Goodbyeeee Argentina

Thank you all so much for reading my blog this summer! It was a pleasure to write, and I am glad that so many people took the time to look at it occasionally.

I will leave you all with a mix of photos from my last couple weeks here:

Casa Rosada, Plaza de Mayo

Kids playing on the street (they were pretty good!)

Some art at the MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires)

University picture #1, taken for my grant report

University picture #2, taken for my grant report

University picture #3, taken for my grant report – ground is covered with confetti, flour, and various other stuff from graduation festivities

Until my next travels, good bye to all of you. Until sometime, Argentina :)

Mis Últimos Días

My last night in Buenos Aires... hard to believe it's here! The last couple days have been crazy, busy, and tons of fun. I really want to post like 5 separate little posts, but that might be excessive, so I'm going to try to condense.

Friday: Día del Amigo! As far as I understand, basically an excuse to go out to eat with your friends. My friend Nick from Yale and I had coincidentally planned a lunch that day, so we were a little worried that we wouldn't be able to find anywhere (people make reservations weeks in advance to ensure a spot for the holiday). We ended up eating at the bar at a place called Tancat. Which was really, REALLY good. I have thus decided to summarize my earlier blog restaurant references into a little list for you guys.

Brianna's List of Best Restaurants in Buenos Aires [with limited sample size]

1) Parilla Peña. See earlier post.

2) Alma Zen. Health food restaurant. So good that I seriously considered coming back with my mom solely for the purpose of eating here again (this is the unnamed restaurant from a few posts back).

3) Tancat. Best spinach ricotta crepes of my life!!

I also really love medialunas w/ jamón y queso, at any café.

(pictured here, with the typical one bite taken out before I remember to take the picture)

Later that day I whittled down my three hair appointments to just one. Hopefully I chose the best one, we shall see tomorrow...

Saturday: Was going to go to the gym, but slept in instead. Was going to go on a tour thing with my old roommate, but she was sick, so slept some more instead.

That night, went to see the movie Pompeya at the Malba (art museum). Pompeya is the weirdest, most blood-filled movie ever. FYI, not a great movie to watch and then walk back to your house an hour in the dark...

Sunday: went to Tigre, a beach/island area about an hour from Buenos Aires with some SIP chicos. Train ride, fair, food, boat ride, walk around some islands, sit on dock, wade in river... awesome day.

Monday: Crazy busy last day! Gym, meet with professor, meet with guy from ministry of immigration (YES! FINALLY!), go to a class at the law school at the UBA with my friend Victoria who is a student there, meet with some friends of my Chilean host family to say goodbye, then last dinner with my host mom and pack!

The law class was super interesting. Every class I've sat in on at law schools (okay, that's just UChicago and here) has made me more sure that I want to go to law school myself. So yay :)

Now all that's left is weighing my suitcase (!), buying some last things, and heading off! Oh, and possibly going to exchange a leather jacket, because I am the most indecisive person in the world.

I have the perfect picture for a final "goodbye" post, but I will hold off until tomorrow.

Besos, Brianna

Parilla Peña

In my first out of order post of this summer's blog, last night marked my second adventure to Parilla Peña, an awesome restaurant in Buenos Aires known for its amazing meat. I went there my first week here with the Dartmouth student Alan and his study abroad group, so it is fitting that I return my last week, this time introducing the restaurant to the Harvard group.

The group that went ended up being pretty large and diverse (okay, depends what you mean by diverse): 6 Harvard SIP students, 2 Harvard thesis students (including me), 2 Harvard study abroad students, 1 Harvard non-SIP internship student, 2 Yale internship students, and 1 Argentine boyfriend!

I was a little nervous about inviting so many people, as the food is kind of expensive by Argentine standards (I spent $82 pesos total, which is less than $20USD, but a lot for Argentina) and I was worried about getting expectations too high. But the food was even better than the first time I went, and the night was a lot of fun overall. I split a "bife de lomo" (beef tenderloin? I think?) with one of the other girls there, and had the unique experience of eating the best bite of meat I've had in my life about 10 times during the course of the night. Great food, great company, great night.

I am not the first to write about Parilla Peña online. Other commentary on the place include: http://www.taxigourmet.com/2007/05/20/parrilla-pena/ and http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g312741-d1067958-Reviews-Parrilla_Pena-Buenos_Aires_Capital_Federal_District.html

Here is a series of pictures that is fairly descriptive of the night for all of us :)

ESMA

I am so thankful that the Harvard programs here in Buenos Aires are so generous about including other Harvard students in their activities. Today I went on a group tour of ESMA with the SIP program. La Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, or ESMA, was the site of many of the detentions and torture of civilians during the dictatorship in Argentina.

Our guide was careful to tell us that much has been changed in the buildings since the time of their active use as holding and torture centers (in the 1970s and early 1980s) – sometimes in anticipation of human rights investigations, sometimes just in the normal course of progress. But being in a building, however different, however barren, knowing the kind of activities that took place there 30 years ago is still a very powerful experience.

Even harder to see a place like this on such a nice day. Although my imaginings of being a prisoner looking out on such beautiful surroundings is nothing more than a hypothetical exercise since during that time period, the windows were covered in order to erase any distinction between night and day.

Photos were not allowed inside the buildings (and actually, I'm not sure about outside either, hence I didn't wait until the guy in the picture had passed by to get a better shot in case I would be stopped), but here is the outside of the main building we toured during our time there. The basement was used for torture and slave labor, the 3rd floor for holding prisoners, with officers lodged in between. How could you live and sleep in a place knowing that people were being electric shocked below you and held in inhuman conditions above you?

The holding area was called "Capucha" (hood), after the hoods that prisoners had to wear 24/7. They were heavy, causing pain; and they were never washed, leading to an intense odor. Prisoners were forced to lie motionless and silent on mats on the floor, only able to leave in the case of moving to the torture chambers or the work rooms. I believe the figure is that out of the approximately 5000 detained in this center, approximately 200 survived.

On a lighter note, many of us arrived late due to the charming fact that in Buenos Aires, many of the buses have several "versions" that trace slightly different routes, of which it appears to be impossible to search online or find out about except by asking a knowledgeable local or a bus driver. If you don't know that you are on one of these fun types, you can end up far from your destination. Hence I ended up taking a taxi for the last part of my journey, while others ended up coming 30 minutes to an hour late.

