Three Peso Hockey

Last night I experienced a very exciting academic occurrence! For my Psychology of the Personality class (my hardest one with too many readings), we have a class blog that the students use for activities and the professors use to post assignments and tell us important things. Our professor just posted a commentary about the grades from the last midterm (the one that I studied for so much the night before that I only slept a half an hour and drowned my bodily systems in mate). He wrote:

En cuanto a los resultados cualitativos ante todo queremos felicitar y destacar a los siguientes alumnos por haber logrado excelentes exámenes que denotan esfuerzo y un profundo aprendizaje de la materia hasta este momento:
...
7. Nancy Lundin

This means: With regard to the qualitative results [of the midterm] we would like to congratulate and emphasize the follow students for having achieved excellent exams that show effort and a profound understanding of the class up to this point. And my name was on the list! I was so happy because I tried so hard and really didn't know if it was enough. There were 7 people listed out of the 50 students in the class. I know this is silly, but as soon as I saw this post, I forgot all about Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and his whole attack on the idealistic American Dream and truly believed that if you work hard enough for something, you can make it possible. I realize now that this is completely unrealistic in so many life situations and there will always be people giving everything they've got while receiving nothing in return.

I found out from talking to my host sister that the reason the door made such a loud noise the other morning was because the ladder beside it fell and smacked against the wall outside my room when the door closed. That helps explain why I was leaping out of my skin and jumping to irrational conclusions. Since mamá has left, I have been more responsible for Tango than usual. It's been like having my own dog, which I have never experienced before. He takes a lot of maintenance, that's for sure. If this dog isn't taken on at least 4 walks a day, he pees right outside the door to my room. Not a cute surprise to come back to after class, let me tell you. I like walking with him when I have time; he gets distracted by every tree and post in existence. I have also been spending more time with Toto the cat. He went from not giving me the time of the day when I first arrived to never passing up an opportunity to cuddle. I took a legitimate cat nap the other day with him. It was adorable; you should have seen it. I can tell that both pets miss mamá but I'm glad they have become my snuggle buddies. P.S. I am still not sure if Toto is a boy or a girl. I thought boy, then girl, now I'm not sure again. Whenever someone in the family talks about him/her, I imagine different endings to the adjectives they use to reference him/her (in regards to many Spanish adjectives, whether they end in -a or -o can tell you if the noun they are describing is masculine or feminine). Maybe I'll ask one day, but I feel like it's a little late at this point. Maybe Toto is past gender. Like we all should be! Haha, so anyway..

I had lunch with my friends from psychology class again the other day. I think it would take a year and a half here for me to completely understand their conversations, plus I would have to be introduced to their personal histories and inside jokes. Sometimes if it's too confusing to keep up, I start talking to one person individually and it's a lot easier. I talked to Mercedes about what books we liked and I showed her the one I was currently reading for class, Operación Masacre by Rodolfo Walsh. She said she doesn't like books about Argentine history because this was a subject that was drilled into her head from a young age. I'm not much of a history person either but I do recognize its importance. I introduced my friends to three-quarter hockey and we played it with pesos. This is a game I used to play with my high school friends in the cafeteria; you use three quarters (or in this case, pesos) and there is one player on each side of the table. One person sets two fingers up like a goal, and the other person tries to slide a quarter in between the other two without letting any of them touch. The player moves the quarters across the table until he or she scores or messes up, and then defense and offense switch. My friend Vari thought it would be funny if an outside player started making a soda can dance in the middle of the playing field as a distraction while simultaneously making weird noises. I like this girl. I got really excited when she started singing a song by Los Abuelos de la Nada ("Mil Horas") and I actually was able to chime in with the lyrics! I love sharing musical interests.

I went to the gym with my friend Mark today. I plan on going at least 4 times a week and also eating healthier, because these beef-fat free cookies and alfajores are really starting to catch up with me. It's easy to forget your healthy habits when you're in a completely different setting. Today I went to look for an old Spanish novel called Lo Prohibido by Benito Peréz Galdós for my literature class. I could not find it in any of the 11 bookstores along Santa Fe, the main street, and I was starting to think my teacher invented it. However, I was successful when I visited the numerous stands set up on a median near Plaza Italia where they sell books of all kinds. I am just as bad as my mom at resisting the urge to purchase when I am surrounded by stacks of books. I bought some of Pablo Neruda's poetry along with the book I needed for class. I also made friends with the bookseller named Luis, who was perhaps a bit too friendly. It seems to be much more common for older people to flirt with younger people here than in the States, and it's still taking some getting used to. It will be weird coming back and not experiencing constant double-takes or catcalls on the streets. I wonder if I will be offended by the lack of whistles and think I look just awful that day.

Oh and below is a picture of my ridiculous rainbow pants purchase. Worn almost daily.

