T-4 hours.

I just want it to go on the record that I am leaving for 13 nights and am only bringing the following:

Proof that people can change. Myself included. 

Also: 

ENTUSIASMADA

EMOCIONADA 

APASIONADA

AVENTURERA

EXALTADA

JUBILOSA

FELIZ

CONTENTA 

EUFóRICA

DELIRANTE

VIVIDORA

ENTUSIASTA

EXTáTICA

Día del Campo

One of the excursions with my program was a "Día del Campo" (country day), where we head to Luján, a nearby town northwest of Buenos Aires and spend the whole day in an estancia, or small family farm.

First though, we stopped at la Basilica de Luján, which was a beautiful cathedral! It happened to be Domingo de Ramos (Palm Sunday) though, so it was packed.

Blessing the palms/other personal items with holy water.

There were a ton of stands outside selling various goods... Warning: I'm going to buy a tshirt with the Pope's
face on it before I leave Argentina. I promise not to wear it here... but I might wear it every day when I get back. (I will wear it every day when I get back)
Guillermo (one of the leaders of our program) was saying how now that the Pope is Argentinian, suddenly everyone wants to be Catholic here. Me.. too..
(Sidenote: I was shocked and appalled yesterday when I learned that the Pope's name in the rest of the world is Francis. I thought his name was just Francisco everywhere like it is here. That disappoints me more than it should...)

Because when cotton candy is offered you do not decline. Even if it's 10:00am and you're at a Cathedral...

This was lunch. This was the meat (one of three racks).

The estancia (kinda like a ranch, in English) was beautiful. For some reason I didn't take a whole lot of pictures of the actual place... sorry about that.

And this is the Great Hall where we ate drank and were merry.

The workers were dressed up in traditional Argentine clothes, and performed typical country dances and music for us. It was pretty cool! It seemed really tourist-y to me--which I didn't love, like the elitist travel I am (sarcasm)--but there were just as many Argentine families there as there were Americans, so I guess some people just come out from the city to spend a day in the country and see the old lifestyle too!

I'd say we spent about 80% of our time there eating. Just. Eating. You'd think it was the last course but they just kept bringing more... and the meat. Argentines love their meat. They played a special meat song and everyone cheered when the meat was brought in on platters!

Adorable boy on his pony is adorable. 

Six peacocks siting on a roof. Sounds like the beginning of one of mom's preschool songs...

I didn't take any pictures of the beautiful house, or scenic countryside, or folk dancers, but I did take a lot of pictures of these birds, because I know what the people want. (Joke).

Also I got bit by a dog. No sign of rabies so far.

WELL. In 24 hours I will be 4 hours in to one of the biggest adventures of my LIFE. (13 days, 5 hostels, 4 cities, over 2000 miles, and 1 ticket to Lollapalooza Chile.) And quite honestly, I have no idea what's going to happen. I should have internet in most of the hostels so I'll try to check in every now and then to let you know I'm alive, but I probably won't be able to upload pictures til I get back--so look forward to a HUGE update in about two weeks! 
Love you all!
¡Que te vaya bien!
Besos,
Abby

Live Update:

Eating dulce de leche--quite literally--by the spoonful.

Because when in  Rome  Buenos Aires....

The World is Huge.

Guys. 

The world is huge.

Okay, I know that isn't exactly news to you. And I didn't think it would be to me either... until today.

But... wow.

I was feeling pretty good about how well I knew Buenos Aires, until I got on a bus for a half hour and got off in the middle of the metropolis (not even the other side, just halfway there!) My friend Claudia and I wandered around the Caballito and San Telmo areas for a good five-six hours today and nearly had an existential crisis because... it just keeps going. This city. It's huge. To think that I could walk all day every day for the rest of my time here and not see all of it. To think that it's just one city of hundreds and thousands like it in the world... it just hurts my little brain. And it makes me want to go everywhere--in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, in the world! I just want to see everything. 

We saw so many things! We just kinda wandered wherever our feet took us and found plazas (on plazas on plazas), book vendors, street art, bakeries, beautiful trees, cool vintage stores, an artisan fair...
I just can't even really begin to describe how mind-blowing it was--to know you could walk all day, but your legs would give out before the city would.

Here are some pictures but they still just don't do it justice.