T-Minus One Week

Until I will be leaving Argentina. Less actually – in one week exactly, I will be a couple hours into my flight back to the US.

A couple interesting and very unrelated things:

1) I don't know if I just didn't notice it when I first got here, or if it has just started cropping up, but today while walking along La Florida (a big shopping district), there were people outside of nearly every other store or so announcing that they would exchange pesos for dollars or euros (this is illegal). I asked a couple of them what the rate they would sell dollars at was, just out of curiosity. For reference purposes, the official exchange rate as of today is 4.55 pesos/USD. One lady told me she would sell me dollars at an exchange rate of 6.7 pesos/USD. I don't know if I just looked particularly easy to scam, but that is the highest black market rate I have heard yet! I usually hear rates more around 6 pesos/USD. (Another guy told me he would sell them to me at whatever price I wanted... clearly asking a 20-something year old guy was not the right move on my part)

2) I am running out of shampoo. What to do, what to do. I plan to get my hair cut my last day here, so that takes care of my last hair-washing. But I calculate around 4 more showers before that. Hmm. Skimp it is...

3) My roommate Deborah is moving out tomorrow due to tensions with my host mom. For me, living here has been stressful in terms of certain issues, mainly food and adapting to her very particular ways of doing things. But Lita has always been very nice to me. In Deb's case, Lita has never been very nice at all. Neither of us are particularly sure why, but when Lita seemed supremely uncaring as to Deb being pretty fairly sick this past week, Deb decided enough was enough, and is moving into an apartment until she leaves on Sunday. This could potentially create a pretty awkward situation for me, as all will be explained after she leaves tomorrow, but I won't have to deal with it for very long at least!

To continue this subject a bit, I'm still a little unsure what to do or say about my host experience after I leave. On the one hand, it has been amazing – couldn't ask for a better location, wifi, I am left alone to do work, she changes my sheets and towels regularly (that definitely didn't happen in Chile! haha), and Lita has been very helpful and nice in all my interactions with her. But on the other hand, living here is like living on pins and needles. We have to wash our dishes, dry them, and put them away – if we forget, or leave something out to air dry, we will hear about it later. Leaving a light on definitely gets you a talking to (this one I understand more). If we don't flush the toilet right, or leave our laundry out on the wrong day, we will get a note left on the toilet seat or on the table informing us of our error. If we don't notify her days in advance about missing a meal, she will passively-aggressively recount a hypothetical event that she would have to miss by someone not telling her about missing a meal with enough advance notice. Not finishing a meal one day leads to an impossibly small meal the next day. And on it goes. None of those are very big things, and they aren't completely illogical, but we ARE paying to stay with her after all. A little bit of warmth, or making us feel like we belong and aren't just a nuisance would be nice.

I personally honestly don't have many real complaints – lack of food led me to actually lose weight in a foreign country, a huge first for me (haha), and I wasn't looking for a very home-y environment anyway. But I can see how it could be really tough for other host students looking for more of an immersive experience to live here, or for people who Lita for one reason or another takes a disliking to. I tread that line in the beginning, but managed to avoid any bad feelings between us luckily!

So in conclusion, writing this has led me to the decision that I will not say anything, unless the housing coordinator specifically asks me about it. Deb has already complained anyway, so they know that some people are not comfortable here at least. I may, however, mention something to Lita about the little stresses of living here, especially since I think a conversation may come up with the departure of Deb...

4) I ate at a restaurant so good today that while eating I found myself planning a trip back in January, this time with my mom so she could try the food. It was just THAT good (Papa, I think you would like it too, but it's more up mom and my alleys – I had a broccoli/squash tarta and soy pancakes with cheese and onions for instance). Ooh! I have a picture:

As usual, I forgot to take the picture until I had already started. And it's not a very good picture (especially since it mysteriously disappeared from my phone and instagram isn't being nice about downloading pictures so I had to take a screenshot of it). But maybe it gives you an idea of how good it was?? Also, the bag contains two large cookies and an apple crisp thing, which also went in my stomach as well, despite the fact that the waitress had apparently determined from the large amount of dessert in my order that those parts were "to go".


Looking forward to my last few days here, and excited for my next stop: San Francisco!

Hospital Rivadavia

In my search for more unregistered domestic workers to talk to, I woke up in the wee hours of the morning today to go to a nearby public hospital, where people arrive starting around 5 or 6 AM to queue for the free medical care that begins around 8 AM. I initially planned to be there at 6 AM, sometime during the night I decided that 7 AM was plenty early enough.

The outside of Hospital Rivadavia, cerca 6:45 AM

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the inside of the hospital [at the time it felt rude, but I really should have taken some!], so let me try to create a word-picture for you: The hospital is all concrete, very dim lighting (as opposed to the harsh bright lighting seen in the entrance here), dirty, cold. There are hundreds of people lined up waiting to be seen, many who wake up at 4 AM or before in order to arrive on time from the provinces. Some people are talking amongst themselves, most are just silently waiting, bundled against the cold.

The situation at first is very depressing, especially to someone accustomed to UHS (Harvard health care) or even higher quality private hospitals. But when you start talking to the people, the vast majority have nothing but praise for the Argentine hospital system, especially within the Capital Federal of Buenos Aires (as opposed to the provinces). They praise the quality of doctors, the ease of getting a same-day appointment, the patience of the staff. Most seem to feel incredibly lucky to be able to receive medical attention so quote-end-quote easily.

I was looking for unregistered workers, those who don't have an obra social to provide for their healthcare. Coming in, I naively assumed that anyone standing in a line for free healthcare would be lacking an obra social, thus be working in black. I thought it would be merely a task of separating domestic workers from all the other people there. I was surprised to discover however that many (if not most) of the domestic workers I talked to there are working in white and have their own healthcare provider. They chose to come to the public hospital instead because of the ability to see someone that very day, and to be able to come in the morning – the obra sociales seem to generally need appointments a week or more in advance, and the appointments are often in the afternoon, smack in the middle of the work day. A few people also mentioned the greater variety and quality of services offered at the hospital as a reason for going to the public hospital instead of to their obra social.

