My seventh week here has been extremely great, and I’m starting to think about how weird it is that I have to go home soon. I’ve been living in a residency with around 35-40 other people who are mostly from Spanish speaking countries. I have three roommates right now, and we all share the same room. I sleep on the top bunk. Needless to say my exposure to Spanish has been pretty intense. I also have been studying the language five hours a day, five days a week. It’s insane how much better my Spanish abilities are since I’ve come here. I wish I could stay here for just a few months more to become more fluent and make fewer errors when I’m trying to speak the language.

One aspect about living in Buenos Aires that fascinates me is the variety of reactions I get from strangers that I talk to when they realize that I can’t speak Spanish fluently. Porteños are used to coming into contact with foreigners, but most of the people they meet can already speak Spanish. Some people underestimate how much Spanish I know and they freak out when they think it will be impossible to communicate with me. Some of my friends overestimate how much Spanish I know and they end up talked way to quickly about topics that are way over my head in Spanish. In short, I’ve become really comfortable talking to people in Spanish even though it isn’t perfect and my accent isn’t that great. It’s been fun trying to trick Spanish speakers that I understand what they are saying to me, even though, in reality, I only understood a couple of words that they said.

This week was really fun because CIS took us on a trip to an estancia! An estancia is basically an Argentina version of what we in the US call a ranch. I got to ride a horse, eat authentic food while watching people dance the tango and play local music. Overall it was an amazing experience! I also loved that I had my own room with a queen sized bed. There was really good internet there too which is crazy.

The house on the left is giant and very rustic looking on the inside. There was another house on the estancia where people could sleep that was equally nice.

I got to take part in a giant maté circle at the estancia

This was our entertainment while we enjoyed a six course meal included 4 different types of bbq style meats

The horses knew to follow the leader.

There was a show involving this guy demonstrating how they train the horses by dominating them and getting them to be comfortable with human contact.

The last few weeks have been extremely busy, but I have caught my second cold since I have been here so I feel like this is the best time to write about what I have been doing for the past two weeks. Now that I have gotten my second cold here, I have learned why Argentinians (Porteños) always carry around and use hand sanitizer. You are constantly touching germy things like a hand rail on the subway or bus. Plus, most of the foods here are eaten with your hands such as the media luna or empanada.

On Saturday and Sunday during week 6, I got to visit a city called Tigre which is a famous and heavily populated area of Buenos Aires. It takes about two hours to get there from where I live by using public transportation, and the crowds on the bus and on the train are ridiculous on the weekends.

I have never taken the train in Buenos Aires and that in itself was an experience. The train is frustratingly slow and makes several stops on the way to Tigre. Hundreds of people take the train on the weekends and it is nearly impossible to get comfortable and find a good seat. At the beginning, the train drives by the slums of Buenos Aires which look like an area where a severe earthquake hit, only there are actually people living in these destroyed buildings. You know people live there because there are clothes hanging on wires in the abandoned, destroyed housing.

When we finally got to Tigre, we had a tour guide and we got to take a boat around the city. Tigre is the name of a river the flows around the city, and we were able to take a tourist boat that pointed out the attractions of the city. There are a lot of people that do recreational activities like rowing and canoeing on the lake, which is weird because of how cold it is right now in Buenos Aires.

This is the tour boat we went on

A nice view towards Tigre

Tigre is also home to one of the biggest amusement parks in South America (which in reality isn’t that big). I don’t know if I’d actually ride on any of the rides because I’ve seen some reports of ride failure, not at this amusement park, but in Rosario, Argentina recently.

Tigre is also home to several mercados selling all kinds of random trinkets, clothing, toys and other souvenirs. It is definitely a cool place to go on the weekend because it has water sports, local food, souvenirs and it’s bursting with people. We were also able to attend a maté museum before leaving.

Maté is a huge part of the culture here. You can’t talk about BA without mentioning how obsessive they are with their Maté tradition. I’m pretty sure most people have seen Yerba Maté in stores in the US and I had heard of it before I came here, but they maté here is more fresh and there are various rules and traditions that go along with drinking maté. It’s meant to be shared with a group of people and it’s a very communal activity.

