Mom, dad... you're absolutely right. I scanned the previous post and I only used three curse words, if you include wanker, but yeah. I am forwarding these to Rotary people as updates and that means I should be a little more careful. Cody. A little to the left of the picture where I say we're about to climb the glaciar it slopes down and touches ground and we climbed up there.
My situation as an exchange student is pretty unique for several reasons. One is that I spoke the language decently before coming here, and it's apparently not common to even speak the language a little bit before coming. Another is that I came super super late. This means that I never wound up going to high school, as was planned. Summer vacation started this week, which is very exciting for everyone who hasn't already been on summer vacation for five months or so. But it's alright, because in February I should be starting in the National University of Río Cuarto. I ought to be studying Sciences of Communication or something of the like. The system here is different. You don't have to apply to college; you basically just decide where you want to go, figure out housing since student housing is basically non existent, and go. No application and no tuition. No books, even. It looks like most of it is photocopies the professors make. Also, you have to choose a "career" as soon as you enter the university, and it determines your classes for the whole five years you're there. All of them. Hence my decision to study Sciences of Communication... it includes a study of Spanish, which means that I'll get to study Spanish at a very advanced level after practicing speaking and reading it for four months and studying it with other English speakers for years prior, and it includes a bunch of stuff like psychology and philosophy that I find moderately interesting but might not spend a credit on in the US.
Another factor that makes my exchange unique is that I had a Rotary trip two days after arriving. That meant that before I had managed to make any friends in Río Cuarto, I was already pretty solidly connected with the other exchange students here. I am hanging out with them a lot, and we are speaking English, BUT! We are acting as Argentine as we can whilst speaking English. We use all their fun hand gestures, and we drink mate, and we play their table games, and we go out until ridiculous hours. It's tons of fun. I'm connecting with Argentine high school students through my host brother, but most of them are leaving the city in February to go to university, so they all feel like doomed friendships even more than the rest of them. Those don't have to end until July or so. Hopefully I'll make more Argentine friends in university.
A few thoughts that don't really fit in paragraphs. There is a Kool-Aid type powder called Boog, which makes me very happy. Not drinking it as much as the fact that it exists. People in advertising are whiter than people on average in the country. At first it weirded me out, and then I realized that we did the same thing in the US. That made me sad.
The neighborhood I live in is called the "Villa Golf Club". For those who don't speak Spanish, that roughly translates to, "Golf Club Town". As one might imagine, the neighborhood consists of a bunch of houses and a gigantic country club. The people are, for the most part, pretty rich. The neighborhood is semi-closed, which means that it's not even remotely closed, but it has private security. In the truly closed neighborhoods you have to have the security call the people you're visiting to make sure that they're expecting you before you can enter. This neighborhood is one of the few places in town where it's acceptable to go out at night. When you stop next to people on motorcycles, you roll up your windows. There are a million tiny things I never think about coming from a tiny town in the USA that these people (and by these people I mean the Villa Golfians, not the Argentines) do to keep themselves and their thingies safe.
I may be imagining it, but it seems like strangers' reactions to my Spanish are improving. My first bit here, I was pretty solidly pegged as American. Later, they clearly knew I was foreign but always asked where I was from. Then they started commenting on how Mexican/Venezuelan/Central American my Spanish is (they can't seem to make up their mind.) The other night a cabbie asked me if I was from town or not. I have a feeling that was his polite way of asking me where in the world I was from, but it still made me feel good about myself. It doesn't take a lot to make me feel good about myself, especially when it comes to my Spanish.
