I can't believe its only been a week from this:
to this:
It seems like a lot has happened.
I'm staying with Magda in Palermo Alto, w
hich is a great location! Magda is so nice. She cooks great food and is really patient with my struggling Spanish. I met two of her grandchildren this week and am excited to meet more of the family. Palermo is a great place to live, not only are there a lot of cool things to explore but I am also very close to some of the other people on the program. Palermo is known for its extensive parks and busy social scene and so far I've been very impressed. Next weekend I plan on walking around the botanical garden and attending the bicentennial fair.
Last week was the first week of orientation where we learned about everything from
how to ride the buses (there are hundreds of privately owned lines, it is very confusing) to the classes offered by different universities to where to find the best, cheap steak in the city (we went there on saturday and loved it!).
Here is a six dollar steak! It was huge, I could only eat half of it.
Here some other students and I are excited to eat our delicious Argentine food.
There has been a lot of down time for exploring. One of the coolest things about Buenos Aires is the different personalities of the neighborhoods and the hidden gems within each. During breaks some other students and I would just pick a direction to wander around. Within a few minutes we always managed to find a few cafes, great empanadas, a park or two, cool, old-style architecture and impressive statues. We also walked around the center, Plaza de Mayo, where many of the government buildings are. I feel like I've walked around so much but have only seen a tiny portion of the city and am excited that I have five months to explore the rest!
There have been the usual challenges such as learning to get around a new city and sometimes not being able to understand Spanish but there also have been some unexpected ones. For instance, my bathroom has a unique set up as you can see below.
The toilet is in the shower stall! And the shower head is only about four feet high so I have to hold it over my head. The main challenge, however, was the location of the toilet paper. When I am holding the shower head water always manages to go everywhere, including on the toilet paper. After four days of this (you might be smarter and have figured it out quicker), I realized that there is a metal top that comes down over the toilet paper! Now my showers, and the aftermath are much more enjoyable.
One thing that I have spent a lot of time thinking about since getting to BA is urban planning and how public transportation dictates who a city is accessible to and the culture of different areas of the city. BA has one of the most extensive public transportation systems I've ever seen, including hundreds of privately owned but government subsidized buses and a metro system. These options are all very affordable, costing about 30 American cents per ride. But unlike the bus system in Washington D.C., BA's is used by all sorts of people, professionals, teenagers and the elderly alike. This is a sharp contrast from what I am used to. When I was working with the St. Bernard Project last spring, the Americorp volunteer was explaining to us that if you don't have a car in the US you are essentially a second class citizen because many things are not accessible to you. I see this as especially true in New Orleans where the public transportation is incredibly limited. On a similar note, public transportation seems to dictate who has access to different parts of cities. In D.C. for example, Georgetown is probably one of the least accessible places because the absences of a metro stop and the difficulty parking deter many people from going there.
While the BA system definitely has its problems, five of the same bus will pass in one minute and then none for awhile, the general overcrowdedness of the system or the lack of transfer points on the metro, I really like the opportunities it offers. The train and buses make it so that anyone can enjoy any part of the city with relative ease and not much money. I hope to learn more about the transportation system so I can use it to further my explorations!
Hasta Luego,
Miriam
