Yo vivé en Recoleta, Buenos Aires por el mes pasado con Susanne Singer, Sarah Meany y Señora Ana Gallardo en apartamento de Ana. Hay cuatro cuartos de baño, tres dormitorios, una cocina, un comedor, una oficina y una sala de familia su apartamento. Tengo mi propio cuarto y Sarah y Susanne comparten un cuarto. Mi cuarto también tiene un balcón con una vista hermosa de la calle de la ciudad.
Mi Cuarto
La Vista de Mi Cuarto
Usualmente, Ana vive soló porque su marido se murió hace dos años, y sus niños se casaron y se mudaron. Su hijo vive cerca de Recoleta y ella visita a sus nietos a menudo. Ana era profesor en una universidad durante muchos años. Enseñó la literatura. Su marido era un famoso poeta. Su apartamento tiene muchos libros. Ahora está jubilado, pero ella pasa mucho tiempo con sus amigos. Ella le encanta ir a museos y al cine. Ella nos cocina cena cada noche. Ella hace generalmente muchas papas y pan, y algún tipo de carne.
El Tango es un baile hermoso y seductor. Es interesante porque originalmente fue un baile entre dos hombres. Sin embargo, el baile fue menos seductor y más como un deporte.El tango originó en Argentina, cerca de Rio de la Plata. Es una combinación de Europea y la cultura africana. Es el baile nacional de Argentina y el asunto de orgullo para las personas de Argentina. Fuimos un concierto de tango en jueves pasado. El teatro estaba muy lujoso y el concierto incluyó tres platas y vino y agua. Para un aperitivo yo comí salmón, para una comida comí pollo y papas y para el postre yo comí helado con dulce de leche.
Todo fue delicioso y estuve muy llena después de todo eso. El concierto misma fue diferente de lo que esperé. Fue más como un juego que bailando sólo. Había poco complots y temas por fuera su baile y muchos cambios de disfraz y fuera cambios de ritmo. ¡Había aún una parte donde un hombre bailaba con escobas! Fue muy diferente.
Fuimos a mucho lugares en Argentina. En el fin de semana pasado, fuimos a Mendoza. Mendoza es una ciudad hermosa y divertida. Mucho vino se hace en Mendoza. Entonces el vino de Mendoza es rico y delicioso. Fuimos a viña y probamos tipos diferentes de vino. Usualmente, no me gusta vino rojo pero me gusta Malbec. Malbec es un vino rojo de Argentina. Fuimos a las montañas también. Montamos a caballos y no me gustan este parte de la excursión. Después del almuerzo, fuimos entre los Andes. La vista de los Andes fue hermosa.
El Parque de San Martín en Mendoza
Mi Caballo, llamdo Alegre
Nuestra otra excursión fue ir a Iguazú. Es muy calor y o soleado en Iguazú porque es en la selva tropical. Vimos monos y tucanes mientras caminamos en la selva tropical. Vimos las catarateas también. Las cataratas estaba lindísimas. Me encantan las cataratas. En nuestro hotel en Iguazú estaba una piscina. Me gusta tocar el sol y nadar. La comida de Iguazú due deliciosa pero caro también. Me encantan las excursións.
The next day in Mendoza we went to San Martin Park in the morning and walked around. It was full of beautiful fountains, gardens, and lakes. In the afternoon, we went wine tasting. I was obviously very excited for this. However, the tours turned out to be a little boring, plus it was extremely hot that day and that didn't help matters. The actual wine tasting part was fun. We tried Malbec, a traditional Argentinean red wine, it was very good. I usually am more of a white wine person, but I could make an exception for Malbec.
The day after that we went hiking and horseback riding in the mountains. The hiking part I loved! The horseback riding was a different story. You see I had a bad experience on a horse before when it started to actually gallop and I had no idea what I was doing and I was terrified. So I wasn't very excited to begin with, and then I ended up on the horse with the shaky back legs who slipped half way up and down the mountains. It wasn't fun.
Now that I am officially a twenty-one year old, I feel that it is safe to admit that I love wine. The wine that I am used to drinking often costs less than twenty dollars and comes from a box. Therefore, when I heard we were going to wine country, I was very excited. For the first time in my life, I was early for the airport. The flight was quick and simple and the view of the Andes mountain from above was spectacular. As soon as we arrived, we were asked if we wanted to participate in an adventurous excursion. I chose white water rafting because I had already gone ziplining this trip and I don't have the guts to go paragliding.
I'm so glad I decided that because it was the time of my life. The instructors were absolutely out of their mind and the six of us girls weren't the best paddlers in the world. Even the ride to and from the white rafting place was beautiul. We all couldn't stop staring at it. It's a shame they don't have a view like that anywhere in america.