Oh right, transportation. Well, I'm not allowed to drive, so either my mom has to take me places, which hurts me RIGHT in my independence, or I have to take a taxi or the bus. The bus is awesome. The bus comes by like every half hour, and costs about 50 cents. On the other hand, to actually get anywhere besides the central plaza you have to take at least two and I have yet to figure out exactly WHICH two for anywhere except for the ladies' houses. The taxis are neato. They never feel very expensive when you're paying for them, because you translate it into dollars and you're like, "Oh! That's only three to six dollars, depending on the amount of distance that I have gone in this particular theoretical cab ride! That's not bad!" But then you realize that that's only one way, and that you're taking taxis pretty much every day, and you resolve to figure out the bus system. Which I have sort of done. I can always get to the plaza. Everyone tells you not to take the bus at night, though, and adults actually sleep, so you basically HAVE to take a taxi then. I have the number of an awesome guy named Dario who works between eight and eight, in the scary direction. His seat belts actually work and his motor doesn't make dying sounds whenever he accelerates and he's not any more expensive than the ones who do. He always has a lot of business, so he's slow to get there, but he's so wonderful and he explained the complicated system of eleventh and twenty first and thirty first and whatnot in Spanish to me so it's ok.
Haha that system is crazy so I'll yell about it for a second. You know how one changes to first and two changes to second and stuff like that? In Spanish, "twentyth" and "thirtyith" are as remotely related to "twenty" and "thirty" as "one" is to "first". It's very exciting. So thirty two winds up being thrafity second. Or something like that. Most people are lazy and get around by, instead of saying, "seven hundred and fourty third" saying, "seven four three".
Plans for the summer are lining up rapidly. It would appear that I am going to the town of Bedia in Buenos Aires province. WO. I had heard before coming here a colloquial thing where spanish speakers would aspirate the "s"s, but it always came across as just not really pronouncing it. So Buenos Aires would be Bueno Aire. But I keep hearing here a really exaggerated version of that where people ASPIRATE the s. So Buenos Aires becomes Bueno Haire. It is a trip and a half. But um... yes. My host dad's family lives there, and we're going there to spend Christmas. The third of January I should be going to Necochea, also in Buenos Aires province, to visit the girl who did an exchange to my district last year for a couple of days. A few weeks after that I'm going with the host family of the other American exchange student to Buenos Aires city, and then crossing the river to Uruguay. This is wonderful not only because I get to see these places without having to pay a ton and sit on the stupid tour bus, but also because crossing to Uruguay and back will get my tourist visa renewed, and since I'm crossing from Uruguay and not the US, I won't have to pay a retaliatory 140$ visa fee.
Ok I'm pretty sure I managed not to swear that time but I'm not totally sure. I AM sure that the whole thing came off a little more unnaturally than the last one since I was being careful not to swear the whole time. Thanks a lot, mom and dad.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Here we are then
I´m not entirely sure where to begin, so I think I´ll ramble. No! I´ll work chronologically. Ok.
I left home, drove up to Portland, spent the night with my aunt and uncle, flew out the next morning to Atlanta, connected to Buenos Aires, took a bus for 45 minutes through Buenos Aires to a different airport, and flew from that airport to Còrdoba city. Factoring in the time difference and counting layovers, it was about 23 hours of travel. My host parents picked me up at the airport, where I managed to make a cultural mistake within instants of meeting them. I hadn´t been briefed in Argentine greetings, and in the states we´ve pretty much got the handshake, and the hug. So went they went in for the kiss, I was like, "Oh, ok, hug time" and I gave them both montrous bear hugs. I´m sure it freaked them out at least a little. We went directly from the airport to a gas station for a soda. Gas stations here are weird. First of all, there´s a chain called Petrobras. Secondly, the little indoor areas to by junk food have tables and chairs. And when I bought my soda the lady offered me a glass. Which I apparently should have taken. It´s cool to drink from a bottle if you´re walking around or in a car or whatever, but it seems like if you´re at a table (which you are in a gas station, trip) you use a glass. Always.
