Hola chicos-Sorry this one has been a little overdue. It has been a very busy thee past few days. The first thing you should know is that I lost my dedit card...Yeah not a very good thing esepcially when it is the card of a local bank in Ohio. I guess I had made a withdrawal from the bank and I forgot to press the button to withdraw my card as well. Argentinean banks are different from American banks because the card is spit back out automatically. The other possible way I could have lost my card was that it fell out of my pocket when I left the bank. Regardless I handled the situation accordingly and called my bank to cancel the card. Unfortunately now though I have to wait maybe a week or two until the bank sends my new card to my house, and then my mother will send it to me in Buenos Aires. Luckily though, I had $100 dollars (or 360 pesos) stashed away. For now I am alright, and my friends are going to let me borrow some cash if needed. Also I am the fourth kid in my program to lose their card, so it happens to the best of us I guess. However-it is def not a good feeling to lose your card in a foreign country.....
Besides that everything else is fine. Classes have been giving us a little more homework, and I will be having my first area studies seminar tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see how this will work as a class of 3 students and at a time of 9:30 AM.
On a different note, I think I am starting to realize that this experience is alot harder then I thought it would be. I have lived in different states (NY and Minnesota) and have adapted very quickly to my environment. I guess I had a similar expectation for here as well. However, it is harder because I am not completely comfortable in the language. And this is completely foreign land to me. Yet the important thing is that I wake up every morning and tell myself what my goals are and that is: to learn the language and to be immersed in the culture. So we shall see how it goes for now, however people still have been friendly so no worries. I did see a reminder of home though...this is the closest thing I have found to Puerto Ricans in Buenos Aires haha...I did not go in though because it was closed for the day. Future visit maybe?
This past weekend though we went to San Telmo, another neighborhood in Buenos Aires, for a fair that they have every Sunday. The neighborhood itself is pretty small, and has many antique shops. However on Sundays an entire street for about six blocks is taken up to have various vendors sell their goods, essentially it is a giant flea market. It is also a huge tourist attraction here as well. There were literally tons of different goods that one could buy-paintings, leather goods, clothes, etc etc. I will be getting souvenirs from here...when I have my debit card back...Here are some pictures of the day in San Telmo.
As for the history of San Telmo, it used to be occupied by the aristocrats of Buenos Aires. However, once there was the yellow fever epidemic 1871, the rich moved out of the area into the more northern part of the city. This left many of the places empty, and for this reason many poor families moved in. Now since the rich had such large houses, many of the rich who still owned these large houses turned them into ventillos. Ventillos can be defined somewhat like a project in the states. The rich had ended up putting as many as 5 different immigrant families in one house. What would happen is that each family would live in a different room of the house. Also these families would be from different European countries, for example: Italy, Yugoslavia, France etc. etc. Here is an example of a hallway in a ventillo.
The picture above is of a ventillo that is being renovated. San Telmo as of now has many properties for sale, and many are trying to renovate old buildings in the neighborhood.
Also here is a picture of mate cups ans straws. Mate is an herbal tea that many Argentineans drink. It is drink from the wooden cup and then sipped out of the wooden straw. I have still not tried it but I will at some point.
On a final note, there was some great entertainment. The 1st video is of a Argentinean ska group, which I thought was pretty good. The second video I find even more interesting. It is a group of Uruguayans, as well as some Argentineans performing a candombe. It is a music directly influenced by Africa, as it can be seen from the drums and the dance. Every Sunday they do this in San Telmo. It should be noted that similar to Brazil, Uruguay has a larger amount of blacks than Argentina. Maybe I will look further into this-oddly enough the tango has a certain amount of African influence as well, but I will blog about that at a later point.
Until then guys-Hasta pronto!
