Buenos Aires

So this weekend has been very busy for me. I'll write down as much as I can remember. (Good thing I took lots of pictures! They'll come much later though.) So I took the CELU on Thursday. It was actually easier than I thought it would be, but it still was a very long test. It was four different essays, and an oral part. Even though it was slightly easier than I thought it would be, I still don't think I'm going to get the highest level, but I'm pretty sure that I'll pass.

The oral section was organized like this. It was like a small little interview asking basic conversational questions, then they hand you two random articles. You read them over then pick one you want to talk about. I picked one about the benefits of alcoholic drinks. Basically when you talk about the articles, you can go in any direction you want, it was really ambiguous. If you wanted to go on a tangent you totally could. Anyway, after you had this random spiel on the article, you had a role-play, which depended upon the article you chose. I actually had a choice between two situations, and I chose the one where I was this person that wanted beer at a party that had no alcohol whatsoever, and I was asking where it was. It was kinda fun.

My oral part was at 4 in the afternoon, so when I finished I went straight home and packed everything I needed into my messenger bag and went with Taylor to the Terminal de Omnibus for our trip to Buenos Aires. The bus left around 9:30ish at night and we arrived in Buenos Aires around 6 am. And let me tell you, the overnight buses in Argentina are Freaking Fantastic! The seats are huge, they lean back, you get this thing that pops out in front of you to rest your legs on, there's so much leg room. They served a pretty decent box meal. So much better than any bus tour I did when I lived in Europe. Alfredo (the program director) and Mimi kept warning us about how it got cold on the Omnibus at night. I only went with my sandals and figured I'd just brave it. I'm guessing Argentines aren't that used to the cold because I remember waking up twice because I was so freaking hot during the night.

Anyway we arrived at our hotel in Buenos Aires (which is on a block right next to their congress building!) around 7:15 am and we had until 9ish to unpack, rest, freshen up and have breakfast before we started our tour for the day. The hotel rooms were nice, they were like a mini apartment with four beds, and a kitchenette.

The first day there, we went to the Plaza de Mayo. They had symbols of the "Mothers of the Disappeared" painted all over the ground, and there were so many flags and banners around commemorating the fallen soldiers from the war over the Maldive islands. And if you haven't heard, there's been more conflict over the Maldives lately, since in the past week and a half the UK has just started drilling oil less than 100km from the Maldives and the Argentines are pissed off like none other over it.

Anyway the Plaza de Mayo is also the where the Casa Rosada is located, aka the Argentine White House. Our Tour guide pointed out the specific balcony where Eva Perón gave her speeches, but we did not see Kirchner.

We also went to a Cathedral at the Plaza. I don't remember the name of it, but it was gorgeous and I took a lot of pictures. It looks a like a courthouse on the outside, and the twelve columns out front represent each of the apostles. Inside one of the girls in our tour group asked one of the docents inside a question and I randomly bumped into their conversation. The man asked me if I spoke Spanish. I told him I knew some, and then he started speaking in English, "No, that is impossible. This is a House of God. All are welcome to come and pray and confess however they wish." I was touched. And they had parts of the church roped off with signs saying, "Closed to tourists, Private Prayer Only." So I figured I'd go into each of these places and pray for a bit since I haven't been to church since . . . December I think. I'm not the prime example of a really good Catholic, but most everyone here in Argentina is a Christmas/Easter Catholic themselves, so I fit right in.

We also spent some time at the Rose Garden in Buenos Aires' version of Central Park, which was absolutely gorgeous and smelled absolutely great, but we left earlier than planned by a few minutes because there were so many mosquitos.

We also went to the Cemetery at Recoleta and saw Eva Perón's grave. The whole cemetery was above ground mausoleum's for different families. Eva Perón's had a lot of flowers attached to the door, and many of the actual Argentine visitor's, especially the women, were making their way to the door to kiss it.

There was also another grave that's famous for the creepy and sad story behind it. A 7-9 year old girl was buried in the cemetery. Her family thought she was dead, burt she wasn't. She had this condition that slowed down her pulse and made her appear dead. The night after her funeral, one of the cemetery guards heard loud banging and scratching noises from her mausoleum and went to get help to let her out, but by the time help arrived it was too late. There were scratches all over her coffin and all over face. So she was re-buried in a different coffin in the mausoleum, and now there's a huge statue attached to it of an angel opening a door as if to let someone out, representing what the little girl went through.

We had a nice buffet lunch and then around 2:30 we went back to the hotel and had the rest of the day free. So of course me and some others took a siesta and then left the hotel around 5-ish so that Lucina could go shoe shopping. I tagged along to get out and see some of Buenos Aires, but those of you who know me real well and what I think about 'shopping,' well . . . It wasn't too bad, but we went to like, 8 different shoes stores or something and I can only keep interested in shoes for like, oh I don't know 15 minutes.

Anyway, I wasn't all that hungry for dinner, so at about 9:30 I had like a bag of chips and some orang juice and I was fine. At midnight, I went with some other girls to a boliche/bar called Sahara with Vicky (assistant director for the program, she's really cool.) I decided to go because I like hanging out with Vicky and I figured since I was in Buenos Aires it would be a good time to start partying like an Argentine. Sahara was right across the street from the Recoleta cemetery, and it was free for us to go in, thankfully. The aesthetic was pretty cool because they has 'Sahara' themed decorations and they used pictures from Indiana Jones on their drink menu, which I thought was funny as hell.