Say No to Bingo and Door Slams ≠ Gun Shots

 Favorite thing someone said to me this week: my friend Gabi told me that I've gotten a lot fiercer since I've been in Argentina; I have learned streets smarts and I'm less "frolic in the fieldsy" than before. I hope I still have some fields in me!

On Thursday night I went to another play through registration with IFSA. It's really nice that I don't have to pay for all of these plays and things, but I know that a lot of the activity fees were paid for in our original tuition. I'm glad to be taking advantage of these opportunities :) I went to a show called "Choque Urbano, Baila!" It was fantastic and kept me entertained for every minute the actors were on stage. They were a group of people in brightly colored overalls and face paint, and they used numerous methods to make music. They banged on trash cans and lids, used whips that made really cool sounds when they sliced them through the air in unison, jump roped in a synchronized fashion, played violins, etc. They leapt around on monkey bars and swings, threw leaves up into the sparkling lights, and did the splits while moving across the rolling trash cans. It was quite a spectacle. There was constant action and fantastic collaboration. They did flips off each other and jumped over each other, among other insane dance moves. There wasn't a lot of talking but it was better that way; dialogue was not the emphasis of this work of art. At the end, they encouraged audience participation, which was super fun. They separated the crowd into sections and we each made a different sound that paired up with a hand motion by the actor, and it sounded pretty rad when put together.

I joined the gym near me for 130 pesos, so about 32.50 US dollars for a one month membership. I think is a pretty good deal if I go enough to make it worth the money :) I went on Friday and after only running on the treadmill for 20 minutes, riding the exercise bike for 10, and then an ab workout, I was completely beat. It was very difficult to get through and my initial reaction was disappointment for being so out of shape, but I perked up when I realized that I have to start somewhere. Pain is motivation to keep going! Except if you're talking to my mom. She thinks it's motivation to stop going to the gym :) Love you, Mumsy. I really don't prefer treadmills and if it were easier to get out and run I would, but for now I'm stuck with this. For me it's just harder to judge how fast I'm going than when I am running outside, and since running is largely psychological, I get tired a lot quicker and it is harder to run shorter distances. I start sweating within five minutes and feel like such an amateur around all the other beastly gym goers cranking up the resistance to my left and right. It's also just really repetitive and in order to get through a run, I have to sing songs in my head so I forget where I am. A big reason why I like running is because I like looking at the trees and the rest of the natural world, and that doesn't happen when you're in a small room filled with rubber and metal. I wrote a haiku to describe my feelings about treadmills:

no trees or my sky
running running 'til I die
human hamster wheel

Yesterday Ana Lucía invited me to come see a short performance that she and her acting troupe put together on a random street in the barrio Almagro. Before her group performed, there was a band with a mandolinist (is that a word?), a guitarist and singers. Their fun folky style reminded me of bands that I used to see in Western Springs back in the States. After that there was a group of clowns that did tricks and acted oddly. It was super weird, but clowns are weird in every country. Ana's performance was a 5 minute rendition of Romeo y Julieta (Romeo and Juliet), and it was hysterical. I was crying with laughter by the end of it. There were 6 people playing all of the characters, and it was very overblown and dramatic, which helped since they didn't have the old English to create humor for them. In the end, Romeo and Juliet took turns waking up and seeing the other one dead and then killing themselves again.. about 8 times. It was so funny and fast-paced. Ana played Juliet and she was beautiful. I feel like we have gotten 10 times closer since mamá left, because it's just us now and she's around a lot more. I'm so happy that she finally feels like a sister to me. Today we talked about Argentine movies and she recommended a bunch to me; I'm excited to watch them :) I also really love her boyfriend; he seems like such a great guy. I can tell that they are unbelievably happy together; whenever they see each other, their faces light up and they look like there is no one else in the world at which they would rather be looking.

Last night I went a birthday dinner for my friend Kayti with my family friend Sara and then two more girls who I had met a while ago but hadn't hung out with much. It was a blast. We talked from 8.30 at night til 4 in the morning while enjoying Mexican quesadillas and tacos, wine, and a kilo of ice cream (between the five of us we finished the whole thing!). It was so much fun to have a girls night; it reminded me of sleepovers I used to have in grade school and high school. We waited an hour for the colectivo (bus) and if I wasn't with two friends I would not have felt as safe standing near the curb for that long. Nothing sketchy happened; just a few too many honks from cars and then two boys asking us if we wanted to play Bingo. I don't even want to know what that is code for. The colectivo finally came when we started calling a cab; I wonder if it would have come earlier if we had threatened it with alternate forms of transportation an hour ago. The bus system can be kind of sporadic but it is much kinder on our wallets to pay 1.25 pesos rather than 50, so it's worth the wait.

