It's hard to think that I've been here for a week and a half. It's at the point now where it's starting to feel less like an unreal vacation and more like real life. I'm starting to form real close relationships with the people from our WM group (there are 6 of us) and some of the people here.
The Comission: We started our classes last week at La Comission Por la memoria. The comission is a government sanctioned organization based in Buenos Aires with an office in La Plata. I can't say enough great things about everyone we've met there so far. It's a VERY liberal organization that deals with current human rights violations through activism and also does research and education about the tragedies in Argentina in the recent past. For those of you who aren't aware (it's not even spoken about that much here...which is why the comission's work is so important) Argentina went through a period of barbaric dictatorship from 1976-1983 I believe. Basically the people in charge of the government would steal anyone they assumed to be affiliated with the communist party and thus a threat to their government. They stole these people (who later became referred to as los desaparecidos, the dissapeared) in all hours of the day and night, tortured them and killed them on what became known as death flights where they would bind parts of their bodies and throw them into the river from an airplane. About 30,000 people, including a high percentage of youth and scholars were thus victimized in this period. La Plata, the region of Argentina that I'm staying in, had a particularly high concentration of desaparecidos making the past particularly relevant and intertwined within the local culture here.
We're taking 12 credit hours of classes at the Comission and are offered a Pasantia (internship) in one of 4 areas. So far we've had one week of intensive spanish grammar classes. It's just the six of us in their little library for 2 hours with our teacher Marcella. It's very different taking a spanish class from someone who doesn't speak english and she has just as much trouble understanding our questions as we do with her lectures sometimes. Some of the others really dislike the classes and think they could have found a more beneficial teacher but I like that she can offer me something different than any other spanish teacher. Granted, I screw up all the time with my spoken grammar but I have a strong enough background in spanish grammar that I generally know all the basics of verb conjugations and grammatical structure and need more practice with smaller details such as articles, conjunctions and word choice. Most spanish teachers wouldn't be able to tell me, for example, that I should use the verb ocultar when talking about hiding an abstract concept and esconder in reference to hiding a noun. The 4 departments we can choose from to have internships for are the DIPBA archive which does research on particular cases of desaparecidos and publicizes and maintains certain important documents, la ensenanza which is a program through which we would help local students in the process of creating projects about the dictadura period to present at a conference, the art center...I'm not entirely sure what they do because we havent toured them yet, but presumably something related to artistic expressions of the time period, and the committee against torture which is the legal department that gathers statistics and interviews prisoners about human rights violations. Right now I'm leaning towards the committee against torture, but the ensenanza interests me alot as well.
BUENOS AIRES:
We went on a tour of Buenos Aires all of Sunday which was an absolute BLAST except for that some of us were exhausted after staying out really late the night before. It's normal in la plata to stay out past 5am...we were some of the first ones to leave the discoteca at 5am...crazy. The bus trip was alot of fun as we were all talking about some of the hilariously awkward international moments from the night before. Probably the highlight of my night was blasting lady gaga in our argentine friends' apartment or learning a really fun Argentine drinking game that's kind of a combination of BS and F.you pyramid. They want to learn beer pong this weekend...ping pong balls are surprisingly hard to find here, we're going to have to look around. We got to Buenos Aires around noon and met up with our tour guide, Nacho (nickname for ignacio?) that also works for the comission. We saw several parts of the city including Boca which was RIDICULOUSLY tourist-y, Palermo (less catering to tourists, some good shopping), Santermo, the plaza de mayo, plaza del congreso and a few other places that I'm not really sure of their names...I thought the coolest part of the day was getting to walk around the casa rosada (argentine version of the white house) and stand on the balcony outside where eva peron gave a famous speech that's a popular depiction of her leadership. We all capped off the night by going out to a pizzeria. They cooked the pizza with alot of cream and grease so we didn't eat so much there, but we had a great time joking around at dinner and I can absolutely see vast improvements in terms of the linguistic skills of everyone in our group.