Given that workers routinely complain to me about the public hospitals and the long wait time to be seen, I have come to understand that obra sociales and public hospitals have their tradeoffs, depending on what you need to be seen for. If what you need is a routine check-up, or an ongoing medical treatment, it's really great to be working in white and have your obra social. If you're sick and need to be seen by a doctor, the public hospital is the better choice. Obviously for both, a private hospital would win hands down.

I am very glad that I went to the hospital, even though I didn't encounter as many unregistered workers as I was hoping to. First off, and entirely unrelated to my thesis, seeing what "free universal healthcare" in Argentina looks like was an eye-opener for me. I think I often envision my personal health care experience superimposed on another country when I picture universal health care systems, when that's just really not the case.

The fact that it was so hard to find unregistered workers even at a public hospital is an interesting fact in itself as well. I would like to take the scarcity of unregistered workers I found as proof that the majority of domestic workers these days are working in white (as many workers have in fact told me). But I have to take my "evidence" with a grain of salt – those who are most likely to be working in black are those who are least likely to be able to come to even a public hospital, be it for lack of money for transportation, the inability to miss work, a slave-like existence where they are unable to leave the house, or even perhaps lack of knowledge. Not to mention that some people may have been simply unwilling to admit to me that they were working in black (or more likely I think, to admit that they were a domestic worker at all if they were unregistered).

I am glad that I went to the hospital. I am even more glad that I don't have to go again. Although going back to sleep at 9 AM led to some really crazy and vivid dreams...

[On a side note, walking the streets of Buenos Aires at 6:30 in the morning was definitely the most un-safe I have felt here, much more so than at night (although I haven't been out walking much past midnight often). Buenos Aires must wake up late because there was next to no one out and even Starbucks wasn't open yet. Maybe I looked like I was coming back from a night out, because I got more cat-calls from drivers this morning than at any other point here!]

Feria de Mataderos

Today, I ventured to one of the more distant fairs in Buenos Aires, the Feria de Mataderos. About 40 minutes to an hour away by bus, it felt like forever next to what I've become used to! A reminder to me that Buenos Aires is actually quite a big city, despite how close everywhere I need to go is to me.

I always tell people that in my mind, Santiago, Chile (where I was last summer) is much bigger than Buenos Aires. But that's only because I was traveling to the furthest districts of Santiago for work last summer and didn't live super close to anything.

In contrast, here my work lies minutes away from me, and I live close to everything:

A map of Buenos Aires. The dot is approximately where I live, and the fair is where indicated. I have included a rough circle of where my daily activities generally take me for reference.

At the fair, I –

...ate humitas...

...looked at belts...

...and bought some people some very cool things!!! Almost done with all my gift purchases :)))

El Ateneo

Is a really cool bookstore. (apparently #2 in the world!)

Mondongo

Today I went out to lunch with Johanna Liander, the head of the Romance Languages & Literature department at Harvard, my Spanish professor my first semester as a freshman, and the head of the Harvard Summer Study Abroad program here in Buenos Aires. She is an awesome person, and is one of the professors I am closest to at school. We ate a ton of super yummy stuff – a squash/corn/cheese mixture, rice with mushrooms in an interesting sauce that I couldn't even begin to describe, and a big salad. At the time, I didn't have near enough room in my stomach to finish everything, let alone order a dessert.

But on the way home, I got one of those sudden cravings for chocolate that are the reason why I am putting off buying food gifts for people until the day I leave – if there is chocolate available in my room and I get a craving, I will eat it. Today it hit me on the street though, so I unfortunately was able to indulge my craving with approximately 1,000,000 calories of chocolate (more or less – let's just say it was about similar to when I ate an entire chocolate bunny in one sitting this Easter).

Between the lunch and the chocolate, I was not very hungry for dinner. So when I walked into the kitchen and saw what appeared to be seafood on my plate, I was not too excited. I'm not a huge fan of most types of seafood, so it's not my favorite even when I'm super hungry. But I also hate to be rude, so I had every intention of eating everything that I had been served.

(This is approximately what I was given to eat, except for with a lot less of the other stuff and lot more of the octopus-looking stuff.)

However, this was one of the only times in my life that I could not force myself to eat something. I had one bite, and it just gave me the creeps. The texture, the look of it... I asked my host mom what kind of seafood it was, and was a little confused when she told me it was not seafood, but cow. At that point, I knew I wasn't going to be finishing it, because the only part of the cow that meat like that could have come from is an area that I really have no interest in consuming.

Sure enough, when I looked it up on Google later, I discovered that what I had tasted was cow stomach (the dish is called "mondongo").

I think I'm just really not adventurous enough for some cuisine...

Córdoba

This past weekend, I took my third trip of my time here, to the city of Córdoba, Argentina. My dad's cousin Melissa spent the past semester studying abroad there, and is there until the end of July. Melissa is from Jamaica (my grandpa's sister married a Jamaican guy and moved there), so we hadn't seen each other in remember-able history.

The trip was, in short, tons of fun. I got to know Melissa, her host family is amazing, and we did lots of fun stuff. For more detail, read on :)

(pictured: Parque Centenario, Córdoba)

Thursday: My bus left at 9:30 AM, so I decided to get to the train station at 8:50 to be safe. Turns out you need not get there ahead of time at all, because the bus won't even show up until about 10 minutes before departure, making you needlessly worried that you have already gotten confused about something and are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor will they show departures on the screens until moments before, though the arrivals for the next several hours will be clearly marked.

The bus ride over was actually very pleasant. Very few people were on the bus, so I had the seats to myself, it was a pleasant temperature inside the bus (I only mention this because of what happened on the way back), they gave out free coffee, and the bathroom even had toilet paper. The only unfortunate thing was that there was a bus accident ahead of us in the morning, causing traffic to be backed up for miles, and preventing us from moving any measurable distance for hours. It's a good thing that there weren't many people in the bus, because if there is one thing that makes me feel claustrophobic, it's sitting in an unmoving bus (or plane). The delay didn't cause any major problems though, just caused me to arrive at 11:30 PM instead of the nicer hour of 8:30 PM.

Friday: I was planning on going to some domestic worker unions and agencies in Córdoba to talk with them and hopefully get some interviews with workers as well. Unfortunately, it was "Córdoba Day" or something, and everything was closed. SIGH.

