Today, I got caught in the rain and had to
walk several blocks in it. Well, that’s
an understatement…Today I got caught in a torrential downpour and walked 40
blocks in it. Ok, that’s a bit of an
exaggeration. Today, for real, I walked
about 23 blocks in a heavy rain. Why,
you may ask, did I walk 23 blocks in the rain? Because I was 23 blocks away
from where I needed to be, of course.
Today was a pretty light day for me, I don’t have my Spanish class
Monday and Wednesday (like many people do), but am one of the people who has it
Tuesday and Thursday. So all I had to do
today was register for classes at the local university UCES…and that’s pretty
much it. So I was able to sleep in (sort
of, it was so humid before it rained and my room was so hot and sticky…it was
gross, also by hot I mean like 95 degrees (Fahrenheit of course) hot) and take
my time getting ready, but I wanted to get to the Center because I wanted to
check my email to see if there was anything important that I was missing
because our internet is still not working…well sort of, but I’ll get to that
later. Anyways, I make it to UCES with
minimal problems (I was at the bus stop for about 15 minutes before it came,
but that’s about it) and when I got there I had to fill out a form and give
them the passport sized photos I had taken earlier in the week, but then she
said I’d have to come back tomorrow at like 3 to actually register for the
class I want, so that gives them time to put my info into the computer. It’s Monday now, and the class I want doesn’t
start until Wednesday, so I’m pretty ok with this, it’s no big deal.
So I walk back to the center (it’s only
like 5 blocks away) and chill there for a bit, and then decide to see if I can
get a Sube card. A Sube card is like a
bus pass, sort of. You can put money on
it and use it to pay for the bus or the subway.
Apparently there’s one super close to the center and I want to check it
out. So I walk over (it’s not even a
block away, it’s seriously super close) and the place is set up like a DMV…that
already is not a good sign. So after
wandering from one line to the next (not really sure where I should be going) I
see a little sign that says if I want a Sube card I don’t need to take a number
(too late) and I just go in a certain line.
So I go in that line, but there are two girls in front of me, and they
ask for Sube cards too and the person tells them that they don’t have any. I’ve heard that this is a common problem in
trying to buy a card. So I leave the
little store and head back to the center.
By now it’s about 1:00 or so, and so it’s
definitely lunch time, and I don’t want to go out to eat alone. So I call Annalise (who had her Spanish class
this morning) to ask her what her plans are.
I called her while I was in the elevator going up to the 12th
floor and as it turns out she was waiting on the 12th floor for the
elevator. So we meet up with another one
of our friends to work out a game plane for the next couple hours. The both of them were going to the UMSA tour
to register for classes there, and that was at 2:30, however, even thought
Annalise had told her bank she would be in Argentina, they hadn’t done anything
about it and so when she tried to take out money from and ATM, it wouldn’t let
her. So this was obviously worrisome,
especially because she only had 11 pesos on hand…which is like $3. And of course, she’d already used up her
phone card that they gave us when we got off the plane. So we logged on to one of the IES computers to
see if her bank had an interactive online…thing. You know, like a chat with one of the
employees…well it doesn’t.
So we left the building (by now, “we” is
Annalise, Olivia (our other friend) and myself) and really close to the IES
center is a kiosk where you can buy another phone card. Luckily it’s only 10 pesos so she was able to
buy one. Of course, to use a phone card,
you must use a landline, no cell phones allowed (which is why, mom and dad, I
haven’t used mine yet, I haven’t asked to use the phone yet) and so we head back to the center and up to the 13th
floor this time (both floors are for IES) and Annalise asks if she can use one
of their phones to call her bank. She’s
on the phone for like 10 minutes and when she comes out of the office, she’s
all set to go. So we leave the center
and now she needs to find a bank. Well,
thanks to my hours of wandering, I actually know that there’s one close by (or
have a hunch at least), and sure enough, my hunch was right and we had three
banks right in a row to choose from. So
we go into one and she is able to withdraw money and everything is happy in the
world. It’s now probably like 1:30 and
so we only have an hour before they have to leave for their UMSA tour.
Now, the Center is pretty close to the corner,
and on the corner across the street is a restaurant we’ve been to before and
the last time we were there it was super fast.
So we sit down to eat and we’re talking and all is good and dandy, but
we only had an hour and so our conversation was cut short as they had other
things to do. So as they went on their
tour, I decided I would walk down one of the main business Avenues nearby, just
to see what kind of shops they had. So
it’s 2:30 in the afternoon, it’s still super humid and super hot…just remember
that. So I kind of lost track of time
and before you know it…or before I knew it at least…I’m 25 blocks away from the
center, it’s almost 4:00, and it’s starting to rain. Also, somewhere along the way I found another
place that sells Sube cards, and they were also out. She said they’d have some next week…it’s
Monday. Bleh. Anyways, so I turn around and start heading back, and at first
it’s just a little bit of rain, but people start whipping out umbrellas like
the rain will kill them…I was just like “Whoa, calm down, it’s just a little
rain”.