Random thoughts:
I never realized how much you can learn about a person without really understanding the majority of what they are saying. I've always considered myself a verbal person with a fairly good ability to read people, but I feel like I'm getting alot more touch with my impressions of people based on vibes and intuition. At first I thought my personality wasn't really translating into spanish which was frustrating and that only the kids would like me because they were less used to relying on a complex vocabulary to interact with people, but it's actually been alot easier than I thought to get to know people and make friends.
Within our group we always compete to see who can be mistaken most commonly for an Argentine and we take it as a personal victory whenever someone comes up to us speaking fluent spanish or asking for directions. So far I've been mistaken for an argentine, brazilian, chilena and irlandesa (a bit of truth to that one obviously...) We asked our tour guide to rank us in terms of how argentine we looked, and he said that I was second which surprised me. I think it has more to do with the curly hair and chill style (or lack of style) than anything. I wouldn't consider Argentina a really diverse country in the same way that the US is, but they certainly have a variety of European looking people as well as a large indigenous population. Having blue eyes is a rarity here so I've gotten some comments and curiosity. Several people have called us princesses as we've been walking around, but I think that may be only because we are white like the disney princesses or because we're huge tourists that like to shop...
Words to be careful with: PERO= but, PERRO= dog, PERON= popular past president, also referred to as San Peron...don't insult him in public PEDO= fart PERRA= bitch...mixing these up could be dangerous ;-)
I also spent about 5 minutes being confused when my argentine aunt and cousin were trying to explain to me that POLLENA is a common argentine dish made from chicken and flour (harina) because I was confusing the word for flour (harina) with the word for sand (arena). My lack of spanish skills has certainly provided some group entertainment...oh well!
Love and miss you all, besos para todos
Monday, February 22, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Bienvenidos a la casa loca
This has been my first two days of true TOTAL immersion in the Argentine culture. It's beautiful and exhausting at the same time. I got here at about 12:30 yesterday and have already met SO much of Eliana's (my host mom)family. I'll try to describe it the best that I can but I'm not even entirely sure I understand it all well. When I got here it was just her and her 6 year old daughter Fran. It was really good that I brought gifts to kind of break the ice and it gave me something to do with Fran for the first chunk of time. Isidro (age 9, Eli's other son), came back later and was equally excited about the goodies I brought although he might have prefered his favorite toy, Pokemon. Their family is of Italian descent and basically acts like I would assume a traditional Italian family would have in terms of coming and going and loud talking and eating etc. etc. She's really close to her sister Yamilla (In argentine castellano 'll' is pronounced like a j instead of a y...the kids corrected me a few times :-) who has a really friendly husband Marcello and three kids- Gregorio is 6 and is one of the happiest kids I've ever seen, he and I are great friends already! I haven't seen as much of the older girls but one, Mercedes is 18 and one is 16, Ardi (short for something...not entirely positive) hopefully as I get to know them they can help me out some because they seem really cool. Mercedes already offered to take me today and help me figure out how to put minutes on the phone Adam/Joe left here for me.
Yamilla's family as well as her parents came over for dinner last night, it lasted a few hours. There was beef, salad, bread and wine...all delicious! They all put alot of salt on everything I have noticed. Eli has commented several times on how little I eat...which seems really strange to me. I still don't understand how they can eat as much as they want and stay really skinny. No one seems to run down here, and a few gyms exist but they certainly aren't popular. My best guess is that the food is healthier because it's really fresh- there are alot of meats, veggies, grains, fruits and juices but not alot of things with preservatives in them. Also, meals never have the rushed vibe so there's no pressure to scarf down more than you can enjoy. Interestingly in la plata they're not supposed to buy any beef this week so the prices go down. The government is encouraging the strike.
I've gotten along really well with all of the kids. For me it's sometimes easier to take a break from chatting with all of the adults and play with the kids for a while because I feel like it's harder for my personality to be lost in translation with them. I didn't realize how truly exhausting it would be to speak in spanish all day- I have to focus alot to understand what's going on. Right now I'm at the point where if I'm having a one on one conversation with someone I can hold my own and understand about 80% of what's going on...but in group settings it's a little easier to get lost in the back and forth banter. Everyone has been really patient with me which I really appreciate.