I had like two drinks the whole night, and when they started taking away tables so they could turn it strictly into dancing only, random guys started coming over to our table to ask various girls to dance, which was NOT COOL for me because frankly, I thought most of the men were skeazy and sleezy, and I couldn't tell if they were the kind of guys that would 'want more' as the night went on. A lot of the guys looked like they were old enough to be my dad, and had god-awful haircuts. (On a 'related' tangent, there are so many guys here in Argentina with mullets! Mother-f@#king mullets! And they all think they're hot stuff! I've seen more mullets here in one concentrated area then I have back in the US! WTF!?) So I played this game of, pretend I'm really interested in my drink and don't make any eye contact with any strange man if possible. I remember running to the bathroom a few times and hiding out there for periods of five minutes, and at one point I had a panic-attack because I was so nervous. I remember I tried picking up mu glass and fiddling with my straw and finding looking down to find I had put them in random places on the table and not remembering putting them there. I know it was a panic attack, because I had this feeling of paranoia that I haven't had since I used to cut myself in high school.

But things got better when a few girls took me to the level up with different music, and it was just us in that room and I didn't have to worry about strange guys. The rest of the night at the boliche was okay, but I wish I had left earlier. I think I stayed because I was trying to persevere through my social awkwardness and Asperger's or something. But looking back at it, I wouldn't have missed much.

Anyway, when I left with the rest of the girls, they all had this bright idea to walk back to the hotel at 4:15 in the freaking morning because it would save money from taking a cab and that "Oh there's seven of us so we're safe in a group and it's not that far blah, blah, blah . . .' WORST FUCKING IDEA EVER! (sorry for the vulgarity, but seriously, this explains just how bad it was.) So anyway, Sarah McCroy kept saying how for it wasn't (not far my ass) it's 4:30 in the morning, it took almost fourty minutes to get their, a lot of girls were wearing uncomfortable shoes and falling behind, and we kept getting weird-ass catcalls from creepy men on the streets. I remember we passed this one group of boys inviting us somewhere and when I walked passed them they gave me a dirty look and shouted "Sola chicas flacas!" They can suck my ass. There were also a couple of homeless guys lying randomly in the middle of the sidewalk, and oh God it was just so unsafe, but we managed to get to the hotel all together in one piece with all our money, which I don't know how we managed, and when I mentioned that we shouldn't
EVER again I got responses of "Well the catcalls weren't that bad. I've had worse." "What? Nothing happened." Like that excused it. Just because we were that lucky that time doesn't mean that it's okay. So basically I learned that in the future it's in my best interest to take a taxi by myself in that situation, no matter the cost.

So we got back around 5am and I woke up around 9:30 so I could eat breakfast before it closed at 10am. Then that day we went to the Evita museum and saw a lot of her outfits, and the car she and her husband used to ride in. The museum is converted from one of the temporary homes that Evita organized and founded that women and their children used to live in as a halfway house. I really liked the museum, I thought it was powerful. I bought a copy of Eva Perón's La Razón De Mi Vida.

After the museum we had about an hour and a half to walk around Caminito, which is really colorful and also one of the really touristy parts of Buenos Aires, but there was a cool little artesan market to look at.

We went back to the hotel in the early afternoon and I just crashed, because I was so tired. (This how the Argentine's function. This is why they take their siesta seriously!)

That night, we all went as a group, dressed up, to a Tango show dinner at Madera Tango. The dinner was fantastic and the show was great. I'm telling you it made me want to sign up for a Tango class right away. The show went on until midnight, and then we went back to the hotel.

At around 1-ish, Jennifer, Sarita, Heike and I went along with Gabriel to a Gay bar, since that's where she really wanted to go. I figured I'd tag along, knowing it was a gay bar, with the reasoning that it wouldn't be filled with creepers looking for sex. We paid a 20 peso entry fee and it gave a ticket for a free drink. I ordered a "Destornillador" but I'm pretty sure the bartender gave me a different drink than what I asked for because I know my hand slipped when pointing at the drink menu. But the drink wasn't bad and it was free anyway, so I'm not complaining. But the music was better at the gay bay, and we danced with these two guys that were actually really nice. One of them said he was from Colombia, and that he was going to University there in Buenos Aires. Before we left, Sarita made a comment about how she thought they were gay, and they told us that they weren't gay and that they didn't know it was a gay bar. And we DID take a taxi that night. All the girls actually wanted to, and I would have refused to hear of any unsafe alternatives.

On Sunday we went to a Feria fair-market that sells artesan crafts and antiques. they have it every Sunday. It was pretty cool, but I wasn't interested in buying many of the antiques, and most of the artesan crafts were very cheap-looking and touristy to me. I ended up just getting a pin, hair barettes, and a shot glass, while some of the other girls were getting leather goods. Not that what they bought was crap, but I had seen some better priced and better quality items at the Paseo de los Artes here in Córdoba.

Then we went to the Museo de Bellas Artes, which was cool, but I thought it fell a little bit short. We had talked about the museum in class and how it held works by Berni, and his art about the poor children in the slums of Argentina. I expected the museum to have this whole section dedicated to his work, but they only had two of his paintings. Everything else was this weird modern art by other Argentine artists, and all this artwork from France.

Then we got back on the bus, picked up our luggage at the hotel, and took a plane back to Córdoba. We got back home around 9:15 at night. When we got back to Mimi's house, Mimi, Juan Pablo, and Soledad had just finished eating dinner and Juan and Soledad were packing themselves back into their car say they could drive all the way back to Buenos Aires.

It was a crazy weekend. Buenos Aires is beautiful, and I am so glad this week is pretty much close to just all free time so I can relax before classes start next week. I'll have more tomorrow after I sleep some more!