First Few Weeks in Buenos Aires

Well, it’s been quite a while since I posted something, so I figured it was time to sit down and get it done. My first few weeks here in Buenos Aires have been busy to say the least. Busy, but very fun. It has been a blast. I have loved getting to know people and making new friends. I’ve enjoyed exploring the city and experiencing what it is like to live in a big city. It’s really the first time that I have ever lived in a city this big before, and it’s pretty exciting for me! Anyways, this post is probably going to be fairly long and have A LOT of pictures in it, but that’s just because I’ve had lots going on that I want to share with you all! The first two weeks were definitely the busiest, because there was a lot going on with IES and the activities that they had planned in addition to the social aspect of those 2 weeks.

When I arrived at the airport in Buenos Aires, I was greeted by some of the IES staff after clearing customs. I took a cab to my homestay with my roommate (who conveniently arrived at around the same time I did). When we got there, Victoria (my host) was waiting for us. She showed us our rooms and we unpacked and got settled. We ate dinner and got to know each other a bit, and then played some cards. The next day, we went down to the IES center and had a city tour of Buenos Aires. Basically, this consisted of us getting into 4 different busses and driving around the city. At some different places, we would get off of the bus and someone would talk to us about the part of the city that we were in. It was a pretty interesting tour, and was the first time that I had an opportunity to meet some other people from the program.

One of the first stops that we made on the tour was at this church which was built in honor of St. Thomas (I think...). Basically, it was the saint who the original settlers believed guided them across the ocean safely. It was a pretty impressive church, so I thought it was worthy of a picture and a place in this blog.

Here I am at the Pink House! This is the White House of Argentina. The color pink came from the Italian influence. It is a very cool building, and you can get surprisingly close without going through any kind of security check. Interesting fact: The president, Cristina Kirchner, actually doesn't live in this building, she only works here. Instead, she lives just outside of the city of Buenos Aires and takes a private helicopter to commute from home to work every day. That's just how they do it in BsAs.

This is right in front of the Pink House. There are 2 reasons that I took this picture. Mainly, I took it because it reminded me a lot of the statue in front of the 5-0 headquarters in Hawaii 5-0. The other reason is because it has the date March 25, 1810 on it. This is the date that Argentina declared its independence from Spain. It was a huge moment in history for them and is very similar to our July 4.

Here's another shot of the Pink House from a little further away. You can kind of see how many people were there (there was a lot). Also, there are a lot of signs/protests that go on in this place. The plaza here is called Plaza de Mayo. Every political protest/demonstration in Argentina (and there are a lot of them) either starts or ends at this plaza.

This area is called Puerto Madero. It is the place where the richest people in Argentina live. One small 2 bedroom apartment in one of these complexes costs about 2-2.5 million USD!

This was just a cool ship in the Puerto Madero area. I think it's a museum, but I just like boats so that's why it made it into this post. 

The next day we were taken to the National History Museum of Argentina. Here we had breakfast and then lots of presentations. Then we had lunch and more presentations. There was a major overload of information during the course of this day. At the same time, there was a good amount of time to meet some more people from the program. It was a pretty good morning/afternoon. After some of the presentations, we got a chance to go on a little walking tour. I only took one picture from this part, because most of the things that we saw weren’t really all that exciting. Even if I did take pictures, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you what the pictures were of. Here is the one I did take though.

While we were walking around, there were some people dancing tango in front of a café. It was pretty cool to see it, especially since I hadn't been here for that long. Anyways, I got a nice action shot of it :)

The next couple days were some of the days that I really got even more of a chance to make friends and meet new people. We had more presentations, visits to partner universities, and visits to museums. Honestly, I didn’t really take pictures from these few days. There wasn’t much to take pictures of from what I did. There was a lot of going to cafes with friends and just socializing. There was a lot of trying to figure out classes, schedule, and where I wanted to take my classes. And at night there was a lot of going out to bars and socializing more. Really during these first few days, I was just trying to meet as many new people as possible and make as many friends as I could. One outing that was quite exciting for me was the first Tuesday night. A large group of IES students went to a bar in the area called Jobs. It was a big place with about 25 pool tables on the first floor. On the second floor they had a couple more pool tables, some ping-pong and foosball tables, and dart boards. Oh yea, and they also had a small archery range upstairs. I know what you’re thinking… “archery range? In a bar? How can that be safe?” The answer to your questions is “Yes. Yes. And it probably isn’t.” But guys I’m in Argentina not the U.S., and things work a little different down here. In addition to all of the stuff they had, there were also table games like Jenga, Four-in-a-Row, and cards. Needless to say, it was a very fun place to be. That Friday night, I went to another exciting place called The Argentine Experience. It’s a restaurant where we became the chefs and had the chance to cook some of our own authentic Argentine food. It was a super fun experience, and I had lots of fun! First, we made some empanadas and learned how to make and fold them. Next, we were given some authentic Argentine steak and finally we made our own alfajores. Those of you who don’t know what an alfajor is, you are missing out on one of the most wonderful things life has to offer. Basically, the alfajor is dulce de leche in between two cookies smothered in chocolate. They are delicious.