Most of the time I have at least a vague idea of what the people here are saying, but there have definitely been some instances where the language barrier caused some confusion. For example, last monday both of my classes were canceled because my teacher wasn't feeling well, so my friend Jackie and I decided to venture to a huge public pool that one of her friends had heard about. Jackie asked her house mom and found out it's only a bus ride away. So we met Monday morning at the bus stop and waited for the 37 bus to arrive. Luckily, it pulled up within 5 minutes. Jackie climbed up the bus steps and asked the bus driver "vas a Parque Norte?" and he replied "no" and slammed the door shut almost before Jackie could even hop off. That was a little disheartening, but we continued to get on each 37 bus that pulled up and asked every one if they were headed to our desired location. Finally, one of the bus drivers said they were headed there. We scurried on the bus so fast that we forgot to stop at the front and pay, no one said anything though, so we got a free ride to the pool.
Once arriving at the pool, we were expecting to just relax and take in some sun. We didn't realize there was a whole process you had to go through before you could enter the actual pool itself. Parque Norte is actually a huge public place with tennis courts, soccer fields, pools, restaurants, etc. The first couple pools we tried to enter were strictly for children or camps or private parties. Eventually, we stumbled across the main entrance to the pool. When we tried to enter the woman rambled something in the least-comprehensible spanish I have ever heard in my life. We asked her to repeat it a few time but she didn't slow down or change any of her words so it wasn't very helpful. Finally Jackie said she understood and we walked away. "I have no idea what she said..something about going to the middle pool" Jackie informed me. I was confused because she insisted that she had heard the word "medio" and I hadn't heard her say that word at all. After a few jumbled spanglish conversations with other guests we came to the conclusion that she said "medico" and we found a building that also said medico and walked in. We were immediately creeped out. We wondered around in an all white room looking for a sign of life. Then we turned the corner and there were dressing rooms with "doctors" in them and Jackie and I were quickly ushered into different dressing rooms. We had no idea what was going on. It was a struggle but they managed to explain to us via hand gestures that they needed to check our hair (presumably for lice) and then they looked under my arms and between my toes. I'm not really sure what they were looking for with the second parts but apparently we passed the test and we were given a pink pass to enter the pool.
These struggles don't even include the time we rode the wrong bus for an hour and a half before we realized it was the wrong bus, or the time we got locked in our apartment/stuck in the elevator for 45 minutes. I'll save those stories for another day.
A mí me gusta la comida en Buenos Aires. Sin embargo, no me gusta bistec, pero encontré otro tipos de comida que quiero. Yo como muchas verduras y pescos. La gente de Argentina comen mucho bistec y papas y toman mucho vino y agua con gas. Yo tomo agua sin gas usualmente y refrescos a veces.
Yo como pan y mantequilla para mi desayuno pero el pan es muy pequeño y yo siempre estaba hambre después del desayuno. Para almuerzo, you como un empanada usualmente. Mi favorito tipe de empanada es jamón y queso. (Argentina tiene mucho cosas con jamón y queso.) A mí me gusta empanadas con tomate, queso y albahaca también. A veces, yo como una ensalda o una pizza para almuerzo.
empanadas<3
mi desayuno
Mi “madre de Argentina” prepara la cena todas las noches. Ella generalmente hace algo con carne, y muchas papas, las zanahorias y los tomates. Por un gran parte del tiempo a mí me gusta la comida que ella prepara pero yo nunca como “suficiente” y se enfada.
Buenos Aires es una ciudad muy interesante. Cada parte de la ciudad es muy diferente. Partes seguros de la ciudad son moderno y hermoso. Mientras, otros partes son pobre y tienen muchas personas en pobreza. El primer dia en Buenos Aires, fuimos a La Boca. La Boca es una vecindario con muchas colores brillantes y arte. Había bailarinas, los pintores y los músicos en cada calle. Me encanta La Boca. Buenos Aires tiene muchas tiendas de las ropas. A mí me gusta comprar las ropas, especialmante en Buenos Aires por que todo es muy barato. Yo compré un vestido lindo para sólo setenta pesos. Esto es fabulouso! Buenos Aires tiene muchos arboles y parques. Hay muchos restaurantes, los cafés y las tiendas de helados también. Todos permanecen abren hasta acerca de 2 de la mañana. Yo no sé cuando personas duermen en Buenos Aires porque siempre hay personas caminando en los calles a última hora de la noche.
Last weekend, we had an excursion to El Tigre, a town in Argentina. The town is located on the Paraña Delta and it is named after the jaguars that used to reside there. We took a tour down the Delta to get a taste of the local lackadaisical life on the river. It was wonderful. There are lovely little cabanas along the river, each complete with their own dock and name for their house. When the residents receive mail, the letters must be addressed to the name of the house.
One of the Names of the Houses
Transportation is solely provided by boats. There are taxi-boats, mail-boats, school-boats, and even grocery store boats. If you need groceries, you leave a white flag out on your dock so that the boat knows to stop at your house. A fact that I found extremely interesting, imagine shopping for your groceries on a boat in the middle of a river. It's a very different life-style.