The back-up plan of going to the mall with Melissa, eating two different kinds of icecream, two other types of desserts, and going to see the new Spiderman was a decent substitute I guess :P

[Side note – loved the new Spiderman movie. No horrible Toby McGuire or Kirsten Dunst!]

When we got back, we watched some sort of CSI-type movie, which led me to dream that night that my brother Spencer had disappeared and I had to investigate his whereabouts. He turned out to be fine in the dream, which is more than you could say for the people in the movie...

Saturday: After sleeping in, which was our norm for the weekend, Melissa and I went out for lunch for one of her classmate's birthdays. Yummy food!

Then we headed to the anthropological museum in Córdoba, where the best picture of the two of us from the weekend was taken (pictured here). One of the girls we were with discovered a hidden trap-door staircase in the museum, but we were all too scared to investigate it further. It will forever remain a mystery.

That night, Melissa cooked a delicious Jamaican meal for some of her friends in her program and me, and we watched Bridesmaids, or in Spanish Damas en Guerra (Women at War). Haha!

[okay, we watched a fair amount of movies over the course of the weekend! We also watched a GREAT – this is sarcastic – 1950s movie about a mute woman living with a mountain man with Melissa's host mom]

And brownies were made (pictured).

This night is also known as Brianna Discovers She Doesn't Know How To Cook At All Part I.

Sunday: Melissa cooked a second delicious Jamaican meal for her extended host family. Also known as Brianna Discovers She Doesn't Know How To Cook At All Part II. I have thus made it my goal to actually learn this summer while I'm home. (excited Mom?? You can teach me!)

Empanadas courtesy of Melissa's host mom.

YUM.

With salad.

The one thing I kind of knew how to make.

Kind of.

That night, we went to Melissa's church in Córdoba, which was a bit big and emotion-y for me, but a cool experience.

And Monday, I had to head back :(

Definitely my favorite weekend of the trip! I got to meet my wonderful cousin, eat delicious food, talk to so many nice people, sleep, and watch a bunch of movies & TV. It maybe wasn't the most "cultural" thing I could have done for a weekend trip in Argentina, but it was definitely a fun "life" thing to do :)

(pictured: yummy Jamaican chicken!)


[By the way, my trip back, though not delayed by a traffic accident, was far worse than my trip over. First, the bus was 30 minutes late getting to Córdoba in the morning. Second, the heat was malfunctioning in my area of the bus and was blasting pure fire out of the vents. There were no empty seats this time, so I couldn't move. Not. Fun. Third, I was and am still battling a cold/cough/general-feeling-bad thing, and so spent the entire time chain-sucking cough drops to keep myself from any uncontrollable coughing attacks. Taking nighttime cough medicine that morning helped me to endure the heat, people, and feeling sick for the first couple hours, but the rest of the ride was definitely not my favorite. For some inexplicable reason, we arrived an hour and a half late (I get the half hour, not sure where the other hour came from), and couldn't be let off in the terminal due to a power outage so were just dropped off in the middle of the street. But, I made it home, and all in one piece (if a bit sweaty). And it did nothing to dampen the memories of the weekend! Which, if you have taken a psych class, you might know is a real concern, as people tend to remember peaks, valleys, and the beginning and ends of things more than the average!! It did, however, persuade me that going back for a day-trip to interview domestic workers would definitely not be worth it. Also that taking a bus to Iguazú would not be worth it.]

Melissa and I already have plans for her to come visit me in Boston this Thanksgiving. I can't wait!

A Typical Day

Sorry guys, I have been a bit lax on the blog posts lately. I spent the last weekend in Córdoba visiting my cousin Melissa and just got back last night. Will try to crank a few blog posts out in the next couple days!

This one is easy, perhaps of interest, and way overdue. What does my typical day look like here in Buenos Aires? I am very predictable, so almost every weekday that I am in the city has looked like this:

8:30-9:30 AM – get up. I hardly ever set an alarm, but my body is remarkably consistent. For most of my time here, I woke up between 9:21 and 9:25 AM no matter what time I went to bed (could be 9:30 PM, could be 3 AM). Lately, I've been waking up closer to 8:30; I think I'm finally catching up on all my lost sleep from the school year...

Eat breakfast. This consists of tea, one piece of bread, several cookies, and a little bowl of cereal with yogurt. For those of you who remember one of my early posts, this is a big step up from when I first got here!

9/10-11 AM – gym. I do pilates, yoga, and muscle toning classes.

11-12 PM – shower, get ready.

~12 PM – go out for my "morning" activity. This is usually comprised of some errand (in the first few weeks, often something related to trying to get the money my parents sent me) or visiting a government office or organization here. Most of my non-worker interviews have taken place during this time. Mondays I often spend the time emailing contacts and searching out new places to visit.

~3 or 4 PM (whenever I finish my morning chore) – interviews with workers. I generally do one, occasionally I get in two. The vast majority of my interviews are obtained by soliciting workers as they leave the health care provider building near my house. Here in Argentina, different sectors often have their own little health care providers, rather than providing insurance for private hospitals. The main building for domestic workers just happens to be about a 5 minute walk from my house here (I am so lucky, honestly). I stand outside and pretend to be waiting for a bus, then ask people as they come out whether they would be willing to do an interview with me. I get pretty good results – very few people brush me off entirely, as would definitely happen in the US. More often, people are too busy to do an interview as they have to pick up their kids, or return to work, or head to a different branch for an appointment. I have estimated that for every interview I have successfully completed, I had to ask about four people, and also watched about 10 pass by without asking (because they were obviously in a huge rush, had small children with them, or were in pairs). So my 20-ish interviews completed equals a lot of approaching people and soliciting!

~5:30 PM – head home. I usually tell myself that I will work on transcribing interviews until dinner. But to be perfectly honest, that does NOT happen on a typical day! More often, I spend the time checking new emails accumulated during the day, writing blog posts, and gchatting people.

7:30 PM – dinner. This is super early by Argentine standards, but I appreciate it. Especially because as you might have noticed, I didn't mention lunch. I do sometimes eat lunch (especially if I do a hard workout in the morning), but I just as often subsist on the abundance of tea and coffee I drink doing interviews, and the occasional croissant.
Dinner is the only time I spend really interacting with my host mom. Although she never eats dinner, she will sit with me and talk about whatever for a couple hours. I usually really enjoy this time, although the food leaves something to be desired.

