anyway. I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my family on Sunday... And that's about it!

December 26

2007-12-26T07:43:00.000-08:00

You all probably already know why I haven't written in here for over 20 days. When you're boyfriend is in town who has time to sit on the internet for an hour writing a blog post.

But, because I haven't written in so long, I've forgotten most of what's happened... so I guess I'll work my way backwards. Most of it's not super important... lots of party's and goodbyes and such fun things.

I want to comment about something Katiana said in her blog. She said she's going to make changes at school next year. But instead of talking about how much she's going to work harder and focus on accomplishments, she spoke of spending more time with friends. I feel like before I left, the reactions I was getting to the the information that I was going to study abroad were things like, "oh, I wish I would have done that in school," and "wow, you're going to learn so much." I kindof got this feeling that I would go away and learn the secrets to the world and come back to school with the gusto and knowledge to work hard and fix everything and be generally more like Dr. Kalu. But no, if anything, I've lost interest in a lot of the things I used to think were important. I feel like I'm finally viewing college as an exciting place to LEARN instead of a place where I have to go to school to get the knowledge that I need to be a productive member of society. I've learned that you don't always have to be stressed and freaking out about everything that's going on around you. Americans are really up tight. I've learned that what I really care about is people. I told Royce and Lauren one night in the middle of a long and deep conversation, after one of them pointed out that I was supposed to be studying spanish for my test the next day, that those types of conversation are the most important things to me in the world, and that I would never stop having them to do something else. As much as I love learning and classes, you can never learn as much about people out of a book, as you can from their mouths. In sum, I'm agreeing with Katiana. The moments with people are the most precious and delicate things. The book will be there in the morning, that beautiful individual sitting across from you may not be.

Anyway, Christmas in Argentina:

Christmas Eve I went to the family dinner of my 'me responsible roommate' Sebí and his sister. It was a gorgeous house just outside of the city with a long narrow backyard and a pool. We didn't end up swimming because it was windy and cold. There were a lot of people there. Sebí's grandparents are Italian so they have a very big, tight, crazy family. It was very nice to see children running about, the youngest was about 7 I think, the light of excitement in their faces. It was very fun. Everyone was very nice. Even if most people did insist on speaking to me in English... grr. There was lots of food and drink. Then we spent some time painting one of the walls of the yard in bright colors following the coloring book like design of trees and birds and hearts that one of the aunts had already painted there. Then at midnight, the world seemed to explode as fireworks filled the sky from all over the city. Unfortunately they were mostly the noisy ones without too many pretty colors. At the same time we all toasted to Christmas and then everyone ran around clicking glasses of champagne and kissing each other on the cheek. Then a few people went to the huge pile of presents and started calling out names and dishing out all the gifts with each person hungrily ripped open unceremoniously before moving on to the next package. All the gifts were opened at midnight. Sebí and Malena (his sister) were kind enough to get me a couple packages so I didn't feel left out. I was a little overwhelmed and exhausted by this time. After the gifts there were cakes and desserts followed by salsa dancing. They don't do Christmas music here. I didn't hear one rendition of Jingle Bells, not even in Spanish. After a little bit of watching salsa dancing in a stupor I went to the hammock and took a nap until Malena came to get me to go home. I got home at about 3:30 am. It was interesting, but fun none the less.

Christmas morning I again joined Sebí and Malena this time going to their Dad's house for lunch. He also gave me a gift. A cd of Argentine folk music... so I wouldn't forget them he said. It was just us three and their dad and his wife. It was very relaxed and nice. Good food. I got home at about 4:30 pm and then spent about 2 hours on the webcam with my family in AK. In the evening I went to my friend Tracy's house, who was also feeling weird on a Christmas free Christmas day, and we made some make shift gingerbread houses out of crackers and dulce de leche and some candy we'd gotten from the one open Kiosk in the area. It was fun.

I decided it was better to not have snow and Christmas music because without it I could just pretend that it didn't exist instead of being sad that I wasn't at home. Besides, my Christmas was really on December 6th when Royce got here.

Now I'm off to visit my Pakistani friend!
Be back soon!

December 5

2007-12-05T11:35:00.000-08:00

Hmm... Mostly I've been consumed with studying and anticipation since I last wrote... and because of that, not much has happened.

I got an overall 6/10 in my modern class. I think that equals approximately a B-. Don't ask me how it works. I expected a 7/10 so I wasn't very happy about it. My modern class is split into two sections in which we learn two distinct modern styles. The one we had twice a week, Martha Graham style, was the hardest for me and the teacher gave me a 5... to which I was frustrated. The other style was more the kind of style that I had learned at UNC and was easier for me to pick up. That teacher gave me a 7... to which I was happy. Unfortunately the average equals 6. sigh. I'm not really angry as I did better than a lot of others in the class... I'm just used to getting A's in dance classes, that's all.

In keeping with the 6 tradition (I also got a 6 in my first intensive spanish class) I also managed a 6 in International Relations. To this however, I am ecstatic! I was expecting to get a 4 as I rarely understood/payed attention in class and didn't do any of the readings. I did study for the final though. And I guess it paid off!

For pretty much the past week, I've had a very hard time thinking about anything but counting down the days until Royce gets here... now we are at about 17 hours. yay!

As my classes come to a close I am very excited for them to be over and for my visitors to come so I can show them around... but at the same time I am wary of the impending sadness of when Royce and Lauren both leave and I am stuck here for Christmas. Then the family comes and it will be all joy (and sweat as it's supposed to be like 100 degrees in the city). Though by the time I finally get back to Greeley in February I will be very out of practice in terms of dance... and I can't help but wonder what I'm going to do with myself once I get there... then there's the every itchy questions of what I'm going to do for the summer, my last year of undergrad, and after. I don't worry about it, but I wonder.

Last night I introduced Lauren and my good Pakistani friend. It was very enjoyable eating Pakistani food and pudding and talking about the world, sometimes in Spanish, but mostly in English. Good times.

It is a gorgeous day, I get to dance tonight and eat fondue with friends, tomorrow my love arrives to visit me from afar, sometimes I catch a glimpse of a fake Christmas tree in a store window. Life is good. Breathe it in. Pass it on.

Dislocated

2007-11-26T06:14:00.000-08:00

how can we all fall
so hard on our own with this
huge world under foot

November 25

2007-11-25T09:52:00.001-08:00

I know I just wrote a really long post so this won't take long...

I know you probably don't remember me mentioning this over 4 months ago when I first got here... but I was worried about turning cold hearted: cold to the trip, cold to people, just cold. Luckily Katiana talked me out of worrying about it... so I haven't. And these past few weeks have been really fun and enjoyable.

But, people tell me I'm cold. Since I got here Argentines have talked about their perception of Americans and the first thing they say is that they are cold. Well, I conveniently thought they just didn't know any. But now people know me, and they still tell me I'm cold. I think Pablo told me I was cold, partially because I wouldn't have sex with him... but it still hurt a little bit. I thought I was being very friendly and considerate about the whole thing. Then last night... William told me I was cold. William, my close friend... the awkward, hands in pockets, Austrian. He said he thought I had changed since he met me... and that I seemed cold. Then he searched for a different word... and unable to find one returned to cold. I know I don't talk much... I'm self-conscious to almost no end. I keep telling myself and other people I just don't speak Spanish well... I don't want to bore everyone with the tediousness of trying to talk to me. I say I'm shy... nope, it just happened when I wasn't looking... I'm cold. And my heart mourns with the knowledge. I told Lauren the other day that I was wondering what my friends at home would think of me when I go back and don't talk because I got so used to it here... cold.

November 24

2007-11-24T15:46:00.000-08:00

There have been a couple things on my mind that I want to share with you... about Porteños... apart from the fact that they don't sleep and eat all the time... (those are exaggerations btw) they have a thing about deodorant. They all carry it around with them. Now this wouldn't be such a bad idea except that when they put it on... they spray it (cause everything comes in aerosol cans down here, and they wonder why the ozone layer is so big...) for a least three seconds under each arm. Apparently on spray won't do. They have to feel it dripping before they are satisfied.

Another thing is Porteños and the zodiac. Almost everyone here has asked me what my zodiac sign is. Apparently it tells them something... though when I ask what it tells them... no one knows. shrug.

On Tuesday night I went to see Lions for Lambs... the Robert Redford movie. It was really... really intense. I didn't want to see it, but I didn't know what we were seeing until the movie started... and from the beginning when the voice of a female news reporter started talking about the war in Iraq I was like oh, I don't want to see this. I knew it would depress me... but what was I going to do. It was actually amazing. Really well put together. And it's amazing that these days people can put out movies like this about something that may be happening TODAY! I recommend seeing it. I think it's important for people to consider the themes it brings up... but beware. Particularly if you have someone you care about over there now.

Wednesday... I was going to sleep... because I hadn't had a more than 6 hours of sleep for almost 2 weeks... but that didn't work out so well. I went to dinner with Lauren and the fabulous Argentines we hang out with. That led to a bar with an angry waitress, lots of sangría, and coral music (because the group I was in are all in the same choir and like to break out into song... I actually love it, it's like living in a musical!) That led to a Milonga to dance chill and dance tango ( I really only danced about three times, the rest was spent judging the other couples and playing a game with Lauren in which when a guy passes the table you have to say whether you would hookup with him or not... it was hilarious) until they kicked us out at 4am. For a while there was a couple of two men dancing tango together. It was fabulous! So... I actually went home that night... 'cause when I go out in Belgrano with Coco... we stay at her house cause it is so far away from everything... but I didn't get there until after 5. And I even went to my spanish class in the morning.

Thursday Lauren and I went for our first waxing experience... and let me tell you: Steve Carell wasn't acting. It hurts like a bitch. Afterwards, Lauren asked me if it hurt more than my tattoo... and I couldn't remember... but I think it probably did, I don't think my tattoo hurt very much at all. Then I went to my tango class and met the parents of one of the other girls in my class who were visiting from N. Carolina. They were very nice and I was in a very enthusiastic and sociable mood for someone so sleep deprived so we talked for awhile. We talked about school and how I'm a junior and have no idea what I want to major in, much less do after I graduate. If I graduate. She said a couple things like "you might as well have fun, because then you have to get a job and that's the rest of your life..." and "that's what we told our daughter too, you have four years and then you are on your own..." First of all... my job will NEVER be the REST OF MY LIFE. I read something about Porteños before I came down here: Americans live to work, Porteños work to live. And it's true! But for me, I'm neither. I want work to be a part of my life that I enjoy and am proud of... but it will never be all of my life at any one point. Neither will I probably work in one place for the rest of my life... THE REST OF MY LIFE... no. Now is the only life I have. And the now that is my life will never be DEFINED by my job. About the second quote. It made me think of a conversation I'd had with my Pakistani friend about the difference between family in Pakistan and U.S. I had been talking about trying to get out of school because it cost so much and I didn't want to be in debt. He'd been surprised by this. He asked if my parents weren't supporting me. I said no... I've always felt extremely supported by my parents. But in the U.S. it's not common for parents to pay for all their children's school and doings after they graduate from high school. He was surprised and said... it's their duty to support their children in whatever until they grow up and start supporting them. Well, needless to say, this is not the way in the U.S. Some people are financially abandoned when they turn 18. I consider myself very fortunate for the support that I get from my parents... and I don't think that my parents will abandon me completely after four years of college like Kelly's mom was talking about. I don't know. I know it's a lot of money, but... shrug. One of these days I will start supporting myself I promise. But I hope that my parents aren't waiting for May of the fourth year to pull the plug and say nope... it's my money... all mine!!! I don't know... i guess I just don't view money as THAT important. You may think that naive... but like I said... my life will not be defined by work... and neither will it be defined by money. I'll do what I can do... and that will be enough. John Lennon was brilliant.

Later that night... I guess that was Thanksgiving... I went to a small dinner party graciously provided by a girl in the program. She and her host mom had cooked chicken (they don't really have turkey here) mashed potatoes, really good stuffing, and apple pie in a small celebration of Thanksgiving. It was very nice and delicious. Then Lauren and I (I love that after only four hours of not seeing each other we have so many things to talk about) were going to walk to our perspective buses, but noticed an odd man kindof following us, so we doubled back a few times and kept crossing to the opposite side of the street when he crossed in our direction. So I invited Lauren to come to my house so we didn't have to wait for any buses alone. The next morning was the wedding of two of my roommates: the cook (28 years old) and the rock star (30). The guests started to show at about 8:30 am. There was cooking and preparation until noon when we walked in procession about 10 blocks to the civil union center, or whatever you call them, and we all crowded into a small room where the man behind the desk with the big book read some things about the law and marriage. Then they kissed and signed the paper. Then we waited outside for them and threw rice on them. Back at the house we waited until they showed up to start eating all the different kinds of empanadas, salad and fruit. Then there was chorizo (sausage) and asado (like steak). Then there was of course cake. 4 different kinds. All with Dulce de Leche in them. At that point I was about to burst. Good thing it was all spread out over some 4 hours. Then I went to my dance class... stupid and full. My teacher advised me that she was going to give me a 5 in the class which is about equivilent to a D+. I was annoyed and frustrated as I thought I had been doing quite well for someone who had never studied Martha Graham modern dance before. Sigh. I've never gotten so many poor grades in my life before, and I don't like it. Then I went back to the party where an Argentine man attached himself to me. He'd just spent 10 years in various places in the states and spoke okay English. It was probably very inhibited by the fact that he'd been drinking beer almost continually since 12:30 that morning. It was very annoying that he wouldn't stop speaking to me in English and that he wouldn't stop trying to get me to go places with him. It was very awkward. Finally he disappeared and I went to bed. The party actually ended at about Midnight... very early for Argentines... but I was very greatful. Last night was the first time in a long time in which I slept as much as I wanted... apparently 12 hours. yay!

Hope you all had a beautiful Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for you all in my life! I miss you. I love you!

November 19

2007-11-19T08:13:00.000-08:00

Wow... over a week. Again.

The craziness continued this week... though really a lot more of the same stuff. Lots of food and friends and late nights. At least last night we fell asleep on the floor for a couple hours. :D

The most exciting thing that's really happened is that ROYCE HAS A TICKET TO ARGENTINA AND IS COMING HERE IN 2 1/2 WEEKS!!!!!!

So there's that.

I can't remember what I did on Saturday. OH yeah, we went to a Tango concert of a friend. He plays piano... and very well I must say. Then we (Me, Lauren, and Coco) walked around all night finding food and buses and argentine folk music and dance. I sucked at it, but hey, i'd never done it before.