Some common questions people have asked me-
Do they watch the Olympics there? No...not really...maybe they would if it were the summer olympics? They watch SOCCER! There's 2 big popular teams in la plata but alot of other teams with smaller following. I've noticed that about 50% of the graffitti seems to be about soccer and the other half is political
What are the guys like there? Well, it's summer so alot of them walk around without shirts...It's a very attractive and fit country overall. I would say there's alot of artsy musician types but maybe I'm just jumping to that conclusion because of the long hair and unique fashion. The men wear capris alot. The women/girls wear alot of jean skirts and gladiator sandals. Also it's trendy to wear really loose fitting pants with a long crotch, which seems out of place to me because everything else they wear seems to highlight their lean frames.
When do you start classes/what are they like? It's summer break here for the rest of february, so I only have classes at the commission for the next month. I have my first class at 2 today...but I'm going to leave in 15 minutes because I know it's going to take me forever to find...I was hoping michelle (the other WM student living in this house) would be here for me to go with...
What do they call you? Kathleen seems to be a hard name to pronounce...so alot of them are calling me Kati (like coffee with a t) or alot of the people here just say KOTlin. Also...they call us yankees here and I'm sure the people that I'm not staying with have called us some other names that I just don't understand
Yamilla's family as well as her parents came over for dinner last night, it lasted a few hours. There was beef, salad, bread and wine...all delicious! They all put alot of salt on everything I have noticed. Eli has commented several times on how little I eat...which seems really strange to me. I still don't understand how they can eat as much as they want and stay really skinny. No one seems to run down here, and a few gyms exist but they certainly aren't popular. My best guess is that the food is healthier because it's really fresh- there are alot of meats, veggies, grains, fruits and juices but not alot of things with preservatives in them. Also, meals never have the rushed vibe so there's no pressure to scarf down more than you can enjoy. Interestingly in la plata they're not supposed to buy any beef this week so the prices go down. The government is encouraging the strike.
I've gotten along really well with all of the kids. For me it's sometimes easier to take a break from chatting with all of the adults and play with the kids for a while because I feel like it's harder for my personality to be lost in translation with them. I didn't realize how truly exhausting it would be to speak in spanish all day- I have to focus alot to understand what's going on. Right now I'm at the point where if I'm having a one on one conversation with someone I can hold my own and understand about 80% of what's going on...but in group settings it's a little easier to get lost in the back and forth banter. Everyone has been really patient with me which I really appreciate.
Some common questions people have asked me-
Do they watch the Olympics there? No...not really...maybe they would if it were the summer olympics? They watch SOCCER! There's 2 big popular teams in la plata but alot of other teams with smaller following. I've noticed that about 50% of the graffitti seems to be about soccer and the other half is political
What are the guys like there? Well, it's summer so alot of them walk around without shirts...It's a very attractive and fit country overall. I would say there's alot of artsy musician types but maybe I'm just jumping to that conclusion because of the long hair and unique fashion. The men wear capris alot. The women/girls wear alot of jean skirts and gladiator sandals. Also it's trendy to wear really loose fitting pants with a long crotch, which seems out of place to me because everything else they wear seems to highlight their lean frames.
When do you start classes/what are they like? It's summer break here for the rest of february, so I only have classes at the commission for the next month. I have my first class at 2 today...but I'm going to leave in 15 minutes because I know it's going to take me forever to find...I was hoping michelle (the other WM student living in this house) would be here for me to go with...