This morning I had an unnecessarily scary experience. The door from my kitchen to the hallway where my room is can be ridiculously loud when it is closed. I was sleeping and I don't remember what I was dreaming about, but I was jerked awake by what seemed like the loudest sound I had every heard in my life, a sound too loud to be made my door, and in my half-conscious state I was convinced it was a gunshot. My whole body shook and I started crying silently to myself, hiding under my pillow and blankets. I was trying to think of where to go, where to hide in this tiny room. I was crying for my host sister, for her boyfriend, for the cat and the dog and whoever else was dead in this temporary realm of insanity in which I was trapped. I feared for my life. I knew at that moment that I was not ready to die. I still had so much to do, so much more to experience. It made me upset that someone was trying to take this special existence away from me. After a few minutes of shaking and hiding under my pillow, I came to my senses. I realized that I could hear the murmuring of Ana and Suky, and even some scratching that could have been Tango clawing at the ground. Therefore my logic led me to the path of reason; it must have been the door shutting and it sounded louder because my senses were more acute and vulnerable in my sleep; maybe I was even having a scary dream at the time. I cannot explain how amplified and unbelievably loud that sound was, or how real my fear of death was in that moment. I went into the kitchen after a few minutes, confirmed with my host sister that it was the door slamming and then I think I told her "Estoy muy alegre de que no haya sido una pistola" (I am really glad that wasn't a gun). She and Suky gave me weird looks that I didn't understand at the time, and then I wandered to my room still slightly delusional and went back to sleep until 3 pm. Well, glad that's over and that I'm alive. Sometimes I question my sanity.

Japanese Food in China Town

 My host mom left yesterday for Greece for four weeks! I was sad to say goodbye to her because I am so used to her constant helpfulness and compassionate presence. But she laughed and said that I will grow as an independent woman and go out with friends more. We'll see if that happens! My host sister Ana Lucía is going to be living here while mamá is gone. She is really nice and helpful with all of my Spanish and social problems. She has three jobs and goes to school so we will not see each other all the time, but I think it will work out wonderfully. She has a boyfriend named Fernando (nicknamed Suky) and we all had dinner together last night. Ana Lucía is a very good cook and I enjoyed her baked potatoes with broccoli, cheese, and other things. Dinner was very comfortable. Ana and her boyfriend are younger than mamá's other children (27ish) so it is a lot easier for me to relate to them than her siblings since they are closer to my age.

Yesterday I went to Barrio chino (China town) with Valeria, my new friend from Spanglish. It was only a few blocks long, but it was really cool to see. There were a lot of shops with Chinese symbol medallions, Buddha figurines, cheap jewelry, scarves, and golden cats that move their heads or arms in creepy mechanical ways. It was a rainy day but we made the most of it. We went to a Japanese restaurant (yes, in China town) and I ordered curry, excited by the word "picante" next to the name of the dish. This means spicy, and I hadn't had spicy food apart from the salsa from a Mexican restaurant since I'd gotten to Argentina. I should not have gotten my hopes up; the curry sauce had a tiny hint of heat that refused to linger for longer than a second, and that was it. Next we walked through a Chinese market which had a slightly overwhelming stench of fish. After I got past the smell, it was really interesting to look around. People were lined up at the cash registers with grocery carts filled with things that I did not recognize. Some of the things did not even look like food! Like big circular black stringy looking stuff. Someone had aloe vera in what looked like two gigantic soda bottles. Can you drink aloe vera? I guess it comes in different forms than the green goo I put on my sunburns. I was roaming through the aisles, glancing at the different vegetables, spices and the gallon containers of soy sauce when I came across.. 5 different kinds of peanut butter! I was saved. Two of them were even natural peanut butter! Looks like I won't have to ration this magical substance as much as I previously thought.

Valeria and I headed back to the estación de subte (subway station) and the subte stopped right in front of us, but the doors remained closed. We waited there for five minutes until they finally opened. Everyone filed out and men in uniforms appeared to tell us that no one was allowed back on the subte. A crowd gathered and a whispering-murmuring-shocked tone of voice fest began. It was hard for me to understand any of the fused-together words uttered amongst the confused chaos, but my ears finally held onto four words that made my heart stop: "Una mujer se tiró." Translation: a woman threw herself in front of the moving subway. How horrific. There were two people on the other side of the subway on the tracks, talking, yes TALKING to someone underneath. Does that mean the woman was/is still alive? I wonder if that's even worse than the success of her mission. If she survives, I suppose it could go one of two ways. Either she will be extremely injured, not have normal usage of her body, and dread her existence even more than before without having any escape because everyone will always be taking care of her. Or she will be extremely injured, not have normal usage of her body, but she will have a newly developed optimistic attitude toward life and will be happy that she survived the experience. I really hope it's the latter.