Here I am all dressed up as an official Argentine chef! :)

These are my two best friends that I have made down here. In the middle is Fran. He is from Spain. It's really great to hang out with him, because he is one of the few IES students who will talk in Spanish all the time. He's great fun to hang out with, and it's been a blast getting to know him. On the right is Costa. He's from Michigan, and is lots fun as well. He's in both my Spanish and Creative Writing classes (more about these below), and he's also really good at Spanish. Needless to say, it has been awesome hanging out with these guys.

This was my alfajor creation. :) It was quite wonderful.

Finally, here's a picture of the whole group that I went with!

On Sunday (8/4 for those of you who are losing track of what date I’m at now. Also, for those who are interested, in Argentina they would write it as 4/8 since they put the day first. That was kind of confusing at first, since I’m used to it being the other way.) we went to the Estancia Cinacina. An “estancia” is basically a ranch. Here we got a chance to see some “authentic” gaucho style stuff. The reason I put authentic in parentheses is because the people running this ranch were not authentic gauchos. It was more of a tourism kind of thing. Gauchos are like Argentine cowboys. An authentic gaucho is someone who doesn’t really have a home. They traveled around the countryside with their horse and possibly a small herd of cattle. Today, gauchos don’t really exist anymore, because the government viewed them as barbaric and uncivilized. (wow this blog is interesting and informative!) Alright here’s some more pictures:

When we got there, this was the asado that was going on. Later on, we got to eat all of this! As you can probably imagine, I have definitely not been starving here :)

Then we got some entertainment with our food. We were treated to some gaucho music and dancing. The guy was an impressive dancer. The girl was ok.

Then we went outside for a demonstration. Here is how it started. Kind of cool.

Then he did this, and everyone was pretty impressed.

Then some music came on and this happened. I was laughing so hard that I couldn't take pictures of the next part, but I can only describe it as him cuddling with the horse. I don't think it was something that I was supposed to laugh at, but I really couldn't help it.

Regardless of the strange horse show, I got a picture with him :)

Monday night, I went to an awesome drum circle show called La Bomba del Tiempo. Unfortunately, we were misinformed of the start time and showed up pretty late. It was still an awesome show, and I'm definitely planning on going back in the future to see it all the way from the beginning! It was kind of hard to get pictures, but here are some.

I saved my ticket, because why not? :)

Basically these guys were just up there playing all sorts of different percussion instruments and making some really awesome beats. It was super cool!

Then this guy came out and started playing the trumpet to the beat. It was so awesome and he was really good!

On Tuesday, my Spanish class began. It is one of my favorite classes right now. We have 4 people in the class, and the professor is excellent. The very first day, we learned how to make maté (a type of tea drink that is very popular in Argentina) and then shared maté and just had a relaxed chat for the rest of the class. The next class on Thursday, I had to prepare the maté to share with the class, and throughout the class we drank maté. Every class since, we always prepare and share maté during class. It is always interesting and I’ve really been enjoying it. It’s always exciting to be able to look forward to a class. Also on Tuesday (8/6 or 6/8 for those who prefer the Argentine way), we did a walking tour of La Boca. This was a very interesting neighborhood. Check out these pictures and you’ll get what I mean.

This is the stadium for La Boca, one of the two big soccer teams in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, we didn't get to tour the stadium, but I am definitely planning on attending a game or two while I'm here!

These are a couple of pictures from the museum we went to in the neighborhood. It wasn't all that exciting, but these were a couple of the exhibits I thought were kind of cool.

This is La Boca (the mouth) as it used to be the mouth of the river. That's where the neighborhood gets its name from.

