week V

2004-03-27 / 5:54 p.m.

Well, it�s taken me just about a quarter of my time here to do it, but I think I�m finally happy being here. I like being in Buenos Aires. Know how I can tell? Things continue to go kind of shitty, and I�m still reasonably happy. My Spanish is super slow in improving, and only in teeny tiny baby steps; classes are hard; making a schedule is frustrating; I don�t like my economics professor; I�m mildly injured and can�t do much in the way of exercise--and I notice myself already feeling much less in shape :( ; I don�t really have many people to hang out with...but still, I�m not really unhappy. Life isn�t all sunshine and roses, but as I continue to say, it�s continually interesting and I enjoy the daily challenges...even the lame ones like trying to communicate with bus drivers.

I think that my family here is one of the biggest contributors to my contentment. My host mom and host brothers really make me feel welcomed and appreciated, and without that bit of affection, I think I�d be really depressed. It�s no substitute for the people who really love and care about me at home, but it�s comforting to know that I have people here who would care if I was suddenly flattened by a bus or something. The environment in my house is just fun, there�s always people to practice talking to. Not to mention the fact that I have people to cook and clean for me.

Unfortunately, I received some disappointing news last night...Laurent left this morning, and the future occupant of his old room is a grown woman in her 40�s from Canada. I cannot picture a more potentially boring housemate. Granted, a Se�ora de Canada is better than some stupid young chick who spends hours in the bathroom, but probably not a potential amiga. At least she doesn�t arrive until May...giving me a full month with complete reign over the upstairs bathroom. w00t.

Mate continues to rock my socks off. I�m quite sure I�ll be a full blown addict by the time I return to the United States, and I sincerely hope that I can find it there. The only stuff I�ve seen is sold in Tea bags�I bought some for my mother for an Argentina-themed Christmas present last year, but it�s not the same as the yerba here.

Despite my not-hating Argentina, I definitely miss lots of stuff about being home. I�m enjoying the experience, but I�m glad it�s only a semester. Five months is just about enough for me, and I know at the end of the semester, I�ll be ready to come home. I miss my friends, I miss Joe terribly, and I miss being able to communicate up to capacity. It�s definitely an experience though. wow.

On a related note: clearly, I anticipate my homecoming being a very happy event. As much as I�ve learned to enjoy studying abroad, I�m still very very very much looking forward to coming home again...which is why a telephone conversation I recently had with my mother bothered me a bit. We were talking about fairly practical concerns, finances, school blah blah blah, and then she says "I was going to wait until you got home to bother you with it, but..." and proceeds to drop fairly bad news about a raise in tuition and a raise in my car insurance. Later, again... "I was going to wait until you got home, but..." and then bad news about a family member. It wasn�t anything horrible, but it was still unfortunate. A general request: please don�t wait to deliver bad news until I get back, I�d rather hear it now. Granted, I think everyone reading this has more sense than my crazy mother and wouldn�t do that, but I thought I�d clarify. I can�t picture much more depressing than returning all excited to be home and with the people I love, and being greeted with lots of unhappy tidings that were saved up for me because someone didn�t want to bother me with while I was in BsAs.

anyway. its warm and lovely outside, and Im off to enjoy the sunshine. adios!

mate with me

2004-03-22 / 12:42 p.m.

What an interesting week this has been.

Argentina has a lot of tasty and interesting foods to offer, but most of them seemed to be designed to double the size of my ass�ice cream, dulce de leche, pizza, pastas, pastries, thick cuts of red meat�and thus I avoid them as much as possible. (ay dios, especially now that I cant really do much in the way of exercise, but that tangent comes later)�but there remains one shining star of argentine gastronomy that I have recently become fond of: mate.

Mate is a strange, strange beverage. One first taste, mate sucked. Tasted like ass. Didn�t like it much. Yet, not ten minutes after trying it, I wanted to try it again. It has some kind of mysterious appeal that I can�t put my finger on. The flavor is really hard to describe, but in general, I guess it�s accurate to say that it�s kinda� like really strong tea. The actual imbibing of it is strange, it�s most commonly drunk from a hollowed out gourd, but there are lots of different kinds of mate cups, raging in flashiness, materials (gourd, silver, wood�) and size. Mine is a lopsided, ghetto looking number�because I wasn�t sure if I wanted to follow the mate drinking path or not, and just wanted to try it, I bought the cheapest cup I could find. It was in the oferta pile at an artesan�s booth at the Feria at Recoleta. It functions well, though I want to buy something prettier before I come home. So anyway, you�re drinking out of a little gourd thingie (which had to be cured first, but it was quite simple to do so�the intern showed me). To prepare yourself some mate to drink, fill the cup with yerba about � full, and fill it the rest of the way with hot�never boiling�water. It is drunk through a metal straw with a sieve like thing at the bottom to keep you drinking the tea, and not sucking up the actual yerba. I�m 99% sure I look like a TREMENDOUSLY lame gringa drinking it, but I don�t care�me gusta. So, as strange as the taste and procedure, the effects are yet stranger. Somehow, mate appears to be both a stimulant and somewhat like a mild narcotic at the same time. It�s kind of relaxing like tea, but gives a palpable caffeine buzz. I haven�t bothered to check how much caffeine it has in relation to coffee (I will do this next time I�m at the supermarket, and can look at the info on a tin of coffee) but it�s got to rank pretty well�while a cup of coffee is enjoyable from time to time, I�ve never found that the caffeine effects me that much; with mate, I notice. Tonight, this chemical duality has resulted in this journal entry�I just feel like chilling out, but I�m not sleepy�even though I have to get up in about 7 hours, and I should be studying for the test I have tomorrow. Yay for me. I know that MikeB mentioned an interest in it�if anyone wants me to purchase mate supplies for them, tell me before I come home and I will hook you up. J