Today I tried going to the Gaucho Fair in Mataderos, Buenos Aires. It was supposed to be a huge deal today since it is the 25th of May, a national holiday. My friends and I trooped through the rain to get to the bus and then rode it for an hour and a half to get to the feria just to find.. no one. There was supposed to be dancing of gauchos (Argentine cowboys) and folkloric music playing on the streets. They decided to cancel the festivities because of the rain. So we hung around for a few hours, thinking we might as well get something out of our trek. There was a lot of meat in different forms and some artisan stands. I was disappointed that nothing exciting was going on since it had cleared up a lot within an hour of the rain. We headed back to the capital, not wanting to miss out on the real 25 de mayo festivities. This was much more satisfying than the turnout of the Gaucho Fair. We went to Plaza de Mayo and encountered a ton of people, music, food, and fun. We saw at least 6 bands play on the stage in front of the Casa Rosada (the government house where the president lives), which was lit up with bright pink lights. Flags were flying, some representing the country, some the president, others diversity.

Last collection of random thoughts: Almost everyone in my Psychology of the Personality class has added me as a friend on Facebook and I can't keep track of them! I think it's much easier to know the name of the one foreigner in the class than to know the 45 Argentine girls and 5 boys, while many of the girls have names that are similar or overlapping. Second thought: There are a lot of street vendors who fry peanuts and almonds in oil and sugar on the streets near Universidad Católica. Rarely can I resist that delicious nutty smell. Lastly, I decided that I should really stop fabricating silly excuses to avoid working out, so I am going to join a gym for a month while I'm still here! I hope this decision will result in me not being a complete blob when I return home and have to start training for my half marathon. My friend Peter agreed to be my workout buddy so we'll see if we can motivate each other enough to go!

Sports and Subway Serenades

 After all the studying for the past two weeks, I am finally having my share of fun again. My week-end started Friday morning when I went to Migraciones (the immigration center) to obtain my legal residency, which is required for students who are studying here for a semester. The evening before around midnight, my friend Vari from my psychology class offered to accompany me to obtain my residency. I was very surprised and told her it was sure to be a boring process, but she didn't mind. I am discovering more and more each day how wonderful the people are in this country. They go out of their way to help you with things. I very much appreciated her presence and we had fun passing the time. Afterward she took me to a store that she thought I would like that sells what she calls "heeepy" (hippie) clothing. She was right; I was in rainbow heaven. I found the most ridiculous pants I could find and left the store happier and more colorful than when I had entered. We then stopped by the pension where she is staying since her family lives in Patagonia. I have heard from a number of people that the best universities in Argentina are in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Mendoza, so the majority of the students from other regions travel to one of these provinces to go to school.

After my morning adventures my friend Maddie and I went to the Evita Museum in Palermo, my barrio. María Eva Duarte de Perón (nicknamed Evita by the people) was a woman who grew up in a modest family, suffered from the death of her father, and then climbed the social ladder through theater jobs until she met Juan D. Perón, a military leader, and they were married. He became president of Argentina and she was First Lady. She was offered the position of Vice-President, but declined because of her developing cancer. This is the part in the movie "Evita" when she sings the well-known song "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina." The Argentine people loved her and the country was heartbroken when she passed away at the young age of 33. I found out from the information provided at the museum that she created a school for sick people and was also a very strong advocate for women's suffrage. Maddie and I then went to the Botanical Gardens near Plaza Italia. My previous conception of a pretty garden included an area overflowing with green plants and brilliant flowers of all colors. However, this garden was almost all greenery, and I realized that this posesses its own beauty. There were a number of different kinds of trees and plants (they even had a section of the mate plant!), as well as a few Roman-style statues. The grass was filled with cats, and apparently there used to be even more a few years ago. I'm not sure how they stay alive; I think people might come and feed them sometimes. A problem arose when we tried to exit the garden.. We just kept circling around and turning down passages until the street was finally in sight 15 minutes later. I felt like I was in one of the White Witch's traps in Narnia!

My sleeping schedule has been even stranger than usual lately. I spent last week barely sleeping, and then this week-end sleeping a proper amount of hours at night, and then taking naps during the day and still being tired. I wonder if it's too much to ask that I will ever get back on a normal schedule while I'm here. On Friday night I went to an event called "Spanglish." These events basically consist of English-speakers and Spanish-speakers meeting up in a social setting such as a bar, and having conversations in both languages with one another. I was set up with an Argentine and we spoke English for the first five minutes, Spanish for the next five, and then we switched partners. I never wanted to switch because everyone was so friendly and 10 minutes was never enough to find out everything we wanted to know about each other! I ended up making a lot of friends who I plan on seeing again. I talked with one woman who is also a vegetarian; we have dinner plans for later this week. A bunch of us went out for Mexican food after the event, which was a great time. It was humorous trying to speak in English to Spanish-speakers because I was not accustomed to it. For some reason I was forgetting words, mixing up Spanish and English vocabulary, and really having a hard time expressing myself. I felt like my Uncle John who has lived in Japan for the past 14 years and is forgetting his native language!