~9 PM – back to the computer. Sometimes I actually do some transcribing, or I watch TV on Cuevana (awesome free website here with all the movies and TV shows you could imagine)

~11 PM - midnight (or whenever I feel like it) – go to bed.

There's my day!! The only real variation I have is where I go in the mornings and occasional night activities. My mornings have taken me all around Buenos Aires and the surrounding areas, so I never get too bored with locations. And I probably average once or twice a week going somewhere at night: going to a movie/concert/ballet/tango show or hanging out with SIP people at someone's house or a bar.

In all, I lead a pretty easy life here. I get as much sleep as I want, exercise, eat mostly healthily, and talk about interesting things with interesting people :)

Today marks the end of week six in Buenos Aires. Exactly two weeks left!

Security Guards

Tonight at dinner, my host mom started talking about the security of the apartment building we live in, and how she doesn't mind paying a little extra for the protection that 24-hour security gives; something with which I completely agree. When she started talking about how respectful the security guards here are though, I had to interject. Since tonight provided such an easy opportunity, I decided to tell her just what I think about some of the security guards that work in the building.

Most of them are great. There are three regulars, all of whom I absolutely adore. They are some of the nicest people I know here, and are always willing to help me out or entertain me with jokes. A few, however, are not so great. I'll start with William.*

When I first got here, I used to talk to a young-ish security guard named William. He gave me pointers on where to find domestic workers, and offered to put me in contact with some that he knew himself. Unfortunately – as I probably should have expected – he did not actually want my phone number to send me contact information for the people he knew, but rather to send me a series of aggressively flirtatious (I think this is a good description) texts over the next few days. The one I found the creepiest was this, which I received after having gone upstairs to my apartment (translated): "You know that you're beautiful and I would like to kiss you. If you want to, come down now." Telling him I had a boyfriend in the US (not technically true) did nothing to stop his advances. It got to the point where if I knew he was working, I didn't want to leave the apartment. And once I did, I would wait until I knew his shift was over to come back.

This sounds worse in writing – I never felt in danger at any point, it was just annoying. But he was a sub, and didn't work often, so I didn't have to deal with him too much. And once I started ignoring everything he said or texted to me, he shut up pretty quickly (at this point, if he is working, he won't even make eye contact with me as I come in or out). I haven't had any issues with him in weeks.

Juan is a different story. He began work here a couple weeks ago, right about when my roommate arrived, and seemed fine to begin with. One night last week, I came in late, and he started speaking to me in (broken) English, telling me that he was learning English from movies, would love to travel to the US someday, etc. I complimented him on his drive to learn English on his own, but when he asked me for my email address to stay in contact and practice his English, I politely made up an excuse about not having my business cards on me at the moment, and that I would give it to him later. I had no intention of giving my email address to him until I was sure that he was not going to use it for William-like goals.

Apparently however, he didn't need me to give him any information in order to contact me. When I first got here, I was asked to write down my name in the book of the apartment building's residents, and I can only assume that Juan used that to find me online, both here on my blog and on Facebook. He started by commenting on a blog post here – an innocuous comment, but one that I found disturbing given the fact that I had given him no information about myself (he has since deleted the comment). I told my host-sister Deb about it, and she advised me to talk to my host mom or the other security guards if it continued. I didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time though. After all, searching people online is far from uncommon.

But today, I received this message from him, via Facebook. No friend request, nothing, just this message:

"Brianna, here in Buenos Aires I whould love to make you love all night very sweetly and very embracing dawn and wake you up with breakfast to your bed before you return to United States and going for a walk and wacht movies in a cinema and drink and ice cream or wine together, I hope you like, and give you a bouquet of red roses, you are a romantic,, lovely, very nice and pretty, JUAN"

That, I thought, was too much. Especially given the fact that, unlike William, he is nowhere near my age. So when my host mom started talking about how respectful the guards are here, I had to let her know that it was most certainly not the case with some of them.

I'm not entirely unsurprised with what happened next. After having me translate the message into Spanish for her, she marched me down to the security desk (in the middle of dinner, in my slippers) to talk to one of the good guards then on duty. She got the number of the head of security and is calling him tomorrow, and she is determined to get Juan fired. She wanted to put in a complaint about William too. But since he is around my age... and I did give him my phone number... and he stopped bothering me once I made clear my lack of interest... I asked her not to mention him in her complaints to the head.

While I wouldn't have wanted to get Juan personally fired, I don't have a problem with him potentially losing his job over this. Using the apartment registry to search people on the internet and then send them suggestive messages is not appropriate, no matter how you look at it or what cultural differences exist between the US and Argentina. I'm leaving in a few weeks, I could deal with it, but he could easily do it again with another unsuspecting host student. Security guards are paid to make people feel safe and at ease – and he certainly wasn't encouraging either of those aims.


*all names have been changed in this post, due to the fact that the people they are concerning could be (and even likely are) reading this right now

Uruguay in Pictures

Leaving Buenos Aires. Note the fog – my boat (the 9:30 AM) was only delayed about 45 minutes due to weather issues, but the 7:45 and 8:45 boats left right about the same time we did.

Peaceful beach. This is actually a river, not the ocean though. Very deceptive. Someone told me it's the widest river in the world (I think the distance from BA to Colonia is about 45 km), but I can't vouch for that.

In the picture below, I am sitting in a tree. Just an FYI.

An old Portuguese-style house in the Barrio Histórico of Colonia.

Wish I could have visited one of the islands...

And that's all :)

In Which I Get In My First Car Accident

If it can be called that, since I was driving a golf cart. I did hit a car though, so I suppose it counts.

[To preface, I had a great time in Uruguay! Loved the town of Colonia, it was super cute and a very nice break from Buenos Aires. There isn't too much to recount except for this accident, however. So back to the story.]

The situation is this: I rent a golf cart for the day in Uruguay with a Chilean girl I had met at my hostel, Lorena. We're on some random road in Colonia when I decide to turn left on to a promising-looking side road. I move to the center of the road, flip on the turn signal (even though by this point the two of us are pretty sure that it doesn't do anything) and wait for the car coming towards us to go by. As soon as the road is clear ahead, I turn – directly into the side of a car trying to pass me.