What do they call you? Kathleen seems to be a hard name to pronounce...so alot of them are calling me Kati (like coffee with a t) or alot of the people here just say KOTlin. Also...they call us yankees here and I'm sure the people that I'm not staying with have called us some other names that I just don't understand
Friday, February 12, 2010
I don´t like ´gaseosa´´
I am having a fabulous time here! Last night after recuperating from the trip me emily and alex left the hostel around 10 to look for a place to eat dinner at a fashionably late Argentine time. It turns out we were still too early...but after wandering for a while we found a little restaraunt that looked good called ristorante milas. The menu was a little bit overwhelming but I decided to try the carne (red meat). I´m not exactly what cut of meat it would be equivalent to but it was excellent and paired with a few potatoes and veggies. We also got a bottle of the house red wine "trancal" for 13 pesos which is less than $4...and much better than three buck chuck. What I loved most about dinner was the relaxed atmosphere. We spent several hours there without feeling rushed and enjoyed the beautiful weather here and people watching.
We didn´t get back to our hostel till about 1240 our time but there were a bunch of people in the lounge playing guitar, hanging out and smoking so we joined them for a while. I really enjoyed practicing my spanish and getting to know them a bit. People here have been absolutely accepting of my efforts to speak spanish even though my grammar is far from perfect. Everyone else was from south america and had a variety of different accents so it was fun to compare. I find that people can understand me well if I am having a one on one conversation with them because they can contextualize alot of what I´m saying, but I get confused looks sometimes when I try to contribute to group conversations. I had a very interesting conversation with a chileno boy who just started teaching english there (his english was probably on par with my spanish). He wanted to know if I had voted for Barak Obama and we got into a very interesting conversation about US (estadounidense) stereotypes. He was glad that my perspective on politics is not ethnocentric and liked that I was curious about south american slants on the 2 party system. I ended up staying up till around 430 (apparently some of the group lasted several more hours). Oh yeah, I accidentally kicked the woman changing sheets in the face this morning, that was awkward.
Today me phillip alex and emily ventured to La Comision Por la memoria in order to meet with people there and find out more about our plan of studies there. We walked through la plaza morena which is a beautiful part of the city with rich archetecture and saw the huuuuge cathedral. I´ll put up a few pictures when I´m not on a comp in the hostel. We met with the 2 program coordinators there. Greeting people with a kiss on the cheek is very awkward to me...I´don´t know what to do with my hands or body. Tomorrow they´re sending cars to the hostel to pick us up around 1130 and take us to our host families! We start the intensive language program on Monday at 2.
We went to a place nearby for lunch and I got vegetarian ravioli and a pepsi ´lite´(they´re not called diet) which was served to me in a wine glass...The pasta was delicious, you can definitely tell how fresh and non processed the food is. It´s great to have a tomatoe sauce that actually tastes like tomatoes without the sugar. Emily and I split up with the boys and did some shopping after lunch. I bought a white dress, zebra sandals, and a wooden necklace all for 30 bucks! La plata really makes sense as a city because all of the streets have numbers with diagonal streets cutting through them that also have numbers. I think once I get my bearings down a little more it wont be hard to find my way around. We´re resting a while in the hostel and are planning on going out for pizza and walking around later, but it probably wont be quite as late of a night since we have to leave the hostel at 1130 tomorrow.