On Sunday I went over to visit my friend from Pakistan. He graciously fed me again (YAY!!!) and we spent the afternoon talking, philosophizing, and sharing stories. It was great! After I spent a frustrating hour and a half trying to catch a bus to a free comedy concert. I couldn't get on a bus because they were all full of people who were also going to the concert. But I got there eventually. I actually understood a little bit of it! I met up with some friends (American and Argentine) after and we went to Coco's house to party until the wee hours of the morning... luckily this time no one took their pants off. Then we all just fell asleep on the floor until Coco's mom called at 8:30 and we decided to make our way home. But needless to say, I'm tired. I don't know... it was a good week and I feel like I'm always learning a lot... but I am not as adept as Katiana at putting it into words... I still feel like conversation and honesty will get you everywhere. It's nice to have friends.

In other news... on the way home in the bus I witnessed a car run into a motorcycle. The bike was pretty bent up but the two guys who were on it jumped off and started yelling at the driver of the car so I think everyone's okay.

November 11

2007-11-11T10:17:00.000-08:00

I think I may actually be insane.

So the tally is now five nights in a row that I have gone out. I need sleep.

This is a warning for those of you who don't want to know... I talk about sex in this blog.

So, Lauren told me there was a party on Friday night. Yay! As of then I had not been to an Argentine house party. So of course I went. We got there at about 1ish. It was a tiny apartment with a bathroom and tiny kitchen, and the bed was on the floor in the living room where everyone was sitting. Luckily there was also a balcony with a fair view. It was someone's birthday, i didn't know her. We all sat around drinking wine and beer and talking. It was very much like any party. But the atmosphere was chill and the people were fun. There were a bunch of streamers hanging straight down from the ceiling, but oddly enough they never seemed to be in the way. And there were a bunch of bottle of bubble stuff, so I ended up blowing bubbles for a good portion of the night. Coco is a friend of Lauren's and she's the one who invited us. She's adorable. She's one of those people that EVERYONE is in love with. She's really outgoing and just great. Anyway, She also doesn't speak English so when we want to hang out with her we speak Spanish, which is great. She and I made some make shift Sangria with the fruit in the fridge. It turned out to be pretty spectacular. The birthday girl, Gaby, spent some time studying at CU in Boulder and we were impressed by her Skippy peanut butter, and she even gave us some Big Red gum... it was amazing. Argentine gum is odd. Anyway, we ended up staying there until almost everyone else left and it was just Coco, Pablo and Emmanuel (Argentine guys), Gaby, and Lauren and Me. At that point... and no one knows why... the guys decided it was time to take their pants off... so they were running around in their boxer-briefs for a while. Yes, Lauren has pictures on Facebook. Eventually we talked them into putting them back on... but then they wanted to play some form of Argentine strip poker, to which we turned them down. We did play a rather illuminating game of Never Have I Ever in which we had a list of things (almost exclusively sexual in nature) to which you may have never done. If you have done it, you have to drink. This was basically the most culturally illuminating experience I've had here, as up until then, things seemed pretty normal to me. But in the world of sex, Argentines are very different from Americans. I consider myself to be pretty open about the subject and generally comfortable with my sexuality. But compared to Argentines I'm a prude. In this culture, sex is something like eating. No one is embarrassed about it and everyone talks about it in detail to those little more than acquaintances. The most surprising thing to me is how lightly everyone treats it. No one seems to bothered by the concerns I have about STDs and getting pregnant. I found out most of the Argentines have done things like had sex with more than 3 people in one night (that's separately mind you). And not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just so weird to me coming from a country that politely ignores that people have sex. Unless they are gay of course, because then they are obviously have sex and that's against the law. oh wait, that's a different subject I don't want to get into here. After Never Have I Ever, they played some kind of kissing game that got increasingly more... exciting?dangerous? We finally left when two of the Argentines actually just started having sex on the floor. And as is was a one room apartment, we decided it was time to leave. At least is was her apartment. And it was her birthday, she deserved it I guess. :D

Anyway, we didn't leave until 7:30 ish... then we walked a couple blocks to Coco's house to make french toast. But none of the grocery stores were open yet so we just had instant coffee and crackers. After I went to Laurens house where we made french toast with apple bread (amazing) and chilled for a while. I finally went home at about 1. It was so cute when I got on the subte. I know I looked tired because everyone kept making room for me to sit down and offering me seats and stuff. They are so sweet these Argentines. lol. I also bought something from the people selling stuff in the train for the first time. I bought highlighters. lol. I needed some. shrug. I got home and crashed for about 4 hours. It was the first time in my life (i think) that I'd been up for over 24 hours without napping... and not having been on a plane. I talked to Royce all afternoon and went to be around 10:30.

I was awoken an hour later by Lauren who was calling to see if I wanted to go out and sing karaoke. ummm... i'm asleep. So I told her I would think about it and if I called her back I was coming, and if not, I was asleep. So I rolled over and closed my eyes and thought, "I just want to sleep, I have so much homework tomorrow, but then again I decided last week that the one thing I was definitely not going to regret about this semester is not having spent enough time studying... besides, I can sleep when I'm dead right?" So my eyes popped open and I got out of bed and went out to Karaoke. That is SO not like me. We got there at one... and saw the end of a really fun blues band. Lauren and I were the only ones there as Coco hadn't left her house yet. After a while Coco's other friends who I didn't know, but apparently Lauren had met before, showed up. It was really fun. I didn't sing. But the friend who's birthday it was sang and it was amazing and fun. Lauren sang a Coldplay song in English. I was impressed. I got home again after 4:30 and this time went to bed in earnest. I didn't get up until 2:30 this afternoon. horrible. Anyway, I still haven't studied, nor have I seen all the friends I wanted to see this weekend... but I am apparently a party animal... lol. go figure.

on another note, Lauren pointed out to me that if I drop my International Studies Major and just do Philosophy, I can graduate on time. And now I'm thinking about it. Who wants to take 5 economics classes anyway...

November 9

2007-11-09T09:08:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe that I haven't written in here in over a week. I've been so busy I could barely check my email. Good for me huh?!

Lauren introduced me to Jem and Sia! YAY! They are bands...

Actually up until Tuesday I hadn't written anything because I didn't have anything too interesting to say. I went to a Halloween party last Friday. It was fun, but it wasn't a very Argentine thing to do. And my costume pretty much sucked so, shrug. Saturday my roommates had another loud, live music party in our living room... through which I slept because I hadn't had much sleep the night before. Sunday, Lauren and I continued our tradition of sitting around, drinking mate, eating lots of food, and pretending to do homework. Monday morning we got up and had some really yummy oatmeal with maple syrup and then, inspired, I made french toast before dragging myself off to class. Later I did some homework.

Tuesday is when things started to get interesting. Lauren helped me skip tango again (turns out I'm getting bored with it), and we went leather shopping and ate ice cream! Then we went to her house to think of something to do... it was like, "um, this is lame. We are in Buenos Aires and we can't think of anything to do..." so I looked for some activities on the internet and we ran across an advertisement for the opera Madame Butterfly. So at 7:30 we decided to go to an Opera that started at 8:30. Lauren loaned me a cute black dress and some really fun light pink heels and we headed to the opera. We each paid 10 pesos for standing room tickets and entered the hall to my first professional opera experience. Luckily there weren't very many people there so we got to sit down anyway. It was fun! I think the most fun thing for me was that we could spontaneously decide to just go watch an opera. After it was over we walked to a pizza place and had some pizza and chocolate cake. We were rather starving as we had neglected to eat dinner. Then we tried to find a bus for a while before giving up and taking a cab. I slept at Lauren's house so I wouldn't have to pay for a cab. Wednesday I got up early to go home and change before my Spanish class. Then following the spending money theme of the week, Lauren and I went to lunch. After my dance class at 9 pm Lauren sent me a text that they were going to a tango club. So, of course I couldn't miss that. I quickly changed my close and returned to her house from which we walked to the house of a friend of a friend (raised eyebrow) and chatted for a couple hours in intermixed Spanish-English... not quite Spanglish... just in whatever language we felt like saying any one sentence. Then we went to the tango club and watched and danced tango for the night. It was quite fun I must say. I know I just said I was bored with Tango but what I really meant is that I am bored with the class. Anyway, I managed to get home around 5... a good 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up and go to the other side of town to finalize my student visa. Then for dinner I went out with some other friends from FLACSO to a Japanese food restaurant. We spoke mostly Spanish all night as one of the girls brought her friend from Colombia who doesn't really speak English. It was pretty good sushi despite the lack of flavor in the salmon. But it was fairly expensive. Oh, well.

It sounds less exciting on paper (or screen...), but Lauren and I are very proud of ourselves... going out three nights in a row... wow. lol. Anyway. I'm glad I'm finally taking advantage of being here. Now if only I can pass my international relations class... I'll be perfect! -ish.

Academia vs. Personal Experience

2007-10-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

Is that a thesis topic?

October 30

2007-10-30T18:08:00.000-07:00

Aahh... (that was a refreshed sigh)

Friday night after my dance class I walked to Lauren's house so we could plan our trip to Uruguay for the following day. (apparently Lauren likes to procrastinate like me!) We realized that the boat reservations could only be made online at least two days before so we decided we just had to show up early and buy tickets when we got there. We booked hostels and packed and crashed on my bed for about 5 hours before getting up at 6 to finish packing and leave to catch a taxi to the other side of town and the harbor. When we got to the ticket box... not only were there no tickets left to Punto del Este (the city we were planning on going to first), we were informed that we needed our student visas (which we had left home) because we were about a week past the three month tourist visa date... grrr. So instead of running home and probably missing the boat we paid the 50 peso fine each and bought our tickets. We ate breakfast at the cafe and got on the boat. The ride was only an hour long and then we were in Uruguay! The boat was cool despite the brown river water. Even though we couldn't sit on the deck and drink piña coladas. Basically the entire weekend all I wanted was a Piña Collada served to me in a coconut with a little umbrella... but it never happened. Anyway, when we arrived in Colonia (which was about a 30 second walk from the boat) we went to the hostel to change our reservation to include Saturday night as well as Sunday night. Then we walked around looking for a place to buy lunch. It is such a gorgeous little town. There weren't very many people around. It was sunny. It smelled good. I kept getting whiffs of different flower smells. One thing that really got us was that the drivers in the cars actually stopped for pedestrians... something that never happens in Bs. As. In fact, when I cross the street here... it is almost always a near death experience. It was beautiful. The people were all so nice and happy and relaxed. It was fabulous. After ice cream we walked down to the artisan fair, and they had lots of good, neat stuff that we made mental notes of to buy later. Then we went back to the hostel to change into beach clothes and get directions to the bus that goes to the beach. We found it, and the bus driver not only took paper money, he took Argentine pesos as well as Uruguayan... and he told us when we needed to get off. We got to the beach and basically laid in the sun for the rest of the afternoon. I walked up and down the beach a bit in the waves but didn't swim. We finally went back when it was getting close to dinner time. We watched the sun set into the river and then ate at a place with out door tables that looked over the water. Then we walked back toward the hostel and ran into our hostel roommates (a university teacher and her 6 year old son). They apparently spend a lot of time in Colonia so they walked us around a bit to show us the best places to eat and go out. Later we went to a bar/restaurant that was supposed to have live music. We ordered drinks that turned out to be really strong and listened to a really horrible band that consisted of a guy working the sound board, a guy who played simple keyboard and sang, plus two other guys who just sang. I still don't get it. But it was made funnier by the strong piña coladas! When we got tired around 12:30 we went back to the hostel and fell asleep, content with the knowledge that we didn't have to do anything the next day but hang out. We got up and found breakfast at a super market. Then we went back to the artisan fair to make our purchases. We decided to go to the beach next to the artisan fair instead of the other far away one. It was just as nice, if much smaller. But there still weren't many people around so it was okay. I spent a long time listening to the unintelligible but beautiful German conversation that was spoken by the couple next to us. Lauren and I had an exciting conversation about religion and taking things for granted and the point of academia. We talked about how I should probably change my thesis topic as I don't really have an opinion or passion for it... and that it would be better for me to write about something similar to what we were talking about before because I obviously had a passion for it. The problem was that as soon as she said that I became in capable of remembering exactly what we were talking about, much less make a hypothesis out of it. But we'll see about that later. After the beach we went to take showers before going to get MASSAGES!!!! We'd happened to walk by a hotel that offered a spa and therefore massages. They were 550 pesos each... which is about U$S 23. And they were awesome! I was so relaxed and my skin was soft. It was perfect. Then we went to the restaurant that our roommate had recommended. It was also amazing! We sat outside and the waiter was a hilarious little man with about 1000 buttons pinned to his apron (including one for Kerry & Edwards 2004.. he he). He also had huge ridiculous hats that he would change almost every time he went inside. I think we saw at least 12 hats throughout the night (including a purple wizard hat, a foam frog, and a yellow bonnet with a big red flower on the side). He was adorable! The other waiters... who didn't really seem to be doing anything, offered us some Mate (which we politely refused) and then talked about how Uruguayans drink Mate ALL day long and carry it with them everywhere (which they do). Then he mimed how they wash their faces in between sips of mate. Lol. Anyway, the food was amazing too. We had this typically Uruguayan dish called Chivito which consists of a steak topped with strips of bacon, cheese wrapped in ham, and a perfectly fried egg. It came also with french fries and salad. We shared some really delicious Uruguayan wine and a hot apple bread pudding with vanilla ice cream for dessert. By the time we were done we were ready to just fall asleep. Which we did. We woke up fairly early the next morning because we had gone to bed so early. We leisurely ate breakfast and chatted until it was time to leave. Unfortunately, the clock I was using was on Argentine time which is 1 hour behind Uruguayan so not only did we check out late (thankfully they didn't charge us), but we missed our boat back to Argentina. oops. So Lauren missed her classes on Monday... but we got to hang out in beautiful Colonia another 5 hours. We spent the rest of our accidental time eating more ice cream and doing logic puzzles in Spanish. Then we got on the boat and headed back to Bs. As... which, was sad to me. I went to my dance class and returned to my house to eat dinner with my roommates (who for the most part hadn't noticed that I'd been gone all weekend), and do my Spanish homework before going to bed.

I feel so healthy and beautiful and refreshed. I understand now why people go away for the weekend when they live in the city. It does help. :D

I wish you sunny days and the calm of a cool breeze.

October 26

2007-10-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday. Hot day. Rainstorm.

