Observations

Hello friends! For this post I'm just going to be giving some general observations about things here in this lovely country. I'm literally just going to look through my special journal that I bought specifically for this trip, and if there's something interesting that I haven't shared with you that seems important, I'll type it here! We'll see how it goes! Maybe if I remember something else important that'll go here too. It's endless possibilities.

So, starting with last weekend, we took a trip to Luján, which is a nice place in the province of Buenos Aires. The way it works here is that there are neighborhoods inside cities, so I live in Belgrano, in Buenos Aires, the city, and the city of Buenos Aires is in the province of Buenos Aires. All of which are contained in the large country of Argentina. So in Luján, we first stopped at a basilica, which was really cool. Apparently pictures aren't showing up for anyone? So if you want to see a picture of the basilica, you'll have to check out my facebook page. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The basilica is called Basílica Nuestra Senora (there should be a squiggle over that n? Apparently I can do all other accents except that one? No one knows) de Luján. Which translates to Basilica of Our Lady of Luján. The story is that people were traveling around Argentina, like you know, old people do, to get to new places and settle, and they were bringing this image of the virgin Mary with them, and at one point they stopped at the place where the basilica would be built, and their horses were being nerds and wouldn't move. So the people tested all the luggage they had, and they figured out that the horses would only move when the image of Mary was on the ground so they were like IT'S A MIRACLE WE MUST BUILD A CHURCH HERE AND DEDICATE IT TO MARY. And so they did, and now that image is still in the church and it's pretty cool.

And after that we went to a ranch place, where they had horses and cows that you could milk and drink the milk immediately after milking it, which I did not do because I'm not about dying. And they gave us food, which was interesting, and I didn't really like it that much. Everyone's like, Argentina is known for their beef, the best beef in the world? (I don't know I might have made that world part up, it's fine). But so far I have yet to be impressed. One of the things I most miss about being home is flavors. Like, they had this barbecue--called asado here--and they just put the meat on the fire and let it cook, and then it's done. And so it just only tastes like the meat, which sometimes tastes like nothing. So I don't know. There's nothing spicy here, really. There's just like, vegetables, or bland meat. I don't know. I'm figuring it out.

And after lunch at this ranch place, they had someone to sing songs for us, but it was so loud and the worst, and so I left to escape and sit on a stump in the forest, like the cool kids do. And then a very nice person from my program came and found me and we wandered through the woods to find horses! And we got many mosquito bites which was not a good time, but we eventually found horses to look at and some to pet. And then it was time to go, so we had like a two and a half hour bus ride home through the traffic of Buenos Aires.

Going back to previous statements about the structure of cities here, it's interesting to learn about the school systems in Buenos Aires. Since I've been here, which is about three weeks (wow that simultaneously feels like forever and zero days), there have been teacher's strikes for almost the entire time. School was supposed to start on March 6, but many kids missed a week and a half of school because the government refuses to give more money to education. But now, the city of Buenos Aires has school, because their government is different than the government of the province of Buenos Aires. So kids in the province still don't have school because their government is like, Yeah, teachers don't need more money, it's fine. I don't really understand why the city gets to be governed by someone completely differently than the rest of the province, but that's apparently how it works.

I know I've already mentioned the food here, but let me go on a little more of a rant about it. So, mostly they eat vegetables. Remember that post I wrote over a year ago where I tried to be a vegetarian and lasted for like four hours, because I didn't eat in those four hours? So basically now I'm like a real vegetarian four three or four days out of the week. It's a weird time. I'm not cut out to be a vegetarian! I know it's good for me, probably, but I just want like, pizza or something or chicken or a potato. I don't know. And it's weird, because I never really expected there to be a language barrier with food, but there kind of is. Like, on my first day, my host mom gave me a salad with tomatoes, which was good, because I like raw tomatoes, but there were so many, and I couldn't eat them all, and she thinks that if I don't finish something, it means I don't like it, but I'm having a hard time explaining to her that sometimes I'm just not hungry for a whole tomato for dinner! Or like, globe squash, that's not really something I eat at home, so if I don't finish it all, it's not that I don't like it, it's just that I'm not used to it and maybe only give me a small portion of it, who knows. Or just because I don't want to eat 60 tomatoes for dinner doesn't mean you have to make pizza without the tomato sauce! BLAH. So that's been an interesting obstacle that I didn't foresee.