Let´s see then. When we got to the house my host dad pretty much went straight to work preparing the asado (barbequeueue). He pulled out two scary big pieces of meat, and then a scary huge knife, and started trimming away. We ate in a scary huge dining room called a quincho, which is apparently reserved for special occasions, like my arrival, and when there are a lot of people in the house. Which actually happens a lot. Cousins keep dropping by, and friends, and grandparents, and uncles and aunts, and I don´t even know. It´s endless. Anywhoozles. There are two other dining rooms in the house, one of which we use most of the time. I´m not totally sure what the purpose of the other one is. The table´s a little bigger, and we have used it a couple times when the grandparents were over, but I don´t know. Oh, yeah. One weird thing about dinner was it was the first time I saw a siphon. They drink club soda like crazy here. My family explained the system to me. Most people buy big bottles in the supermarkets, but family and quite a few others get siphons delivered in big cartons, and then they put empty ones outside and get replacements. They pay per month for all the soda they drink, and the service. Like a milk man, but for club soda. Crazy.
After dinner and most of the next day were really awkward, since I was trying to get my bearings, but my host parents assumed my disorientation was discomfort that they could actually do something about, and kept asking me what I wanted, and my host siblings (who are older than me) hovered around me a lot. That night, after dinner WAIT. Ok. Dinner is anywhere from 9 to 11. People meet up to go out at 11 at the earliest, they sit around and drink for a few hours, and then they head out at maybe 1:30 or 2. The clubs close at 6, so getting back around 6:30´s probably pretty typical. Alright. Now you´ve got the ridiculous time line in your head. But yeah. After dinner that exact thing happened, friends of my host brother started showing up, the parents went to bed, and we all hung out in the quincho. It was a thursday, so one of the clubs was open. They don´t usually go out on weekdays, but it was one of their birthdays, so they did. Except the club was full. So we went to the casino. I know now, after touring the south, that every city has a casino. Even cities you can´t really call cities. It was pretty boring. I didn´t gamble, so I just stared and the crazy flashing lights for 45ish minutes before they called it quits and we went home.
The next day I left for the south trip. Oh jesus, I have to describe the whole trip. Well... we drove for like a day and a half or some crap, during which the exchange students got to know each other a bit. A significant plurality were from Germany or Austria, two the two lingua francas (is that Latin, or French? Because I only know how to pluralize one) wound up being English and German. We wound up in Punto Pyramides, which is a tiny town that basically only exists because of tourism. The town is on a bay that´s the whale spawning ground of the world or something. There´s crazy amounts of whales there. We saw lots. We went to a peninsula where we saw penguins and sea lions, and the bones of a whale. Ok, it was called the Reserva Provincial Penìnsula de Valdès, if you feel like googling it.
We then drove for another ridiculous period of time to El Calafate. We had a free day, and the day after we went to Perito Moreno glaciar. That I demand that you google. Or go see yourself. Oh wait, I figured out how to upload photos to the blog. Here´s a picture of the glaciar from way up high.
And here´s us all up on it.
Anyways. That was probably the most beautiful place I´ve ever been in my life. Not a lot else of note happened in El Calafate. I offended a German with my shopping habits. He wanted me to walk around with "a big bottle of Coke and at least 2 kilos of ice cream". The guy from New Zealand also explained how everyone in Argentina´s a total wanker, and that´s why he acted like such a wanker here. No offense Tim, but I´m pretty sure you´d be a wanker no matter where you went.
After El Calafate we drove to Ushuaia. This was a silly thing to do. First of all, there´s not really anything in Ushuaia. Granted, it is the end of the world, but it´s on the island of Tierra del Fuego, and Argentine Tierra del Fuego is not connected to the rest of Argentina. We had to pass through Chile, which meant four customs every direction. First Argentina has to make sure that you´re not smuggling any cocaine or whatever OUT of their country, then Chile has to make sure that you´re not bringing in any agricultural products that could have parasites on them, and then when you leave Chile they have to make sure you´re not taking OUT any fruits, and then Argentina has to make sure you´re not bringing any cocaine in. It´s no fun. Ushuaia was just shopping and a boat ride out to some islands with sea lions and powerful laxative plants. Then we went back through the freaking customs up to Esquel, but we didn´t really do anything there.