I chose to skip Tango (partially to recuperate from Tuesday, but mostly because I just wanted to go party with Lauren). I got to her house at about 5 pm. We went to the store so I could buy ingredients for a sangría recipe that Spencer gave me. I was providing sangría to some 16 people so I bought a lot of it. Wine, Ginger Ale, Peach/Apricot Juice, Vodka, Lime Juice, and Fruit Cocktail. The recipe called for cherry juice and cherries... but those were very expensive, so I improvised. I thought there was going to be way too much, but turns out it was a HUGE hit and the Argentines drink more than Flacso likes to say they do. But I knew that all ready. Anyway. Then we sat around in the kitchen and listened to music, drank mate, and made a music mix for the evening. Eventually Lauren started making the tacos which ended up being awesome! Surprisingly the Argentines arrived early and the Americans arrived late. But we ended up with 12 people I think(5 Argentines, 6 Americans, and 1 Austrian), sangría, tacos, sandwiches, potato salad, teriyaki chicken, sushi, brownies, chocolate oatmeal cookies, sweet bread, corn bread, and apple crisp with vanilla ice cream (which Lauren made from scratch, the apple crisp, not the ice cream, and it was amazing!). It was a fabulous time! After we ate and drank our hearts out we went to an electronic tango milonga. It was interesting. The music was very untraditional and the dancing was almost nothing like what I've been learning. But it was fun! One of the Argentine guys plays traditional tango piano and taught us some tango moves (he dances too). I got to talk to him a little bit about what tango really is. We left at about 3:30 because Lauren had to go to class at 9:30. I thought we'd done pretty well, but the poor Argentines complained the whole way home about how early it was. *rolling eyes*. Anyway, I ended up walking around for a while on the way home with the tango pianist. He has a knack of simultaneously making you feel like you are doing something wrong with your life and telling you to calm down in the same moment. I think he just wants people to be chill and with his philosophy about what chill is. shrug. He's not a bad guy and I don't think he means to do this but, he made me very confused and introspective to the point where I was awake until 6 am writing about it. I skipped my 11 am Spanish class. But I finally found some peace... in my breaths. All in all it was a fun birthday party! Hopefully Lauren and I will get to Uruguay this weekend. If we don't... i don't know... but I won't be happy. :D

I am.

2007-10-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

I am part of the fabric of being.
I know that I exist.
I am glowing brightly with life.
I know that I am alive.
I am tinged pink with love.
I know that I love and am loved.
I sparkle with intelligence.
I think that I am and that you are.
I am human.
Hot red blood keeps me here.
I am Makena.
My experience tells me so.
I choose to be.
The truth is nothing more than the choices we make.

October 24

2007-10-24T17:48:00.001-07:00

Today, I had a rather interesting experience. I went to my modern class at 7:30. The class usually starts at 7, but on Wednesday the professor can't get to class until 7:30 (or so I gather). Anyway, for the past few weeks we've been having problems with the professor getting there before 8... 8:15 even. Usually there are a good number of people who leave or are encouraging everyone to leave. I think that some are worried about being counted absent if everyone doesn't go at the same time. Anyway, there is at least one girl who refuses to go because she likes this class and we only have this professor on Wed, so usually we wait the some 45 minutes until he shows up. Today we waited 45 minutes... and I think we would have left, but today the students seemed to be in the dancing mood... so we gave the class ourselves! We did the warm up and went through exercises. The accompanist on the drums even played for us. We danced pretty hard for about 45 minutes... but at 9 people started to peater out and leave. It was fun though. Everyone was in such a good mood! Laughing and talking and playing around but dancing! A couple of the girls were even doing funny impressions of the prof. every now and then (in the states I would consider this rather disrespectful... but I don't know what to think of it here, and everyone else seemed to think it was great so... shrug). There was even a short rendition of Let the Sunshine In... which immediately got stuck in my head. I'm still thinking about the whole thing and it makes me laugh. The prof. never showed up.

Anyway, earlier today my Spanish class got canceled... and luckily someone from FLACSO called to tell me so I could sleep in. Then I went to a fabulous lunch with Lauren. We sat outside at the tables on the side walk and had hamburgers (seriously these have to be the best hamburgers in the world) and french fries. It was warm and sunny, but we were sitting in the shade... and it was perfect!

Tomorrow is Laurens birthday potluck dinner. I'm making quesadillas and sangría. Lauren is turning 21!!!! I'm very excited. You'll hear about it I'm sure! Goodnight!

October 22

2007-10-22T13:46:00.001-07:00

I got a letter from Molly today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it was really exciting.

October 21

2007-10-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

Wow... October 21. Time does go by... i should really stop worrying about that.

Last week was fairly straight forward. I slept in because I didn't have Spanish classes this week. Friday night I went to a salsa club with some people in my tango club. It was really fun, but it was Friday night, after my 2 hour modern class, and it took me forever to get there. Also, I've never danced salsa before (with people who actually know how) so I pretty much looked like an idiot all night. Sigh, fun though. I got home at about 5 am... dead. Saturday I basically couldn't walk up stairs... apparently salsa does a number on your quads. But my two engaged roommates were bbq-ing steaks on the roof and I got to spend some time with them and eat a nice lunch on the roof in the beautiful sunlight.

Saturday afternoon I met up with my friend Eli and we went to this theme park call tierra santa or Holy Land. Its a park dedicated to depictions of religion and Jesus. and yep... it was hilarious and completely made of plaster (or something similar). I was thinking about Emily the whole time because I think she would have found it ridiculous and a little creepy how some of the 'shows' consisted of scenes from the bible, in which the figures were all just placed out there, some of them moving like the Santa Clause dolls you see at Christmas, with fat cherub-like angels hanging from the ceiling, with the story read in Spanish from a record, and fancy lighting changes. Most of the park was just stationary figures set up with short passages from the bible on placards. There was also a synagogue, a mosque, the wailing wall, and for some reason a display of Gandhi. The writing in the plaster synagogue was not even Hebrew, which Eli pointed out, it was just funny looking gibberish. Neither of us can read Arabic so we don't know if the writing in the mosque was authentic or not. Oh, and on the hour there is a 'resurrection' in which an 18 meter high Jesus statue rises out of the plaster mountain in the middle of the park, with lots of Allelujah music and more fancy lighting, to 'bless' the people in the park. The park guide said he had 36 mechanical movements, but I only counted 13... of which most of them were just the figure turning 1/4 of the way around. He did however, at one point, close his eyes, lift his head, and turn his palms to the sky (as his arms were already, obviously, spread wide). Most of the time I couldn't figure out whether to laugh of be offended on behalf of Christians world wide. Wherever they didn't have something specific... there was a plaster donkey or sheep or camel. All of the figures in the park were life size. All the people working there, including the maintenance crew, were dressed up like you would imagine the people of ancient Jerusalem to be dressed. There was one stage where they did live shows and we watched some belly dancers do some slightly less than authentic dancing. The main dancer was decked out in hot hot pink. They did do some cool dancing though. The main dancer finished off the show with at least a minute of hard core head banging in which her really long hair was swung around in large circles. I still don't know how I feel about that.

After that I made my way home. I was supposed to meet some other people and go out some more but I had no credit on my phone with which to contact people and I was so tired that when I finally climbed the last stair to my bedroom I lay down and fell asleep.

Now it's Sunday. A beautiful day... of which I plan on spending doing homework and talking on the phone. I would like to go to a park but as my phone isn't working I would have to put a lot of effort into finding someone to go with me. We'll see.

I posted new photos on Facebook

2007-10-19T06:48:00.000-07:00

http://unco.facebook.com/photos.php?id=42109307

I don't know if you can access them without a facebook account... and if you can't... well, I guess you'll just have to wait until you see me!

October 18

2007-10-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

I think I forgot to mention this... but a few weeks ago, my friend William actually did get kicked out of his house because of the bathroom door that I broke. oops. oh well. His land lady was a psyco anyway. And he found a new better place to live pretty quickly so it´s okay.

October 16

2007-10-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

Friday night I decided not to go out so instead I talked to Royce and went to bed. I slept for almost twelve hours. I must have been tired. I woke up on Saturday and lazily got ready for the soccer game. Getting there ended up being a little stressful because I couldn´t get hold of Lauren so I had to go to the internet cafe to look at the email for directions and then get on the subway which ended up taking much longer than anticipated. And in my silly head I thought that maybe if I was late they would leave without me and I wouldn´t be able to go so I took a taxi the rest of the way. I then proceeded to wait on the corner with the group for almost an hour while we waited for the other people who were late... silly me. I spent all the money I´d taken with me: 10.75 pesos on that silly taxi for no reason. Oh well. The soccer game was very fun though. The second half wasn´t the greatest thing because Arg. was two up over Chile, so they basically just tried to keep the ball away from them for 45 minutes. Sigh. Oh well. It was cool to see all the people in the stadium though. They are crazy about their soccer. The opposing team was sequestered in one section of the stadium with about 15 police men at each entrance... no one was getting in there. When we were waiting on the street corner, a caravan of opposing fans went by, chilean flags haning out the windows, and they were accomplanied by lights and sirens, policemen on motorbikes with HUGH FREAKING RIFLES!!! There were BIG guns involved and at that point I was less excited to go... though I obviously went anyway.

Anyway, after the game I went back to Laurens house because her family wasn´t in the house all weekend and she was having a sleep over! It was so fun and perfect. We watched 10 Things I Hate About You and Moulin Rouge and talked and drank Mate and ate cookies and chocolate and ice cream... it was unhealthy and delicious and perfect. I slept on the couch and in the morning everyone else left so Lauren and I made PANCAKES and watched Eddie Izzard on youtube. We then proceeded to spend the entire day watching tv, drinking mate, and eating the rest of the ice cream. Sunday pretty much didn´t exist. It was wonderful. Luckily, Monday was dia de la Raza... which Royce told me is like their columbus day... but regardless, we didn´t have class. So after I woke up I went to the parks to meet Lauren and William and drink more mate (I´m really starting to like this stuff, it´s so wonderfully social). Plus, the hamburgers at the stand in the park are pretty much the best I´ve ever had... and they don´t put anything on them. It´s just meat and bread. Unfortunately while we were waiting for burgers, it started to rain so we changed tactics and went back to my house to watch a movie: Amoresperros, which means love is dogs only all squished together. It was good. If long and sad. We also played a little ping pong on the temporary table in my living room and ate empanadas. It was grand. It was basically the most relaxing weekend I´ve had since I got here. I didn´t do one bit of homework. And I was happy almost the entire weekend. Quite a feat.

On sunday night I had a really crazy dream in which I had an identical twin who had lost her memory and couldn´t remember who I was. But I still loved her. And when I looked at her I saw my face but knew she was a different person. And I felt like I could see myself from someone elses point of view. I watched how my hair moved and actually looked when I wasn´t looking in the mirror. It was crazy. I´m not sure what to think about it.

Royce got my letter yesterday. It took ten days. :D But we are pretty sure they lost his package that he sent me as it´s been over a month and a half.

Besos!

In response to the questions about my last blog

2007-10-16T11:49:00.001-07:00

To be clear... he´s not THE pakistani foreign ambassador, he is a Pakistani foreign ambassador, as is my other Pakistani friend who was in my spanish class. And they are both still in training. Learning spanish. Or one of them is. The one I went out to dinner with doesn´t want to and isn´t trying. He´s been here 9 months and is still in level 1. I met him through the one in my spanish class and invited me to dinner because I accidentally expressed my ignorace of good restaruants in Buenos Aires so he decided to educate me. It´s fascinating to talk to people from different parts of the world. Do you know for example that the Pakistani government always hopes for the Republicans to be in power in the U.S. because the only power Pakistan has against India´s size and army is their nuclear bombs and the democrats would try to take those away. Interesting.

Katiana: I will always be a little sad when you are not with me. And at times I will be very sad. But I will also be happy for you having fun wherever you are and that I will see you again. Hopefully soon.

Molly: Where is home? is a very good question. One that I have been pondering for quite some time and have not come to a conclusion about. When I think about home I think of Spencer and Katiana and Emily and Royce in my living room drinking tea or wine and playing board games... but I also think of sitting in front of the woodstove in Talkeetna with my family listening to Lord of the Rings the radio play... and I also think of playing cards after breakfast on Sunday morning in the sunshine with you and mindy. These things are my home. And they will never be in one place. I don´t know whether to be happy or sad about that.

In terms of plans, I am planning on going straight to Colorado from Buenos Aires in the first week of February. I don´t know exactly when I will be back in Alaska. At the latest it with be Christmas of ´08. I can´t go back this christmas and I can´t go back for the summer because I will need to take a full summer course load to make up for this spring semester. I could come up sometime in the spring... but that requires money I am skeptical I will have. But we´ll see. I don´t know if I can survive without being in AK for over a year and a half.

I think I could never be president of the U.S. because I wouldn´t take those actions that are best for my country, I would try to do what is best for the world. Even though I really think that what is best for the world is also best for the U.S. I feel like most people in our country aren´t ready to make sacrifices for the world. And there´s alway the chance that some nuclear power seeking further strength would sense weekness and decide it was time to take the U.S.A. out. Shrug.

October 12

2007-10-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

It´s raining horribly, still.

I had a very long dinner and conversation(s) with the Pakistani foreign ambassador last night. I love conversation. I learned so much. And he paid for everything... which was a lot. If everyone would take time to talk to different people from around the world... we would have no problems. It´s when people think they know how other people are, while they haven´t ever talked to them, that problems start.

I´ve come to a decision about next semester. I´m coming home.

I got my spanish final results back today. I passed, but barely. Therefore, I suck.

Sigh.

I´m going to an international soccer game on saturday!

October 11

2007-10-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

I am tired of everyone always telling me to calm down. I am calm. I am just enthusiastic and I strive to be clear about things so I don´t end up mistaken or disappointed. Which tends to happen anyway. It's being told that I need to calm down that really gets me going.

October 10

2007-10-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

I have met an unreal number of disillusioned, pessimistic, and dejected men here who used to be naive and idealistic like me, ready to save the world, but then they joined the real world and were consumed by bureaucracy and politics. Almost all of them have a drinking problem. My response to this is that I am trying to hold on to my idealism and optimism. And they all respond that I should do that and then in a rather depressing way say they hope I stay the same and do all the things I want to do. I´ve met students, foreign ministers, and ONG workers like this. It´s really scary to me. Last night I was told by a Pakistani foreign minister that it was nice to finally meet someone from the states who could intelligently talk about politics in the U.S. and the world. He was shocked to meet the "only intelligent American girl in the country". Sigh. He also told me that I shouldn't worry about accomplishments but just enjoy my life as much as I can, but at the same time, I should always be great at my job... and then turn around and say 'go fuck yourself' to my boss because then I will be indispensable. Mind you he was pretty wasted by this time. Alcohol is dangerous... but not nearly as dangerous as government jobs apparently. Sigh, what are we supposed to do? And then I of course want to help these poor sad human beings but they are usually too drunk to really remember me anyway. I miss my campus. At least campuses spawn hope and new ideas. Maybe that´s the key. I´ll just stay on campuses for the rest of my life and I can´t get too dejected. But I´ve met many teachers who seem to have lost hope too.