On Saturday I went to a rugby game, a sport of which I was completely unfamiliar before (aside from knowing that it had English roots). It seemed a lot like football but with a few exceptions: the shape of the ball is different, you can only throw the ball sideways or backwards, the play does not always end when someone is tackled to the ground, and no padding is included in the uniform. It was very violent; four players got seriously injured while we were watching! The visiting team had a fan club in the stands next to us, and they spent the entire game jumping up and down and singing their team songs. It reminded me of Madison football games and made me excited for the coming season. Every food item being sold at the game was very representative of Argentina, meaning it was all meat, so I had a piece of cake for lunch. Very nutritious. Today I played fútbol (soccer) for the second time and had another good workout. Although I kicked the air a few times and passed to the wrong team once in a while, I achieved my Mission Impossible and scored a goal! I was very proud of myself. I also realize that I should not expect to be as skilled as the American kids who played AYSO soccer since kindergarten or the Argentines who play fútbol as often as I eat lunch.

Riding the subway is a dynamic experience here. I have completely open expectations each time I squeeze on board. When my friend Maggie and I come back from our literature class on Wednesday nights, we are often entertained with some sort of concert. Anything from Argentine rap to old ladies singing about their long lost lovers, we hear it all. There are also people that walk up and down the aisles and place random items such as marker sets, packs of gum, or sports calendars on your laps. Then they circle back around and you either hand the items back or give them money. It is also common for small little girls or boys without shoes to walk up and down the aisles and ask for spare change. A surprising amount of people actually give them monedas (coins). The same thing happens with beggars on the street; earlier today I saw a man hand some pesos over to a homeless man on the corner. It makes me really happy that even though there is occasionally a survival-of-the-fittest feel to this busy city, some people are able to stop what they are doing and realize that maybe they don't need their five pesos as much as the young woman with two children sitting year-round outside of the cathedral. Buenos Aires continues to surprise me every day.

Te Entiendo

The last few days have been so busy I can't remember what happened! Let us begin with Saturday. My friend Sarah and I finally had a chance to catch up over a delicious dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant that my parents recommended from when they visited. It was refreshing being in her company. Even though we live in the same city, it's so easy to lose oneself in classes, routines, and the hustle bustle of Buenos Aires. We shared a bottle of Malbec and dishes of hummus, falafel and fried eggplant. After dinner, we sporadically made plans with our friend Federico, the boy who sat next to me on the 16 hour bus ride from Mendoza back to Buenos Aires in March. His family lives in Mendoza but he is currently working here. We met his friends and had a hilarious time playing drinking card games at their apartment and listening them try to speak English. Afterward, we headed to a nearby boliche and had a lot of fun dancing to Latin music. Although it was hot and sweaty inside, this club thankfully had an outside garden where there was also dancing but with less risk of death by heat exhaustion. Inside there were two stages especially geared toward hormonal young adults. On one stage were young women dressed in outfits that would have made my grandmother gasp with disapproval. On the other stage were men dancing (if you want to call it dancing) who looked like they had just fallen off the Abercrombie gift bags right after hitting the gym for 10 years straight. Both the men and women were pulling lucky spectators on stage to dance with them. It seemed very superficially enjoyable.

I had a wonderful time dancing and making new friends. I can tell how much my Spanish has improved because when I first talked to an Argentine student, I couldn't understand a word that they were saying. I think this was caused by a combination of factors including: the speed at which they were talking, the conversational slang that they were using, and also the fact that I was so nervous and unfamiliar with conversing in this manner that my mind blocked all possibilities of comprehension. Now I hardly have to ask "cómo?" as we speak. It gives me so much joy to be able to have normal friendships in another language. It's something unexplainable. Like I have conquered my personal challenge of intersubjectivity. I finally get the feeling of "te entiendo"; I understand you.

In my psychology class, we read something by Spanish philosopher and existencialist Ismael Quiles in his book El Yo Psicologóico-Ontológico y La Transcendencia that expresses my feelings in an effective manner: "Las otras personas nos ayudan a descubrir características esenciales de nuestra personalidad, de nuestro yo. Parece que precisamente al contacto con ellas, y por ellas, descubrimos el verdadero y total valor de nuestra propia personalidad, de lo que es 'ser persona'. Este contacto se realiza, no por una mera presencia física o corporal, en la cual se puede tratar a las personas como si fueran cosas, sino por y en el contacto espiritual, sobre todo, por el amor. El sentido de la vida humana, el sentido del valor y de mi yo, lo descubro en relación con las otras personas" (174-5).
*Translated to the best of my ability: "It is other people that help us discover the essential characteristics of our personality, of our selves. It seems inevitable that from contact with others, we discover the true and complete value of our own personality, and what it is to 'be a person.' This contact is fulfilled, not just from mere physical or corporal presence, in which one can treat people as if they were things, but rather through spiritual contact, and above all, through love. The feeling of human life, my sense of value and of myself, I discover in relation with other people."