Now, in my memory, and that of Lorena, we were definitely in the middle of the road; ie where people should not be passing to the left. In the memory of the man driving the car, we were more towards the right of the road, and thus open to be passed (especially as there was no one coming the other direction and we had no left-hand turn signal on). I suppose it might be hard to tell lanes when one of the objects is a golf cart and there are no lines on the road, but I definitely don't think I was completely in the wrong, particularly if you consider the fact that our turn signal was theoretically on at the time.

Nevertheless, if I had been more aware of my surroundings, it wouldn't have happened. And for a golf cart at very low velocity hitting a car, I did a surprising amount of damage. I messed up the alignment of the wheels of the golf cart to the point where it was definitely un-driveable, and made some pretty significant dents and scratches on the side of the car that I hit. The car happened to contain a couple taking their two grandkids to a birthday party, and they were not very happy about the situation. Luckily no one was hurt at all – one of the little kids was scared,* but even the big cake that the grandmother was holding was undamaged during the incident.

Given that I have never even been pulled over in the US, and that this was in a foreign country, I really had no idea what to do immediately following the collision. Exchange insurance information? I didn't know mine. Exchange phone numbers? Neither Lorena nor I had an Uruguyuan cell phone. Since the car had a party to get to, I ended up writing down their phone number and promising to call them from the agency as soon as we got back. Lorena and I hitched a ride with a man and his wife, who happened to work for the ferry service that I had used to get to Uruguay (the boat deserves a post of its own! It was huge and awesome), and who were very nice and more than happy to help us out. The wife kept telling me that "there are always two people in an accident", and the husband recounted anecdotes about the town to us as we drove.

I was super nervous to talk to the rental company, but they were surprisingly very nice about the whole ordeal. They weren't angry at all, and kept assuring me that things happen, and not to worry about it. I was, however, unique: apparently the worst golf cart accident in recent history was a family tipping over their cart outside a shopping mall, and it wasn't even through the same company. But as the car I had hit had insurance, and I was insured through the rental company, there was no problem taking care of it (besides me having to pay the accident fee stipulated in the contract). The worst was probably the awkward 45 minutes of waiting for insurance to come with paperwork for us to fill out, spent making small talk with with one of the rental agency guys and the still-not-very-happy couple, who had come back from the party after dropping their grandchildren off.

The $366 fee I had to pay means that my bank account just halved for the rest of my trip. This probably means that I shouldn't spend $500 for the trip to Iguazú Falls that I was contemplating. But in all, I can't complain. I think I did more than $400 worth of damage to the other car (which I'm almost glad about, considering that I would have had to pay the fee no matter how little damage there was). And given the circumstances, the experience was just about as not-bad as it could have been. The rental service even tried to convince me to take out another cart afterwards, since I had rented one for the entire day (I declined, as I was scared to even cross the street at that point!). All in all, I am left with a very, very good impression of Uruguayans.

Plus, now I have a story. What was my first car accident? Oh, that one time in Uruguay, when I was driving a golf cart...


*the grandmother told me later that the kid was completely fine at the party, that he had forgotten all about it

My Knees

One of the more frustrating things that I have had to deal with while here in Buenos Aires has nothing at all to do with the country, or the language, or my thesis research – it is my knees.

Somehow, I think as a result of moving all of my furniture and many boxes into storage at the end of the year, I managed to hurt my right knee over six weeks ago. In the weeks immediately following, I thought that refraining from hard exercise would be enough to make it get better, but it only got worse. In addition, my left knee started really hurting as well. For the entirety of my month here (because today marks a month since I arrived!), I have been dealing with two bad knees. They don’t always hurt, but I generally can’t bend them very far, or do much activity with him. Walking up and down the four flights of stairs to the apartment where I am staying is a slow affair, and gym classes are embarrassing – as I might have mentioned before, the gym I go to is attended almost exclusively by older women, and yet I can do much less than all of them in the classes I go to. I also can't go to all the classes I want to, as I have been warned against cycling and kickboxing (normally two of my favorites). And not being able to give 100% in any exercise class I do attend is a very disheartening experience. I also had to give up on my initial plan to run the 10k at Sweet Pea when I got back to Bozeman, as running right now is out of the question.

About two weeks ago, I decided I really needed to get serious about fixing the problem, and started a strict regimen of ice, 3x/day. Since then, I have added heating pads and I wear a knee brace around the house sometimes. And they are improving… but I’m still nowhere near where I usually am. I’m a little unsure of where to go from here, because most sites I see online only reference using ice for a few days – for those of you who know, should I continue icing every day? Alternate between hot and cold? A few days on, a few days off?

I guess this is an exercise in patience, but I never expected to be fighting my own body this much as a 21 year old. My roommate here and my mom have mentioned acupuncture as a possible option when I go home, something that I am extremely hesitant to do. But I really want to be able to go hiking and running and do everything that I love to do when I am in Montana. It’s bad enough not being able to feel my best or do the things I want to do here, but in Bozeman it will be ten times worse :(

- - -

On a brighter note, I am headed to Colonia, Uruguay for the weekend tomorrow. Another passport stamp, here we come!

Places I Have Been Mistaken For Being From

1. Italy.
I get this one a lot.

2. Brazil.
Less frequently.

3. Russia.
LITTLE bit harder for me to see! But today someone swore I had a Russian accent...

Every time I get mistaken for being from a country other than the US, I take it as a compliment. Even if it just means I have an accent in a different way. Or that the person is bad at differentiating between accents :P

The Three C's: Club 69, Teatro Colón, y Café Tortoni

A recap of this past weekend, which for me consisted mainly of Thursday night & Sunday:

Thursday night
(I've already discussed what I did during the day on Thursday in my earlier blog post today, but the night of Thursday was different enough to deserve to reside in a different post)

A friend of mine also here for thesis research this summer, but who spent a semester abroad in BA last year, informed us that we could not miss Club 69 – a weekly Thursday drag show at a place called Niceto Club in Palermo, Buenos Aires. So a group of us met up and went to check it out. Here is a look at what we encountered... for those of you who are familiar, it's like the Donkey Show in Cambridge, except the guys are wearing a bit more clothing and makeup ;)



Sunday
Sunday morning bright and early, my roommate Deb and I headed over to Teatro Colón for a free cello show that I had picked up tickets for a couple days earlier. Deb is great by the way – she is a master's student from Albuquerque doing the FIU study abroad program here in Buenos Aires for the month (she's not actually from FIU, sorry mom & Kefhi...), and she is super nice and talkative. The apartment is much different now that she is here!

