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.