I met with a group of students from my Spanish Literature class on Sunday and we collectively wrote an essay about the complexities of Romanticism and other literary movements in Spain and related them to Spanish culture and literature. It is incredible to be able to relate on an intellectual level with people in Spanish; I feel worlds away from the Nancy that could only speak enough Spanish to tell the cab driver in Mexico that he should be sure to use his umbrella when it was raining while on a family cruise. Relating to people in their own language on a deeper level than simply that of relaying information makes me feel like more of a person. It makes me want to learn every language so I can have this profound connection with everyone in the world! As my Spanish is improving, I am finally learning how to let my personality manifest itself in my relationships with my friends. Learning how to make jokes, express my feelings and make someone smile is truly sublime. In the words of Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, "And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

The epoch of midterms! I got my Structure of Subjectivity test back and was very excited to receive a 9! The grading system here is based on a numerical scale from 1 to 10. The professor read everyone's names off a list along with the grade they received. This included the students that did not pass (those who received below a 4). I thought this was very unnerving and would not prefer to have my academic performance broadcasted to the world. However, it's different here. 8 students of the 61 did not pass and 15 did not show up to take the exam. No one received a 10. As for the ones who did not pass, this did not seem to be something to be ashamed of as it is in the US, but rather a time of reflexion to figure out what went wrong, have a personal discussion with the professor, and understand the material so that you can learn it better the next time. I think this mentality is a lot healthier academically. It seems to me that in the US, students are more focused on passing classes than internalizing knowledge. Here, getting a perfect score seems much less valuable than understanding concepts and becoming a more well-rounded person from the process. I took my Psychology of the Personality test this morning before 8 AM.. There was un montonaso (a ton) of information to study! I only ended up sleeping half an hour the night before with the aid of cookies and two rounds of steaming and highly caffeinated mate. Thankfully there is a holiday this coming week (25 de mayo, when the first autonomous government was instated in Argentina), so I will have time to catch up on my studies, sleep, and have too much fun.

I love Argentine Rock! We are listening to so many excellent bands in my Urban Music class. I can't wait to bring my music home in order to share it with friends and think nostalgically of my travels. Luis, one of my favorite porteros (doormen) gave me a very weird, interesting and pretty necklace the other day without much explanation. He is one of the nicest people I have ever encountered and I was very flattered but also slightly baffled. Honestly.. how do you react when your doorman gives you a necklace?

Wise Madness or Foolish Sanity?

Structure of Subjectivity midterm - done. I think I did well. And the questions where I wasn't exactly sure what the professor was looking for, I wrote a ton of information and just hoped that the answer was in there somewhere. State and Religion midterm - done. This one did not go as well. I did not have enough time to study for it and it was too much information. I focused on certain parts and knew them really well, but of course the parts that I did not focus on were the ones that showed up. Life goes on. Probably. Two more parciales (exams) coming up. Am I studying? No, I am writing a blog entry.

After Wednesday when my other two midterms are done, I really need to get out more. Other than trips, I have not been out on the week-ends in a long time. I also want to do more cultural things like going to plays and fútbol games. I was just reading one of my psychology packets and it quoted Miguel Cervantes's Don Quijote: "¿Qué escogéis: la locura sabia o la cordura necia?" Translation: Which do you choose: wise madness or foolish sanity? Good question. On this entry, I added more Calafate pictures from the day we went to the lagoon. An hour ago, the power in my apartment went out and this gave me poetic inspiration. I decided to write something half in English and half in Spanish to reflect my feelings of cultural integration.

Power outage y pensamientos

Las luces se apagaron
while in my house alone.
No puedo ver mi mate,
just my illuminated phone.

But you I see more clearly
ya que existís en mi mente.
The weeks when we’re not us
son demasiadas frecuentes.

La llama de mi vela
plays with the jaunty breeze.
Me amenaza con desaparecer
with the sunlight and the trees.

The wax melts and coagulates,
mi luz acaba de dejarme.
In the darkness I can only hope
no vayas a abandonarme.

Ghosts and Empty Seats

I recently started reading ingredient lists of snacks I was buying, and realized that almost all of the alfajores, cookies, and crackers that I have been eating contain "grasa bovina" or "grasa vacuna", aka beef fat. This initially shocked me and grossed me out. I suppose lard is used more here in processed products because it is cheap due to the abundance of cows, while in the States it is cheaper to use vegetable shortening. I really do not know what to think about this and have to think again about my vegetarian moral system. Do they use the fat from the cows once they are already killed for meat? If they are going to kill the cow for meat anyway is it better to use as much of the animal as possible? Or is that just supporting the meat killing industry? However, I have the same problem with gelatin, which is also a part of an animal (generally horse hooves). This makes me want to consider being vegan but I do not think it is sustainable nor healthy if you do not plan your diet exactly right. I do believe it is natural to eat animals, but it just makes me shiver the way we go about producing meat in the States. I don't know much about the process in Argentina; I should research their tactics. As for right now, I will stick with the one alfajor brand and one cookie brand that I know don't have beef fat until I can find the way out of my tangled thoughts.

