Pictures finally!

But first some general observations about Buenos Aires:

1) Any regulations or rules related to driving (including lanes) are optional. If a light is red but no cars are coming, people will simply go (looking beforehand is optional). If lanes shift, cars might not. The intersections by my house actually have no stop signs, no traffic lights, and no signs whatsoever, so it is quite literally a free-for-all. It's really amazing that there aren't more accidents.

2) Porteños very rarely seem to be in a rush. Everything here starts notoriously late (except for the theater, I am told). In New York, everyone walks on the right side of the sidewalk to allow faster passage, but there is no generally accepted side to walk. No one seems to think that they might be in the way, because why would you be in a rush? All cafés here are sit-down (it is impossible to get a cup of coffee to go, but why would you need to multitask?), and restaurants will not bring you the check until you ask for it--they will literally let you sit for hours. This is weird but defintely enjoyable!

3) The word "vegetarian" does not translate. People here assume that it means not eating red meat and will go right ahead offering chicken and fish. This is really surprising, because (based on the Argentine faculty of the study abroad program) there actually appears to be a decent number of vegetarians here.

And now on to the pictures...

This is my room...definitely great accommodations! I have a view looking out over the neighborhood of Recoleta and a balcony that will be great once it warms up.


This one is La Avenida 9 de Julio that cuts right through the middle of town. It's kind of a crazy cross between an interstate highway and a city street:


Pictures like this make sure that everyone in the general vicinity knows you are visiting from the United States. This is taken in front of the Casa Rosada, which is essentially the Argentine equivalent of the White House.


This is a shot of Retiro, which is a neighborhood towards the "microcentro" (essentially downtown Buenos Aires). The main train station is right around the corner from here.


Parts of Buenos Aires really do look like Paris! This was taken in a square in Recoleta, which is one of the nicest/most expensive neighborhoods of the city. There are a lot of boutique hotels and shops all over the place...a really nice section of town!


That's all for now, but I will share some more soon...

I have successfully survived (and enjoyed!) my first weekend here!

I still, however, haven't figured out when people in this city sleep. The basic pattern is for people to go out starting sometime around or after midnight, stay at a bar for a few hours, and head to a boliche (essentially a dance club). The night ends around 6 am if it even ends at all. Apparently everyone is really upset about a new law here where bars stop serving drinks at 5 am, but I am having trouble thinking of any situation where I could possibly be upset about that. I made it through the first step here, but by ~3 am, I was very ready to go to sleep. Hopefully I will get to experience a boliche this coming weekend. I was kind of embarassed by sleeping in so late after having stayed up, so I asked my host mom what time people my age generally wake up here. Her response: "No existe. Ellos comen su almuerzo para el desayuno." (It doesn't exist. They eat their lunch for breakfast.)

I also had a really interesting conversation with her about the appearance of the city. She said that Buenos Aires is always trying to look like a different city. Recoleta and the surrounding area is trying to look like Paris, the area around the Plaza de Mayo in the city center is trying to look like Madrid, and the newly developed district of Puerto Madero by the waterfront is trying to look like Barcelona (it even has a bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava, a really prominent architect from Cataluña). The neighborhood of Palermo SoHo is where much of the city's night life takes place, and nearby Palermo Hollywood was apparently renamed after TV producers started to move to the area. Despite all of this immitation, I would argue that this feels like a pretty "authentic" city with an extremely distinct culture.

On Saturday afternoon, I went with a group of students to the neighborhood of San Telmo. This area is just south of the city center and has a lot of the more colonial architecture, although it felt a lot different than what I think of as colonial architecture. One of the Spanish professors descriped this area as "un barrio muy bohémia" (a very bohemian neighborhood), and I definitely got that sense walking around. I ate dinner at a very typical parilla (I think the best way to translate this would be steakhouse, but it is much less formal) and was able to enjoy some olive oil-drenched ñoqis (gnocci) while my friends chowed down on steaks that would cost a lot more than $9 in the United States.

One major difference between restaurants in the US and Argentina is that there is a charge for any beverage. Even though the water is drinkable here in Buenos Aires, restaurants will not serve tap water and will charge for bottled water. You also have to specify "agua" or "agua con gas" (sparkling water) pretty much everywhere.

That's it for now, but I promise to post some pictures of my apartment, my neighborhood, and my walk in San Telmo very soon!

Jacob

The past few days have been pretty busy with orientation (which is really exhausting), but I have gotten a chance to explore a little bit of the city, especially Recoleta (the neighborhood around the school where orientation is being held. It is really beautiful, makes me feel like I am actually in Europe and not South America, and seems to be pretty pricey relative to the rest of the city. I will post some pictures of that soon.

We are beginning to think about selecting classes, which will be pretty difficult since everything is subject to change and we might show up to class only to realize that we can't understand the professor and need to switch to a different class. This is pretty frustrating for someone who needs to get a lot of specific credits here! To complicate things more, we are able to take classes at Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Universidad de Salvador, Universidad Católica Argentina, and classes offered by the IFSA Butler program. These classes are located all over the city, and it could take as much as an hour to travel between two locations. We also have had a few hours each day of Spanish instruction and were taught today how to use "vos". For those of you who have taken Spanish before, vos replaces tú as the informal version of the singular second person. Instead of saying "¿De dónde eres?" (Where are you from?), someone from Buenos Aires would say "De dónde sos?". Most forms aren't that different, but it was a little confusing at first.