Plaza Rivadavia

Book vendor on the street;  Convento de Santo Domingo

Look at this beautiful day!

El Ateneo.

So yesterday I had some free time and went wandering around and found El Ateneo... this really cool bookstore that used to be a theater in the 1910s. It was beautiful! 

It's got three stories around the outsides, and then you can go down to the subsuelo for even more books. There's a little café back behind the curtain too! Quite possibly the classiest bookstore ever.

I had a great time wandering around a looking at all the different books in Spanish. I found a ton of books I recognized--Harry Potter, Anne of Green Gables, Judy Moody. The kids books were so darn cute.  I found a copy of The Little Prince in Spanish (El Principito), and had to buy it :] Now I've made it my mission to find "Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day" in Spanish somewhere in this city!  It has to be here somewhere.

Se acerca el invierno.

Side note, while I was looking up the official way to translate "winter is coming" for the above caption... I found these tshirts. Add those to my animal shirts and I may never need to buy clothes again.

I need these so much it hurts.

I also found this one which... there's just.. so many.. so many things I love happening in that one sentence that ... I can't. I can't.


(For the confused: this is a Game of Thrones references inside of a Princess Bride reference, then translated to Spanish.)

Random Update!

I remember hearing a lot before I came here, to expect a lot of downtime when you study abroad--not to expect to be constantly on the move or doing something.
False. 
I've been here three weeks and I feel like I've hardly sat down! Perhaps it's because things are just now settling into a routine, but I'm not so sure they'll ever calm down much! Not when you're living in one of the coolest cities in the world... I have a list of so many things I want to do before I leave, and I'm already worrying that I won't have time to get to them all!



I finally got all my classes sorted out--what a relief that was!
I cried uncle on the International Politics class. ...as I sat there at 8:02am with a sleepy mind trying to process the rapid and soft-spoken Spanish being thrown at me regarding the fiscal policies of various  European countries I just... I just knew that wasn't going to happen.



So I sat nicely in the back of the class til break and then excused myself and went home.

So now my schedule looks like this:

World Economic Geographic

International Marketing

Urban Fictions: Latin American Cities

Latin American Cinema

And the earliest one is at 2:30pm :] that's my kind of schedule! It's turning out to be a heck of a lot of reading though... I'm afraid I'm just going to be reading my textbooks all the time! All of my professors are really cool though, and I made some friends with some of the Argentinian students in my class. (We had to do a group project and I actually contributed, how smart am I?? :] )


So basically when I'm not in class, I wander around and find a good panadería or café to study in (I found one the other day where you can buy your own personal tea party for less than $4. It was adorable! I'll take a picture next time I go.) There are also a ton of parks for studying... Sydney and I brought some blankets and spent a few hours in our favorite: Las Barrancas de Begrano one afternoon. It was such a perfect day! --->

Time is flying by--I've got a pretty packed weekend (Salsa club, meeting, language exchange, weekend fair, class project, reading...), and on top of it all I have to finish getting stuff together for our trip! 

I don't think I've told you yet, but on Wednesday I'm leaving with three of my friends for a 13 day trip to Mendoza, Valparaiso, Viña del Mar, and Santiago! It's going to be CRAZY. 

Well I've got to run (and get some caffeine before I head out for the night!), but I'll leave you with this picture of my favorite Bean skyping me, like the sweet bean she is.

CHAO.

POLO.

So the perfect Argentinian day looks like this: 

You go with a professional polo player to his family's house in the country. They have about 20 horses there that they use to practice polo. He and his brother/cousins teach you how to play polo, take you to a real polo match, you have an asado (grill-out... with chorizo and beef.. YUM) for lunch, drink mate in the afternoon, and play more polo afterwards.

...I asked what I'd have to do to get adopted into this family. They said adoption might not be an option but I could always marry in. No worries, I could totally be on board with that.

To the right you see a picture of a pro polo match. They were... really good.

<---So this is Bernardo Bravo. He's a professional polo player and has played all over the world. I took this picture so that Aunt Sandy could see what hat he's wearing :] It's a John Deere one, of course! 