The two of us went with my friend Julia, incidentally the same friend who recommended the club above. The free tickets that I had gotten were for the "cazuela" section, which is a women-only, standing room-only section of the theater. Luckily the space wasn't too cramped, so we were able to sit down, but it was still one of the more uncomfortable concerts I have experienced in my life. The theater is gorgeous though, as was the music. Hopefully I will make it back to the theater next week for a ballet, this time with an actual seat to sit in :p

Afterwards, Julia took us to the Gran Café Tortoni, which is apparently a notorious tourist locale. It's a coffee shop slash restaurant by day and a tango show by night. We had to wait in line to get in, where I had some pretty delicious hot chocolate and churros.

(picture: the three of us outside the café – me, Julia, Deb)

Afterwards, Deb and I walked around this Portuguese street festival and the Feria San Telmo. I had gone to the fair last weekend, but it was raining and there weren't that many people – not the case this time! The place was packed and very overwhelming, but I managed to buy a couple small things. I also tried choripan (The Wiki page is in Spanish, sorry) for the first time, although apparently it is also common in Chile. It's basically a bunch of sausage and bread. Good, if a bit disgusting...



Yesterday marked a month left for me in BA, and tomorrow marks the halfway point of my time here. I'm keeping kind of close track, can't wait to be back enjoying summer in Montana! But keeping myself busy here for the meantime. Also, a select few of you will shortly be receiving postcards!! Finally found some that I liked well enough to buy. If you don't think you're on my short list (read: mostly close family & penpal), let me know if you would like a postcard from me and I will send one off to you as well :)

- Brianna

Cementerio de Recoleta

Last Thursday, I was heading back from an interview and realized that I was right outside of the cemetery in Recoleta (the part of Buenos Aires where I live). It's known as one of the places you must visit in Buenos Aires, and it was a beautiful sunny day, so I decided to check it out for a couple minutes. There happened to be a tour leaving just 10 minutes later, so I figured it was destiny and spent the next hour and a half learning about the various important people and places in the cemetery.


During the course of the tour, I actually ran in to the Harvard Study Abroad group on a tour of their own. Unlike the Summer Internship Program students, I haven't been spending any time at all with the Study Abroad-ers, so it was fun to see them (although I didn't stop to chat, my group was heading on and I don't really know any of them anyway). The leader of that group is a professor I had my freshman year at Harvard though, Johanna Liander. She didn't know I was in Buenos Aires, so it was fun surprising her! We're going to meet for coffee sometime soon.


We of course stopped by the Duarte family tomb, where Eva Perón is buried. Apparently there can often be a huge line to see it, but it wasn't too bad for us.

I also met a UBA law student on the tour, Victoria. I gave her own of my handy-dandy business cards, and she emailed me later. She was very nice, and I'm hoping to hang out with her some more, because it would be fun to have some Argentine friends here as well :)

The Dollar

Here is one of the blog posts I have promised, on the subject of the US dollar in Argentina. I don’t claim to be an expert on any of this, but I will explain what I do know.

Currently, as of about two months ago, it is illegal to buy or sell US dollars in Argentina. To do anything with dollars, you have to register with AFIP (the national tax agency) with appropriate documentation, and permission to deal with dollars is extremely hard to obtain. The restrictions have been very hard on many people – immigrants in Argentina, foreigners visiting, and native Argentines. I have heard many anecdotes about various issues, but the two I am most familiar with are my personal experience of trying to obtain US dollars here, and the experience of many of the immigrant workers with whom I have been talking.

First, my experience: Before coming to Buenos Aires, I arranged housing through the coordinator that does the housing for the Harvard programs here. Since I am not officially part of any of the Harvard programs in Argentina however, I couldn’t pay through Harvard, I instead had to pay her personally. When I asked the best way to transfer the money to her, the coordinator told me that I should bring the money I owed her in cash, US dollars, when I came down. I felt a little uncomfortable bringing $1550 with me in cash, but didn’t say anything then. As my day of departure got closer, I made the mistake of transferring all of my money to a Montana bank, in anticipation of using my Montana debit card while in Argentina. Upon realizing that I didn’t have $1500 in cash readily available to me in Boston, I figured that it wasn’t a smart thing to do anyway, and decided to get the cash once I got to Argentina.

Once I got to Argentina, the housing coordinator informed me that it was going to be impossible to get US dollars here, because of aforementioned restrictions on the dollar. And she was right. After weeks of trying to find a way to get dollars down here, my parents thought they had finally found a way – open an account at Wells Fargo and wire money to BBVA Banco Frances, where I could pick it up here with my passport and wire transfer number. Ha.

From there began the real saga. When I went to the bank, I was told that I had to have a CDI (clave de identificación, government ID number) in order to be able to get the money that my parents had sent. To get a CDI, I had to go to the AFIP. I went to the AFIP. They told me that I didn’t need a CDI. Went back to the bank. They told me I did. Went back to AFIP. Got forms, but had to have proof of address, which, being here only 8 weeks in total, I did not have. Went to police station. Paid to get proof of address mailed to me. Waited. Went back to AFIP. Discovered that the AFIP for my particular part of the city was located about a million miles away. Went there. Waited for an hour and a half. Got the CDI. Went to bank. Was there for a good 2 ½ hours while three people attempted to arrange getting the money for me. Finally was able to take it out... but only in pesos. Even as a US citizen, the government of Argentina would not allow the money to be taken out in dollars.

Luckily, the coordinator took the money. If she was planning on exchanging it for the black market rate (closer to 6 pesos to a dollar instead of 4.5), she lost out on a bunch of money. But the fact that even US citizens can’t get their hands on dollars is simply ridiculous. The fact that it takes weeks to get the documentation necessary to even take out wired money in pesos is even more ridiculous. All these restrictions have done is cause headaches for countless people and create a booming black market.