The other kids from this program and I have been eating in cafés a lot during the day. Most of these are about the same size as American coffee shops, but they all have sit-down service with waiters and heavier food than a Starbucks or something similar. These are still less formal than most actual restaurants, though, and it seems like people don't really eat large meals here--the most I have seen is breakfast or a light lunch. A lot of them also close on the early side, which seems kind of strange for a city that stays up so late (most people don't eat dinner unitl at least 9:00 here).

Tonight I went to a synagogue in my neighborhood that the parents of one of Victoria's high school friends recommended, which ended up being pretty cool. The building was really unassuming on the outside (was unmarked, had no windows, etc.), but there was a lot of security outside. I was actually approached by a security guard on the opposite side of the street while looking at the building and had to ask him if that was the synagogue. Before leading me across the street and inside, I had to answer about 5 minutes of questions about what I was doing in Argentina, let him search my bag, and show him my drivers license and student id (though he originally wanted my passport). I was really shocked by how much security there was to get into this building. The service itself was interesting to see, and it felt a lot like I imagine Bnai Jeshurun was in the early 1990s--it is definitely easy to see how influenced that congregation is by the Argentine jewish community. The service pretty much followed a traditional liturgy but skipped around a fair amount with no announcement or change in the music (it was accompanied by a piano, guitar, and drums and led by two cantors and a rabbi). There was also a lot of responsive reading in Spanish, which was often acompanied by some really cheesy background music by an "organ" or "accordian" (aka the electric keyboard). Definitely an interesting and positive first impression of the Jewish community here in Buenos Aires.

Now I'm off to see the Buenos Aires nightlife for the first time--more to come soon!

¡El Primer Día!

So I have a few minutes and figured I would give my first update, starting from the beginning:

I left Charleston early yesterday morning, and the flight down to Buenos Aires was almost entirely Argentines, even though it was an American Airline. I guess there are just fewer Americans that visit this time of year (which makes sense, since it's the middle of winter here). Hearing (and not understanding) the announcements in Spanish without having them translated into English probably qualifies as my first "what have I gotten myself into" moment. The long flight was made more entertaining by the pilot's poor attempt at making announcements in spanish and the section of the plane that looked like the opening scene of Real Housewives of Buenos Aires (there was a very high plastic surgery per capita rate). I also learned that Argentina uses the metric system (when I realized that we were not going 120 mph on the way from the airport).

I arrived at my host mother's apartment and was greeted in the lobby with an embrace and kisses on both cheeks (which seems to be typical, despite not having met her before). Once upstairs, I received the tour of the apartment. The central area has a small living room, kitchen, and dining room (which appears to be carved out of a balcony, kind of like a sunroom), and their is one bedroom on either side. I have my own bathroom and balcony (with a view of the area from 9 floors up...should be nice once it gets warmer!). My host mother (or so I thought...) insisted on feeding me despite my lack of hunger. When I referred to her as Lilia (the name of the host mother I was assigned), she acted surprised and emphatically stated "¡No soy Lilia!" After about a minute of dialogue in broken Spanish (mine) and broken English (hers), I was able to understand that Lilia was at dinner to celebrate her mother's 80th birthday and asked her friend to be there when I arrived. (Yes, in Argentina 80 year olds are still at dinner past midnight to celebrate their birthdays)

Orientation began this morning, and Lilia brought me to the program site (primarily to teach me how to use the bus). The colectivo (bus) seems to run about every 2 minutes on this particular street (which is pretty good!), but the system seems kind of complicated. The program gave us a guide for the bus that has maps of Buenos Aires (split up into about 30 pages), and each map is divided into 24 sections with a grid. There is a corresponding table to go with each map showing which bus routes (they are numbered) go into that section of the grid. Once you find your originating point and destination, you can compare the numbers and see if any routes happen to connect where you need to travel. If there is a common number in those two, then it means that you might be able to travel by bus (but you need to check the list of the streets that the bus travels down...in the back of this guide. Inbound and outbound buses take different routes, so the map information could be misleading). There is also not a great form of payment for the bus...you tell the bus driver how far you are going, and he presses a button to set your fare, but they only accept monedas (coins) and no cash. This means that stores hate giving change and set prices to avoid having to do just that. It's hard to complain, though, as my ride each way today was the equivalent of about $0.30. I am interested to try the subte (subway) as well, but people generally seem to think that the bus is more convenient.

Before leaving the house this morning, I put on a sweater and a fleece (which I figured were appropriate for this mild winter). My host mother saw me and said something along the lines of "That's all you are wearing?! You are going to freeze to death!" I switched out my fleece for a heavy coat, and she put on her gigantic fur overcoat, hat, scarf, and gloves, and we ventured downstairs to brave the 55 degree temperatures. Not a joke. People here apparently hate cold weather (or what passes for cold weather), becuase most of the other host mothers dropping off their kids on the first day of school were also dressed the same. I think it did go down into the 30s for a few days in the past week, but this is certainly a much more mild winter than I was expecting.

At lunch today, I had my first "you're a vegetarian and decided to go to Argentina?" moment. I chose the only non-salad item on the menu that did not contain beef, the grilled provolone. This section of the menu contained pasta and sandwiches, so I was expecting something along those lines, but the menu was quite literal. I was certainly surprised when the waitress handed me a giant plate of melted cheese (which had been grilled with spices, a few vegetables, etc.). Also hard to complain here, as this sit-down meal at a decent restaurant set me back a whopping 24 pesos (about $6).

More to come soon--stay tuned and be in touch!

Jacob