In the morning they taught us "stick and ball." Then we took a break for lunch and to go see a match. Afterward we "played" a polo match. And by that I mean we paired up with two Argentinians and two Americans per team... it really involved more them laughing at us than an actually game... but they were nice about it :] they'd slow way down and let us try to get a hit every once in awhile. It was so sad though... I'd get so excited about hitting the ball two feet in the right direction, and then Guillermo or Facundo would come up outta no where and hit it 120 feet in the opposite direction.... there was a just a bit of a wide disparity in skill level, you see...

Bernardo used to be the "piloto" for Adolfo Cambiaso, the #1 ranked polo player in the world. Cambiaso gave him his old helmet, and I got to wear it while I played! So here I am, playing polo, wearing the same helmet as one of the greatest players! Maybe that's why Bernardo and Facundo told me I was the best player of the day and named me MVP! (True story! I actually wasn't so bad!)

Is that me on the right? or the left? I can't even tell.

Our whole group. 

Okay, and I'd be lying if I said my heart didn't melt completely out of my chest by the time the day was over. Do you see all these adorable boys who not only speak Spanish, but ride horses and are crazy talented? I fell in love. With all of them.

Cover of the next Polo magazine? I think so.

It really was such a perfect day--I can't even explain it all in words, you just had to experience it! I now have such a huge appreciate for polo players (how do they lean over so far without falling off?? how do they not get hit with the mallet??). It was so hard to maneuver a horse with one hand and try to hit a ball with another! (During the match I'd hit the ball a couple times in a row, but then my horse would get excited and start galloping a lot faster... it was so hard! haha)
Probably the best day I've had here so far.... the ranch was absolutely beautiful and the whole family was so welcoming! I loved every minute!

¡Cumpleaños Feliz!

Plaza de San Martín, Retiro, Buenos Aires

I'M 21 I'M 21!

...not that it really means too much here. But HEY birthdays are birthdays and mom and I were raised Jamaican (joke) and thus like to celebrate them as much as possible! 

And I had the most wonderful birthday. 

I was woken up by a FaceTime call from mom and dad... I opened the presents they had packed in my suitcase :] what sweet parents I have! And I opened cards from family and friends... I am such a lucky girl to have such loving people in my life!! 

Mimi went out and got me medialunas for a birthday breakfast! There were even ones filled with dulce de leche... YUM. 

And look Mom sent me a baby bluebird of happiness! I love those!

Thank GOODNESS I had no classes on my birthday! And neither did my friend Sydney, so we went out for a birthday lunch! I found a cool steak place in Retiro and we took the train there. The place was called El Federal... we got some beef tenderloin, empanadas and some wine, because it's my 21st birthday of course! The restaurant was so cool. We sat in the table in the corner with these huuuge cushions and felt awesome in general. The food was delicious! (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

Afterward Sydney treated me to ice cream at this really cool ice cream place! Dulce de leche mixed with brownie pieces, American cream, topped with hot fudge and white chocolate pieces! NOMZ.

Subibajas en Plaza de San Martín!

Sydney y yo!

All of us in Acabar.

 A bunch of my friends came out with me to celebrate my birthday last night! We didn't do that whole stay-out-til-sunrise thing since a lot of us had to be up early for classes, but we had such a good night just the same! We went back to that bar in Palermo where they have all the board games... so much fun!

After that we wandered down the street and found another bar. When we walked in my friend Claudia told them in was my birthday and they yelled/sang/whatnot. After looking at the menu we decided we didn't actually want anything, but as we were leaving a bartender (manager? owner? no sé) said but wait I got you some cake! So we came back inside (half the group had left already), and they gave us a piece of cake (complete with candle and birthday song), along with two rounds of champagne for all four of us! HOW NICE IS THAT? We legitimately bought nothing from this bar, and they gave us all of that on the house! Just proving my theory that argentinians are the nicest people ever. 

That's about all my stories... it was definitely a birthday for the books!!

When it's your birthday you're allowed to wear your giraffe shirt, even if you're going out in Buenos Aires.

Ahogando.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.
...I was trying to think of a good metaphor.. to describe how this morning felt.. but I realized,
you can just pretend like:
     you haven't produced a single academic thought in three months, and all the sudden:
     you're taking subjects that you don't particularly like in a normal circumstance,
     subjects you didn't take the prereqs for and thus are already at a knowledge deficit,
     in a place you don't know,
     surrounded by people you don't know,
     taught in a language you don't know completely,
     for four hours straight,
     starting at 8 en la mañana.
...and you'd be pretty close.

