Back in the US

Today is July 19, 2009 and I’m sitting in the JFK International Airport in New York. I have a five hour layover till my flight to Boston, so I figured I would write my final blog post here. I have a lot to cover, but I also have plenty of time.

Last time I posted I wrote about the onset of the swine flu precautions in Buenos Aires. By now, Argentina has overtaken Mexico as the country with the second highest amount of deaths from swine flu. For portenos, residents of Buenos Aires, exams from this past semester will continue and finish in August before their next semester starts. Many of my friends from my Argentine classes have decided to travel with their extra long break and it was sad to say farewell to them!

So, my classes had pretty much wrapped up last time I had posted, I was still waiting to hear back about a final paper I had written from one class, but as of now, I still haven’t heard anything about it. So I’m assuming that it went fine.

I was going to head to Brazil on the 7th so before that I was trying to wrap up a lot of things in Buenos Aires, like souvenir shopping and things of that sort. I was not successful and still had much to do when I got back. Also, I started to say bye to a lot of kids in the program and it was really sad.

Then, on the morning of the 7th, I boarded a flight from EZE International in Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, where I met up with my sister and my cousin! I loved Rio de Janeiro. We started our days off early and were in bed by 10 most nights so we didn’t see the night life, but we were able to see the Jesus the Redentor statue, the Botanical Garden, the Copacabana Fort and Beach and Sugarloaf Mountain! It was really hot there too! About 80 degrees Fahrenheit and it was the middle of the winter! Then on Friday we traveled to Foz de Iguacu which is on the border of Brasil and Argentina. There, we spent the first day shopping and avoiding the rain because our flight landed in the afternoon in a storm. The next day, we took a tour of the Argentine side of the Iguazu Falls with seven other people who were all very nice! As Americans we had to fill out many forms to cross the border! But the falls were worth it! It was incredible to see so many waterfalls in one place.
The next day was my birthday! On that day we went to see the Brazilian side of the Falls. Although the Brazilian side is not as big as the Argentine side, it has a great panoramic view of the Falls and we took many pictures. The next morning I departed and went back to Buenos Aires for my final few days! Upon arriving I had learned that many people had also changed their flights and had gone home earlier which was sad because I didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye to everyone, but I hope that we’ll catch up in the future again.

This past week has been crazy. First, I had tons of souvenir shopping to do, which I completed the day before my flight home! On Monday I visited one of my favorite parks in the city and hung out most of hte day with a friend. Tuesday, I finally went to Boca, which is a part of the city that has very colorful buildings. It’s only like two or three streets so we just walked around for a little bit, but it was still good to see it!

On Wednesday I went to MALBA which is a museum of Modern Art in the city! It was great to just have a relaxing day in the city. That night a group of us FLACSITOS went to Sugar, which was a bar that we frequented during the semester for one last time. Even though it wasnt a great bar, it was a place where so many of us went to hang out during our weeks here in Buenos Aires. The next day was another lunch at a restaurant that had great! lasagna and a salad bar with the entree. That night my some of my friends from FLACSO and I went to a club in the city with some of our Argentine friends! It was my last night to go out in teh city, but we had a good time!

Then Friday was another busy day. After lunch, I headed to the Recoleta fair to pick up some gifts and then to downtown to pick up some more too. After that, my host family and I had our despedida (goodbye) dinner. It was very sad to say goodbye to them! They gave me a framed picture of us together and I gave them an Argentine decoration! We have each other’s emails so I’m sure that we’ll keep in touch!

I spent the rest of the night- literally until about 4am packing! I had soo much stuff! Demasiado as we say in castellano. I knew that one of my two checked bags was definitely going to be over weight limit, and I had two carry-on bags as well! I guess that 23 kilograms isa bout 50 pounds cuz thats the limit. My lighter bag was 19 kilos, even though it was completely packed, and my other bag was 29 kilos, which is like 62 pounds i think! I had to pay a 50 dollar fine, but I didn’t have any other choice so I had to pay.

During the morning I finished getting everything together and said farewell to my friend Kelsey from Georgetown, who’s in BA till Thursday.

Time at that airport seemed too short. I shared a car to the airport with my friend Sebastian from FLACSO, and then we met up with other FLACSO students at the bar/restaurant before our flights! My flight was at 8 and at 715 I had to go to board and it was sad to leave. I have to say that this flight felt shorter than the one to BA from Texas in February even though it was longer, but we didn’t have personal tv’s like we did on the way down and they showed Inkheart, which I decided to not watch after five minutes.

I still can’t believe that the experience is over. It’s so strange to be sitting here in New York after five months not in the US. I’d be lying to say that it isn’t really nice to completely understand what everyone is saying, but at the same time it’s almost like I was uprooted from a new home, right when I was starting to adjust to it. But I’m excited to be back, it’s like returning to reality from a month off from real life.