Something else strange is the weather. My host mom always tells me that it's going to be cold today, and that I should wear a sweatshirt or jacket and then I look at the weather on my phone and it's like 70 degrees! I'm wondering what people wear when it's actually cold, like 50, which is as cold as it really gets here. Like parkas? I didn't bring a parka, and they told us that even if we're not cold, we should still dress like we fit in, which means wearing warmer clothes. So I'm not really sure. I have a jacket? Maybe that counts for something.

Classes have also been going well. I feel less prepared for them than I would were I in the US, but I think that will change once we all get settled into our real classes and routine. On Thursday, I had a literature class, and we were supposed to buy the book for it, and I tried, but I went to the wrong place, so the guy there gave me an architecture workbook instead of the literature book? And then said I couldn't return it. So that was frustrating, but it was like 45 pesos, which is $3. But still. So I was unprepared for class, and I felt bad, and like I was disappointing the professor, but also this culture is way less preoccupied with perfection in schools than the US? So I just told her I got the wrong book and she was like, Oh can you share with someone for today? So it wasn't the worst, and I didn't die.

There have also been news about like protests in the street? And people just standing around protesting the government, in general blocking traffic. I understand the need to protest bad things, but I am vaguely worried for the safety of these people. Like, on a regular day, if there is any sort of delay in someone driving their car forward, ALL of the cars behind them will begin honking continuously. And motorcyclists will speed through anything that is in their way, with their tires squealing. Someone is going to get hit by a car, I can just see it in the future.

Also, the other day when I was walking home from school, I saw a stop light that had fallen over! That was exciting, and all of the car drivers were super mad, because it was blocking a road. There were police that were directing traffic, which was good, because people are generally less willing to do bad things when there are police, although not altogether completely unwilling. But the next day I walked by and they had put up a new stop light already, and it looked kind of temporary, but in general it worked, so that was good.

Yesterday, I got to play with my host mom's granddaughter who is like 1 and a half. She is super cute, and also, if I ever think understanding adult people speaking Spanish is hard, I should just remember that I understand nothing of toddler Spanish. She made me draw a duck for her like seven times. And she always wants to share her food with me, because she is worried that I'm not eating enough, or something I guess. And also she only likes to chew grapes and not swallow them, so she always just spits them out after chomping on them.

It's so interesting to think about toddlers and language. Like, I knew in my head that people grow up as babies speaking different languages, but I never really experienced it until now. It's so cool that people can learn different languages, and learn to speak differently and be weird and stuff, I don't know what I'm say, I'm just very excited about language acquisition. Also, talking to her forces me to use the Castellano grammar that they use here, because she won't understand if I use other Spanish. Like, they say vos instead of tú, which means you. And there's a little bit of different grammar associated with that, and most adults will understand what I'm saying if I mess up and use the wrong one, but a tiny child will not. So I have to practice all the time so she doesn't just stare at me and say, Pato! every second of the day.

I think that might be everything exciting I have to say. I have to spend the rest of the day doing homework, because we're doing something tomorrow. And also I might eat tacos today. That is the goal. Tacos and homework. What a good time.

PS: Foods

• Pumpkin - I don't count pumpkin pie (which I have had before) as this, because this was weird
• Chorizo - a kind of sausage, not the worst
• Chinchulín - intestines of meat, kind of the worst
• Flan
• Asado - it's basically steak, but apparently different
• Eggplant pizza - I think my host mom might have told me the wrong vegetable, because it didn't really seem like eggplant, which is gross-ish but it's fine
• Pan frito - fry bread, which I actually had in New Mexico, but this is different, but still very good
• Dulce de leche - just straight up ate it, like a fiend. It's basically caramel that's a little less thick. Eating it reminds me of a certain roommate I have who just eats Nutella straight out of the jar
• A strawberry dessert, unclear what it's called - this was from when we went to the Israeli restaurant, and I forgot to write it down before. It tasted like sunscreen, but wasn't bad
• Budín de banana - basically banana bread, a little different texture, literally called Banana Pudding

PSS: Here is Xander with my journal; he's jealous that he doesn't get to write in it