My school.

Because it felt like someone had poured poprocks in my brain by the time lunchtime hit. Or had been using my brain as a stress ball.  For real. I had to take it for a walk.


So... first day of school was good... I'm taking four classes, all in Spanish, and three of them are legit real classes with that actual Argentine students are taking at the university (the third is with other international students like myself).

The current tentative horario is:

International Politics
International Economic Structure
Urban Fictions: Latin American Cities 
International Commercialization 


(When I was skyping my parents earlier, I couldn't remember how to pronounce "commercialization" in English. It took me a few tries... I can only pronounce it in Spanish now apparently!)

The first two classes are going to be very very difficult. The kind that would be difficult in English and now I'm taking them in Spanish. I'm not entirely sure why I'm doing this to myself, excepto que I like a good challenge... and hey I only need to pass these classes to get credit so I might as well drown myself in the learning process... right?
...I hope I still agree with that thought process two months from now, but vamos a ver.


So I took a "first day of school" picture, you know, like you're supposed to. But it was entirely too unrepresentative of the day (the looking happy and naïve part), and so I took a real "first day of school" picture when I returned (15 hours later).

But hey, after one day I feel like my Spanish-entendimiento skills increased ten-fold, so I'm going to have this language DOWN frontwards and backwards by the time this semester is over! 

My Spanish-speaking friends will be happy to know that I will return with a wicked Argentinian accent.. it's already happening. I'm not going to stop it. 

Zho me zhamo Abigail y a-zher en la ca-zhe a-zhudé a mi zherno encontrar sus zhaves. Y zha tengo un po-zho amari-zho...pero gracias. 

Okay I need to go to bed, that's apparent now.

LOVE.

Exitosas.

Oh I forgot to tell you!

Yesterday Sydney and I traded money on the "blue" market. (It's not called black here).

If you trade in your cash at the banks they'll give you 5.01 pesos per dollar... but if you go to a "cueva" (which means cave, as if it needed to be any sketchier) you can get over 7 pesos per dollar depending on where you go. 

So I asked my host mom for where to go, and yesterday Sydney and I went in this tiny, unlabeled shop with a large man standing outside the door... The inside was actually way less sketchy than I anticipated. They gave us 7.60 pesos per dollar! We checked the bills too, don't worry, they were legit. 

We were so proud of ourselves... I mean that's time and a half more bang for your buck. 

Look at us figuring things out. How cool are we? :)

Rey de Reyes

Yesterday night I went with Sydney to try out this church she heard about called Rey de Reyes (King of Kings).

And my, what an adventure it was.

It said the service started at 8:30pm, so we arrived ten minutes early. As we began to go up the steps, we were instead told to wait in the line until the current service lets out, and then to follow the line into the church. Okay.

"Un-obvious" picture of the line of people.

So we follow the line around.. and keep following it for a block until it turns into this parking lot, which is full of people. There is a man in there whose job it is to corral people into lines that turn and snake around. You know, kinda like an amusement ride. So we're standing in this dimly-lit parking lot with around 200 argentinians on a Sunday night... and the line doesn't move for a good 30 minutes. The handout we receives said the service before started at 6, which is making us believe that these services last 3 hours....



It's going to so weird to get back to America, and actually know what is going on 97% of the time. Because here? It's just wonder and confusion all day long. 



So the line finally moves, we get inside, the service starts around 9. And my, what a service. There's a dancing choir, accompanied by a full band to include this tenor sax player ripping it up, who occasionally pulled out a soprano sax even! There's dancing there's singing... some of the songs are even ones we recognized, just in Spanish! The man leading the singing has pop-star style vocal rips... beautiful voice. He was pretty beautiful as well. All around a good worship/song time.

After an hour or so of singing, though, things began to get intense. I had to leave (around 10:30!) at the point where people were all murmuring loudly to themselves and holding hands, but Sydney said after I left there was much jumping, shaking violently, weeping, and speaking in tongues. We were a leetle overwhelmed...