On a lighter note: I had my first real encounter with tequila last night. It was fun. And I think I did well on my Spanish test this morning. The other sad realization is that I check my email, blog, and facebook far too often for anything to have changed in the interim.

I wish you a sunny, enthusiastic and hopeful day.

October 9

2007-10-09T11:58:00.001-07:00

Sigh, it´s raining again. They tell me it´s not normally like this and that I´m here in the wrong season. But the fact is, I´m tired of having wet shoes all the time.

Friday night after dance I went to the other side of the city to have mexican food with Lauren, William, and an argentine friend of Lauren´s. The place looked awesome! It was called Frida Kahlo and it was all mexican looking inside. Just being there made me happy. The food was... just about as disappointing as I expected though it is apparently the best mexican food restaurant in the city. So I guess mexican food is not a good plan while I´m here. oh well. It was fun, but I was tired from a long week and my spanish wasn´t working so I didn´t say much all night. I went home fairly early so I could get up in the morning and study.

So on Saturday I woke up and tried to study though my headache, sore throat, and tired body. It kindof worked. But I was reminding myself of Tyler when I would get distracted for hours at a time by the philosophical questions in my head about the meaning of life and the role of love... seriously I stared at the ceiling a lot on Saturday. anyway, at about 6 I traversed to Laurens house where she fed me some tarta and some alfajore (a rather indescribable sweet) before going to the Night of the Museums. I can´t remember if I discribed this last time but it´s a night in which all the museums in Bs.As. stay open until midnight and you can go to them for free. Also there are busses that run from all the museums to the others that you can take for free. We started on a cool, old looking ship in the river thats crew were all in sailor suits and had a brass band and singer on the upper deck. It was fun in a kindof Titanic feeling sort of way (in a good way). Then we went to the Tango museum. It was okay. The performer was singing, not dancing. Then Patricio (my argentine friend) showed up. I hadn´t seen him in mucho tiempo. We all proceeded to a big cultural center to look at a bunch of different kinds of art. There was the performance art of the the girl in the blue dress who ran around the crowd. Then there was the childrens paintings on huge rolls of brown paper; the woman in the doorway who looked like the clown from Saw (very creepy); the room full of large canvases with different brightly colored circles on them which were apparently representing the 'supremacy of color'; the room with all the poorly taken photos of the towers on meat plants and cemetarys (we spent a lot of time in this room because we didn´t get it); and the room on the top floor with the pretty acrilic painting of people and a great use of orange. From there we returned to the center of town and Puerto Madero to see the final concert and to eat some hamburgers. Unfortuantely it was getting cold and I had neglected to bring a coat. The music was fun enough but we left after the first ten minutes of the drum group because apparently there´s only so much drumming that we can take. It was all good and fun. We left early enough. I was ready to go to bed. Unfortunately that part of the plan didn´t work out. It took us an hour and a half to find a taxi. It was rediculous. If I hadn´t been worried about being robbed or kidnapped I would have walked the some 30 blocks home. But finally we did find one, by some worldly magic.

Sunday morning I did much the same thing as Saturday morning with much tiredness and feeling like I was getting a cold. Then I started out to the house of the Pakistani man (Shahzad) in my spanish class for food. It was one of the most stressful moments since I´ve been here because I didn´t have any phone credit to call neither him nor Christina who was also going but didn´t know the directions. I looked everywhere but everything was closed or didn´t have any cards. By that time I was late and feeling horrible because it is Ramadan and I didn´t want to make Shahzad wait to eat after fasting all day. Finally I found a phone card and everything worked out... though almost 40 minutes late, but Shahzad had already eaten so I didn´t feel too horrible. I found a new love: Pakistani food. It was delicious! And we talked about many things in the world, including the current state of Pakistan and the differences of culture. He played us some Indian music too! We did most of the talking in english because he speaks really good english and we all speak rather poor spanish. It was great. We talked and ate for almost 4 hours before walking Christina home and to my bus stop. Shahzad and I talked about how relationships between people of the opposite sex differ between my culture and his. It was really refreshing to just strait up say what kind of relationship you were interested in having with someone from just about the very beginning of the friendship. It was imortant too because our cultures are so different. But we found out that we are basically looking for the same thing: good friends. And that my definition is essentially the same as his. It´s really too bad that the political situation is so bad in the middle east these days because after meeting Shahzad, hearing his stories, tasting his food, and listening to his music, I would really like to travel there. Hopefully someday soon the world will get over all this silliness and killing each other and I can travel to visit my friends around the world.

Monday: I had my International Relations midterm. It went very badly. And my leg injury had actually gotten worse instead of better so I didn´t participate in all of my dance class. The good thing was that I finally got to talk to my parents for a while and even see my love on webcam! It made for an excellent evening, despite the rain.

Reading Katiana´s blog makes me feel like I just had a really long conversation with her, and reading the New York Times makes me feel like I know so much about what´s going on in the world. Writing this reminds me of good things. Now I am happier.

October 5

2007-10-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

This morning, 6 am, I was awoken by cannons firing above my head.

well, not really, it was thunder.

but it was the loudest most abrupt thunder I had ever heard in my life. And then the rain that I usually enjoy listening to on my skylight turned into litte rocks that I thought would surely break through at any moment. It was a little freaky.

And the rain stopped long enough for me to not take my umbrella to class... and then started again. In furry.

But my friend Christina and I went to a glorious lunch at my favorite café. So it´s none the less a good day. I can´t believe that at 9 pm tonight I will have had an entire week of classes. Something I haven´t experienced for over a month. My body is tired from dancing. I´m so glad it´s friday! Tonight... I´m not sure what is going on. Mexican food, maybe, hopefully. Tomorrow is the Night of the Museums in which all of the museums in Bs.As. are open until 2 am, they are free, and there are busses running from each one to the others all the time. That should be good stuff! Sunday, perhaps Pakistani food with the Pakistani man from my spanish class. And all the time in between will be (need to be) spent studying for my midterm in International Relations on Monday. Happy first week of October! Love you!

October 2

2007-10-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

Hmm... I have not been inclined to write here lately, even though I travelled halfway across the country. I don´t remember what I did last week.

Okay so Jujuy. It started out pretty straight-forward. We went to the aeroparque (which is what they call airports when they aren´t international) at 5 and didn´t actually leave the airport until sometime after 11. Apparently the plane was delayed. They gave us dinner though, which wasn´t too bad. While I was sitting in the food court and got into a conversation with the three argentine men sitting behind out table. They were very nice and we talked about Alaska (of course) and what we were studying, and then I was talking about the college culture in america and about the time I got to binge drinking the FLACSO kids that had been spending the previous hour and a half drinking wine, beer, and whiskey (continually getting louder and sillier, mind you this is like 6 pm on a Wed.) managed to spill a bottle of wine and then one of the guys proceeded to slurp the spilled wine up off the table. It was gross and I was incredibly embarrased. I don´t have a problem with drinking, as you all know, but I feel like when you are an American travelling abroad you might want to take the opportunity to improove the image of Americans rather than solidify the stereotype. Sigh, oh well.
We got to the hotel in Jujuy at about 3:30. They insisted on giving us dinner, again, before letting us go to bed. We then had to wake up and be on the bus by 10 am. We took off but got stopped at the border crossing to the next province because we didn´t have all our names on the right lists or something like that... I think we were there for a couple hours, we didn´t get to Tilcara until after 5 anyway. So we missed the museum and went straight to the Incan ruins where we saw some llamas and some old clay buildings and such things. The mountains, with which we were completely surrounded, were very pretty, not brown and covered in trees but dusty and blue, green, yellow, red, burgundy, purple, and turquoise all mixed together. And the sky was the most blue I had ever seen. And lots of cactus.
From there it basically went: market, fried bread, food, sleep, breakfast, bus, rocks, bus, lunch, market, spending lots of money on cool stuff, bus, more money on stuff, meeting foreigners (I´ll come back to this), dinner in town (this too), sleep, breakfast, bus, bus, big salt mine (this too), bus, lunch, more market (no money), bus, nap, dinner, party in town, walk drunk man back to the hotel, sleep, breakfast, bus, airport, and now unfortunately I´m back in Buenos Aires.
The Foreigners: I met them because I noticed how fancily indigenously dressed they were and was absolutley shocked to hear them speaking english. So I asked the lady where she was from. She's from england, had children and grandchildren and in her words "now it´s my turn." She was really nice and fun to talk to. She told me that when I go to England this summer I should visit Stratford and Yorkshire. Apparently they are the good nature places. The man was from Belgium and obviously very educated and eccentric. He was actually quite intimidating. He had large diamond encrusted Jaguar head earings on...
The free night we had to eat dinner in town was fun. My hotel-roommate Eli and I went to a Peña that had live traditional music and we shared a couple dishes of llama, just to try it. It was a lot like steak. Not my favorite thing in the world. And we got to go home relatively early. The cool thing was that I got to spend some cuality time with Eli who is really cool and I´m glad I got to know him.
The salt mine was cool: basically just a almost never ending plane of white stuff that it actually salt. It was cool, though I´m not sure it was worth the 2 1/2 hour drive both ways.
The drunk man, I´m not at liberty to discribe in detail... but after an evening of feeling completely alone and isolated, walking (half carrying) with this person who had never talked to me before who started telling me about his life made me realize that I am blessed blessed blessed. I KNOW that I have people in the world who love me, even if I can´t see them right now. And even though this guy apparently has lots of friends here, he honestly doesn´t believe that anyone, in the world, cares about him. It made me sad about the state of the world, but also I realized the smallness of my own pain. And that is what I really want to do. I want to help alleviate that kind of pain in the world. That´s the point. I don´t know if I helped him. But I tried.

Monday was not a good day. But I have not the energy to talk about it now. Maybe next time.

You are special.
You are loved.
I know this because I have seen you.
I loved you then.
And I love you still.

September 25

2007-09-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

I was talking to Lauren yesterday about the things that I´ve learned here. There really hasn´t been that much. The cultures aren´t really that different. I think people here are generally more ameable, or at least they pretend to be. And I still haven´t quite mastered the kissing on the cheek thing. I´m not sure when to do it. I think the general rule is kiss everyone you have any kind of relationship with when you meet them and when you say goodbye. And mostly I can do that. It just gets complicated when there are a bunch of people around or when I´m in a hurry. But in my experience that´s about where the friendliness ends, at least with me. Introductions don´t seem to be too common and for the most part if you don´t talk to them, they won´t talk to you. Course, that could just be because I an extrañero. And really, they are mostly very nice once you get talking to them.

The biggest thing I´ve learned here is how I treat people. Before now, I never realized how hard it is to understand things in a different language, and it never really occured to me that a cute accent means something more than that they weren´t born in this country. Even when I was with Kana, I probably didn´t slow down and explain enough. Native speakers talk so fast, and unless I am invited into the conversation and directly spoken to, it´s really hard to participate. My normal state of being here is tuned out. So I am more aware of myself. I will invite outsiders into my conversations and introduce them to others and make sure they are comfortable and participating. It´s difficult, because I´m kindof shy myself to think that I will take that much iniciative, but it is much more difficult or the one who´s new.

September 24

2007-09-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

The long weekend. Friday was Dia de los Estudiantes. Apparently it’s a really big deal. Everyone was wishing all us students a happy day and my dance professor even gave us candy and little pictures of her when she was young and dancing on stage in different situations. It sounds a little conceited here but it’s actually pretty cool to see all the things she used to do. She’s gained quite a bit of weight since the pictures were taken. Anyway, on Friday Lauren finally got me up and out of bed so we could go to the huge parks on the other side of town that was apparently the place to be. It was incredible. There were thousands of students in the park covering the grass and sitting under trees. Everyone was sitting, talking, drinking mate, playing futból, listening to music (or playing music), and just generally being with friends. No one was alone, and it was rare to see just two or three people together. There was so much joy, just the happiness of being in the company of friends and not being in class. It was great. The spectacle was only slightly dampened by the fact that when the sun started to go down and everyone left they also left behind all their trash on the grass and in the lake and on the streets. Ugg. Sigh, oh well. I have noticed that people seem less concerned about littering here. It was great to see and be a part of that though. Although Lauren and I were severely wishing we had brought some mate with us. We did buy some burgers from the vendor on the corner that despite being just bread and meat were absolutely delicious!

Later we tried to go to a Mexican restaurant with William. Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed for renovation so we ended up at the pizza place across the street. It was really fun though, to just hang out. Side note, when the menu says that something has basil on it here it means lots of fresh basil leaves. It’s fabulous. Were hung out in the restaurant for a while and then went to a bar for a bit where I saw a girl from my program who I have Spanish with. She’s nice and it was really good to be able to socialize with her a bit. I’m really jealous of her situation because when she came down here, her boyfriend came with her. Most of the other students I’ve talked to left their boyfriend/girlfriend in the states. On the way home I stopped at William’s house to use his bathroom, and somehow managed to break the door knob or something… anyway, it wouldn’t open. Seriously, who gets locked in a bathroom. We spent some 10 minutes trying to get it open before William just told me to break it down. So I did. I felt ridiculous. But really, in my secret heart I’ve always wanted to break down a door, just so I could see if I could do it. I just rammed into it with my shoulder a few times and the wood around the door knob splintered and broke away, and I was free. Anyway, I decided that the universe was telling me it was time to go to bed. So I grabbed a taxi.

Saturday I layed around it bed most of the day until it was time to go to a choir concert with Lauren. Side note: on the way to meet Lauren I was walking in the Subte and I saw one of the Rastafarian musicians that we had seen the day before at the park, and I swear, he looked at me, smiled, and nodded. As if he recognized me. It was insane. Anyway, one of Lauren’s friends was singing in the concert and then afterwards, we and the other people in his choir went to his house for some authentic asado (which is basically a bbq… with lots of distinct kinds of meat). Apparently, meat is a big deal down here and everyone loves them some asado. And now I understand why. Really, it was incredible how tender and juicy and flavorful it was. I had to actually stop eating for a while because I felt overwhelmed by flavor. Amazing. After that I finally got back to my house after a rather terrifying car ride with Lauren’s friend. No one in this city wears seatbelts and they all drive like locos. My roommates were having a huge party in my house that I had learned about earlier that day. I was really excited to go, but due to the fact that I don’t have a car and that the Asado was in a suburb outside of town, I didn’t get back to the house until almost 3 am. But it was still kicking, though I had missed the band. My roommates had bought at least 16 crates of Heineken beer (that 12 liters per crate) and wine and Fernet (an argentine alcohol, gross, but supposedly is better for the liver and doesn’t give hangovers) as well. And they had formed a little bar in our kitchen and were selling alcohol and pizza to those in need. Luckily, I live here so I didn’t have to pay. The music was really cool and I immediately thought of Spencer. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to socialize in a situation like this, dark, loud, and in Spanish. Fortunately, not too long into it a man and his friend started talking to me. They were very nice, and definitely in their mid to late thirties at least. Not too long into the conversation, after finding out that I was a dancer, they asked if I wanted to dance, and of course I did. It was hilarious to find myself in a rather sparsely populated dance floor with two thirty plus argentines dancing to the heavy beat of some argentine house music. I’m really glad that everyone was dancing in their own space, none of that bump and grind oddness that always takes place in the states. Anyway, they didn’t shut the music off until after 5, at which time I eagerly went to bed.