We then went to Bariloche. Bariloche, I´m not sure how to explain. Oh! This should be illustrative. Before I came down, I saw a photo album my host brother had entitled Bariloche. It turns out it was of a trip he took with his classmates to Bariloche, but based on the content I assumed Bariloche was Spanish for debauchery. Yes? This is the reputation of the city. Tons of tourists go there, and they´re supposed to have the best clubs in the country. I got badly sick in Bariloche, so I didn´t take part in the debauchery, but I heard it was tons of fun. We had a one night stop in San Martin de los Andes on the way home, and that was it. Oh yeah, and we visited a bunch of national parks with forests and mountains and lakes and after a while they all started to look the same.
I´ve been back home now for a few days, I´m on antibiotics, I´m drinking water from an empty Fernet bottle, I´m going to get lung cancer from the second hand smoke, breakfast is just cafe con leche and maybe toast, they freak out when I tell them about eggs and bacon and pacakes and waffles and oatmeal and whatnot in the morning, siesta is the greatest invention since whatever was the greatest invention before sliced bread, since sliced bread isn´t really that great, I reacted a little too favorably the first time my host mom gave me dulce de leche and she´s now trying her hardest to give me diabetes, aaaaaaaaaannndddd the maid is really cool. And mate´s the shit. If you managed t read the whole thing, I´d like to take a moment to give you my respect.
I left home, drove up to Portland, spent the night with my aunt and uncle, flew out the next morning to Atlanta, connected to Buenos Aires, took a bus for 45 minutes through Buenos Aires to a different airport, and flew from that airport to Còrdoba city. Factoring in the time difference and counting layovers, it was about 23 hours of travel. My host parents picked me up at the airport, where I managed to make a cultural mistake within instants of meeting them. I hadn´t been briefed in Argentine greetings, and in the states we´ve pretty much got the handshake, and the hug. So went they went in for the kiss, I was like, "Oh, ok, hug time" and I gave them both montrous bear hugs. I´m sure it freaked them out at least a little. We went directly from the airport to a gas station for a soda. Gas stations here are weird. First of all, there´s a chain called Petrobras. Secondly, the little indoor areas to by junk food have tables and chairs. And when I bought my soda the lady offered me a glass. Which I apparently should have taken. It´s cool to drink from a bottle if you´re walking around or in a car or whatever, but it seems like if you´re at a table (which you are in a gas station, trip) you use a glass. Always.
Let´s see then. When we got to the house my host dad pretty much went straight to work preparing the asado (barbequeueue). He pulled out two scary big pieces of meat, and then a scary huge knife, and started trimming away. We ate in a scary huge dining room called a quincho, which is apparently reserved for special occasions, like my arrival, and when there are a lot of people in the house. Which actually happens a lot. Cousins keep dropping by, and friends, and grandparents, and uncles and aunts, and I don´t even know. It´s endless. Anywhoozles. There are two other dining rooms in the house, one of which we use most of the time. I´m not totally sure what the purpose of the other one is. The table´s a little bigger, and we have used it a couple times when the grandparents were over, but I don´t know. Oh, yeah. One weird thing about dinner was it was the first time I saw a siphon. They drink club soda like crazy here. My family explained the system to me. Most people buy big bottles in the supermarkets, but family and quite a few others get siphons delivered in big cartons, and then they put empty ones outside and get replacements. They pay per month for all the soda they drink, and the service. Like a milk man, but for club soda. Crazy.
