Lady Gaga's bad romance blasts through my old busted headphones as I inspect the city from behind my 16 peso pink rimmed sunglasses. I have always been told that I'm a slow walker, but in this moment I'm outpacing the locals. There's a pair of chattering girls with matching lip rings chattering at a rate I will never understand, but I feel their eyes tracing me. It's hard to discern whether they approve of my bold fashion choice of an oversized t shirt that reads "despues de todo, no somos tan differentes" paired with tights and faux leather boots. Maybe they are thinking I should have skipped the free galletita that came with my cafe americano. Maybe they are hoping I get a phone call so they can determine my nationality via my butchered spanish. Maybe they think my life consists of eating hotdogs, watching the simpsons and spending frivolously. Maybe they're lesbians. With every person I pass, a new reel of possible insecurities could present itsself if I allowed myself to focus on the trivial. Speculation about peoples perception of me lasts a millisecond for every minute that it used to.
Someone told me that during this trip, I would change into a completely different person without realizing it. I catch myself thinking about this quote in spanish and am weirded out momentarily by the linguistic fluidity of my thoughts. I pass by the same set of brightly painted stores, kiosks, heladerias and buildings that held my attention so tightly at first without a second thought. My pace slows a bit as Alejandro comes on after Bad Romance but I continue the walk home on autopilot. In a city that has over a half of a million people, I know exactly where I am. I have shed the nickname la perdida (the lost one)
I am striking a strange balance between trying not to stand out as a foreigner and not changing integral parts of my personality. If I want to wear bright pink earrings and drink my fernets with coca lite instead of regular, I will. I don't want to erase my individuality but I don't want to represent my culture in a negative way. I don't want to be a muted version of my outrageous self, but rather a universal version of myself. I was worried that my personality wouldn't translate here. I now think that with time, anything can translate well enough. It's all about trying to understand the context.
For every moment I've been frustrated to the point of tears there has been one filled with joy beyond anything I've known before. I have always considered myself to be a person of extremes. Changing countries has only intensified the volitility of my mood in the short run...perhaps this is something I can correct about myself.
I am fighting insecurities I never knew I had. I am seeing strength in places where I thought only weakness existed. I am surprising myself.
In a city that contains a half a million people, I know exactly where I am. Learning.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
El Rio Tigre, Movistar y yoga
It's hard to believe I've been here for a month already...and even as I write this some words naturally want to come out in spanish. We need to try harder to avoid english within our group from WM, but other than that the language barrier has been lessening (or at least we are talking ALOT more despite our grammatical inadequacies...) We joke with our Spanish teacher that we're in linguistic purgatory: our spanish is nowhere near fluent, but we're kind of forgetting how to speak propper english. Tomorrow we have our final in spanish grammar. I think we're all looking forward to getting that one out of the way. It's not that professor JALID (we actually thought her last name was JARDIN for the first few weeks of class...) isn't a great woman, but her teaching style of aimless blabbering isn't as concise of a review as we would have liked.
Last weekend the 3 girls and I were itching to get out of La Plata for the day and do something adventurous, so we went on a day trip to El Rio Tigre. It was a GREAT decision as we were initially planning to go to Mar Del Plata which would have been more expensive, more touristy, and had worse weather as it is south rather than north. A chronicle of the trip/pricing is listed below...we thought it was cool that we went on so many modes of transportation within such a short time
30 minute walk from C/3 e 61/62 to Bus station- 0 pesos (40 bugbites...)
60 minute bus ride from La Plata to Buenos Aires- 8 pesos (about $2.50 total there and back)
4 minute subway ride to Retiro because we got off at the wrong stop... 1 peso
40 minute train ride from Retiro Buenos Aires to El Tigre- 4 pesos- $1.25
15 minute boat ride from El Tigre to the islands of 3 Bocas- 17 pesos- $4.50 and well worth it because the ride was phenomenal and it was incredible to see so much of the coast
total- under 2 hours, 40 pesos = $10
We had a nice lunch on the patio in our swimsuits which was a little bit overpriced for it's quality (of course I'm spoiled by the great exchange rate...) then laid out in the sun with a lovely Quilmes each and loved every minute of it. I also bought a pair of pink rimmed stunna shades for the equivalent of about $5, so all in all the day was quite a win in terms of value and adventure. We still made it back in time to go out for dessert, take showers and meet up with the crew for the usual saturday night activities culminating in going out to dance. We laughed at michelle because the other 3 of us got delicious extravagant looking desserts and because she is allergic to nuts we asked the waitress to reccommend something and she ended up bringing out the equivalent of what looked like a klondike bar drizzled in chocolate syrup. For the first time in La Plata I did notice a cop ACTUALLY doing something in making sure the club wasnt letting people in beyond it's capacity.
