Raindrops keep falling on my head... ♬

Buenas noches, amigos :)
I am currently mid-way through my first week of classes, and it's been quite the shock.  First of all, I haven't been in a class since December 18th, which is something in and of itself. Secondly, instead of one Spanish class per semester like I'm used to, everything is in Spanish. I'm taking classes on 20th century Argentine Poetry, Argentine Foreign Relations, Spanish Grammar, and Regional Blocks & Globalization.  The hardest of these was Globalization, since it is taught at UCES, Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales (local university in Buenos Aires) instead of through the IES Program at the center.  Luckily, there were 5 students from IES taking the class with me, so we struggled through the econ and business vocab together!
Last week, we took a field trip to visit the Boca Juniors' soccer stadium in the neighborhood of La Boca. It was much smaller and older than Minnesota's newly-built TCF Bank Stadium, but it was clearly the pride of the area and well-known throughout the country.  The team is one of the best club teams in the world, having won over 40 national and international titles and included players such as Diego Maradona and Carlos Tévez.  The area of La Boca is known for its brightly-colored buildings, so the blue and gold stadium fit right in.
We celebrated our last day of orientation in Puerto Madero, the newest neighborhood of Buenos Aires.  It is known as the "clean business district" on the river, and it is still under construction in many parts.  IES hosted a dinner at La Bisteca, an "all-you-can-eat" steakhouse right on the edge of the water.  There were so many different kinds of meat and cheese that came from locally raised Argentine cattle, as well as a variety of other traditional foods like empanadas and spaghettis. I was stuffed after topping it off with a delicious tiramisu, but  walked it off by the river where we found the famous bridge of Puente de la Mujer. It was designed to look like the embrace of a man and woman while dancing the tango! Overall, it was a beautiful night.
On Saturday, we took a city tour by double-decker bus.  It would've been an amazing way to see the city, but it was difficult to completely enjoy it since it rained the entire time :( One benefit of this was that it brought down the humidity, so we were finally able to enjoy a day out without sweating like crazy.  Most of the buildings have a Spanish-European influence, which makes for a truly beautiful cityscape.
Minor sidenote: The title of this blog relates to the fact that when it is extremely hot out, everyone in the city runs their air conditioners, which unfortunately drip water onto unsuspecting pedestrians. I have tried and failed (many times) to dodge the random "downpours," so actual rain was a nice change of pace!
My last outing recently was to visit the famous Recoleta cemetary.  I knew nothing of the place, so I was expecting rows of rotted gravestones with nice greenspace... I was completely wrong.  Recoleta is filled with intricately carved mausoleums, which are made to resemble small chapels and other important buildings.  There are rows and rows of them, and you could easily get lost while looking for any one of the many former presidents or cultural icons buried there. One such well-known figure is Evita Duarte Perón, First Lady of Argentina from 1946-1952 and champion for causes such as women's rights.  After exploring the cemetary for a few hours, I left the eerie walls to find the world outside alive and bustling with the Recoleta fair, commonly referred to as "la feria gypsy." Many vendors set up tents to sell their crafts, and there is plenty of food and live music to keep the crowds entertained.  I spent the rest of the afternoon taking in the excitement, and I can't wait to go back another weekend. Until next time...
Sending my love from Argentina- besitos!
-Taylor

Boca Juniors Stadium

 

Puerto Madero

Puente de la Mujer

La Casa Rosada (Argentine government building)

Recoleta Cemetary

¿Qué suerte soy yo?!

The long-awaited post you've all been dying to read... straight from Buenos Aires!!

Six flight attempts later out of Atlanta and Miami, I finally managed to make it on a flight!  After 8.5 sleepless hours on the plane, I had arrived in the Paris of South America-- Buenos Aires, Argentina!!
The local time after landing was 7:15am, 2 hours before my official IES Program Orientation started. I was exhausted, but after lugging my suitcases to the taxi and gazing out the window at my beautiful new country, I was running on pure adrenaline.  The cab driver was very talkative once he found out I could speak Spanish fairly well, so he helped me break down my nervousness when speaking to locals.  He told endless stories about his family, and taught me a couple of new words (in lunfardo, Argentine slang, a lot of the words are standard Spanish words but switched around. For example:  lleca=calle/street). He dropped me off at my homestay, where I met my Argentine (grand)mother Maritina! She lives in an apartment in the chic neighborhood of Palermo, and teaches music :) She is absolutely adorable, and reminds me of my grandma Sylvia, but with blonde hair. She helped me drop off my bags, then she brought me to a café to get an espresso to help me stay awake. We then took a taxi to the National History Museum, where my orientation was.  I got to meet other students in my program, and we went over important things and finished by taking a walking tour of San Telmo (an artsy part of the city, on the south side).  It was still surreal to me that I was finally in Buenos Aires, but the more I saw of the city, the more it felt like my adventure had really started!

The next day, I learned how to take the bus to the IES Program Center where I will be taking most of my classes for the next 4 months.  We had more orientation classes, which became more interesting when we started to learn about the "vos" form of informal speech (unique to this part of South America) and general Argentine slang words that are commonly used.   After class, I was able to wander around with new friends and explore, which has been by far my favorite way to spend my time. We have two weeks of orientation before classes start, and this has been how most of the days have gone-- exploring cafés, heladerias (ice cream shops) and panaderías (bakeries). Yummy!

This past weekend was Carnaval, so my friends and I planned a trip to Mar del Plata (2nd largest city in the Buenos Aires province, and 7th largest in the country), which is supposed to be a 4-hour bus ride south of the city. Turns out over 100,000 tourists visit Mar del Plata during this weekend, so we got caught in insane traffic both there and back- the bus took around 8 hours!!  We stayed at Hotel Pergamino, which was a hostel within walking distance of one of the beaches.  The atmosphere was  a lot of fun since we had planned the trip with a group of 9 and there were were others staying in the same place who were also in our program. The nightlife was really fun since sone locals showed us around, and despite Monday being rainy we had a lot of fun :)

Now it's back to the last few days of orientation before classes start on the 14th.  Tomorrow is a tour of "La Bonbonera," where the largest Argentine club soccer team, Boca Juniors, plays. Also scheduled is a city tour of Buenos Aires, so hopefully I'll get to see all of the touristy places now, too! More later, amigos... I'll leave you with a few take-your-breath-away landscape/city pictures :) ¿Qué suerte soy yo (how lucky am I)?!

My bedroom :)

City Pics of Buenos Aires:

Catholic Cathedral

El Ateneo, a theater turned bookstore

Mar del Plata