Here I go again with those boats. I just love them! I actually got in trouble for taking the first picture here, because apparently pictures inside this museum are prohibited. So for the second one, I was sure to be more sneaky :)

This is the main street of La Boca. You'll notice that all of the buildings are bright and random colors. I'll explain that a little further down.

This is Maradona. He is one of the heroes of Argentina.

This is one of the most popular (tourist) spots in Buenos Aires. Here you can very clearly see the different colored buildings. Why are they all different colors? Well, La Boca is a historically poor area. Paint was expensive, so when boats came into their port, they would take whatever leftover paint was on the boats and that color was what they would use to paint their houses and buildings.

On Wednesday, we went on a graffiti tour in the Colegias area. This was one of the most interesting tours I have been on so far. Graffiti in Buenos Aires has such a different connotation than it does in the U.S. Rather than being gang related or hateful (although there is some of this, it is a very small minority), graffiti actually represents democracy for Argentines. That might seem weird, but what happened is that during the military dictatorship that lasted from 1976 until 1983 if you made graffiti art, you and your family would be taken and tortured or killed. The dictatorship was very strict, very unpredictable, and very bloody. When democracy returned to Argentina, so did graffiti. People saw it as a way that they could freely express themselves again. For them, it symbolized that they were no longer under the oppressive military dictatorship. With that in mind, here are some pictures I took of the graffiti I saw:

This is the symbol of the mothers/grandmothers of the desaparecidos. This is one of my favorite pictures that I have taken so far. I thought that with the cross there and the cloudy sky, it was just the perfect scene. Interesting fact: If you could see what is below this symbol, there is a ton of graffiti. Because everyone has such respect for the mothers/grandmothers of the desaparecidos, nobody will cover their symbols. 

 This was one of the most impressive graffiti art that I saw during the whole tour! The whole mural was done with spray paint cans. It is incredible how talented some people are!

This is just a wall of love, and I thought it was pretty cool.

This is actually the outside wall of a very fancy and expensive restaurant, but you would never know it from looking at this. The wall is completely covered with graffiti, and you can't even see the original wall.

Just some more crazy graffiti art that I saw!

 This is actually one of the most famous graffiti arts in all of Buenos Aires. The artist who made it only used one can of spray paint. It was red. The rest of the picture was made with tar and gasoline. The reason he used those materials is because they were cheaper than the spray paint, and because he wanted to remind himself that he came from the streets. For being drawn with those materials, it is quite impressive.

That Friday (8/9 or 9/8 for those of you who are really feeling Argentine at this point), we had an asado at IES. For those of you who don’t speak Spanish, an asado is what you would call a BBQ. Only this BBQ had homemade Chimichurri sauce. Which is indescribably delicious. I’m not going to explain here what Chimichurri sauce is, but if you’re interested feel free to Google it. On Saturday, I went on a bike tour around Palermo and some of the neat parks in the area. It was a really cool tour, and we had some awesome guides! I don't have pictures from that yet, but they will come up in the next one!

The next week classes started. Here is my final schedule (after a bit of moving around):

Monday – nada (that’s Spanish for nothing)

Tuesday – Creative Writing Workshop (9:30am-11am), Spanish (11am-1pm), Marketing (1:30pm-3pm)

Wednesday – Leadership, Conflict, and Negotiation (11:30am-2:30pm)

Thursday – Creative Writing (same time), Spanish (same time), Marketing (same time), Argentine Literature and the Formation of National Identity (4:30pm-7:30pm)

Friday – nada

For those of you who were paying attention… Yes, I do only have classes 3 days a week, and yes I do have 4 day weekends. Now a little about my classes:

Creative Writing Workshop: This is my favorite class so far. It is with the same professor I have for Spanish (who is awesome!), and like that class, there are only 4 people in this one. It has been lots of fun so far and I get really excited to go to it (which is good, because it is not easy to get up that early in the morning!)

Marketing: This one I just added recently, so I haven’t had much experience with it yet. So far, it has been a pretty good class. It is the only one that I’m taking in English, but it is still an exciting class.

Leadership, Conflict, and Negotiation: This class is one that I am taking at UCES (Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales), which is one of the local partner universities. It has been a little bit challenging, because it is on a very different level than the IES classes are, but it has been a really neat and very interesting class. The dynamic of this class is also very interesting, because the majority of the students in the class are foreign exchange students, but I am the only one from the U.S. There is a pretty good size group from Germany, one from Finland, a couple from Ecuador, one from Colombia, and maybe one or two others. Basically, it makes for an interesting mix.

