Weekend #2

This weekend was a lot of fun, and I am definitely a lot more comfortable getting around Buenos Aires now. I will just share a few highlights with you...

On Friday night, I joined the Lantos family (whose daughter Irene went to high school with my brother Joseph's girlfriend Victoria) for Kabbalat Shabbat services at their synagogue and dinner at their home. I took the train from Retiro Station, the city's main train station, out to Dr. Lantos' office in Belgrano. This trip is essentially the equivalent of taking Metro North from Grand Central to the Bronx or SEPTA from Center City to Overbrook, and it cost a grand total of 80 centavos...that's roughly equivalent to $0.20. Transportation costs nothing here! The synagouge, in the suburb of Florída, was really similar to the one I went to in Palermo the week before and had a "small" crowd of ~175 people (I was told that there are usually more people, but it was still winter break here). Based on what I have seen here so far, the synagogues in Argentina are much more multigenerational than in the US. There was a pretty even distribution of people of all ages, and the synagogue had lots of educational programs for kids, a hillel house attached to the complex to serve the student population of the northern suburbs (university students here still live at home), and lots of other activity as well. The Lantos family could not have been nicer, and it was great talking to their kids who all attend or did attend UBA (where I will be taking one class this semester).

On Saturday, I ventured out to the suburbs again, but this time by bus. My friends and I decided to go see El Origen (Inception), as it just came out here a few days ago. While we could have gone to see it in a theater about 4 blocks from my apartment, we decided instead to go looking for Argentina's only (I think) Imax theater, located in a gigantic mall called the Norcenter off of the Panamericana expressway. The bus ride took about an hour, mostly winding through the city before getting on the highway. We could have taken the subte to the end of the line and gotten on the bus then for a much quicker trip, but this was a really good chance to see how the neighborhoods in BA transition. There are bus stops located really frequently along the highway that seem really heavily utilized, but I have no idea how they can be safe. These are essentially small concrete strips on the side of a 16+ lane interstate-type highway. Kind of frightening. The mall (which is definitely geared towards people arriving by car) felt very much like an imitation of an upscale mall in the US. I used the word "Argentween" to describe the most common demographic (exactly what it sounds like!), but there were a lot of families, senior citizens around as well. Unfortunately the IMAX was sold out when we got there, but this exploration was definitely not a total loss!

Today, my friends and I went to see the big exposition at La Sociedad Rural (The Rural Society). I wasn't sure what to expect, but it seemed kind of like the Argentine equivalent of a giant county fair. There were warehouses full of cows, sheep, and other animals that had been in contests and had won different awards/been recognized for being the best/biggest (I guess...). There were also vendors selling products from rural parts of argentina as well as vendors marketing their products to Argentina's rural residents (ex--companies that manufacture trucks and farm equipment). There were also a few demonstrations...gaucho-type things, stuff that looked like polo players riding their horses in a more choreographed performance, and something that I didn't understand with horses pulling wagons/carts. It was kind of surprising to walk off a city street and into an area that smelled...well...like a farm, but it was a very cool thing to see.

Classes start tomorrow at Universidad Catolica Argentina and Universidad del Salvador, so I will update later in the week with details about how that is going.

Jacob