We all enjoyed today because we didn't have class. We went to Alex's on the other end of the city for matte (obviously...) and spanish studying but ended up speaking in english and enjoying pastries provided by his host mom. Oh well. Michelle and I went to watch the guys play soccer. By whatever luck, almost all of our Argentine friends thus far have turned out to be guys which is certainly a change from my WM experience but has been a blast so far. They each paid 10 pesos and rented out a little indoor field and played some intense soccer for an hour. Michelle was itching to play, but I have played in one too many IM soccer games to think that I could stand a chance playing against Argentines that have played soccer religiously for their entire life. There are two immensely popular soccer clubs in La Plata- Estudiantes and Gimnasia. Estudiantes are evidently better and get more funding (ojala que mi madre argentina no leera eso porque tendria q. encontrar una cama nueva...jaja) but have a reputation for being more stuck up. My family here are huge LOBO fans because they more represent working class (PERONISTA) ideals. The mascots are la Pincha y Lobo. The way they ask what team you prefer is- SOS DEL LOBO?! which is the same grammatical construction that they would use to ask where you're from or what you do for a living. Soccer is not a passtime. It's a way of life here.
I also FINALLY after a month here, have a functioning cell phone. Movistar cell phone company absolutely goes on my shit list because it took 4 trips to the store to get things working properly. I finally had to bring back a woman from the commission to yell at the man (Pablo...QUE BALUDO) to stop jipping me and give me a functioning phone. It was one of the most frustrating feelings to be here without a phone and know that people felt like they could exploit my lack of confidence and knowledge of the language to make money off of me. It certainly will make me more sensitive to anyone I might encounter in the US who doesn't speak english. The majority of the people I've met here have been excellent and patient, but it does leave you feeling quite isolated when you cross paths with someone that targets you because of your differences.
My only other complaint is that I MISS YOGA. I checked out a studio yesterday which was very nice...but much more like a relaxing meditation class than the Bikram sweatfest of a workout that I'm used to. Clearly there's no right or wrong way to practice yoga and their studio was probably even more traditional in terms of yogi ideals, but sometimes you just like what you're accustomed to. There's a studio in Buenos Aires that I'm going to adventure to this weekend.
Signing off to enjoy my peppermint tea and give indirect sentence construction another glance before tomorrow...
<3Kathleen
Last weekend the 3 girls and I were itching to get out of La Plata for the day and do something adventurous, so we went on a day trip to El Rio Tigre. It was a GREAT decision as we were initially planning to go to Mar Del Plata which would have been more expensive, more touristy, and had worse weather as it is south rather than north. A chronicle of the trip/pricing is listed below...we thought it was cool that we went on so many modes of transportation within such a short time
30 minute walk from C/3 e 61/62 to Bus station- 0 pesos (40 bugbites...)
60 minute bus ride from La Plata to Buenos Aires- 8 pesos (about $2.50 total there and back)
4 minute subway ride to Retiro because we got off at the wrong stop... 1 peso
40 minute train ride from Retiro Buenos Aires to El Tigre- 4 pesos- $1.25
15 minute boat ride from El Tigre to the islands of 3 Bocas- 17 pesos- $4.50 and well worth it because the ride was phenomenal and it was incredible to see so much of the coast
total- under 2 hours, 40 pesos = $10
We had a nice lunch on the patio in our swimsuits which was a little bit overpriced for it's quality (of course I'm spoiled by the great exchange rate...) then laid out in the sun with a lovely Quilmes each and loved every minute of it. I also bought a pair of pink rimmed stunna shades for the equivalent of about $5, so all in all the day was quite a win in terms of value and adventure. We still made it back in time to go out for dessert, take showers and meet up with the crew for the usual saturday night activities culminating in going out to dance. We laughed at michelle because the other 3 of us got delicious extravagant looking desserts and because she is allergic to nuts we asked the waitress to reccommend something and she ended up bringing out the equivalent of what looked like a klondike bar drizzled in chocolate syrup. For the first time in La Plata I did notice a cop ACTUALLY doing something in making sure the club wasnt letting people in beyond it's capacity.
We all enjoyed today because we didn't have class. We went to Alex's on the other end of the city for matte (obviously...) and spanish studying but ended up speaking in english and enjoying pastries provided by his host mom. Oh well. Michelle and I went to watch the guys play soccer. By whatever luck, almost all of our Argentine friends thus far have turned out to be guys which is certainly a change from my WM experience but has been a blast so far. They each paid 10 pesos and rented out a little indoor field and played some intense soccer for an hour. Michelle was itching to play, but I have played in one too many IM soccer games to think that I could stand a chance playing against Argentines that have played soccer religiously for their entire life. There are two immensely popular soccer clubs in La Plata- Estudiantes and Gimnasia. Estudiantes are evidently better and get more funding (ojala que mi madre argentina no leera eso porque tendria q. encontrar una cama nueva...jaja) but have a reputation for being more stuck up. My family here are huge LOBO fans because they more represent working class (PERONISTA) ideals. The mascots are la Pincha y Lobo. The way they ask what team you prefer is- SOS DEL LOBO?! which is the same grammatical construction that they would use to ask where you're from or what you do for a living. Soccer is not a passtime. It's a way of life here.