Life on the river is simple. It is a place where many people go for vacation and/or retirement. Our tour guide said that houses are very inexpensive, but that maintenance is very expensive.
We had four different excursions this week. The first trip was to the colorful town of La Boca, which I discussed in my previous blog. The next was to the infamous Recoleta Cemetery where Evita Peron is buried. The cemetery was not what I expected, it was more like a town than a cemetery. There were rows and rows of elaborate mausoleums for all of the wealthy and important families of Buenos Aires. Some of the mausoleums were decorated with personal belongings and photographs of the people buried inside, while others had intricate statues and sculptures to represent their life and/or their death. For example, certain symbols, like a cracked column, indicate that the person died young, before their time. Other sculptures depicted tragic scenes of a mother grieving her baby, or a soldier killed in action. It was actually a beautiful place, with ivy overgrowing the tombs and gorgeous stained glass windows in some of the mausoleums.
Above is a picture of a tomb I described earlier where a mother is depicted as mourning her baby. She is crying over a cradle while an angel carries her baby up to heaven. It his hard to see from this picture but there is also a broken column carved into this grave.
One aspect of the cemetery that I found especially surprising was how open the graves of the famous people were. The graves of a lot of ex-presidents are in this cemetery and anyone can walk right up to them and take a look. It seems like it would be easy to vandalize these graves, and it was shocking because these kind of graves are much more guarded in the United States.
The mausoleum of Evita was surprisingly small and plain. I was expecting a great statue in her memory, but there was none. Her grave is located down a narrow corridor and isn't really anything special. However, it is definitely a tourist attraction and we had to wait in line to look at it.
Hubo dos paradas en mi viajae a Argentina. La primera parada fue en Perú, después en Chile y finalmente en Buenos Aires. Elprimer vuelo duró por mucho tiempo, perodormítodo el tiempo. Elvuelofuebueno, yoestabacontenta. Cada persona tenía su propiatelevisiónpara cada personaylas películaseran nuevasyagradables. La comidaeradeliciosa, especialmente la cena. Para la cena yo comí pollo teriyaki con arroz. Para el desayuno yo comí un sándwich de queso y agua sin gas. Para almuerzo yo comí otro sándwich y yo probé un poco de vino blanco. Mi sándwich fue mal pero el vino fue muy bueno. Viajé por un día completo para llegaraArgentinayluegotuve quetomar un autobusa BuenosAires. Yo estaba muy muy cansada. Fue un día muy largo. Sin embargo, volar sobre los montañas de Andes era muy hermosa y toméfotosmuy lindas.
Buenos Aires is one of the most diverse cities I’ve ever been to. Every time you turn a corner there is a different type of community. It ranges from some of the most upscale, gorgeous mansions that I’ve ever seen to a slum city, complete with babies sitting in windows and splashing naked in a tiny inflatable pool in the middle of the sidewalk. It reminds me of a mix of Philly, New York, and Washington D.C. It reminds me of Philly because it is the place where the declaration was created and there are tons of monuments representing that fact. Also, the older parts of Buenos Aires have cobblestone streets and tiny cafes that remind me of some parts of Philly. The streets lined with luxurious shops remind me of New York, especially the gigantic intersection that kind of resembles Times Square. However, it is also like D.C. because it is the capital of Argentina and includes all the Embassies and other types of government housing.
However, there are other aspects of the city that are not comparable to cities in America. For example, there are stray dogs and cats everywhere, and even the domestic dogs are rarely on leashes and seem to use the bathroom where ever and when ever they please, which can make walking a tricky task. There are also beautiful parks and exotic trees, including palm trees, everywhere. It makes the city seem more classic and natural.
The men here are much more aggressive than American men. They don't have spacial boundaries, or any problem keeping EXTREMELY uncomfortable eye contact for excessive amounts of time. They WILL whistle at you from across the street for the entire time it takes you to walk a block, and they WILL stop their moped in the middle of the street/traffic just to say "Buenos Dias Senorita!" Last but not least, there is nothing even close to La Boca in the states. It is a beautiful place dripping with culture and art. There are tango dancers and musicians and artists lining the street and the colors are so vivid and bright, it is breath taking and unlike any town I have ever imagined. What is so interesting about La Boca is that it originated because of all the poor immigrants that came to Argentina. They would enter the port that was shaped like a mouth (hence, LA Boca) and move into these tiny one room homes with a gigantic patio in between all of the rooms. These patios were shared by many families, from a variety of countries. This is where the tango originated. Argentina is the true melting pot, everyone's customs and traditions were blended together to form a truly unique Argentinean way.
Interestingly enough, the tango was originally a dance between two men. It was less seductive then and involved more kicks. It was thought of as a manly competition, almost like a sport. Once women were added to the dance it became much more sensual. Here are some pictures I took while in La Boca. I also took a video which I will add once I figure out how to upload it onto my computer :)