Because I like lists--
Things I´ve seen ALOT OF en La Plata- stray dogs, grafitti, ice cream stores, gladiator sandals, men wearing capri pants, thin tall people, dreadlocks and piercings, agua gaseosa! (carbonated water here is the default, if you just want regular water you have to ask for agua sin gas..found that out the hard way), fruit and produce stands, beer (Quilemes, stella artois, and heineken mostly), beef (asado), Old music from the united states (they apparently love old rock music like rolling stones as well as pop), soccer jerseys, men without shirts
Things I haven´t seen alot of- STOP SIGNS AND LANES (Argentine drivers are crazy crazy, getting anywhere is playing a live version of frogger with your life), unpainted surfaces (alot is brightly painted, alot of designs and grafitti), political apathy (people seem to have passionate opinions), other Americans (la plata isn´t very tourist-y, we definitely stick out), gyms or yoga studios, out of shape people (interesting contradiction?), people who are obviously in homosexual relationships (I think it´s a hidden part in la plata at least)
We didn´t get back to our hostel till about 1240 our time but there were a bunch of people in the lounge playing guitar, hanging out and smoking so we joined them for a while. I really enjoyed practicing my spanish and getting to know them a bit. People here have been absolutely accepting of my efforts to speak spanish even though my grammar is far from perfect. Everyone else was from south america and had a variety of different accents so it was fun to compare. I find that people can understand me well if I am having a one on one conversation with them because they can contextualize alot of what I´m saying, but I get confused looks sometimes when I try to contribute to group conversations. I had a very interesting conversation with a chileno boy who just started teaching english there (his english was probably on par with my spanish). He wanted to know if I had voted for Barak Obama and we got into a very interesting conversation about US (estadounidense) stereotypes. He was glad that my perspective on politics is not ethnocentric and liked that I was curious about south american slants on the 2 party system. I ended up staying up till around 430 (apparently some of the group lasted several more hours). Oh yeah, I accidentally kicked the woman changing sheets in the face this morning, that was awkward.
Today me phillip alex and emily ventured to La Comision Por la memoria in order to meet with people there and find out more about our plan of studies there. We walked through la plaza morena which is a beautiful part of the city with rich archetecture and saw the huuuuge cathedral. I´ll put up a few pictures when I´m not on a comp in the hostel. We met with the 2 program coordinators there. Greeting people with a kiss on the cheek is very awkward to me...I´don´t know what to do with my hands or body. Tomorrow they´re sending cars to the hostel to pick us up around 1130 and take us to our host families! We start the intensive language program on Monday at 2.
We went to a place nearby for lunch and I got vegetarian ravioli and a pepsi ´lite´(they´re not called diet) which was served to me in a wine glass...The pasta was delicious, you can definitely tell how fresh and non processed the food is. It´s great to have a tomatoe sauce that actually tastes like tomatoes without the sugar. Emily and I split up with the boys and did some shopping after lunch. I bought a white dress, zebra sandals, and a wooden necklace all for 30 bucks! La plata really makes sense as a city because all of the streets have numbers with diagonal streets cutting through them that also have numbers. I think once I get my bearings down a little more it wont be hard to find my way around. We´re resting a while in the hostel and are planning on going out for pizza and walking around later, but it probably wont be quite as late of a night since we have to leave the hostel at 1130 tomorrow.
Because I like lists--
Things I´ve seen ALOT OF en La Plata- stray dogs, grafitti, ice cream stores, gladiator sandals, men wearing capri pants, thin tall people, dreadlocks and piercings, agua gaseosa! (carbonated water here is the default, if you just want regular water you have to ask for agua sin gas..found that out the hard way), fruit and produce stands, beer (Quilemes, stella artois, and heineken mostly), beef (asado), Old music from the united states (they apparently love old rock music like rolling stones as well as pop), soccer jerseys, men without shirts
Things I haven´t seen alot of- STOP SIGNS AND LANES (Argentine drivers are crazy crazy, getting anywhere is playing a live version of frogger with your life), unpainted surfaces (alot is brightly painted, alot of designs and grafitti), political apathy (people seem to have passionate opinions), other Americans (la plata isn´t very tourist-y, we definitely stick out), gyms or yoga studios, out of shape people (interesting contradiction?), people who are obviously in homosexual relationships (I think it´s a hidden part in la plata at least)
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The sun set over Richmond and rose over the Andes
I´m now safely sitting in my hostel en LA PLATA! there´s no wireless internet access here but there are comps that you can use for 30 minutes so I´ll write more about the rest of the trip later... but for now here is the email I wrote to my family in the Santiago airport. The travel complications ended up being a blessing because I had the most BEAUTIFUL window seat flying over the Andes mountains this afternoon. I couldn´t have asked for a more pleasant plane ride with clear skies and a great view. I´ll update more later
Hope that everything is going well with you guys! It has been a marathon of a day so far, but everything is going really well. As i write this I'm sitting in the airport in Santiago, Chile. Everything is so cheap here...I'm already tempted to buy earrings for $5 (we're in an airport...so they take US bucks for everything which is convenient). And I'm looking at a sign for fully dressed hamburgers for $3 a piece! Well it's 9am here...but I'm so discombobulated, I think it's 7am american time but the sun is shining brightly over the Andes so it's hard to tell. The flight from Richmond to Atlanta was a little delayed because there were alot of last minute add ons so they said we were running about 20 minutes late which made me a little nervous since our connection from atlanta to Santiago was pretty rushed. ALSO you know how I was wondering if there had ever been a dead body on one of my flights? Well there was, on this one. There was a military leader escorting the corpse home :-( SAD JOB.