After dinner and most of the next day were really awkward, since I was trying to get my bearings, but my host parents assumed my disorientation was discomfort that they could actually do something about, and kept asking me what I wanted, and my host siblings (who are older than me) hovered around me a lot. That night, after dinner WAIT. Ok. Dinner is anywhere from 9 to 11. People meet up to go out at 11 at the earliest, they sit around and drink for a few hours, and then they head out at maybe 1:30 or 2. The clubs close at 6, so getting back around 6:30´s probably pretty typical. Alright. Now you´ve got the ridiculous time line in your head. But yeah. After dinner that exact thing happened, friends of my host brother started showing up, the parents went to bed, and we all hung out in the quincho. It was a thursday, so one of the clubs was open. They don´t usually go out on weekdays, but it was one of their birthdays, so they did. Except the club was full. So we went to the casino. I know now, after touring the south, that every city has a casino. Even cities you can´t really call cities. It was pretty boring. I didn´t gamble, so I just stared and the crazy flashing lights for 45ish minutes before they called it quits and we went home.
The next day I left for the south trip. Oh jesus, I have to describe the whole trip. Well... we drove for like a day and a half or some crap, during which the exchange students got to know each other a bit. A significant plurality were from Germany or Austria, two the two lingua francas (is that Latin, or French? Because I only know how to pluralize one) wound up being English and German. We wound up in Punto Pyramides, which is a tiny town that basically only exists because of tourism. The town is on a bay that´s the whale spawning ground of the world or something. There´s crazy amounts of whales there. We saw lots. We went to a peninsula where we saw penguins and sea lions, and the bones of a whale. Ok, it was called the Reserva Provincial Penìnsula de Valdès, if you feel like googling it.
We then drove for another ridiculous period of time to El Calafate. We had a free day, and the day after we went to Perito Moreno glaciar. That I demand that you google. Or go see yourself. Oh wait, I figured out how to upload photos to the blog. Here´s a picture of the glaciar from way up high.
Here´s us getting ready to climb it.
After El Calafate we drove to Ushuaia. This was a silly thing to do. First of all, there´s not really anything in Ushuaia. Granted, it is the end of the world, but it´s on the island of Tierra del Fuego, and Argentine Tierra del Fuego is not connected to the rest of Argentina. We had to pass through Chile, which meant four customs every direction. First Argentina has to make sure that you´re not smuggling any cocaine or whatever OUT of their country, then Chile has to make sure that you´re not bringing in any agricultural products that could have parasites on them, and then when you leave Chile they have to make sure you´re not taking OUT any fruits, and then Argentina has to make sure you´re not bringing any cocaine in. It´s no fun. Ushuaia was just shopping and a boat ride out to some islands with sea lions and powerful laxative plants. Then we went back through the freaking customs up to Esquel, but we didn´t really do anything there.
We then went to Bariloche. Bariloche, I´m not sure how to explain. Oh! This should be illustrative. Before I came down, I saw a photo album my host brother had entitled Bariloche. It turns out it was of a trip he took with his classmates to Bariloche, but based on the content I assumed Bariloche was Spanish for debauchery. Yes? This is the reputation of the city. Tons of tourists go there, and they´re supposed to have the best clubs in the country. I got badly sick in Bariloche, so I didn´t take part in the debauchery, but I heard it was tons of fun. We had a one night stop in San Martin de los Andes on the way home, and that was it. Oh yeah, and we visited a bunch of national parks with forests and mountains and lakes and after a while they all started to look the same.
I´ve been back home now for a few days, I´m on antibiotics, I´m drinking water from an empty Fernet bottle, I´m going to get lung cancer from the second hand smoke, breakfast is just cafe con leche and maybe toast, they freak out when I tell them about eggs and bacon and pacakes and waffles and oatmeal and whatnot in the morning, siesta is the greatest invention since whatever was the greatest invention before sliced bread, since sliced bread isn´t really that great, I reacted a little too favorably the first time my host mom gave me dulce de leche and she´s now trying her hardest to give me diabetes, aaaaaaaaaannndddd the maid is really cool. And mate´s the shit. If you managed t read the whole thing, I´d like to take a moment to give you my respect.
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