Sunday I actually only slept until noon and did some more laying in bed, organizing pictures and music, and playing Freecell, my usual free time activities. I think I did manage to do a bit of homework though too.

Today was pretty straight forward. I went to class. My dance professor didn’t show up, so I took Lauren out for gelato to celebrate that she had finished her first midterm and came out alive. She thinks she passed too! Then I came home to the first truly satisfying evening with my roommates. We all (well most of us + Malena and her boyfriend + some girl I had never seen before) sat around the table drinking some of the mountain of beer left over from the party and eating some left over pizza. It was fabulous because they talked to me. I felt included in the conversation. They asked me questions. I felt almost capable of conversation. It was fun! Now I’m going to bed. With a smile on my face.

September 20

2007-09-20T11:33:00.001-07:00

I´ve been really tired all week, a combination of a tiring trip and not much sleep this week... basically just making it through my classes. I´ve also been unexplainably busy. Luckily we don´t have class tomorrow because it´s Dia del Estudiantes. And aparrently it´s just a spring party day for students. I finally talked to Katiana on the phone yesterday. It was amazing. Our experiences seem to be more similar than I thought they were. Lauren and I decided that we are going to a mexican restaurant this weekend... I´m really excited... though I´m sure it´s nothing like the mexican food we get in the states, nor like anything you would get in mexico. But hey, if it has blackbeans and mexican rice I care not. My brain is scattered... or maybe it´s just my heart that is scattered, and my brain can´t figure out what to do without it.

September 17

2007-09-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

Cordóba

Tuesday night I watche Clockwork Orange... not the most pleasant experience of my life.

Wednesday I only had to go to Spanish class. Then I went to FLACSO to check my email and such and have lunch with Lauren. The program had split our number in half so as not to have to organized housing for 120 people per visit so unluckily Lauren was going to Jujuy and I was going to Cordóba. She brought a piece of cheesecake and a piece of chocolate cake for us to share. It was delicious. Then I happily talked to Royce online for a couple hours before running home to take a shower, eat dinner, and pack in the hour and a half I had before I had to head to the Bus Station. I actually finished doing everything in an hour...lol. Then I drug my sport bag and book bag to the subte and found my way to the bus station. I actually got there an hour before I was supposed to get there because I hadn´t known how long it was going to take me to get there so I left early. Then we waited another hour and a half before we actually got on the bus, an extremely comfortable semi-sleeper with lots of space and apparently lots of food. It was just the beginning of a weekend of being stuffed full of food at every turn. Then we began our twelve hour bus ride with a horrible movie called Lucky Seven. I won´t bore you with the details of the odd movie.

We got to our destination at about 11 am Thursday morning and of course immediately went in for breakfast. Our destination was a small sort of resort. We separated into cabins and rooms of about four people each. The room I ended up in was kindof at the top of the hill and the view from our porch looked down over the village and up into the mountains in the background. Of course I didn´t know that on Thursday because it was really wet and cloudy the entire day. After we had lunch we all walked through town, cute, small, a little shabby, to a path that led up the river into the mountains. This part was beautiful and I was really excited to see something resembling nature. At the top of the mountain there was more food, snacks, and drinks for us to have before they drove us back to the resort. Then we had some more free time before dinner. Stuffed ourselves full of dinner and wine and beer before getting up to dance some local cumbia and things like that. It was fabulously fun. Well, I suppose I was a little lonely the whole trip because Lauren wasn´t there and I don´t really hang out with anyone else so it was awkward tagging along with other groups of friends. But it was fun to meet some new people. Anyway, then the people in my room and the girls from next door all hung out on the porch until some ungodly hour... well I suppose it was only 4 am.

Friday, we slept through breakfast and got up for lunch at 12:30. But the clouds had cleared mostly and I got to see all the gorgeous scenery. Then we all got into vans that took us up into the mountains to this gorgeous little waterfall where we hung out for most of the day. Some people were brave enough to hop into the pool below the waterfall, but I was not one of those. It was not really that warm out. Then we returned to the resort where we had some free time so each room could organize a skit to perform at the bonfire later that night. Dinner, wine, beer, free time, then the bonfire complete with hot wine, melted chocolate, marshmellows, and many hilarious and often horrible skits. Our skit was a short and rather lame depiction of how the young men in Bs. As. hit on women which basically consists of starting by showing us that they can speak english then basically just grabbing you. It was funny, but really not very good. There was a funny version of Twelve Days of christmas about all the rules that we had to follow in the program... most of which we don´t even try to follow. The evening was finished off by another large group of people sitting on our porch being drunk.

Saturday we skipped breakfast again and dragged ourselves out of bed so we could go out to a ranch or something where we had some of the tradicionally grilled meat that you hear so much about. It was quite good. Then they gave out prizes for the skits from the night before. And they gave us all Mate gordes (the cup you drink mate out of) with out names carved into them! It was so cute! Then we went HORSEBACK RIDING!!! It was really exciting for me. My horse was so cute and attentive to me. I felt like such an expert comparte to all the city kids getting on a horse for the first time (there weren´t actually THAT many who had never been on a horse before, but I was definitely one of the most experienced riders). It was fun! Then we retured to the resort to pack before getting back on the twelve hour bus where instead of one, we watch two bad movies.

We got back to Bs. As. at 7 am. The subte doesn´t open until 8 am on Sunday and am becoming less and less inclined to take taxis... because I´m cheap. A girl said that she would sit and have coffee with me until the subte opened. So we had some yogurt and cereal and chatted for an hour before getting on the subte and making our way home. I spent most of sunday relaxing on my bed. Then I went to the locutorio across the street for 5 hours to reconnect with my long lost parents, spencer, emily, and royce. It was too late to call kati. :(. Then I happily went to bed. Though I am not really excited to be back in the city. Seriously, I could have sat on that porch in that small town, with my roommate playing guitar in the background for the rest of my life. Or, maybe I was just so relieved to be out of the city. Anyway, I´m going to see if I can go to Uruguay this weekend. William wants to go anyway, to renew his tourist visa.

September 10

2007-09-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

Hm, I don´t know what to write here. I´ve been really uninspired to write in my blog for the past couple days. I don´t know why. My classes are okay: I really enjoy my spanish class which is good because I have it 8 hours a week. My international relations class is kindof like any other international relations class (the information is really interesting but it´s often hard to pay attention because of all the big language and indepth theory talk) only worse because everything is in spanish and it´s really easy for my brain to just recognise is at background noise if I´m not directly involved in it. It´s sad because I really do want to know the information. I think I need to figure out a different way to study for the class. My dance classes are fabulous, as always. One is fairly easy for my level and one is very challenging and over my level... but I feel like I´m keeping up, or close to it. Tango club is getting really fun! I think I like it! And I also think that I will probably pursue my tango translation thesis idea.

Anyway, on friday I hung out with some of my roommates and ate dinner before Lauren came over to watch Love Actually... seriously I must have seen that movie 50 times by now... and though I can practically recite it from memory it still makes me cry a little. It was cool, we had a little girl party and ate chocolate covered peanuts and various cookie things from the store. It was fun. On Saturday we tried to go to a concert but it turns out that Argentines are 30 minutes late for everything except things that are free. Then they show up hours early. Sigh, oh well. We went to a museum for a while and then to a cafe for an American time dinner at around 6 pm. We talked for over two hours. I love that so much. I know that sitting in cafés talking for hours will be something I will always miss from being here. Then we went to Lauren´s house and she graciously let me use her internet to talk to Royce for a while. sigh. And we had some amazing ice cream. It was a little surprising because up until then all the ice cream I had had here was substandard I must say. I even bought some hagen daz (however you spell that) and it wasn´t good at all. Then I went out with Patricio and some of his argentine friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. Unfortunately since I had not had much sleep the night before I was ready to pass out at about 1 and talked them into letting me go home around 2 even though they thought I was completely lame. Oh well. Sunday Lauren and I went to one of her singing friends concerts at the museum of Bellas Artes (btw: lauren is a singer who is taking classes at the Arts Institute here... in one of her classes they watched a video of vocal cords that had been take by a camera that had been shoved up someones nose...). The concert was actually kindof amazing and it was in a museum so we got to look around at all the art... all in all it was a very spencer and emily kind of moment. Then we went looking for a restaurant that Coco (Lauren´s friend) wanted us to eat Choripan (a really fatty red sausage) at. Turns out she didn´t really no where it was so we ended up walking around a lot. We got there eventually though. And she and her friend were both really nice and fun. We went to her house after that to eat popcorn and watch the Devil Wears Prada. Then we tried to go home... but I got turned around looking for the bus and we ended up walking around for quite some time in a strange neighborhood after midnight. It was kindof a nice neighborhood though so we didn´t get robbed... unlike one of the other girls in my program who was just sitting in a park with a friend at 9 pm... or so I heard.

I´ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do next semester... since I don´t know if I´m getting the experience here that I really wanted. I have lots of options... but I have to keep thinking about things like money, credits, dance, and friends. It´s so complicated having so many things I want to do at the same time. I´ve just kindof been feeling like I´m only having a kindof spread out college experience, in spanish, and living in a house that is okay... but I don´t get very much attention. I´m thinking I would probably get more out to the culture if I weren´t having to spend a bunch of time reading about the international relations of south america... I don´t know. I just feel kindof focusless... but I guess that´s what happens when you want to dance, study, experience a culture, learn a new language, and save the world all at the same time. I know Spencer and I have had this conversation many times... but how do we find a satisfactory balance between art and making a difference. And then you throw in personal happiness and you´re practically counterproductive. But I did decide that I´m not going to decide anything until the end of October at least... even if I want to. So I should really stop thinking about it. But alas, my brain has a horrible habit of completely ignoring me.

I´m still having crazy dreams.

September 7

2007-09-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

I don´t really have time to write this because I have to go to modern, but I finalized my schedule today. I have two intensive spanish classes that take place one after the other thoughout the semester. I have modern at IUNA, and contemporary dance at the cultural center. and International Relations here at FLACSO. I´m satisfied with my schedule. It is getting hot and humid around here. They call it pesado which basically just means hot and humid. I had a long and badly needede conversation with spencer last night that helped me a lot. After about two hours and almost two phone cards I decided that we could easily continue talking for the entire night and that I´d better save some of my phone cards. It would be a lot easier if the freaking internet in the house worked. I don´t know what´s up with that. Then again maybe I would end up spending all my time talking to spencer... naw. Anyway. I have to go. Talk to you all soon... it had better be soon anyway.

September 4

2007-09-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

Aahhh... where did the time go.

I suppose it´s a good thing that I haven´t had time or energy to write in my blog for a while... but really, not too much has happened. I dropped my ballet class because it was far far too advanced for me and I wasn´t really learning anything. I felt like I was in the way. When on Friday everyone pulled out their pointe shoes halfway through class I was like... oh-k, that´s that. And left. It was very stressful because I WANT to dance. I'd be happy to take a lower level, but they don´t offer them this semester. So I spent the rest of the evening worrying about, money, classes, credits, the future and life... and consequently picked up a stuffy nose to go with everything else. I did go to Family Night with Sebi though and that was fun. It was a potluck with some of the other CIEE students and their families in my neighborhood. There was so much food. And it was all delicious... I probably ate two dinners in the two and a half hours we were there. Plus desert. It was fun... but then of course I went back to my room and sat at the computer until 3 am because I was too full to sleep... then I stresses for a while in bed, fell asleep, woke up 6 hours later and stressed some more. This is my neuroticism.

I layed around in bed most of the morning before finally texting Lauren so we and a couple of her friends from her college in D.C. could go to the Body Exhibit that was displayed in one of the malls. It was insane! For those of you who don´t know, the Body Exhibit is a travelling display of meticulously disected cadavers that show all the different body systems and parts of the body at different levels. It was incredible... if a little creepy. Anyway... we then waited around in a Café for a couple hours before going to the Peña we were planning on eating dinner at. We waited around some more because we were typically and horribly early. My argentine friend Patricio showed up after a while as well as Kevin, another CIEE student. The Peña turned out not really to be a peña but more like an empty room with beer and a $15 cover charge. We hung out for a while and then went to the resaurant near my house with all the good food at about midnight. It was fun. We all laughed a lot and we talked in english the whole day which was a nice break for my brain. Everyone else wanted to go to a club in Palermo but I decided I should get some real sleep and try to get over my cold. I complained to all my gracious friends for a while and they said I should relax and get some sleep. Of course! But it's nice to blow off steam! It´s also nice to have friends. So after that... I let it all go. I slept for 10 hours and woke up refreshed and happy with a more relaxed outlook on life. YAY! I still have a cold however...

Monday I did laundry, the first time in a month... I was out of everything! I went to class. Modern was still really fun! YAY! Ate dinner with my roommates. They make the best rice ever... I have to figure out how they do it. And I went to bed.

In the interim I found out that I don't have to be back here for next semester until around the 10th of MARCH!!! So I get to spent my 21st birthday in the states afterall!!! YAY!... that means I will probably be imposing on my dear Spencer's hospitality for closer to a month than two weeks... but if I have to sleep on the sidewalk that's okay too.

Anyway, I love you all. I had a dream last night about us roommates all being back on 17th street together. It was a pleasant dream. It's funny how I miss the little things... like sitting in the kitchen and emily's footsteps coming down the stairs. It's finally getting warm here. And humid. I feel sticky all the time. But I'm getting more comfortable. And having fun!