I want to write here the thing that I will miss the most and the least about Buenos Aires.
The most: How nice and friendly the Argentines were. Although there were some portenos who were not the nicest, the truth is that the Argentines in my classes, Argentine friends of my host family and Argentine friends of my American friends here were all so nice and welcoming and accepting. I will really miss just how kind the Argentines really were to the extranjero whose Spanish was just okay.
The least: This is an easy one. The subte. If I never have to take the subway system in Buenos Aires again in my life, I will be very very happy. It’s so hot and crowded, I look forward to American public transportation (although American public transportation will be so expensive in comparison!)

I want to say thank you to all of you who have continued to read by blog! I know I was never the most consistent blogger, but I do hope that you enjoyed what I read and the pictures I sometimes posted. In a few days I hope to be able to post a link to Picasa where I will upload all the pictures from the trip! Good luck to everyone with everything in the future! I’m sure I’ll see many of you soon!

things are getting pretty interesting.

hola again! two posts in two days. first time that's happened i think. woohooo.

But i feel like i must address the turn of events that have occurred in Buenos Aires over the past five days.

First: Sunday was the election here. Cristina Kirchner has been the president here since the election of 2007, and the president before her was her husband, Nestor, who only stayed on for one term and gave support to his wife during the election. Her popularity, due to a variety of reasons, is in the twenties now which is really bad. These are midterm elections in which only members of the Congress and not the President compete. As a result of Sundays vote, the President's party, who had a majority of both houses of their congress, lost a lot. Now, the other party has a majority or maybe plurality of the lower house and her party lost tons of seats in the upper house. Anyways, to top it all off, her husband, the ex-president, was running for a seat to represent Buenos Aires, but he lost by like three points to his opponent, which everyone has said has destroyed his plan to come back to run for president (for his second term) in 2011.

But during the elections the government told everyone who was voting (because voting is mandatory here) to wear masks when they go to the polls. At some point in teh past week, Buenos Aires declared a state of emergency.

On my way to my UCA final yesterday, I saw a great amount of people wearing masks and I started thinking, why is everyone wearing masks now, gripe (flu) has been around forever. but then i found out that apparently it's gotten worse in buenos aires/argentina - not to worry for my trip to brasil, provided they let me in- and that more people are now worried about getting it in Argentina. America has had many many more cases of the gripe. And, so many of those people wearing the masks had no problems with touching the poles and hte seats in the Subway system, so i really do not think that a mask is really going to give them that much protection. I don't really believe that a mask gives that much protection from this anyways, or that this flu is actually as huge of a problem here as they make it out to be.

But anyways, last night I started hearing all these rumors about schools being shut down in Buenos Aires, and I was wondering what would happen to us. Keep in mind that I've finished four of my five classes and my last class is not a direct enrollment, I have to give a short presentation in my Spanish language class on Monday for my final. But now the University that houses htat class as well as all the other universities are shut down. As of this afternoon. Which is really crazy! Anyways I should be getting information on how to do this last presentation pretty soon, but theres another catch. Apparently GUMail is shut down for this weekend, which doesnt really affect most students who are on summer break, but unfortunately, my gumail is the main one for most of my abroad activities, so if i get important emails about whats going on for the program here, i might have problems actually receiving them! What a week!

In really good news, I got the results of my econ/history exam from yesterday! I got a 10, which is the highest grade that you can get here, so i'm really excited!

Ummm. Swine flu

Hola Todos

Today has been one of the most interesting days in buenos aires. First, this morning i had my uca final exam. it was really hard, but it's finally over. I also passed in my monografia for my uba class yesterday.

this afternoon i had some great pizza and went shopping for souvenirs. I have only one more final at flacso on monday. or do i?

tonight i was online and i started reading about this whole panic of the swine flu in buenos aires. and then i went on fb. apparently the universities here are closing as in ending their semesters this weekend because of the swine flu, so my final at flacso as of right now. is up in the air. everything else has pretty much wrapped up, but now i have no idea whats in store for monday. also, just to put another wrench in the system- i do hope that brasil lets me in next tuesday.

Vamos a ver! (We will see!)

Things Pick Up

Hola Todos

So things are rapidly coming to an end here in Buenos Aires. On Tuesday, I had my grammar final and yesterday I passed in my final for Economic Development. Now, I'm working on my fifteen page paper for my class at UBA on Chile and next Wednesday I'll have my Economic World History Final. So much to do, in such a short amount of time. After that, I'll have my Listening and Conversation final the next week, which I'm a little stressed about, but after next wednesday, the bulk of my schoolwork will be finished. 

All this really means is that my time in Buenos Aires is coming to an end. The other day I was thinking about how long ago i arrived and how much has happened in the past few months. It's been quite an experience. I still have many pictures that I haven't posted in this blog to show when I get back to America and though it is sad that things are wrapping up, I'm so grateful to have had a chance to experience life in Argentina. 

This weekend, elections are taking place in the country. It's basically for the legislature and I ahve to admit that I dont really know enough about politics here to say which party is in the lead on the polls, but I'm sure that it will be smooth enough. Voting takes place on Sunday and it's obligatory. Sundays here are usually really quiet, so it makes it easy for everyone to vote, although with the gripe porcina (swine flu) I'm sure there'll be tons of precautions set up to prevent the spread of the illness.