Well, a couple blocks later, it was coming
down a little harder to be a consistent and steady flow of rain. I was pretty wet, but not drenched, it was
still ok. However, the sidewalks were
getting more and more slippery and I was wearing my sandals that are like, 2
inch platform sandals (which are more common here than one might think)—let me
tell you, they are not the most ideal shoes to wear on slippery grounds while
it’s raining. So after probably 8 to ten
blocks it really starts coming down, like serious rain. The sidewalks are pretty much cleared, but
only because people are now walking on the sides of it to be close to the
buildings because many places have awnings or something like them…ok, now even
the people with umbrellas were walking there, and that was pretty frustrating
because I was the one who ended up moving more into the rain for them. But at this point it didn’t even matter
because I was drenched. Completely, head to toe soaked. My purse was not doing much better and I was
kind of getting worried about my phone, but I didn’t dare pull it out. So for another 10 blocks (at least, it felt
more like 100 though) I’m soaked, walking as fast as I can (which is getting
slower by the minute) to get back to the center. The reason I want to get back to the center
is not only because I know how to get home from there, but also because at 5:30
they’re showing a, Argentine movie that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign
Film in 2006 (it was incredibly good and I would highly recommend it, yes it’s
in Spanish, but get subtitles. It’s called El Secreto de Sus Ojos—it’s
seriously so good).
Anyways, so I’m walking back and although
after a bit, the rain lightens up from mega downpour to steady flow, it doesn’t
even matter anymore because I’m soaked.
There were several points where the streets were almost flooded and so I
did not just cross streets, I waded through them. So after blocks and blocks of
wondering “Am I there yet?” I finally
made it back to the center. There were a
couple people waiting under it (it has a pretty big section that protects you
from the rain) but none actually from IES.
I figured the people in the building
wouldn’t like it very much if I walked in soaking wet, so I sat on the three or
so steps in from of the building letting myself dry off a bit. After a few
minutes of just sitting (and also making sure my phone was ok—it was fine, it
had been in an inner pocket and hadn’t gotten wet at all) I stood up and
started wringing out my dress (PS I’m wearing a dress). Well pretty soon some homeless guy comes up
and stands right next to me and starts talking to me, pretty much just saying
something along the lines of “Oh you got a little wet, huh?” And because it was harmless I let it go, but
then he stayed standing kind of close.
So I decided I was dry enough to go inside (even though I was still
quite wet) and went inside. So by now
it’s like 5:00, so I’m happy I made it back with plenty of time to dry
off. So I go to the bathroom and wring
out my dress for pretty much 20 minutes.
By the time I’m done, it’s still pretty damp, but so much better than it
was! So I go into the room where the
movie will be and decided to check the rest of the contents of my purse. The results were not so good.
The guidebook they gave us at orientation
(which has saved my butt a number of times) was wet all along the binding of it
(but it’s a spiral-notebook-style book, so it’s not too incredibly bad), my
“Guía T” (the guide to all things transportation) was completely soaked and
totally ruined, it shouldn’t be a big deal to get another one though, what I
hadn’t remembered was that I had taken photocopies of some pages of my passport
earlier that morning. Also, I wasn’t
sure how many pages I’d need to register for classes (I knew it was some, but
couldn’t remember) so I had my copy of every page of my passport with me—thank
goodness all the pages were in a plastic page protector thing (Thanks Dad!),
some water still seeped in from the top, but the damage could have been much,
much worse. My actual passport was fine
also (thank goodness), but it’s a bummer to have only wrinkly pages to give to
the Visa place and the background check place (PS we’re all getting background
checks because…well I don’t really know why it’s required but it is…and it only
covers our background in Argentina…so for almost all of us it will be pretty
darn clean) and so that seems really unofficial and boo. But I guess it could have been a lot, lot
worse and I should be grateful that I got off pretty easily. So I am.
So we watched the movie (which was so
good!) and by the time it was over, I had been sitting in a damp dress in an
air conditioned room for over 2 hours.
When I stepped outside, it was still raining (compared to before it was
barely a drizzle though) and I just became so stinkin cold. As I was standing at the bus stop, I got a
call from Yelena asking if I’d be home for dinner. I told them I was at the bus stop and that
they should just eat without me. So
after no less than 10 minutes (but probably more like 15 or so) of waiting for
the bus, I was shivering almost non-stop, and it was the first time (I
realized) since I had gotten off the plane, that I was actually cold in
Argentina. It took me a week (a little
over, actually) to get there, but it happened.
So I finally got home, and I ate dinner,
and now I’m here, writing this. But as
promised, more details about our internet.