I went to lunch with my group of Argentine friends from my psychology class in Universidad Católica and had a blast. When I compare now to having lunch with a few of them the second week of class and not understanding anything, I smile. Of course there are always going to be inside jokes between groups of close friends that I will not understand, but I felt so much more comfortable this time. We went to Burger King (the first time I have been there since I was about 10), and I tried a soy sandwich. It still tasted like fast food, but at least it was vegetarian. We took pictures by the river and made fun of each other. They make me very happy and I'm really glad we are friends :) That same day I went to the annual Buenos Aires Fería de libros (book fair). It was gigantic and very easy to get lost in. There were millions of books and some discussions by authors that I was able to listen to. I bought El Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges (an Argentine author that many streets are named after), Cien Años de Soledad by Gabriel García Márquez (a Spanish author), and Historias de cronopios y de famas by Julio Cortázar (a book recommended to me by my semi-cousin Geoffrey).

Random collection of occurrences/thoughts: I signed up for a half marathon October 29th in Middleton, Wisconsin, right outside of Madison! It will be my second one and I hope to beat my time of just under two hours. It is the day of Freak Fest and is Halloween themed. I don't think it's very likely that I will have the time/motivation/space to train here, but I will start right when I get home. Toto the cat scares the crap out of me sometimes. He can open my closed door and sometimes does this while I am concentrating hard on homework or sleeping. Also, his eyes glow from across the room when he stares at me unblinkingly. The other night, he started spazzing out and jumping on furniture. Then I started imagining movement of objects and leaky sinks, reinforcing my theory that perhaps there's a ghost living in the apartment. Maybe it likes mate. I have two midterms this coming week and two the week after. I am deathly afraid of them, since some of them count for my entire grade for the class. I'm used to tests with grades that make up 20% of my class grade, so it is very unnerving to have only one chance to do well.

I returned to Rosario for the week-end with my IFSA program and had a lovely two days in the sun. We did a walking tour through the city and saw a lot of government buildings, cathedrals, shopping malls, and historical sites. One of the government buildings used to house tortured prisoners in the basement during the Argentine dictatorship and the time of the desaparecidos. I was able to spend more time with Agustín, and we went to the Museo de la Memoria. Here were many symbolic representations and documents commemorating the desaprecidos during the dictatorship. Between 1976 and 1983, 30,000 people disappeared. There were golden columns with all of the names and ages of the victims listed on them; it reminded me of the wall of victims in the World War II Memorial in Washington DC. There was a room with a wall of puzzle pieces, where there were pictures, ages and families of the disappeared. Some of the squares were blank, and underneath it said "this is the unborn child of so and so, who disappeared in 1977.." It was heart-breaking to see all of the families who were taken by the government without justification. There was also a room filled with identification cards hanging from the ceiling. On them are victims who disappeared from the same library; they had distinct occupations but were all studying and gaining knowledge about things that the government didn't like. Walking through this museum produced the same feeling that I experienced when visiting Hiroshima many years ago. There were videos and interviews with the Madres (mothers) of the victims which made me want to cry. There was a book of poems written by them; here is a part of one and my translated version (disclaimer: possibility of misinterpretation):

"volverá la mañana a dorarte los ojos?

un asiento vacío tiene un eco profundo
hay un frío absoluto en sus ojos cerrados
como absurdo
como brumas de sueño

en las sillas vacías se sientan los recuerdos."
*
"will the morning return to light up your eyes?

an empty seat has a profound echo
there is an absolute coldness in your closed eyes
an absurdity
like the haziness of dreams

in the empty seats reside the memories."

There was also a horrible message on the wall created from newspaper cut outs from the assassins to victims, threatening their lives and those of their families. Seeing these things horrifies me and tears me apart from the inside, but I really appreciate the awareness I am gaining. I would like to do more research about the time of the Argentine dictatorship in the 70's and 80's. On a lighter note, for the rest of my Rosario trip I was able to spend time walking along the Paraná river, basking in the sun, and hanging out with Agustín. And now, time to study until I disintegrate. 

Meeting Perito Moreno

What a week-end! Some friends from my Mendoza trip as well as a few others accompanied me to Patagonia, Argentina to see the glaciers. We stayed in the town of Calafate, which is in the extreme South of the country. We had our first exciting experience before even getting off the plane. The flight attendant made an announcement over the loud speaker, but I missed the message since I was listening to Disney soundtracks with my friend Sarah. However, I realized something was up when the plane stopped in the middle of the runway and we began to disembark. I was quickly informed that someone called in a bomb threat, so they had to unload all of the luggage. After 15 minutes of standing in the wind and utilizing my warm coat for the first time in Argentina, we all jumped in an ambulance that took us to the airport. We paid for a hostel but they ran out of room, so we received an upgrade to a hotel. Luckily, we were still able to pay the hostel price ($10 a night!).