I registered for the LSATs today. Its so weird to think that it's already the end of June and that the test is in September. That means I'll have to spend a lot of the rest of the summer studying, but I'm glad to take them in September when I get back. I'll be taking them in Massachusetts (DC's venues were all filled up).

Anyways, I'm going to get back to writing my essay! but Ill post again later.

Miss everyone!

FINALS!

So, it's finals time and the workload has picked up. Unfortunately, my motivation hasn't. I'm planning a long night writing about Argentine politics and economics tonight to try to finish my take-home for Econ Development, but who knows how far I'll actually get?

Today, for my FLACSO class, we went to the Cancilleria which is kinda like a foreign affairs office of Argentina. We met with some ambassadors there who explained to us the role of Argentina in MERCOSUR and things like that. It was really interesting, but I was a bit too preoccupied with my exam to really pay that much attention. The building was really cool too, but I didnt bring my camera, so I wasn't able to get any pictures.

I have less than a month left and I finally figured out the date of my last final will be July 6, which means that I can head to Brasil (spanish spelling) with Val and Maureen on the 7th! I booked my flight to Rio from Buenos Aires and my flight from Iguazu back to BsAs and now all I have to do is secure my visa next week. Apparently the process only takes three days so it should be relatively easy, although a bit expensive- over $100, but by the end of next week, I should be all set.

Well, I'm gonna get back to work. I'll post later.

The Last Month

Wow, this month has been flying by.

I've meant to post more, but things have been really busy here lately. It's weird but although I haven't been traveling, I feel like I've barely had anytime to truly relax. This past weekend was a lot of fun though! Although I spent much of the weekend working to prepare for finals and a presentation, I also had a chance to go out to celebrate a birthday of one of my friends in the program! It was a lot of fun and a good way to chill out before the onset of finals.

Today, I had a presentation in my class at the University of Buenos Aires. It was on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. Although I was nervous, I was in a group of four students and I was the only American so I was pretty confident that if I got confused I would be able to get help from one of the other kids in the group. The presentation went really well and I got a good grade. It was weird too because this project was my last real assignment before finals start up. 

Tomorrow, I get my first final in one of my Economics classes. It's a take-home and I have a week to complete it. My professor has been telling us that it's going to be really hard, but he also told us that the midterm was going to be really hard too and that turned out to be pretty easy, so it's really hard to know if he's just trying to scare us into doing some of the reading before the test or whether it actually will be hard. But I figure that I'll find out tomorrow haha. 

Two weeks from today, I also have my final paper due for my class at the University of Buenos Aires. It's a fifteen page research paper, and I have to admit that I've barely nailed down my thesis. Like I've said, these next two weeks are going to be pretty intense. However, I think I work better under pressure so I'm betting everything turns out really good. 

I know that this has only been my second post in June, and I wish that I could post more often, but the ongoing craziness here has made it difficult to do that! I can't believe that I have just over a month left in South America and really only three weeks left in Argentina before I head off to Brasil to visit my sister and cousin, which should be really fun! 

I'm off to try to churn out a page or two of my final paper, but I'll try to post again sooon. 

Buenas noches!

Time Flies

Hola todos,

I can't believe that today is June 11th! It's actually my cousin's birthday! Happy Birthday Dianne!

The other week in my grammar class, we learned that in Argentina, if you know that someone's birthday is coming up, you can't wish them a happy birthday unless it's the day of their birthday because to wish them a happy birthday earlier is bad luck, which I found to be very interesting.

Not a whole lot has been happening these past few weeks, just a lot of work and studying. However, I thought I would take the opportunity to share some things about life here in Buenos Aires.

First, the Quick and Dirty. The Quick and Dirty (not an official name) is a restaurant/cafe/parilla type of place really close to my university here. It's cheap food and it's really fast; however, it's also, true to its name dirty. And yet, despite this appearance, I've eaten there twice this week, two chicken sandwiches and frankly they've been pretty good. Haha. As long as I don't get the norovirus again, I'm pretty satisfied.

Second, final exams. At one of my universities here, UCA, I still haven't been told the date of my final exam. It's frustrating because I'm trying to make plans after my finals end, and I really want to know what day it does, but it's also frustrating because it seems no one at the school seems to really care. Asking them when the final is seems to annoy them, as if knowing when the final is isn't something that's important. 

Third, the subway system here. I don't know if I've blogged about this before, but the subway system here (called the Subte) is crazy. It can be forties degrees outside, but the Subte will always be warmer, like in the 80s. It gets horribly crowded as during most of the day, people are pushed up against one another. It's a very unpleasant experience, but pretty unavoidable.

Fourth, the Buenos Aires Symphony. Last Thursday, I went to the Buenos Aires symphony. I went with some kids from the program and it was a really good experience. It lasted for about two hours and it was a great way to end a pretty long week of studying. 

That's it for now! Things are really good and they're starting to wrap up! Hope all is well in the US, I'm missing the warm weather!