Apparently it works on her desktop now, but the wireless is
finicky. Yelena can connect, but I can’t
seem to be able to get the internet to work L It’s very sad. Hopefully I
can get it to work soon, or find some way to upload this today anyways (it
won’t be that hard), but I’d really like for my computer to work.
And even though this post is already three
pages long in a Word document, I must tell you about my yesterday. So when we were at the ranch we were able to
sign up for bike tours if we wanted to.
Of course, my group of friends wanted to, so we did. We signed up for Sunday at 1:15. We all walked over together (and because we
didn’t want to be late, we left pretty early and ended up getting there like,
half an hour early…yeah) and once the entire signed up group was there, we were
about 10 students strong, with 2 guides, and 1 IES staff member. So it was a decent sized group of
people. We start biking along (on the
street—yes I wore a helmet) and we would stop at certain places and the tour
guide people would tell us a little history about where we were. It was all actually really interesting and
really fun. It was a Sunday and so the
roads were super clear, and the weather was pretty much perfect. One place we stopped for a while was the
Ecological Reserve, part of which includes a beach. Well, as it turns out, the beaches in
Argentina are super unsafe to swim in due to all the pollutants and toxins that
were dumped in the water over many many years—seriously there was a cop there
that would blow his whistle at people that got too close. So while we were there we drank Terere, which
is pretty much cold mate, but with juice instead of water.
Ok, culture lesson. Mate. (Mah-teh).
It’s a drink here in Argentina that is similar to a very strong green
tea. There are very specific cups that
you use for mate as well as a certain straw (una bombilla). The straw can be one of a variety of styles,
leaving people to pick their preferred style.
Examples of different styles would be that the end of one may look more
like a strainer, whereas the end of another may look more like a coil. The difference is in the way it filters the
tea leaves (la yerba), and thus the way the mate tastes. Typically, mate is a hot drink. You fill your mate cup 2/3 of the way up with
the yerba (which looks a lot like chopped and dried parsley flakes), pour very
hot (but not boiling) water in, put the straw in, and let it steep for a few
minutes. You’re not supposed to stir it
in any way, you just let it sit. Then,
once steeped, you drink it. Of course,
on a hot day, hot tea is not ideal. So there is another way to drink mate and
that is either with cold water or with cold juice. (I’m not sure if any cold
mate or just cold mate from juice is called Terere, but at least the juice is.) Although mate is acceptable as one person’s
drink, it is also quite common for a group of friends to drink mate
together. When that happens, there is
one server, one cup of mate, and several people. The server will pour the (in our case) juice
into the cup and hand it to a person who drinks until the juice is gone. They
then hand it back to the server who pours more juice and hands it to the next
person. This cycle continues until
either 1) There’s no more juice, 2) The flavor is gone from the drink, or 3)
People just get sick of it (ok I just made up that last one, but I’m sure it
happens…maybe). So to recap: mate is a drink—very common in Argentina—that can
be shared among friends or drunken separately; it is a type of tea; it requires
a special cup and straw; it is delicious. End of culture lesson.
So we had mate with pineapple juice and it
might have been the most delicious drink I have ever tasted in my life. Yeah we were all sharing the same straw and
the same glass, but it was totally fine and no one really cared. We also were able to finalize the rules of
our new game we’re playing now. It’s a
picture-taking game. 1 point if you take
a picture of a couple making out (it’s so common here…so common), and 5 points
if you’re the one making out (of course, that means you have to take a picture
while kissing someone, and also I don’t plan on getting points this way). We’re calling the game “Tourism”. If I had been camera-ready, I could have
gotten two points today. Oh well, there
will be more opportunities for points. I guarantee it. We’re also making a fake email address to
give to people that we all will have access to; we want to see who responds and
how they do…it should be a blast J. After the ecological reserve we continued on
our way. One of the stops was La Plaza
de Mayo (I’m sure you’ve heard of it).
We got a pretty sweet history lesson, and then we were able to walk
around. In case you don’t know (I didn’t
until I visited) the capital building is in La Plaza…but instead of a White
house, they have a pink house.
Now, there are two legends about the color,
one is that the President at the time wanted to show that he was mixing the
fascist way of thinking with the communist way of thinking, to be one united
country. Thus, white and red make pink.
The other legend is that they used animal blood to mix with the primer to
help the paint last. In any case, we
were able to go in (all you had to do was put your bag through the conveyor
belt-scanner things they have at airports and boom, entrance to the capital
building. We asked one of the guides
there why it was pink, and I’m pretty sure he said it was nothing more than
that the president at the time was named Rosado (which means “pink”), which is
not nearly as interesting, but probably accurate. After riding around a bit more (it was a 3
hour tour—with stops) we ended up back where we started. Now, where we started just happened to be a
block away from one of the guide’s favorite bars, called La Puerta Roja (the
Red Door), which has no sign, and is simply a red door. The signature drink of this place is the
Chili Bomb. It’s some type of liquor
(don’t know what kind) that has part of a habanera pepper in it, and you drop
that into half a glass of Red Bull and chug.