August 30

2007-08-30T13:11:00.000-07:00

So... modern dance is amazing. I love the dance classes at the art institute (IUNA) here. They are CHALLENGING! I am the worst dancer in both my ballet and my modern classes, but I am learning fast and it is becoming easier. In anycase, it´s probably plenty beyond what I could get out of the dance classes at UNC. Plus each class is six hours a week, so including my modern class at the cultural center and the tango club I´m in I have some 18 hours of dance a week which is amazing! I feel fine, I´m not even sore anymore... but I really hope I don´t get injured because that would really cramp my style. I´m being careful. But sometimes luck plays a large part in injury. Sigh. Also, in both my IUNA classes we have in room musicians who play the music to which we dance: piano for ballet, and drums for modern. I think it is amazingly brilliant.

Too bad I have a headache.

August 27

2007-08-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

Today is the first monday I´ve had of a week that will be completely full of all my classes. Mondays are not actually going to be too bad because I don´t have class until 3 pm. Tonight I´m going to try Modern II instead of Ballet II because ballet is turning out to be far over my head and I think that I look like an idiot enough around here, I don´t want to look like a complete idiot in dance too. The only problem is that Modern goes from 7-9pm monday, wednesday, and friday. That´s pretty late for me... and on fridays it´s going to be a pain. Oh well, dance is more important than anything else while I´m here so... there you go.

Let´s see... I guess it´s been almost 5 days since the last time I wrote. I got my student visa fine, though it took hours of sitting, staring blankly around the room. We had to be there at 8 am and I did not get enough sleep to utilize the time to study... so I did the stupor thing. But it was fine. On friday I went out with the austrian and met some more Argentines who were very nice. It was fun. So I slept most of the day on Saturday before going out to dinner with Lauren to a restaurant in my neighborhood. It was the first time I´d eaten in my neighborhood and it was a fabulous choice. We got free bread and empanadas before we ordered, then a real salad with lettuce (rather rare around here), corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and eggs on it. We also shared what they call a tortilla which is kindof like an open faced omlette. It was very delicioius. We won that round of the never ending adventure with food. After that I went home because my family was having a party in our living room. I sat around for about two hours because it didn´t even start until after midnight. It wasn´t really a party per say, it was more like a free concert of my roommates and all their friends in my living room. The music was good for the most part and definitely interesting, but I was really tired for some reason and hermitly went to bed at 1 am. I was so tired I could sleep through the loud music and all the clapping and whistling. I woke up at about 6:30, shortly (I assume) after everyone else left, to use the bathroom. It was raining really hard and I could hear it very well through my skylight, so I stayed up listening to it for some time and had a text message conversation with one of my argentine friends who was just getting to bed and was very confused why I had a) gone to bed at 1 and b) woken up at 7 am on sunday morning. shrug. I did go back to sleep for a while though.

Last night I went to the WORLD TANGO CHAMPIONSHIPS with Lauren. It was very cool. It was the sala competition which means it was more like social tango than stage tango. It made me think that I would probably actually like doing this tango thesis idea. So, I´ll follow that for a while and see how it goes.

It´s weird to me that classes at UNC started today and I wasn´t there. It´s also weird to me that Spencer´s huge beautiful appartment has never met me and that Katiana is tanning and wearing long skirts on a beautiful beach in Africa and that Emily is sharing the only home I´ve know as an independent adult with three other people and that Royce went to the hospital and I didn´t know about it until just now. My mom went on assignment, my brother has a girlfriend I´ve never met, and my dad´s bike broke. Molly is starting school and should be back from a trip to california by now. I don´t know where Mindy is or what she is doing. Dan is going to be a father any day now. Did the Colorado Eagle season start yet? This is the long way to say that it´s so easy to forget that the world keeps moving even when you´re not there to see it. This is a little comforting and a little more disconcerting. Stay safe friends. I´ll see you again soon.

August 23

2007-08-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

I am so sore. I had Modern on Tuesday and Ballet on Wednesday. The Ballet class is way over my head but I think that the teacher just thinks it´s because I can´t speak spanish, so I´ll fake my way through it and learn a lot. But I am so sore!!!! I haven´t danced really since May and my body is not used to the stretching. However... in two days I went from about 8 inches from fingertips to floor to touching the floor... these people will make me bendy. YAY!!!

August 20

2007-08-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

I think I just gained about 5 pounds. I just had breakfast, lunch, and dinner in one sitting. It’s my fault really. I should have gone downstairs for breakfast at 9 am when I woke up, but I wanted to finish dreaming of my abandoned loved ones. So I determinedly remained in bed with my eyes closed reliving my happy memories for an hour before sitting up and reaching for my computer in order to (and this is going to sound really lame) work on my budget and schedule, which oddly enough happen to be two of the most satisfying activities that I spend my time on. I think it makes me feel like I’m in control of my ever changing life. Not that I mind that it’s always changing. I just take out my anal retentive side on my Microsoft Excel. In any case, I didn’t get down to the kitchen until after 2 pm when I foolishly fed myself, before accepting the vegetable soup dish from Vero and the milanesa dish from Sebí. Silly me. It was delicious though. I just won’t eat ever again…

I haven’t written in a while because I have been too busy. Finally. I had three classes this week: two International Relations of South America classes and my first Contemporary Dance class. OMG. Dance! It had been 3 and ½ months since I had set foot in a dance class, and I thought I was going to die. It was fun. We did a lot of things I had done before in Modern I, but without all the thorough explanation. I think there was some explanation but as I couldn’t understand it, I followed along and tried to use the principles I had learned in Modern. When I told the teacher after class that I was from Alaska… he looked REALLY concerned that I probably couldn’t understand what he had been saying. I had this experience when I did Tai Chi with my roommates Tuesday morning also. I wish they wouldn’t worry about me. I’ll be fine just following along until I pick up the language enough to understand them. I don’t want to feel like a problem. I have to deal with that enough just trying to communicate socially.

Thursday night the Austrian’s roommates invited me to their house for a Chocolate Fondue party. I brought a bottle of wine. Tangent on wine: I love it. This makes me think about Spencer every time I drink or buy it (and it IS really nice to be able to buy my own wine). The wine here is EXCELLENT! And CHEAP! I went to the store and bought one of the more expensive bottles I could find, 11 pesos instead of the 3 pesos that were the cheap bottles of wine. That’s about $4 for one of the better wines I have ever tasted. Anyway, back to the party. There were a ton of people there, everyone seemed to have brought a bottle of wine, and the table was full of bowls of sliced fruit and a pot of each dark chocolate and white chocolate. It was delicious and really fun. All the people who live in William’s house are from abroad as well, there are like 12 of them, mostly from Europe, and so most of the people at the party were from other countries. I met people from Canada, the U.S., Columbia, Mexico, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, England, and the Netherlands, to name a few. I was there until 5 am. It was great.

Saturday, Lauren and I walked around a few different parts of town with Tracy from CIEE before taking the Subte to the edge of town to have dinner and ice cream with on of Laurens friends from school. We ate at a Mediterranean restaurant. It was good, if a little expensive. Later, I’m talking around 1 am, Lauren and I met up with a couple Argentines who we’d met before and hung out in a pretty nice bar (Asian themed with a huge blue and orange lighted disco ball) until around 5 am. It was very fun and good Spanish practice. And I honestly slept until 2:30 pm when my phone rang. I think that has to be an all time record…

After I pulled myself out of bed in mid afternoon on Sunday I voyaged to Laurens house to bake our first banana bread and watch House, Moulin Rouge, and Bruce Almighty. The banana bread was fabulous. Especially with Dulce de Leche spread on it. And we ordered in some empanadas which only cost me 7 pesos. Ordering in is something really common here that I am finding I really like. Especially since I can’t cook.

Today is a holiday so there aren’t any classes.

I miss the sky.

I was going to say something I missed and then end with something I love about this city… but I can’t think of anything I really like about the city. Not really very surprising considering my background and lifestyle. Oh well. I’m learning, and I love that. And although they don’t have peanut butter… they do have Nutella!

August 13

2007-08-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

A lot has been going through my head since the last time I posted but I haven´t had access to the internet in a while. On Saturday I couldn´t get anyone to go anywhere with me so I went across town by myself to an area called Recoletta. It was fun because on the weekends they have a huge street fair with really cool stands. The jewelry is the most gorgeous ever... and it´s cheap for our standards... not that that means I have money to spend on it but hey. There is also a cemetary where all the famous people are buried. It wasn´t like a cemetary... as I think of it. The place is just packed full of large elaborate stone tombs. People aren´t really buried, they are put in coffins and the coffins are placed in their families tombs. The difference in family wealth is very apparent. I didn´t really like the really rich elaborate ones... the really interesting ones were the poorer families with 13 some coffins stacked in them. Most of the doors to the tombs were clear glass so you could easily see into them. The whole thing made me think of Emily. I think she would have loved it. I walked around and imagined what she would say about different cool or creapy or artistic things I saw, and I imagined what I would say back to her, and how we would laugh about the large number of cats running around the place. Everyone talks about how Eva Peron is buried there like that´s the only thing worth seeing. I didn´t see it. I decided that her tomb probably has about the same significance to me as any of the others... and like I said, the old poorer ones were cooler.

After I walked around the cemetary I walked around the art portion of the fair and this strange old man started talking to me. It was fine for a minute until he started trying to get me to go get coffee with him. He asked me a bunch of times. And I was deffinitely not going somewhere with this guy. Then he said we could just walk together and practice spanish. Umm... okay. Creepy. I couldn´t figure out how to get rid of him. It was scary. After a while he just said caio, goodbye and left. Whatever.

Yesterday, Lauren and I walked around a fair in San Telmo and checked out the street performers. We both have colds so after a while we decided to go back to her house and watch 10 Things I Hate About You. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store. OMG. The store by her house is like a mini walmart. It was the most fabulous thing I´d seen in a long time. The grocery stores by my house have like 5 things. I was floored. Okay so you´re probably not as excited about the grocery store as me... but try buying groceries in a foreign country for a month in stores with no variety. Anyway... so I'm still spoiled. Oh well.

Last night I went to a bar with the Austrian and his roommates. It was really fun, particularly because the german guy brought me some empanadas so I didn´t have to buy food and when I told the bar tender I wasn´t sure what I wanted... he made me something for free. YAY! Didn´t spent any money.

I had my first class today. It was good. I'm really excited about it. International Relations from the South American perspective. I understood about half of what was said. But that´s okay. I recorded it on my MP3 player (good choice mom) so I can listen to it again. I also got internet in my house today so I can upload pictures and such to the internet soon. I´m trying to decide if 18 hours of dance a week would be too much for my body... I´m just so tired of being bored. But I don´t want to get injured that´s for sure. hmmm.

I think I´m going to Uruguay next weekend with some girls from CIEE. Costs money... but how many times in my life will I be able to take a ferry to Uruguay? I still miss my house... which makes me think of Emily a lot because it´s her house now. I think I will probably always miss our year of Glory. But I´m in a good mood. I'm glad I'm here. A couple tweaks to the situation would make it perfect. Some of them will come with time. Some of them will forever be lacking and I will always be casually aware of their absence. I guess that´s life huh. Peace to your hearts and minds. The world is beautiful.

August 10

2007-08-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

I discovered random fabulousness in the sandwich world today. As there are few choices of food in my house and the only thing I could find at the store for lunch were a couple small packages of salami and some unknown white cheese, my sandwich prospect looked pretty grim. I needed some mayo or something to relieve the dryness of the bread and some lettuce to add some crunch. Not having those on hand I improvised. I glazed both pieces of bread with peach jam and put a couple crackers in there for the crunch. I was PLEASANTLY surprised. It was very good. I suggest the combination.

On a less exciting note... it occured to me today that perhaps I don't actually like travelling as much as I thought I did. Or more specifically I don't think I enjoy venturing solo into the unknown for extended periods of time. I should have realized this when I decided to go to Colorado just because that was the state where I knew people. And now that I think about it, whenever I talk about wanting to go somewhere, it involves seeing someone that I know who lives there. When I decided that I wanted to study abroad, it was because I wanted to have the amazing experience that everyone talks about. I wanted to force myself to grow. Well, I'd better do some growing quick because I'm getting bored and lonely. Mind you my classes haven't started yet. But still... I've just realized unsurprisingly that my loved ones are the most important things to me. I think I would be having a blast if I had a friend with me. I have made a couple friends here... but it's not the same as being with someone you love. And I don't really want to get used to being alone and not having loved ones around. I'm sure that would make me stronger in some sense... but I think vulnerablility is valuable. I don't want to grow cold. Everything is more fun when you have someone to share it with. Anyway. I'm not complaining really, just taking note of an interesting personality trait I chose to overlook so I could be one of those amazing people who studied abroad. I suppose by this time next year I will be telling everyone I meet that they absolutely have to study abroad because it is AMAZING! But right now I miss sitting in my living room with my various families laughing about something silly the cat just did.

August 9

2007-08-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

I accomplished a fair amount today considering I didn´t really have anything to do. I´ve spent almost the entire day by myself. I don´t do that often. It was fine really. It made me feel competent and independent. I felt like people were more willing to listen to me and make allowances for my poor spanish. But walking around the city doing errands by myself also made me feel a little bit separate from the world. Like I was an alien... studying something first hand, but not really being part of it. I don´t know if it is because I don´t speak the language... or because I´m not used to big cities... or just because that´s how I feel when I´m alone. But it was interesting. I could write in my notebook in a very field notes kindof way about what I am learning. Doesn´t really feel like a life though. I think I´m okay with that.

I found out Royce also has a blog today. I love the way he writes. I also realized that I haven´t talked to Molly in almost a month. It´s so hard to keep in touch with people the way you want to and also experience all you can where you are.

August 6

2007-08-06T16:02:00.000-07:00

I've had the worst cold for the past three days... It just seems to be getting worse. I've spent the last two days laying on my bed... braiding my hair and listening to Harry Potter... from the beginning. I'm almost done with the second book. I wanted to listen to something in spanish but as I don't have internet and I can't figure out how to turn on the TV... good old HP. Sebi made me tea and soup yesterday. He also made me a home remedy for congestion... onion in sugar water. It wasn't that bad actually, but I don't really know if it helped at all. I started feeling sick on Friday so I didn't go out that night... but I couldn't get out of going out on Saturday. At 10 pm we went to a bar that you have to ring the doorbell to get into. It was interesting. It was actually really fun... but I didn't feel super great. We met up with some Argentines that we'd met the week before. I have one of their phone numbers. I think me might be friends in the future. As it got later, it got really crowded and loud. And smokey. Since my throat was irritated anyway the smoke just tore it to pieces. It was horrible. So I went home about 4 feeling rather ill. I probably shouldn't have gone out at all. Oh well.

William and Lauren are turning out to be good buddies. Though I haven't talked to them for a couple days.