But we ended up making it to Atlanta with literally JUST enough time to find our exit, go to the bathroom then board the plane. The plane was HUGE but I actually had an aisle seat which was crucial because I spent sooooo much time in that seat. I sat next to a cute 26 year old (megan and doug...legitimately a more exotic Zack Jackson...) who started speaking to me in fluent spanish. I was taken aback a litle bit and told him that I was "estadounidense" and apologized for my bad spanish. He then apologized and said he thought that I was Chilena because of my style (pumas, jeans, bracelets and crazy nail polish?) But anyway, he was really cool to talk to and we ended up speaking in some spanish and some english. It was really cool because I feel like our levels of speaking were pretty comparable. Airplane food- chicken and potatoes with a mini salad, a piece of cheese and crackers, and a piece of bread. I was so hungry (this was around 9pm our time that dinner was served) that I ate most of it but regret it heavily when I started having stomache cramps throughout the flight. OH WELL, you live and learn... They also had complimentary beer and wine which I didn't feel like but it would have probably helped me fall asleep. And when I say I didn't feel like it, I mean that I thought they would card me but the girls in front of me were like 16 and they got huge cups of wine without being carded so I'm sure it would have been fine. But it's probably good I declined because I drank so much water and still feel dehydrated. I managed to get a couple hours of sleep and watched a couple of movies on and off. Anyways, it was REALLY cool to see the sun set over Virginia and see it rise again over the backdrop of the andes mountains. Our flight leaves here at 11:25, then we'll be in B.A. at around 1:20 and eventually La Plata!
It's already been an adventure. I'm about to go buy a bottled water and browse the cheap jewelry.
<3 Love and miss you all already
Hope that everything is going well with you guys! It has been a marathon of a day so far, but everything is going really well. As i write this I'm sitting in the airport in Santiago, Chile. Everything is so cheap here...I'm already tempted to buy earrings for $5 (we're in an airport...so they take US bucks for everything which is convenient). And I'm looking at a sign for fully dressed hamburgers for $3 a piece! Well it's 9am here...but I'm so discombobulated, I think it's 7am american time but the sun is shining brightly over the Andes so it's hard to tell. The flight from Richmond to Atlanta was a little delayed because there were alot of last minute add ons so they said we were running about 20 minutes late which made me a little nervous since our connection from atlanta to Santiago was pretty rushed. ALSO you know how I was wondering if there had ever been a dead body on one of my flights? Well there was, on this one. There was a military leader escorting the corpse home :-( SAD JOB.
