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