The next morning, we woke up bright and early to take a bus and a boat to Perito Moreno, a famous glacier in Calafate. It is 110 km deep but only 15 years old. The glaciers in Antarctica are much older than this one. I learned that glaciers are on land, and ice bergs are in water. Perito Moreno was formed from compacted snow, wind and gravity, rather than water that froze. It moves 1-2 meters every day. While we were looking at it and even after we were on it, we heard loud crashes and saw massive pieces of ice falling off the edges! The guides kept us away from these regions, so we weren't in danger. The combination of the glacier, the Andes mountains, the water, and the trees created a view that was absolutely breathtaking. Sometimes I just had to stand there and ask myself if I was dreaming. A repeated question throughout the day between my friends and I was: "Is this real life?" We were strapped in intense shoe covers (grampons) with spikes on the bottoms that enabled us to walk on the glacier without slipping. Walking up and down the pointy ice hills was unnerving but doable. Our guides were very nice and helpful and taught us the correct way to walk on the glacier. We had to keep our feet "bien separados" (well separated) so that our spikes wouldn't catch on each other. Walking up and down the hills got tiring after a while, but the wind cooled me off. We were able to lean over the edge of a big ice chasm while holding tight on our camera straps. We also were able to drink the fresh glacier water at one of the group stops! Two of my friends were ready with straws. It was the most fresh, delicious water I have ever tasted, a close second being water from Lake Superior in Washburn, Wisconsin. We hiked on the hilly surface of Perito Moreno for an hour and a half and then the guides surprised us at the end with a table and refreshments hidden in the glacier. Whiskey and alfajores! It was my first glass of whiskey; I didn't like it very much, but I was on a glacier, so can't complain.

The weather was perfect and sunny all week-end. It was a bit brisk since we were on the Southern tip of Argentina, but still nothing compared to Chicago or Madison winter. Calafate is a quaint, small town; the streets in the central part are lined with cafés, small, colorful houses, and shops with clothes made out of sheep wool. We had a few very good dinners at family style restaurants. I could tell how small the town was because our lunch waiters, glacier guides, and friends we met at the bar all walked into our dinner restaurant at some point during the night. If I lived in Calafate, I feel like I would know everyone within a week. We tried to go to an estancia (farm) the next day to see sheep shearing and a gaucho show, but the season for estancia viewings had just ended. We ended up walking around the marshy paths of the lagoon, which I enjoyed more than a touristy activity anyway. We got to see flamingos and beautiful blooming trees as well as Lago Argentina (the Argentina Lake). I am so glad that we came during Autumn; all of the trees were flaming red and bright yellow.

I went for a run around the town in the morning and breathed in the fresh Patagonian air. I named the first part of my run "colorful houses and whistles." We were getting even more catcalls than in Buenos Aires, which might be due to the fact that there are less young women to whistle at, so each one is a rare occurrence. I saw more dogs in Calafate than I did in Colonia, and that's saying something. I agree with my parents when they said that the dogs in this country all seem so docile. They like making friends just as much as I do. Two of them hung out with us for a few hours and served as our tour guides. I noticed that there seems to be a "Plaza General San Martín" in every city in Argentina. My friend Maja and I had a really good conversation about the flaws of the education system. I want to be a teacher so I can impact young people's lives in a positive way, but I am also scared that I will be another helpless pawn in the system and will not be able to change the rigid structure by myself. I somehow managed to get locked in bathrooms twice while on this trip.. Once in the hotel, and the front desk worker had to unlock the door with a key. Another time in the glacier refuge. The guide's screwdriver didn't help, so I had to climb over the door and two guides had to catch me. I might just never lock doors anymore. While in my hotel room around 1 in the morning Saturday night, we turned on the TV and were overwhelmed with news stories about Osama Bin Laden's death. I understand that people are happy to have the man responsible for their family members and friends' deaths unable to harm anyone else, but I also feel that I could never celebrate someone's non-existence. I also do not like the idea that we are now in grave danger from angry terrorists. I think this quote by Martin Luther King Jr. really sums up my opinion on the matter: "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

I had a lovely time in Patagonia and am also on the verge of spending my life savings. Traveling is one of the things in life (along with US universities) of which I really wish I could change the price. It is such an invaluable activity; I feel that everyone should have the opportunity to explore the world around them without having to pay an arm and a leg for it. I wish I could carry the mountains and glaciers with me in my pocket and take refuge in them whenever I am feeling stressed or lonely. Thank goodness for pictures to help jog my memory whenever I forget about the wonders of the universe.