For the immigrant workers I have been talking to, the restrictions on the dollar make sending remittances to their home countries very difficult for many. Most seem to prefer to send money in dollars, as the purchasing power is higher, but are unable to anymore. For some, sending money in pesos isn’t even worth doing, so they are in the tough position of being unable to help support their families back home. One lady I talked to is even considering returning if the policies aren’t changed.

So, yes, one thing I would change about Argentina is its stance on the US dollar.

Día de la Bandera

Today, the 20th of June, is Flag Day in Argentina. This didn't mean much to me (as, it seemed, to many Argentines) except that most stores were closed and that I couldn't do interviews. [Orrr if we want to be really honest, more like I had an excuse not to do interviews...]

Instead, I spent the morning at a brunch at the apartment of one of my friends studying abroad here. This table became much, much more full as the time went on! There were tons of people there, way overwhelming as I knew exactly one of them before going... I met another Harvard student who I hadn't ever met but had heard about, some girls visiting from England, the other roommates of my friend, a German study abroad student... and I kinda gave up from there :P I think my friend kind of wanted me to insert myself into a whole new friend group here, but with only 4 1/2 weeks left and my schedule pretty full as it is, I'm just not sure it's worth it slash feasible.

Last night, I went to a birthday celebration for one of the SIP girls, Zuzanna. Below are pictures of her cake and champagne bottle-popping (sorry the picture is a little overexposed, the flash on my phone apparently does not work very well!). Very fun, very yummy.



I will close with a picture I took in downtown Buenos Aires on Sunday. I took the picture because of the protest, but I can't actually remember now what it was for. In the spirit of Flag Day, I'll say that I think the picture sums up BA pretty well – beautiful, but with a lot of room for improvement (how? a future blog post will discuss one way: let people buy US dollars!).



-- Brianna

PS Tomorrow, I will be getting a new host sister here. I'm not really sure what to expect, as my host mom doesn't seem to remember the details very well. I THINK that she is a graduate student at Florida International University taking a course at the University of Buenos Aires (the UBA, pronounced like grape in Spanish, I love saying the name!). I'm looking forward to having another person around the house, and to having another person who actually eats at dinner (my host mom sits with me, but she never eats anything). Had to move all my stuff out of the shower, as I will no longer have the bathroom to myself, but I think it'll be okay :)

Music, Movies, TV, Books

What have I filled my non-thesis time with so far this summer?

Music
Owl City: AKA my getting-ready-in-the-morning music

Tim McGraw: AKA my at-the-gym-music

Evita soundtrack: AKA my constantly-have-stuck-in-my-head-as-I-walk-around-Buenos-Aires music

My summer has been sadly quite music-free however, partially because I have been told that it is inadvisable to walk around wearing headphones on the street, and also because internet music either takes forever to buffer or doesn't play outside of the US; so I have been largely reduced to music that is already in my possession.

Movies/TV
Elefante Blanco
I saw this with a fellow thesis-researcher the first week I was here. Great movie about the slums of Argentina, would highly recommend.

Into the Wild
My cousin Patrick burned me this movie when I was visiting him in Chile, after I mentioned having read the book. Some more thoughts on it below.

Modern Family & Gossip Girl
Pure entertainment :)

Books
Trabajo Doméstico: Un Largo Camino Hacia El Trabajo Decente ed. María Elena Valenzuela
(OIT Chile, I interviewed her assistant while in Santiago)
Well, so this was for my thesis, but I'm including it anyway. Very, very informative and helpful. Definitely the best book I have encountered about current domestic labor and immigration laws in Argentina.

Sin Azúcar (el amor se sirve caliente, la venganza – fría, la amistad – sin maquillaje) by Milena Ivanova
English translation: “Without Sugar (love is best served hot, revenge – cold, friendship – without makeup)". It was pretty much exactly as it sounds.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
I read Into the Wild (also by Krakauer) a couple weeks ago while visiting my aunt and uncle in Chicago. After hearing how much I liked it, my uncle gave me this book – which I have always meant to read, but had never gotten around to. I ended up reading it over the course of my weekend trip to Chile, so my memories of the trip are somewhat strangely intertwined with the experiences on Everest in 1996… Was especially cool to read now, as the step-dad of some of my high school classmates (Conrad Anker, who was mentioned in the book) just recently ascended Everest for the third time this May, first time without oxygen. I read the National Geographic blog about the trip right afterwards, and the two together were great complements.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Am almost done with this – so many classics are available for free on the Kindle!
Might tackle Les Misérables next.

- - -

Two things jump out to me about these lists. First, there are very few Spanish-language sources. In past summers, this was not the case: I kept myself strictly away from all English-language material, only allowing myself to read Animal Farm in English last year in Chile on a day when I was sick and couldn't handle Spanish. This year, however, I have been much more lax with myself. I speak in English with Americans (if they want to), I read English books, I listen to American music, and I haven't watched any Argentine TV since I got here. I think the Spanish immersion method is effective, and was good for me, but this summer I am more concerned with enjoying my summer than sticking to Spanish 100% of the time. Plus, my daily interviews have been better for my Spanish than anything else ever was!

Secondly, although all of these books are quite different – nonfiction essays about immigrant workers in Latin America, a Spanish romance novel, a nonfiction adventure memoir, and a 19th century classic – one thread that happens to bind them together, and that is also quite relevant to myself in my time here, is the theme of loneliness and social isolation (the movie Into the Wild also furthers this theme). Reading about Hester Prynne’s lack of social interactions, about the hours of personal reflection demanded by an ascent of Everest, about the hardships and loneliness of living and working in someone’s home 24 hours a day, 6 days a week (even the descriptions of the pain of divorce in the romance novel)… all have resonated with me particularly strongly given my current situation of solo research in a foreign country. I am currently working on a blog post about my feelings on the subject, so watch out for that in the next few days.

June 17th &18th

...are two important dates that I am missing being in the States for. Happy Fathers Day to my dad in Bozeman today and Happy 19th Birthday to my brother Spencer in Boston tomorrow!


The last time I got to spend these days with them was the summer after my senior year of high school, when I had yet to start traveling every summer. Perhaps next year I will be able to be there to wish them the best in person :)


(picture: the most recent photo we have of us all together. We actually did all meet up in Boston in March, but forgot to commemorate it with a photo :P)