Of course, we had to go there to try it…but it didn’t open until 6 and it was
only about 5, so we went to the market, which was conveniently located right by
where we were. There were several blocks
of market-y things, and apparently this happens every single Sunday, so we’re
pretty pumped about that. One thing that
was on the minds of many people was buying their own mate cup and
bombilla. There were many, many options. After walking up and down the entire market
(probably 4 or five blocks or so) only a handful of us had actually bought mate
cups—I am one of them J. So now I have my own cup and bombilla, I did
not, however, buy any yerba…it’s super easy to find and I had already spent
quite a bit that day. Side note, we also
at an outdoor place and I had…chori? I can’t remember what it was actually
called, but omg it was the best thing I’d ever eaten. And I don’t even know its name…such a sad
story! So anyways, by now it was about
6:15 and so we made our way back to the street the bar was supposed to be
on. We passed one red-doored place, but
it didn’t seem to promising, so we kept walking with the intent to return if
there were no other red doors. However,
a few more shops down, there was a tall, narrow, bright red door. We figured this had to be it. We opened the door to a stair case, and at
the top of the staircase, it had a sign that said “Happy Hour” and then a list
of drinks. Yep, we found it.
Our main goal of going there was to just
check it out and see what it was like and to see if we would want to come back
again sometime. Short answer to that is yes.
It’s a very chill bar, with a pool table, and lots of places to sit and
chat, it just seems like a really cool place.
Well of course, happy hour was from 6-10. We couldn’t pass that up, and
people were dying to try the Chili Bomb.
So of the 8 or so of us there, 6 tried it and loved it (the other two
(myself included) didn’t try it). After
that, we all ordered beers and went to go sit down. Yes, I ordered a beer. A Quilmes, for those of you that care. It was ok.
I only drank about a third of it before I started to feel the effects of
it, and by that point we’d probably been there about half an hour, and people
were ready to leave and continue on with plans for the night. So I had a little help finishing my beer and
we headed on our way. Most of the people
in the group wanted to eat dinner picnic-style at a concert that was happening
in town. The plan was to go home and
shower (we were all so grimey!) and then meet back up and head out. Well, I had already made plans to eat dinner
with Yelena, and I didn’t really feel like I’d be missing out on a lot, so I
said my goodbyes and headed home for the night.
I must say, Yelena and I felt very
Argentine when I got back at 8:30 and we were just starting to get hungry. It’s a good feeling knowing you can adjust to
a culture’s eating habits! We went out
to a little restaurant and were able to order food, and we even had some sobremesa
(mini culture lesson: sobremesa (literally “over table”) is time spent after
dinner talking. This usually goes
anywhere from 1-4 hours, but in our house it’s usually almost non-existent due
to language barriers. Also, another mini culture lesson: here, it is considered
very rude for a waiter or waitress to bring the check if you have not asked for
it, thus allowing time for sobremesa; people stay in cafés for hours, even if
they just order a cup of coffee, and it’s totally ok.) So basically what I’m
saying is that I had a good time hanging out with Yelena and I’m glad we’re finding
it to be easier and easier to talk about, well anything and everything. I’m sure it also helps that our schedules
have started to drift apart a little more, and so we really don’t know how the
other’s day was, and so we can fill each other in on new things learned, or new
people met. We went to another café
after dinner so that we could have some dessert and use the wi-fi. It was nice J
Also, I forgot to tell you about Saturday
night. Friday night was such a bust (if
you remember) and Saturday was so much better.
Annalise has a local friend that she’s known for…I don’t really know how
long, but her name is Lou. We (Yelena,
Annalise, Lou, and I) went out to eat, then later went to a café for dessert,
and we were there for maybe, two hours just talking and having a good
time. The thing is, Lou and Annalise
started making Yelena and I speak only in Spanish. And Lou is kind of a grammar nazi, so we
learned a lot because she wouldn’t let us get away with making little
mistakes—it was great. That’s what I
want to happen when Inés is here, I want to be able to ask for clarification in
English if I need it, and learn how to say things correctly in Spanish. All in all, it was a pretty good weekend, and
I’m excited for this Friday when Inés finally gets back from the States.
Well, three pages later, I’m finally done.
I hope you enjoyed my weekend as much as I did! Now I just need to find out how
I can post this…but the good thing is that by the time you’re reading this, I
already did. Oh yeah, I rule…or I hope I will at least, lol. The closer to Monday night I post this, the
more I rule. Let’s just go with that.
Ciao!
Kiki
P.S. *Sigh* Alas, I do not rule.