I have a flash of inspiration last night over dinner about my Thesis. I want to choreograph an American Tango by studying and contrasting how Argentine culture relates to and expresses emotions and how they are represented in the Tango. Then I will translate the moves to American culture and see what happens... That's the rough outline anyway. I'm really excited. Now I have something to think about and write about for the rest of the year.

I applied for my student visa today. Now I won't be an illegal. YAY!

August 3

2007-08-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a few days since my last blog. I've been going out and making friends.. no real stories. I just spent the last three days furiously reading Harry Potter. It was excellent! Very exciting.

I managed to contract a cold last night. Just in my throat... but it's annoying. And all the smoke doesn't help. At. All. But hey, I can't change the social customs of an entire country... and I'm not supposed to try... so I'll just take the punishment.

I'm actually in a bad mood because it's been cloudy all week... and rainy... and cold. I've been very disconnected from everyone at home for quite some time and it's starting to get to me. I really wish I had internet in my house. Oh, well. I'll write again soon... when I'm in a better mood. :)

Dia Dies

2007-07-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

I told myself when I started this blog that I would write everyday for at least 10 days. Well I haven´t been able to write everyday... but I have a post for everyday so far. This is my last daily post. From now on I´m only going to write when something of note happens. So... you don´t have to keep reading my blabber.

Not much happened yesterday. I got out of bed at 1:30 again. I hope that doesn´t become a habit... I wrote my blog posts for the previous two days and got dressed before taking my computer downstairs to try to find some internet. I found a little and frantically tried to do all my internet stuff before it disappeared or my computer died... My computer battery is going and it now only holds charge for an hour or so. I got to talk to Royce and Mom and CJ a bit before my computer died sadly. oh well.

I went for a walk by myself to look at the neighborhood. It was sunday so not much was open. But I found out that there is a park by my house that had a bunch of soccer fields packed full of people. It made me think of Tyler... really he should just travel to another country and hang out and play soccer in the park with the locals. There is also a childrens hospital behind my block. Interesting.

I spent the rest of the day sitting around and watching Love Actually... again. In English. I love that movie. Then I made some soup... badly. Because I didn´t understand the dirrections so I winged it and I think I didn´t put enough water in it. Oh well. Then I went to bed at around 10. Nothing else to do.

On an interesting note... this morning I was reading out program handbook and it had a seccion about Culture Shock in it. I could find myself during the past week and a half in both the first two stages. The second stage... of frustration they said sometimes lasts weeks... I hope not. And I think I´m moving out of it. As soon as I stop writing in english and start speaking spanish. So I´m off to track down a Harry Potter book so I know what people are talking about.

Dia Nueve

2007-07-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Saturday, since I didn’t get to sleep until 7, I slept in until 1:30 in the afternoon. That seriously has to be a record for me. I had to sleep though my roommates doing some kind of hammering downstairs for a while but I was determined to sleep past 10. P.S. I’m happy right now because I’m listening to the Once soundtrack! When I got up I took a shower. All my clothes from the night before reek of cigarette smoke. I need to find a Laundromat pretty soon anyway. I did some more staring at my computer before calling Lauren around 4 to see if she wanted to do some exploring. We met at FLACSO and walked around down Avenida Corrientes. We did some window shopping and she finally bought a coat so she wouldn’t be so cold all the time. She decided that she was going to go out that night no matter how tired she was so we casually called some people to see if they wanted to go out. It was early so we went back to her house to watch Center Stage before meeting up with people. William took the Subte (subway) out our way after he finished dinner and suffered though the peanut butter that Lauren insisted he try and the end of Center Stage. Poor guy. At about 12 we called Gaby and she was going out with some people and we decided to try to meet up with them. We shared a cab and after walking and confusion finally found them in the smoking room of a restaurant. That is not where we wanted to be. So we left and walked around to look for a disco. One of the people handing out flyers on the street told us to go to one of the places on the corner so we decided to try it. OMG. STRANGENESS! When we got in, there were a bunch of people sitting at rows of tables. The man in drag, the woman in the nun costume, and the table of people wearing devil horns immediately caught my attention. Ummm… yeah okay, we’ll give it time. Eventually they took all the tables away and everyone was dancing and drinking… The music wasn’t very good and it was so loud that talking was impossible. The people were older than us for the most part and all looked a little odd. We put up with it for a while before running away to a different bar that William had heard was good. It was fun. It was a pub not a disco so people weren’t dancing but I could hear myself thinking and talking was easy so it was nice. We met a couple guys who heard us speaking English and decided to see what was up. The one guy who did most of the talking spoke English very well so he practiced his English while we practiced our Spanish. His English totally kicked my Spanish’s butt though. But he was great. Turns out he is very interested in the U.S. and has an American flag on his bedroom wall. We even talked about American politics and who would win the primary and who would win the election. Really interesting. It was fun though. We talked about music and what we were doing with ourselves these days. By the time we were ready to leave we gave him our email addresses and I got a picture with all of us. I guess I should have tried harder to remember his name. I’m getting worse with names as my 20 year old brain starts to fail… lol. I got home a little earlier than Friday night… around 5. It’s nice feeling like I have friends to do things with. I haven’t actually seen my roommates for almost 3 days. I’m thinking of everyone at home with love!

Dia Ocho

2007-07-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

On Friday I slept in till 9:30 because I didn’t have to go to the orientation for UCA in the morning because I’m not taking any classes there. I sat around for a while. Ate some breakfast. Stared at my computer. En serio. That means seriously. I sat around until 3 when I decided to go to FLACSO and use the computers. It was fine. I updated my blog and talked to Royce and Dan. I had a sort of breakdown moment during which I sent my mother a rather alarming email. Hopefully she’s not worrying too much since I haven’t talked to her in a week because I still don’t have internet in my house.

I returned to my house for a while before catching a cab to the other side of town to have dinner with Lauren and a group of CIEE girls and a cute Austrian guy that Lauren met at her hostel. We went to a Peña where they have live Argentinean Folk music. We couldn’t sit in the music room because we didn’t have a reservation but the food was fine and the music was great even if we couldn’t see them. We finally left at about 12:30 to go look for a bar or disco to hang out in. It was cold out… and for some reason none of the other girls were wearing coat. Seriously the difference between people who live in AK and those who don’t is that Alaskans know how to wear warm clothing when it’s cold out. Anyway, the girls got sick of looking and were tired… a sad thing to be tired in Buenos Aires at 1am… so they all caught cabs back to their houses. So I continued looking for a place with William (the Austrian). We asked a cop where to go and he told us to catch one of the busses to Palermo Hollywood. He he. We just told the bus driver where we wanted to go and he told us when to get off. We found a cool place that was playing good music and had quite a few people. It was fun. Turns out William isn’t much of a dancer but he danced a bit. We met a group of locals because they wanted us to take a picture of them. They were really fun and animated. We might go out with them again.

It was really fascinating to me that as it turns out, William is in a situation very similar to mine. He’s staying in Buenos Aires for a year doing service work as a requirement of his school (I think). He doesn’t know anyone in Buenos Aires and he left his girlfriend in Germany. Coincidentally we both came to the same conclusion about how to deal with that situation, and decided that the most important thing while here is to enjoy being here and not spend all our time wishing we were somewhere else. It was insanely interesting to find myself in Buenos Aires hanging out with another foreigner, though from a different country, feeling almost exactly the same way.

Anyway, it was really fun. I hope we are going to be friends. And I was a good Argentinean and didn’t get home until 7 am… though it did take forever to catch a cab and I’m pretty sure the cab driver took the long way. Yeah sure, take advantage of the foreigners.

Dia Siete

2007-07-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

Today at FLACSO the morning lecture was about the program rules regulating behaviors, like no illegal drugs please… etc. I understood most of his Spanish. Then we had a quick break in which I went to “coffee” with my old hotel roommates Lauren and Christina. I had hot chocolate which consisted of hot milk and a block of chocolate to put into the milk and melt. It was good but there was too much milk for the chocolate… next time I think I’ll just eat the chocolate because it was amazing and drink the milk. They don’t drink milk here. Then we went back to FLACSO to sit in our groups and ask questions about registering for classes. It was fine. After, I went to the computer lab and checked my facebook and looked up classes I want to take. The dance classes don’t have times up yet which as the organized/anal retentive person I am annoys me to no end. How am I supposed to set my schedule for the next 6 months if I don’t know what time the dance class is… : p… yeah, I know… silly. Whatever. I found out on facebook that all my old and greatly loved/missed roommates have blogs this year in which to keep in touch. Katiana’s doesn’t have anything in it yet because doesn’t go to Senegal for a few weeks. Emily is good at blogging… she doesn’t write forever like I do but she gets her point across well. Spencer hasn’t really posted a blog yet but the forum is called Princess Children in memory of us. I can’t remember exactly how the title goes but its something like he misses his nemo face (the cat), the girls upstairs, and the sometimes naked one downstairs (that’s me) which by the way brings me joy of no end. I was sitting in a quiet computer lab when I read it and I burst our in loud bubbles of laughter which kept going off and on for a good couple of minutes. That memory… of which many of you probably have no idea… is one of my favorites ever. So FUNNY. For those of you who don’t know… it’s nothing scandalous I promise. But funny none the less. You are welcome to ask me about it someday too. As you are probably noticing, I’m not the most modest and private person in the world. I rather like being an open book.

Anyway… that was a good moment.

I walked around for a while looking for some minutes for my phone. None of the stores of my brand of phone had them… and they kept saying I needed to go to the kiosk… I have never known what that word means. So I went to a tourist station (*blush*) and asked her in my slow Spanish. She pointed me directly to one explaining in patient Spanish exactly where I needed to go. So I got some minutes and went home. When I got home… my brain seemed to have fried. I couldn’t speak Spanish nearly at all and poor Sebi had the hardest time figuring out what I was saying. I could barely think in English much less in Spanish. I ate some food. The phone was broken apparently so Sebi had to go somewhere else to use the phone to ask about my computer. But since he didn’t have the computer in front of him, my computer is American, neither of us know very much about computers, my Spanish was fading rapidly, and I couldn’t connect to the internet to look up online what to do, the instructions the technicians gave to Sebi didn’t do much good and I still can’t connect to the internet. After that I basically stood in front of the stove in the kitchen yawning and staring at the TV. I wonder if standing in front of the stove like that is rude… but that’s what we have always done in AK and I don’t know how to ask. A friend of Sebi’s came over to hang out (they always have friends over). He was nice and tried to talk to me a bit but I couldn’t understand or talk. I was completely broken. I felt like such a jerk. Eventually I went to take a shower to see if that would help… it did a bit. Sebi fed me some more pasta and then we hung out in the kitchen with Vero, Nati, and two of their friends. It was fun to watch them interact. I went to bed soon there after. I never could figure out how to put those minutes on my phone.

Dia Seis

2007-07-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

I arrived at FLACSO at the normal 9:45 time. We sat for 2 hours in our small groups and asked questions and listened to a lecture about how to register for classes. After that, I went to lunch with a fairly large group of girls. We ate at a café, apparently just like all the other cafés… but the food was amazing. I had a spinach and ricotta filled crepe with some kind of parmesan white cheese sauce on it. It was really fun. And I am starting to know a few people’s names. We broke up a bit depending on who wanted or needed to get back to FLACSO and when. Me and the other last two girls walked around a bit to work off all the cheese sauce and returned to FLACSO early enough for me to check my email.

In the afternoon we sat in the auditorium and got our results of our tests that told us our level of Spanish going from 0-7+. The lowest anyone got in the program was a three, and she also has required tutoring or something like that. I got a four, along with a good number of others. Many received fives, a few sixes, and two or three got sevens. The sevens are not required to take Spanish courses. There are three options of types of classes to take: regular classes (of each level) that are 4 credits and meet for 2 hours twice a week for 16 weeks, intensive classes that are also 4 credits but meet for 2 hours 4 times a week for 8 weeks, and special objective classes that study Spanish through things like music and literature and movies. I had asked a couple of the advisors what they suggested for me to take because I am staying for two semesters (I think there are only a few doing that, the rest are only here for a semester. There’s a part of me that’s jealous of them.) Anyway the advisors suggested that I take two intensive classes (one the first 8 weeks and the second the other 8 weeks) so that I would be super comfortable by the next semester and able to take whatever classes I want. This past year I wasn’t excited about taking Spanish anymore, but I see their point so I took their advice and signed up for an intensive level 4 and an intensive level 5.

We are required to take 15 credits per semester and my Spanish classes are 8 credits total. That means I need 7 more. We have to take at least one FLACSO course which are 3 credits each. All the other courses at UBA, UCA, and IUNA vary in credits and recommended level of Spanish. Most of the dance classes at IUNA are 6 credits each! That’s exciting but also means that not only will I only be able to take one, I will have 17 credits. I’m not worried though. I think I’m also going to take a dance class at the cultural center for an elective 2 credits.

Anyway, after the Spanish registration I returned to the house. Sebi had told me that they played drums in the living room at 4:30 on Wednesdays and sure enough when I got home that was true. I sat in my room for like 2 hours playing Free Cell and Spider while I listened to the drums and Spanish conversation. It was rather boring without homework, internet, or the new Harry Potter book which is keeping everyone else busy. When everyone finally left, Sebi and Vero also left. So I was again… still, alone. I made some eggs and toast for dinner and went to bed, reading the program handbook.

I could feel myself turning cold to the whole thing. I began to think about this trip as a job from which I could return to my life. I started trying to decide when would be the best time to return to the U.S. during summer (winter for you) break. I think often of Kana and how she felt during her time in Alaska. I remember how I felt the same way I do now about UNC for the first few weeks. I try to tell myself that I know it will get better. But my heart freezes while I stand next to the electric heater in the kitchen. It disturbs me my lack of patience in myself and my undeniable need for friendship. It has been a week…

Dia Cinco

2007-07-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was rather uneventful. We had to be at FLACSO at 8:45 instead of 9:45 for whatever reason. My group spent the first couple hours creating a PowerPoint presentation to present to the other groups what we did on our walking tour. I had little input because I wasn’t paying attention to the tour guide. But I looked up a couple things on the Internet for the others. I talked my way out of speaking during the presentation… but in retrospect, I probably would have done fine. Then we presented along with the other groups. After that, I had about four hours for lunch because I had to wait for my assigned slot to do my one on one oral exam. I walked around with some other girls for a while before we had lunch. Then I took the bus back home to see if Sebi was around to help me hook up to the internet, but he wasn’t. Nor was anyone else for that matter. So I hung out for a while before going back to FLACSO for my exam. It went pretty well. The examiner was really easy to understand and that was heartening. I returned to the house at about 5:30. No one was home. My closet was finally fixed though so I put all my clothes away and organized my room. Then all of a sudden my internet hooked up to one of the wireless signal that I sometimes get in my room, and suddenly I could talk to Royce on the internet… of course it only lasted a couple minutes, but that inspired me to walk around the house and see if I could find a good signal. I found an excellent one on the counter in the kitchen. It was really exciting to be able to see him for the first time in a few days (webcam). We talked for awhile before my silly battery died and I had to run and get my plug and adapter for my computer. Anyway, it finally worked out. It was amazing… especially since I don’t see it happening tonight.