�What else is new? My ankle hurts like all get out. Any of you athleticish people know anything about stress fractures? God, if it even IS a stress fracture�though I find that after several years of being a mild hypochondriac and reading a lot of medical advice books/webpages, I can diagnose myself fairly well. J Anyway, from everything I look into, my symptoms suggest stress fracture. It�s mildly sore to the touch in several spots, it hurts to bend my ankle at various ankles, hurts with pressure, and there is mild swelling when I walk around a whole lot.�so I�ve been treating it like a stress fracture. I bought a support for it, which I wear around the house and stuff, and I try to stay off of it, but come on�.I live in a big fucking city. I don�t have a car. I walk a lot. I�m sorry, there�s no getting around this. But no running or anything (except when crossing the street on red, dodging taxis and buses). Yet despite my best efforts, it still hurts as much after a week... When I woke up this morning, I was pissed off to find that it was ALREADY hurting, after 7+ hours of doing absolutely nothing. So asking again�does anyone have any good advice? �.Good advice besides �go see a doctor�. I know that going to see a doctor will be a tremendous hassle, and it will be just like going to see a doctor in the US for something like this. I�ll go, they�ll tell me to stay off of it. I�ll tell them I�ve tried that. Then they�ll say I can fork out the money for an x-ray, or else continue to try to stay off of it. Absolutely useless. Last time I went to the doctor for a general pre-argentina check up and a shot, I asked him about various aches and pains. He said that if I didn�t want to invest the time and money going to a specialist, I�d just have to chalk it up to a hazard of running.

Ug, and as far as the gym�.this stresses me out. Not being able to exercise up to my usual rigor is bad news. I was adhering fairly strictly to my exercise regimen before I left, and I still wasn�t able to drop any of the weight I had gained, nor was I making any progress as far as improving my endurance. I�m afraid that being here, eating here, and not being able to run is going to yield terrible results. The medical consultant chick at the gym said I could do exercises that didn�t make it hurt, so I�ve only been doing the stationary bike and lifting weights. This is not very physically challenging, and I find that pedaling quickly enough to get my heart rate up enough is VERY difficult on my leg muscles and I can�t do it for very long. I guess since I can�t do much, I should try to do it more often. My goal last week was to go five times, but I only make it in for my usual 4. I�ve also upped my workout time from 30 minutes to 40, but I don�t think that will change much. I guess the only think I can do is to be extra careful about what I eat, walk a lot, and hope that it gets better soon so I can get back into running. Garh, it kills me how much progress I�ll probably lose, and how much harder it will be to run after a god-knows-how-long hiatus.

fucker. fucker. fucker.

Wow, this is going to be a long entry if I don�t start being a little more sparing with the words�.

A survey of other interesting things I did this week:

*Monday I took a spanish test for the program�s Spanish class. I did miserably poorly. I am the biggest failure at Spanish EVER. I�m still waiting not to suck. Diana, my host mom, tells me that I�m getting better, but I think she�s just being nice. I�ve gotten some interesting guesses on where I�m from based on my accent too�some guy asked me if I was Lithuanian. Go figure. So yeah, not only can I not conjugate verbs, I apparently sound like I�m fresh out of Lithuania.

* Wednesday night, there was a HUGE party in the city for Dia de San Patricio. Several city blocks were closed off, there was live music in the streets, and beer-o-rama. I had forgotten about it even being a holiday until breakfast that morning. Since it was a Wednesday night, I�m not Irish, and I�m not a party chick, I hadn�t planned on doing anything, but Ramiro and Intern convinced me to come along with them for at least a little while. We went out to a restaurant first�I had already eaten dinner at a sane time (crazy argentines eating at all hours of the night�) so I didn�t have dinner at the restaurant, but it was kind of cool anyway. Beer, irish dancers, and lots of people speaking in Castellano that I could listen to and try to learn to shake some of my painfully American accent. Afterwards, we went to the street party and into a couple of bars, but I�m not a huge aficionado of beer--It makes me feel unpleasantly full befotre it makes me feel inebriated. I left early. Please note that this is "early" in the Buenos Aires sense of the word, and not "Early" by Emily Wednesday night standards.

* Saturday, Brian and I went to the Cemetary at Recoleta which was cool. We saw Eva Perron�s tomb, which wasn�t actually that interesting as compared to some of the other monuments there. This cemetery is really something else, I took a bunch of pictures, and I�ll try to get them up soon. I bought some books on Argentina to help me in my classes. Went to the Feria at Recoleta again, to the Recoleta cultural center and looked at some photography exhibits, and then to a free concert at the Facultad de Derecho, which is a neato building. Again, I�ll try to get pictures to you soon.

Okay, this is too long and it is tooooo late. Chau.

tick

2000-11-08 / 1:23 p.m.

As of today, I have been in the Southern Hemisphere for a month.