But we ended up making it to Atlanta with literally JUST enough time to find our exit, go to the bathroom then board the plane. The plane was HUGE but I actually had an aisle seat which was crucial because I spent sooooo much time in that seat. I sat next to a cute 26 year old (megan and doug...legitimately a more exotic Zack Jackson...) who started speaking to me in fluent spanish. I was taken aback a litle bit and told him that I was "estadounidense" and apologized for my bad spanish. He then apologized and said he thought that I was Chilena because of my style (pumas, jeans, bracelets and crazy nail polish?) But anyway, he was really cool to talk to and we ended up speaking in some spanish and some english. It was really cool because I feel like our levels of speaking were pretty comparable. Airplane food- chicken and potatoes with a mini salad, a piece of cheese and crackers, and a piece of bread. I was so hungry (this was around 9pm our time that dinner was served) that I ate most of it but regret it heavily when I started having stomache cramps throughout the flight. OH WELL, you live and learn... They also had complimentary beer and wine which I didn't feel like but it would have probably helped me fall asleep. And when I say I didn't feel like it, I mean that I thought they would card me but the girls in front of me were like 16 and they got huge cups of wine without being carded so I'm sure it would have been fine. But it's probably good I declined because I drank so much water and still feel dehydrated. I managed to get a couple hours of sleep and watched a couple of movies on and off. Anyways, it was REALLY cool to see the sun set over Virginia and see it rise again over the backdrop of the andes mountains. Our flight leaves here at 11:25, then we'll be in B.A. at around 1:20 and eventually La Plata!
It's already been an adventure. I'm about to go buy a bottled water and browse the cheap jewelry.
<3 Love and miss you all already
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Stressful day, sleepless night
Despite years of tentative planning and about a year of serious planning, I don't think the reality of studying abroad hit me untill today. The experience seemed intangible, untill it came time to fill out my luggage tags. The first line was easy- Kathleen Doyle. Then, I realized that I would have to put the address and phone number of my host family and not the familiar and comforting home address that I've had memorized since I could speak. I am the only constant in the equation. Every thing else- my contact information, culture and language is about to switch from everything I have ever known...and I couldn't be more excited.
I woke up this morning (afternoon, really but who's counting) to a text from Alex saying that I should check my flight from Dulles to confirm if it was still departing on schedule. I flicked into panic mode. My original flight plan was to fly from Richmond to Dulles then connect to Dulles to Buenos Aires directly with three other students from my program. However, apparently rolling blackouts from the uncharacteristically intense virginia winter made flights from Dulles backed up and they ended up cancelling alot of flights. Like mine. It's a good thing my dad handles crisis situations alot better than I do, because he managed to react quickly and book me in one of the last remaining seats on a flight tomorrow. The new route is a bit more complicated. I'm leaving from Richmond airport at 5:15 tomorrow. I'll fly into Atlanta, GA then Santiago, Chile and lastly Buenos Aires Argentina. For those who aren't familiar, B.A. is about the size of New York City, but where I'll be spending the majority of my time in Argentina is about an hour South of that in La Plata which isn't quite as big of a city but should still be MUCH more interesting than colonial williamsburg.
I actually feel alot more prepared right now than I would, which is why I'm spending my last insomniac Charlottesville night blogging, watching Millionaire Matchmaker and dying my hair (my roomate did it last time and she is...not a detail oriented person...love you megan). There were DEFINITELY moments that I thought the trip was all going to fall apart. I certainly couldn't have done it without the help of my best friend and facebook spouse Doug, who helped me when I was, to quote an almodovar flick "mujer al borde de un ataque nervios" (woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown). He helped me rush around to collect my reccommendation letters, scan copies of my passport, and get an official copy of my transcript literally hours before the application was due. Anyone who knows me, has seen my schoolwork or been in my car knows that organization is not a strong point (or any point) of mine so my Mom's (sometimes neurotic, but always beneficial)organization made it all possible. In one of the more memorable moments in the later stages of trip planning we found out that some of my travelling might lead me to a place that would require the Yellow Fever and Typhoid vaccines. My mother found out that the health center giving out vaccines only had one Yellow Fever shot left, and the clinic started at 830 on a Thursday morning, but the doors opened at 8am. True to form, Mama D managed to get me out of bed and we were in the parking lot at 7:45am. "Kathleen, why don't you go stand at the door so the second they open it you can be first on the list" I rolled my eyes at the time, but her tactics worked and I left an hour later with several more live viruses in my body. By the way, if you ever have to get a yellow fever vaccine for any reason, get it way more than a week in advanced. There are some rather quirky side effects that affect alot of people and range from flu like symptoms to rashes and can last up to 10 days. My arm was rather sore and just developed a really itchy painful lump about the size of a Pringles top.