I also FINALLY after a month here, have a functioning cell phone. Movistar cell phone company absolutely goes on my shit list because it took 4 trips to the store to get things working properly. I finally had to bring back a woman from the commission to yell at the man (Pablo...QUE BALUDO) to stop jipping me and give me a functioning phone. It was one of the most frustrating feelings to be here without a phone and know that people felt like they could exploit my lack of confidence and knowledge of the language to make money off of me. It certainly will make me more sensitive to anyone I might encounter in the US who doesn't speak english. The majority of the people I've met here have been excellent and patient, but it does leave you feeling quite isolated when you cross paths with someone that targets you because of your differences.
My only other complaint is that I MISS YOGA. I checked out a studio yesterday which was very nice...but much more like a relaxing meditation class than the Bikram sweatfest of a workout that I'm used to. Clearly there's no right or wrong way to practice yoga and their studio was probably even more traditional in terms of yogi ideals, but sometimes you just like what you're accustomed to. There's a studio in Buenos Aires that I'm going to adventure to this weekend.
Signing off to enjoy my peppermint tea and give indirect sentence construction another glance before tomorrow...
<3Kathleen
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
El movimiento hippy
That pic is an indigenous strike for workers rights that we witnessed one of the first weeks here. There is ALWAYS some kind of strike going on here...we didn't eat beef for a week because the government encouraged a strike to lower meat prices, (Meat here is EVERYTHING...asados, or barbecues are very common), and Eli's son Isidro started school this week on monday only to miss class tuesday and wednesday because the janitors are on strike. Right now, the president is a woman named Christina Kirchner who is very peronista which correlates to having a strong emphasis on workers rights.
Michelle and I had the opportunity last week to go to a Peronist political rally where Kirchner's husband was speaking. Eliana is VERY involved in the local political scene so she had VIP passes and tried desperately to get me michelle, her sister and friends in to the front section. I can not even DESCRIBE how insane the atmosphere was. There were over 8,000 people of ALL ages and ethnicities, though a high concentration of youth and more indigenous looking people parading around the town with drums, chants, signs and various noise makers. It's lucky that she told us in advance to leave all money and items of value at home because there was barely room to breathe. Since Argentines tend to be more physical people in general there was alot of pushing (out of excitement...not bad intentions)and pulling. A frotteurists dream...kidding, I'm a psychology TWAMP (typical william and mary person, ie NERD and one of the most commonly used insults at WM.)
I haven't blogged in a while but I'm exhausted and it's late and my mind's a little jumpy so I'm going to list some of the things I've done in the past week and a half.
- Learned spanish pig latin...you put pa,po,pu,pe or pe after all syllables depending on the vowels it follows. I live in La plata Argentina (vivo en la plata argentina) would be- yopo vipivopo enpe lapa plapatapa arpagenpetipinapa
-Went back to Buenos Aires to get another document for our student visa, walked around ALOT and made our way to Eva Peron's tomb which is right next to the most beautiful catholic church that I've ever seen. We also went into a restaraunt, sat down, pretended to look at the menu just so we could all use the bathroom....then we stealthily left one by one. CHEAP.
-Spent the day in the park with a huge group of Eliana's family and friends sipping on matte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_mate and enjoying the beautiful weather. We were joking with them all that there is a chant/song for EVERYTHING in argentina and then they made us perform WM's song and the star spangled banner. Argentina...your gale has officially been harked upon.
-Sat around outside various places while boys play guitar and try to sing songs in English. Music is so beautifully universal. I helped translate some Floyd and RHCP lyrics for them, it was alot of fun.
-Witnessed la marcha de los madres del plaza de mayo...they're a very famous group that have kids or relatives that were taken during the period of dictatorship.
-Eaten some of the best ice cream of my life...michelle and I have to walk by it EVERYTIME we come home from class, it's torture. I laughed to myself today because eating ice cream before it melts was the most stressful part of my day. I love living in the moment here, plans are always so fluid.
---
I desperately need to upload photos, i have SO many but they take forever to upload. The girls and I are planning a weekend get away en la tigre which is a group of beachy islands 2 hours away. Now that we've got our bearrings down here we're excited to explore more parts of the country!!!
Love and miss you all...I also miss peanut butter which cannot be found here!
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