Varias Cosas

Although it's only been a few days, I feel like I have so much on which to update you, my surprisingly broad readership. To begin with, Thursday. It was divided neatly into two parts: the horribly frustrating morning at immigrations and the wonderful, FLACSO-sponsored night at Job's Bar.

To give you an idea of how terrible Argentinian immigrations is, my group spent about 6 hours there, and we were lucky. Those assigned to the previous day had waited 12 hours. They actually saw the sun rise and set inside the immigrations office. While waiting, I had two notable interactions, the first one involving a rather smelly Peruvian man attempting to convert me to some form of Christianity, and the second involving a three-year-old Peruvian girl who I played with and practiced my Spanish on while we waited.

That night, the students and staff met at a bar to celebrate the end of orientation and meet the Argentinian participants in our "Grupos de Interés." The grupos are a part of FLACSO in which students choose among three groups - journalism, sports, or arts - and participate in various events with Argentinians of our age who share our interests. Although I'm excited for the events (I'm doing the arts group), I was skeptical about actually meeting Argentinians in such a structured setting. However, Elaine and I ended up talking to two Argentinian members of the journalism group for most of the night, and it was so much fun!

I ended up having a really interesting conversation with one of them about Argentinian history and politics. I was pretty much jumping up and down with excitement the whole time; it was exactly the type of conversation I hoped to have with people here and exactly the way I had hoped to learn about Argentina. The most interesting part was when we were talking about how the rest of the world views Argentina. I said that a lot of people mistakenly see it as a third world country, and, unlike every other Argentinian I've talked to about this, he responded, "it is a third world country." He said that the rest of the country is completely different from Buenos Aires, and that even the poor parts of Buenos Aires don't seem like they belong in a developed country. Although many porteños have told me that Buenos Aires is different from the rest of the country, I'd never heard such an extreme opinion. Hearing this perspective made me want to see other parts of the country even more than I did before.

We also talked about Peronism for awhile. When I asked if they could define Peronism for me, both of them gave the exact same answer that every Argentinian has given me: "Es complicado." Both of them are literature majors, and they told me they'd email me the names of some novels and short stories that, they claim, will help me understand Peronismo more than any non-fiction explanation. One of them also said he'd make me a mix of Argentinian music. Normally, I'd be skeptical about someone following through on such promises, but they'll both be around FLACSO, so at the very least, I'll talk to them more. Perhaps even more exciting than the political conversation, I found out that one of them likes Wilco (my favorite band)! It turns out we had pretty much the exact same taste in music, and that, unsurprisingly, most of these bands were basically unheard of in Argentina. About halfway through these conversations, I realized that I was actually communicating substantial, complicated thoughts in Spanish, and understanding the equally complicated thoughts of someone else. It was so cool.

Today, I was supposed to meet up with Elaine to go to MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), but I accidentally ended up at el Museo de Bellas Artes (the two are quite close). Despite the mix up, I ended up having a lovely afternoon by myself. I often prefer to go to museums alone, because I can go as slowly as I want, which is usually quite slow. It was a very nice museum, with lots of French paintings from all the recent centuries, some great Rodin sculptures, and a whole floor of Argentinian art. To be honest, the Argentinian stuff, or at least their collection, didn't do much for me. It was mostly inferior copies of European styles. However, I liked seeing landscape paintings from all over Argentina, and paintings of colonial-era Buenos Aires with portraits of all the important social/political leaders from that time. Perhaps the best part about the museum was it's quietness and its bountiful space, both rare commodities in this city.

After I left the museum, I wandered around Recoleta, the surrounding neighborhood. I'd only previously seen the residential and commercial sections of Recoleta, but the museum was in the middle of a park, and the next few blocks in every direction were filled with parks and plazas. It was lovely to see some green stuff and sit in the grass and people watch by myself. Unfortunately, my camera died soon after I arrived (I'm not so good at monitoring that), but I'll definitely be back in that neighborhood again.

When I got home, I finally met Elvira's daughter, Cata, who was very nice. I was mostly listening to the conversation between she and Elvira, and it was incredibly exciting to realize that I could understand almost all of it without trying that hard. In generally, I think I've partially overcome my first language hurdle - being completely baffled by the Argentinian/Porteño accent. On a similar note, I learned a hilarious new Spanglish phrase: peace out = paz out. I think that's awesome.

The only bad part of the day: I looked over my schedule, and it turns out I'll most likely have to drop my geography class, and thus not take any classes at UBA filo. I was so excited about that class and campus, but it's simply not worth trading for all the other courses I want. Oh well, perhaps I shall find a way.

Additionally, I enabled anonymous commenting. Just in case you're curious.

Ciao,
Chelsea