So that was quite the experience. Can't say I'd ever been to a church so full of.. emotion.
Even going to a church service here can turn into an adventure! hahaaa

And here is a video of "Trading my Sorrows" in Spanish. Do you see beautiful singing man? Do you hear the crazy sax man??

Una semana!

Welp it's been a week!
It seems like I just got here, but it also seems like I've been here forever! The learning curve has been steep... seems like everyday I learn a good hundred new things, and get more comfortable with an increasing area of the neighborhood. If the learning curve stays at this rate, I'll have this whole city down by the time I leave!

It's a beautiful day in Buenos Aires today, so I've been sitting outside on the terraza (patio-type area connected to our apartment) while updating my blog!
This is the few from the roof.  Hellooooo Buenos Aires!!

¡Chao!

Las Noches.

Jueves.
Thursday night we went to Tango/Salsa classes! Tango was super interesting, but it's a lot harder to master than Salsa. Salsa you just kinda have to move around a lot and let the guy spin you and you'll be fine... We went to a Salsa club in Palermo called La Viruta--so much fun! I want to go back again this week.

Here's a short video of Sydney dancing Salsa with some man...

Sábado.
And Saturday night we had what I think was our first true night out! The nightlife here is crazy... people start going out around 1 or 2, and then stay out til sunrise! Christa, Claudia, Sydney and I met up at one of the Bares Notables (I'm up to five of them now!) called Café de La Esquina around midnight for some sangría, and then headed to a salsa club in Belgrano called Azúcar around 2! The salsa club was so fun, and sooo classy! Everyone there was insanely good and definitely out of our dancing league (I wish I'd taken some videos!), but that just meant that the guys were really good too! So as long as you warned them that you didn't know very much, they'd just laugh with you when you messed up and help you along :] I learned quite a bit, and definitely want to go back. Hey who knows, maybe there's actually dancing hope for me yet.

Here we are at 4:30am outside of Azúcar, sweaty, exhausted, and happy! 

Tigre--The Venice of Buenos Aires

Yesterday we took a train to Tigre, a small(er) town north of Greater Buenos Aires. It's on a river delta, and is a river town--the main way to travel is by boat! We got on a ferry and went up and down the river. There are the coolest colorful houses with little docks on the river, and people in kayaks paddling all over the place! Some were 60-70 year old women... just rowing their way down the stream! 

Tigre is a popular weekend destination for tourists, and for locals who want to get away from the city. A lot of people have weekend houses there! It was a very quiet, peaceful town... definitely a good place relax and unwind from all the hubbub of the city! Their supermarkets are even on their own boats! 

The man in the photo on the right was putting his three dogs in his boat to take with him--reminded me of Sir! :] 

We stopped at this small orilla to eat lunch. Honestly it was about twenty feet long, overpriced, and besides the sky was cloudy and the water was brown... so we didn't do a whole lot there. But we had two hours to kill so we took some pictures on the dock because why not. 

Sadly one of the less-awkward pictures we took.... 

Here you see me being really enrapturing and hilarious. Christa is obviously out of hearing range. 

View of Puerto de Frutos from the river.

My favorite place at Tigre was the Puerto de Frutos. It's this huuuuuge market place that sells everything you can think of. Except they're not just touristy rinkydinks, they're actually pretty cool! Clothes, mate cups/straws, wooden things, metal things, home dec things, kitchen things, frames, pictures, posters, you name it. And everything was crazy cheap. We walked around for about an hour--it was so overwhelming, I wanted to buy everything! We decided to go back another day once we've seen more of what Argentina has to offer us and can make more educated purchases :] 

On the way home from Tigre we stopped for meriendas at a restaurant in San Isidro, which had the coolest view of the BsAs skyline over the ocean. There was this grassy area outside, where Argentines were playing soccer, drinking mate, or laying with their significant other on a blankets. There were two guys playing Blackbird on guitars! And another guy serenading his girl... my heart was melting.  It was such a cool atmosphere. And so picturesque. 

...so picturesque that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a romantic picture of me and my Argentinian lover. And by that I mean "Hey Mike (from Connecticut) come sit like this and look at me lovingly for this picture." ... but shhhh no one has to know the truth. So here we see me and my Argentinian lover watching the sailboats at sunset. SO CUTE RIGHT?

Y Buenos Aires! Allí está!