I tried to call my mom… left a message. And talked to Spencer for a few minutes. Then I put it all away and took a shower. I finished putting my stuff away and made “dinner” which consisted of the left over noodles in the fridge butter and parmesan cheese. It was fine. But I’m a bad cook when I have food that I know and a microwave… much less with food that I actually have to make on a real stove… I don’t know what to do if I can’t eat quesadillas. The food here is very Mediterranean. They don’t eat Mexican. They eat Italian. And I don’t know what to do with that. Sigh… I’m just complaining about my lack of a personal cook to follow me around. Spencer: I can’t believe you’re in NY instead of cooking my food! So, hopefully they have leftovers every time I need to make food for myself. When I was washing my plate, Sebi finally got home, about 10:30. He made himself some food and we watched a little TV before going to bed. It was a rather lonely evening. I guess I’ll have to start making friends, huh? It’s amazing to me how much I can write about a day in which nothing much happened. Oh well.

Dia Quatro

2007-07-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

Today was the day that the loneliness and homesickness started to become apparent. I woke up at 7:30 am to take a shower before anyone else needed it. No one else took one though. I got ready so I could meet Sebastien at 8:40 because he offered to show me to the bus. At 8:40 I ran into the kitchen to scarf a yogurt before I had to go. When I had done that, I looked around and realized that Sebastien was not ready to go, much less in view. So I returned to my room to clean up a bit. Sebastien finally came out not too long after and I followed him into the kitchen. He calmly made tea and toast for us to eat. At 9:15 he finally asked if I was ready to go and I said Sí. He gave me a key and made me a simple map of the bus route to follow so I would know where to get off. He also gave me 80 centavos as I didn’t have any. Then we walked to the bus stop on the corner and when the bus came he said good luck and sent me on my way. AAAAHHHH!!!... We don’t have busses in Soldotna. It was fine though. I held onto my bag and watched how others were getting on and off the bus. When my stop came I was ready. The hardest part was seeing what street we were on because Buenos Aires only has one set of street signs per intersection, if I’m lucky. And you don’t know what corner they are on. So that was fun. But I found it, and I walked the other 4 blocks to FLACSO and arrived on time at 9:45 am.

The morning was devoted to a Spanish written exam which I am sure I bombed. I have the worst Spanish of anyone in the program. But that’s okay. Last year when I was planning to study abroad I decided that I didn’t care how I did in my classes. I have no delusions about the quality of my Spanish. My goals in coming here are to LEARN Spanish, not learn other things IN Spanish. And to DANCE as much as possible. So I was none too concerned with the poor quality of my test. I know, I’m an honors student, what was I thinking. I was thinking that I don’t need any more stress than I have and my Spanish will come eventually. But even so, it’s a little depressing being the worst. After that they turned us loose for lunch. I followed some other girls to a café for a sandwich and “agua sin gas”. There we all searched our transportation booklet to determined the how best to get to the part of town where we were supposed to start our small group walking tours at 2 pm. I got there fine, using the subway for the first time. But I was a little early so I waited around until 2 when I still couldn’t find anyone so started to worry. I shouldn’t have. Everything starts late in Buenos Aires… so of course people started showing up about 10 minutes late. I guess American students learn how to be late quickly. The walking tour was boring and the speaker was talking far too quickly for me to follow her enough to understand what was going on. So I basically just stood and listened and looked around. It was okay I guess. When that was over, me and three other girls went to find a café to sit in and have “coffee” meaning that I don’t really drink coffee. But I like water. It was fun. It was actually good for my brain to speak English, again, not the best for my Spanish, but good for my loneliness. The girls were nice. Then we all went to our home stays and I rode the subway back to my house. It went well.

When I got home, Sebastien was sitting in the kitchen in the near darkness playing his guitar and drinking Maté (a staple tea in Argentina). He shared his tea with me and we talked. Soon Malena came in with their mother visiting from her far off home. She spoke very good English and insisted on speaking it to me. She had so much energy. She was very fun and very nice. They didn’t stay for long. And soon after they left a friend (whose name I have not yet determined) arrived. She spoke so fast that I couldn’t understand anything she said. Sebastien offered me to hook up my computer to the wireless internet and I tried… but the IP address was wrong or something so I couldn’t get into it. Sebastien and his friend went to his room and I went to mine to try to steal some free wireless. It worked for a while and I had a few words with Royce before it quietly stopped working, even though it said it was still connected. Oh well. It was frustrating, but we should be able to get the wireless working tomorrow so I am looking forward to connecting with my American friends and family. I miss everyone. I hope all is well. Goodnight.

Dia Tres

2007-07-24T15:33:00.000-07:00

On the third day, I set my alarm for 7 am because we all needed to take showers before we went to FLACSO, the host school, for orientation at 9 am. We walked from the hotel... about 10 minutes, in three groups and hung out in the cafeteria with coffee and fruit before going into separate rooms to take a quick questionnaire about what we know about and expect from Argentina. It was boring... then we met the FLACSO staff who we will be working with this semester. Then we took a break before breaking up into smaller groups to learn about the housing system. That was also pretty boring, but useful I suppose. All the staff are really nice and funny so it was okay. Then we had lunch. The empanadas were amazing. Muy bueno! After, we returned to our small groups and learned about the public transportation system. That was so necessary!!! This city is huge. It was kindof confusing, but I'm figuring it out. It is scary though, running all around the city (that I don't know) by myself. But hey... whatevs. After the transportation lecture, we were dismissed back to the hotel for a few hours before we went to our new homes with our host families. At 7 pm I went down to the lobby with my four heavy bags and waited a surprisingly short amount of time for my name to be called and two people to come forward to meet me with a kiss on the cheek (the standard greeting here). The woman was as average looking as any beautiful Argentinean woman can look. By average I guess I mean she is of average height and build. The man was tall and a little scruffy in the beard. He was wearing a baggy blue sweater. They helped me take my bags to the sidewalk where we waited for a cab. He name is Malena. She is the sister of the man: Sebastien. Sebastien lives in my house; Malena does not. She lives nearby. We took a taxi to the house, about 30 blocks from the hotel.

The house is very large. The “living” is a huge tall room with almost nothing in it. It has the record player and a piano of some sort… and a couple of chairs on the other side of the room near the stairs to my room. My room is sort of a walled in loft. It’s almost as large as my room in Alaska is, but the ceiling is a bit lower. I have a twin sized bed that turns out to be quite comfortable. I have a loveseat, an electric heater, a closet that I can’t use yet because it needs to be fixed, a night table, a lamp, a large glass and wooden coffee table, a desk and chair, and a cell phone that the last student left for me. It’s very cute. I’ll take pictures eventually. I’ve sadly been being lazy in my picture taking. Anyway. There is a bathroom on the main floor, under my room and next to the bedrooms of Vero, a female roommate that I passed on the stairs but haven’t seen any of since, and Sebastien. Across the living room and though a door is the heated kitchen with the same tall ceiling as the living room. It is modest in it’s accommodations compared to American kitchens but it reminds me of our kitchen in Talkeetna, except it’s bigger. Up the narrow stairs next to the kitchen is Nati’s room. She is another female roommate, a vegetarian, very petite and cute but relaxed. Past her room is the door to the roof of the building which is large and has a great view. I hear we BBQ up there in the warmer season.

Back in the kitchen Malena made tea and toast (not in a toaster, on the stove) on which we put either cream cheese or dulce de leche (basically caramel spread). It was very good. We talked for a while about the rules of the house and other things before Malena went to her own house and I was left with Sebastien and Nati. Nati went to do homework and Sebastien turned on the soccer game. Tyler is going to be so jealous of all the soccer I’m going to see. It was fun, but Boca, the Argentine national team, lost. Eventually, around 9:30 Sebastien made dinner: spinach and cheese ravioli in pasta sauce. It was very good. After that, though it was only 11 pm we went to bed.

I’m very pleased with my host “family?” They are all about my age, or within 10 years of me anyway. And Malena and Sebastien speak English… so when I have that blank “I don’t understand what you are saying” look on my face, something that is happening a lot, they say it in English. Probably not the absolute best thing for my Spanish, but certainly good for understanding, shared learning, and the building of friendships, something I am in need of greatly at the moment. The third day was very exciting.

Dia Dos

2007-07-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

After getting about 5 hours of sleep I awoke to the persistent sound of the door buzzer and loud knocking. My first roommate arrived at about 9:30. Since we were staying in a hotel for the first night, we all had 4 or 5 people to a room. After Mary arrived I went back to sleep for and hour or so before hunger finally enticed me to find food. I didn't know if Andrew would be up yet or what. So I hung out for a while to see if he was going to come down and see if I wanted breakfast... and about 12 I got sick of waiting and went of to find him. He was sitting in his room, with his roommate, nursing his hangover and watching tv, and having already gotten breakfast kept watching tv. Men... again... eh. So I went out on my own to find a "supermercado" or a grocery. At this point... after my failure of a dinner the night before I hadn't eaten very much and I was starting to feel like I might pass out. I found one easily at the direction of the man at the desk and proceeded to find: a cereal and yogurt combo, a large can of peaches, a huge bottle of water, a loaf of bread, some raisins, walnuts, and cashews, the last three for some make shift gorp (trailmix) so I wouldn't be in danger of starving again. It was an interesting breakfast. And I had some jam from Katiana's mother to put on the bread. By this time my two other roommates had arrived: Christina and Lauren.

I spent the rest of the day surfing the web or sleeping on my bed. We were all a little bored, but too tired to walk around, and our TV didn't work. Lauren went out to buy the new Harry Potter and read about 300 pages in the first 3 hours. Finally at 8 we all went down to the lobby, some 110 American college students poised to be set loose on the poor city. Just kidding. We were bussed to a huge buffet restaurant for dinner. This place was amazing! It had EVERYTHING! And all the food was so pretty... I don't think I'll even try to describe it, and I don't think you could imagine anyway. It was crazy. And it was packed. But the food was delicious. Buy the time we were done, about 11. I was really sleepy. When we got back to the hotel we tried to watch Empire Records... but we were too tired and went to sleep at about 12. I know some of the others in the group went out... but I was not interested. Besides, the wake up call was at 7 am then next morning.

Dia Uno

2007-07-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, around 8:30 in the morning, Buenos Aires time, I found myself in a different country for the first time in my life. Well, technically I went with my family to Baja when I was 10 but that doesn't really count. Anyway, the flight from Dallas/Ft. Worth was painless. I managed to sleep a good portion of the 10 hour flight and listen to some music along the way. Also in the last hour of the flight, they played an episode of Cheers and that was exciting. When we got off the plane, all the non residencias (citizens of Argentina) got to stand in a long time to get our passports checked, but after that we easily got our bags, painlessly went through customs, and found our way out of the airport. Oops, I neglected to mention Andrew. Andrew is one of the young men in the CIEE Buenos Aires program with me and we happened to be on the same flight down. I met him in Denver and we hung out in the airport in Dallas. Anyway, he's done a little more conversing in Spanish than I and doesn't have to deal with my particular shyness so he got us a cab from the airport to the hotel and we were on our way. We were staying in the same hotel so the shared traveling was particularly convenient. Our cab driver was very nice and interested in us. At this point everyone speaks Spanish so my conversation is not the highest quality but I am ever so slowly getting better. The man at the front desk of the hotel was a little hard to understand because he was speaking so quickly but we got to our rooms fine. All the people at the hotel have been very nice and accommodating. By this time it is about 10 am and I am getting hungry. Andrew and I go out to walk around the city and find a Cafe to eat breakfast at. Turns out the average Argentine breakfast consists of a croissant or two, a small but high quality café con leche (coffee and milk), and a small glass of room temperature sparkling water. I was starving so we made ourselves obvious Americans and ordered an omelet and a calzone. But, they wouldn't serve them to us because there were only two of us and each of those is only made for two. So we just got the calzone. It was HUGE! We couldn't finish it, but fortunately we didn't make big jerks out of ourselves and ask for a carry out box. We were pleased though, that we had accomplished the food thing and were ready to take on the city. We spent the rest of the day wondering and looking for electricity transformers so we could plug in our electronics. We wandered into about 4 different random electronics stores and tried to explain what we were looking for... slowly we figured out what it was called and finally one of the ladies wrote down directions to a place she knew had them and told us to ask for Juan Carlos, because "he speak English". We found him and he spoke a little English and we spoke a little Spanish and ended us with exactly what we needed. I had accomplished my one goal for the day in less than 3 hours. It was very exciting. We returned to the hotel... after getting only a little lost, and I plugged in my computer and proceeded to call my mother as well as Royce, both of whom where surprised to hear from me so soon. I was pleased with myself.

For the rest of the day we walked down to the river and back before looking for something to eat... it's about 7 pm now... but no place is open for dinner yet because no one eat before 8:30 and the normal time is 10:30. I'm really hungry. 10:30 is my bed time. So we went into another cafe and had some croissants and an amazing 1/2 bottle of wine. I can't remember what it was called. I'll have to look it up. Then I went to take a shower so I wouldn't look in such a sad state walking around stylish Buenos Aries at night. During this time Andrew found another guy in the program staying at the hotel: Cotton. He of course changed the dynamic of the group and the guys spent the rest of the night making fun of me. yay. But what can you do. Men... anyway we finally got dinner at a restaurant. I ordered a salad that actually turned out to be 5 slices of tomato with mozzarella slices on top drenched in olive oil and garnished with fresh basil. It was not the most sustenance I'd had in my life but hey. Then we walked around looking for bars/clubs to hang out at and ended up at this great place with lots of local and 1 free beer upon entry. Unfortunately, I don't like beer. Oh well. But the music was loud and it was really crowded. They played a lot of older American songs like Madonna and REM as well as some modern stuff like Gwen Steffani and The Black Eyed Peas. It was hilarious. They were mixed in with some songs in Spanish... but most were these kinds of songs. And everyone sang along. They probably didn't know what they were saying... but they loved it. We met a group of girls who were very nice and talked to us and danced with us. It was great! It was very fun! We finally stumbled back to our hotel rooms sometime after 4 am. An early bedtime around here, but I was so tired. It was a great first day. I'm very encouraged!