Basically there is a cup or container that they call “maté” and the leaves they put in the cup are called Yerba. The cup is filled with 3/4 maté and the rest is filled with hot water. The resulting yerba/water mix is meant to be drank with a metal straw with little holes on the end to filter the yerba particles.

One person is in charge of filling up the maté cup with hot water, and it generally only takes a minute or so per person to drink the maté. When the person in charge gives you the maté, you have to drink ALL of it. You don’t pass it to the person next to you when you’re done. You give it back to the person with the thermos of hot water in charge of refilling the maté. I like the taste of maté but it has an extremely strong flavor the first time you drink it so it takes awhile to get used to. 

This is my second try drinking mate. I think I’m addicted!

When I landed in Buenos Aires, I was lucky enough to have been able to connect with three other study abroad students who were equally confused as to what to do after we landed. Annoyingly stressful and worrying thoughts kept popping into my head while I was waiting in the extremely long line to get my passport stamped and to get through customs like, “Was I supposed to recheck my luggage when I transferred in Texas? Was I supposed to pick up my luggage before waiting in line to get through customs? What do I do if CIS is not here to pick me up and I have no phone?” Luckily for me, none of these worries ended up being a problem for me and I was able to easily find my luggage and my ride to my residency.

The long long line of people trying to get into Argentina from the United States.

Being driven through the streets of Argentina was surreal, and I was way too tired to be able to process the fact that I was in a strange land far away from home. My mind kept trying to make comparisons to places I have been before in the United States to these new places and images I was observing while being driven through Buenos Aires. The grey skies and cold weather reminded me of Oregon. Being an Oregon native, I am accustomed to seeing stores in all Spanish. This kept me from feeling too odd while observing a city that only speaks and operates in Spanish.

This statue is right next to where I live. I use it as a reference point to know when to get off the bus on my way home from school.

After being being dropped off at my residency and taking a long nap, my CIS advisor took me and another CIS student on a tour around the residence area. One thing I noticed while on my walk is that Buenos Aires does not feel like a extremely foreign country on the outside. The buildings, architecture, clothing, and advertisements are very similar to the western culture that I am used to. It wasn’t until I tried ordering food by myself that I truly felt like an outsider to the culture.

Me and Leah having dinner at a really nice restaurante in BA. This was my first Argentine meal.

One thing that really amuses me is how much culture in the United States has become infused with the culture in Buenos Aires, especially in terms of US entertainment. There are many US brands, fast food, TV shows and movies here. I was in a fancy bakery the other day and they we playing the song “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio. I was hanging out at a big billiards/bar here and 90% of the songs that they played were current pop hits and a few 80s and 90s hits as well. One of the bars that we walked by had a cover band that were doing several covers of famous songs from the US. It’s interesting how far away from home US culture has spread.

Another interesting event that happened to me was that I was able to make friends with people from a different study abroad program in the US. My first or second day here, I was able to join along with student from their program for a guided tour of a very nice Catholic church as well as one of the nicest graveyards in the entire world. The graveyard tour was definitely the highlight of my trip so far because I was able to learn about the history of all of the famous Argentine figures that were buried there (such as Evita) and I also got to observe the immaculate sculptures and art that went in to making the mausoleums that these Argentines were buried in.

Glimpse of just of few of the immaculate mausoleums that we got to see.

Picture of the pope inside of a Catholic church

This what the exit of the graveyard looked like.

The only thing that has frightened me about being here so far is that I have been repeatedly told to be careful about valuable electronics such as cameras, phones and computers. This has made me wary to use my phone to take pictures. I also brought a non-digital 35mm camera, but I’m afraid to use this camera too in case someone mistakes it for a nice camera. It also makes me look more like a tourist.

I am looking forward to the coming week and will hopefully have many more stories and pictures to share on next week’s blog!