My dad was also a godsend in helping us figure out alot of the technological stuff for the trip. Not only did he help me rewire my school email address to gmail, but he helped install skype (kpdoyle89, add me if you want!), figured out how to use zap tell phone cards, AND figured out how to trick hulu into thinking I'm still in America so that I can watch the last season of LOST :-). Both of my big brothers and their wives and girlfriends respectively came home this weekend which was really special to me. My in-laws the Tuckers, my grandfather and cousin Peter all helped me out with finances and words of wisdom. I want everyone who's helped me along the way to know how much I appreciate your support and that I intend to make the absolute most of this experience.
Love to All,
I'll get the word out when I land safely.
I woke up this morning (afternoon, really but who's counting) to a text from Alex saying that I should check my flight from Dulles to confirm if it was still departing on schedule. I flicked into panic mode. My original flight plan was to fly from Richmond to Dulles then connect to Dulles to Buenos Aires directly with three other students from my program. However, apparently rolling blackouts from the uncharacteristically intense virginia winter made flights from Dulles backed up and they ended up cancelling alot of flights. Like mine. It's a good thing my dad handles crisis situations alot better than I do, because he managed to react quickly and book me in one of the last remaining seats on a flight tomorrow. The new route is a bit more complicated. I'm leaving from Richmond airport at 5:15 tomorrow. I'll fly into Atlanta, GA then Santiago, Chile and lastly Buenos Aires Argentina. For those who aren't familiar, B.A. is about the size of New York City, but where I'll be spending the majority of my time in Argentina is about an hour South of that in La Plata which isn't quite as big of a city but should still be MUCH more interesting than colonial williamsburg.
I actually feel alot more prepared right now than I would, which is why I'm spending my last insomniac Charlottesville night blogging, watching Millionaire Matchmaker and dying my hair (my roomate did it last time and she is...not a detail oriented person...love you megan). There were DEFINITELY moments that I thought the trip was all going to fall apart. I certainly couldn't have done it without the help of my best friend and facebook spouse Doug, who helped me when I was, to quote an almodovar flick "mujer al borde de un ataque nervios" (woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown). He helped me rush around to collect my reccommendation letters, scan copies of my passport, and get an official copy of my transcript literally hours before the application was due. Anyone who knows me, has seen my schoolwork or been in my car knows that organization is not a strong point (or any point) of mine so my Mom's (sometimes neurotic, but always beneficial)organization made it all possible. In one of the more memorable moments in the later stages of trip planning we found out that some of my travelling might lead me to a place that would require the Yellow Fever and Typhoid vaccines. My mother found out that the health center giving out vaccines only had one Yellow Fever shot left, and the clinic started at 830 on a Thursday morning, but the doors opened at 8am. True to form, Mama D managed to get me out of bed and we were in the parking lot at 7:45am. "Kathleen, why don't you go stand at the door so the second they open it you can be first on the list" I rolled my eyes at the time, but her tactics worked and I left an hour later with several more live viruses in my body. By the way, if you ever have to get a yellow fever vaccine for any reason, get it way more than a week in advanced. There are some rather quirky side effects that affect alot of people and range from flu like symptoms to rashes and can last up to 10 days. My arm was rather sore and just developed a really itchy painful lump about the size of a Pringles top.
My dad was also a godsend in helping us figure out alot of the technological stuff for the trip. Not only did he help me rewire my school email address to gmail, but he helped install skype (kpdoyle89, add me if you want!), figured out how to use zap tell phone cards, AND figured out how to trick hulu into thinking I'm still in America so that I can watch the last season of LOST :-). Both of my big brothers and their wives and girlfriends respectively came home this weekend which was really special to me. My in-laws the Tuckers, my grandfather and cousin Peter all helped me out with finances and words of wisdom. I want everyone who's helped me along the way to know how much I appreciate your support and that I intend to make the absolute most of this experience.
Love to All,
I'll get the word out when I land safely.
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