Argentine Literature: This has been a pretty good class so far. We have only met 3 times (since it’s only once a week), but I like the group of students and I like the professor. It is also pretty fun, because Fran is my TA for this class.

Last weekend, was packed full of fun stuff. On Friday, I went to a cooking class at the Gastronomical Institute of Argentina (the best cooking school in Argentina). It was lots of fun! We made empanadas, desserts, and steak. It was a super cool class to take and I had a great time with it! Here’s some fun pictures from that! :)

Something about using big knives is just really exciting :)

Mixing up the empanada filling!

Meat filling and a vegetarian option. Bet you can guess which one I ate! :)

Some kind of dessert that we made. They had a solid fig jelly on the inside and then were deep fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar. They were pretty tasty when they were done!

Filling the empanadas!

Some of the friends that I did the cooking class with. From left to right: Sheridan, Sam, Me, Willy.

Lots of steak! Woohoo for Argentines and their beef! Loving it :)

My dulce de leche sandwich. :) Gotta love this stuff

At the end I received my "diploma" for completing a course in cooking from the university :)

 On Saturday, we went to San Isidro, which is a town outside of the city of Buenos Aires, but still in the Province of Buenos Aires. We took a little tour around the main square and then had some time to walk through the artisan fair that was going on there. Afterwards, we went and toured a really big house that belonged to an important Argentine family sometime in the past. The outside of the house was pretty impressive and the grounds were beautiful. The inside (where pictures were prohibited) wasn't much to write home about though. Then we went to a café that was right on the river! We were treated to some sweets and some coffee/tea/hot chocolate/submarinos. (Side note: submarinos are wonderful. Basically, the waiter brings you a cup of hot milk with a small bar of chocolate. You put the chocolate into the milk and let the milk melt the chocolate. Then you have your own hot chocolate). Here are some pictures from that outing.

This was an impressive looking cathedral in their main square area. It was beautiful inside and out.

Here's the inside of the cathedral.

One of the views that we had of the river :)

Really cool looking from the outside. Surprisingly boring on the inside.

The view from our table in the café. It was so cool being that close to the river!

We also had a pretty nice view of the skyline of Buenos Aires.

On Sunday (25/8 for those of you really trying to keep up with the dates on this one), we went to Fería de Mataderos. This place was awesome and I cannot wait to go back! It was a HUGE artisan fair with all sorts of cool stuff. Also, there was a big stage with authentic music and dancing. It was lots of fun and in addition to all the crafts, there was some amazing food! It was such a great time! Here's some other cool stuff that I've seen while I've been here:

This is Victoria, my host mother. Just thought you all might be interested in seeing her.

This is the law school of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The whole UBA has over 200,000 students and is completely free to attend. (Interesting fact: all public education is free in Argentina. Even public universities are free. Anyone, including people who aren't Argentines, can take classes at UBA). Students from all over Latin America (and the whole world) come to Buenos Aires to study in this university. It is one of the best (and biggest) universities in Latin America.

This flower is pretty cool. Besides being giant and metal, it used to open and close based on when the sun was rising or setting. It was operated by solar panels. Those broke after some time though, and for a while it was operated by electricity. Then the electricity mysteriously broke on the same day that the guy who designed it died, so they just left it open as a tribute to him.

We passed this guy a couple of times while he was in the process of drawing this picture. Then again when he was done, we walked by. After about a week, when the picture had completely faded away, he redrew it. Kind of interesting, but a pretty good way to spend your morning and make some pesos. The people here sure have creative ways of making money.

Well, that is the update for now. Sorry it was so long, but there has been lots going on. From now on, I’m going to post something every time I take pictures or do something interesting to try and cut down on the length of the posts. It’s a bit too hard when I get this far behind. You should all know that I’ve been thinking about you and missing you. I have been having an amazing time down here and I am truly loving this city. It’s really the first time that I have ever lived in a big city (although I used to think San Jose was big), and it has been such a neat experience. I can't believe it has already been over a month though! The time has flown by! Coming up in life I’ve got some more cultural tours and a trip to Bariloche planned to go skiing with my friend Matt (who goes to SCU). I’m really excited for all of it. Watch out for some more posts coming soon! Love to you all!

-Ryan