It’s high time to update this blog on my life. Especially since about a week ago I passed the “One month left in Buenos Aires” mark. Insane, yo. This blog won’t include anything super intense, but still has pictures from a solo trip I took last Friday to the end of a subway line.
I’m gonna start with what’s up in my classes. Things are good and bad. In all honesty, I have a big chunk of work remaining. But I’ve been telling people, justly, that it’s very encouraging because I can see the end of it. Final in my UCA class in a few weeks (most scary), final in Oral Production and Comprehension class and a dance test Monday after this coming one in Tango class. The only thing in there that’s scary is the UCA final, because I did not do well on the midterm at all. Not at all. So I gotta bust it out if I want a decent grade…and it’s an oral exam. Which means you go in there, sit down, and they (the professors) ask you a series of questions about the history of Argentina. I’ve read a few articles about the extreme amount of stress students experience when preparing for these sorts of exams…and those are students who natively speak the language. I’m praying for an articulate day when I go in to be tested and good study habits until then. I’ll be done with nearly all of my classes after the first week of July. I’ll still have that test in the UCA still…but I’m editing this before posting it and I got good news about the UCA final. The grade in the class is based solely on the final, so I have a chance to do much better than I thought…the bad grade midterm/partial doesn’t mean anything! Except it is an indication for how the final will be. I have a lot of studying to do, but I chose the second date to take the final, the 13th (could have also taken it the 6th). Other than that test, the only thing remaining will be my Tango class at the cultural center after this Thursday and the final plus one more meeting afterwards of my Oral Production and Comprehension class (which won‘t have any homework I don‘t think).
On Tuesday I turned in my final paper for my Argentine Fiction class. Nothing special, pretty late minute paper, and I got my first final grade. I don’t know what it translates into in the A through F system for sure yet so I can’t share it :P. And yesterday I gave my presentation for that Oral Production and Comprehension class and it went really well. I prepared it well into the night, sleeping about 3 hours that night…but it went really well and I think I got a good grade. It wasn’t hard and I didn’t have really any major nervousness. It was just really chill. So that’s taken care of.
Highlights of the last few weeks:
-Getting a good grade on a paper for fiction class, getting asked to bring in another copy of my first paper because the teacher wants to include part of it in an article he’s writing,
-Acing a presentation
-Tossing a Frisbee around en los bosques de Palermo with friends (It’s fun to be the only person with Ultimate Frisbee experience…haha)
-Church service on a Saturday night at a church I’d never been to. It was incredibly intense, overwhelming, but a really good experience.
-Two Friday nights in a row now of Casa Amistad, a small group with my church. We eat pizza or empanadas, drink soda, eat argentine candies (OH YEAH!), watch movies on TV, and when we’re done eating and everything we watch a video from the pastor with a message and discuss it. Finish with prayer. Super good.
-One more Friday meeting with the same two girls that I met with before, in my program. Reading, prayer, support, gooooood. Hugs.
-Cappuccino a la italiana at Bar la Poesía (Favorite, 2 blocks away, actually a Café not really a bar)…not a big coffee fan, but it was YUMMY. And a few hours later I got a nice bottled coke. It was a solo reading/study session that lasted many hours and was quite productive. Good way to spend a Wednesday.
-Slightly improving my sleep schedule – more on that later. Managed to get to bed by 12:30 one night though! Wild!
-Getting a CD from a friend that works in the corner hamburguesa place. It’s Cumbia music, which he says is MUCH better than música yanki (Yankee, pronounced SH-ank-ee), and although the lyrics are basura (trash, his words), the music is fun and makes you dance. He’s correct, haha. Not sure on the lyrics yet, but this band is hilarious. They’re called De La Calle, and in EVERY song on this CD (although I’ve only heard 14 of 18) they say the name of their band at least twice, in different parts of the song. They’re either full of themselves or trying REALLY hard to be noticed.
-Last music group meeting. Fun, worth it, learned a bit of percussion, really relaxing. I’ll miss you dudes and playing music together!
-Getting together with friends to eat sandwiches of banana, peanut butter, and honey. SO GOOD. BIG SUCCESS.
So last Friday I had 0 plans for the day, until the Casa Amistad thing that doesn’t begin until 21:30. Sooooo I randomly decided to hop on the E line, the subte, and take it to the very end since I’d never been there. I ended in Flores, a barrio of Buenos Aires known for many Peruvian inhabitants (of which I have heard terrible accusations about them all being thieves, etc, hrm…). I half wanted to find Peruvian food, which is supposedly spicy and good, but since I went without planning anything I ended up just wandering, taking pictures.
I didn’t know why Flores was called Flores when I went. At one point I came to a road. I followed the road, wondering what was inside the big wall, thinking it was a big park (my map showed the area as green, so without reading too much I assumed it was a park) until I saw these stands of flowers:
At this point I still hadn’t understood. I thought they just sold a lot of flowers in Flores, perhaps, because that COULD make sense I suppose. But as I was entering the back entrance I found, one of the flower salesmen noticed I was definitely not from there (backpack+camera+fleece+super white+aura of noob) and came over to tell me about a monument that was inside that I should check out. Really nice guy to just come up to me like that, and I felt rather welcomed. At least, until he described where it was, saying it was behind a certain tomb. All at once it made sense. This:
Flores – Flowers for the dead. A very colorful cemetery, really beautiful, really quiet. I spent about 45 minutes just walking around and reading graves, taking a few pictures here and there. Based solely on what I saw en el Cementario de Flores, I would say that Argentines have a living memory of lost loved ones.
The Copa America begins today with a game in La Plata, south of Buenos Aires (Copa America is in Argentina this year). Argentina contra Bolivia to begin! Lamest thing - I don’t get to watch it for more than a few minutes, if that. I have a planned Milonga visit to a Milonga tonight, to go dance Tango with the class. Oh well, there are worse things to have to miss the game for. I just wish I could watch, grrrrr.
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