LA VISITA DE LOS PAPIS!

Tea shop, Chinatown, and view from the Evita balcony.

     Well, I walked them until their legs gave out and then I put them on the subway, and when the subway closed I put them on a bus. :]

     Mom and Dad visited for eight days and I welcomed them with a big hug, and a full packed Argentine agenda. I spent the week as the tour guide, activity planner, and translator—and what fun we had! Steak restaurants, museums, a graffiti tour, a tango show, fairs, lots of shopping, lots of tea, lots of dulce de leche--and I even threw in another country! We took a day trip across the river to Colonia, Uruguay. 

Found the jewelry street--all closed.
Because why would they be open at noon on a Saturday?

     The first day I gave Dad a map of the city and Mom a 6-liter jug of water, so they both adjusted just fine. It was so funny for me to see Buenos Aires through my parents eyes, now that I've spent nearly four months here and am completely used to everything... Mom was nervous all the time and hated all the graffiti; Dad couldn’t stop laughing at the reckless driving practices and the abounding lack of logic apparent in so many things here. I had to teach them that the answer to any question starting with "why don't they just..." is usually answered with "because that would make sense."

Sitting on the glass in the lighthouse atop Palacio Barolo--probably not up to US safety codes.  

Dulce de leche yummys at Feria de Mataderos. 

     In retrospect I should have pushed them into the language deep end and forced them to learn more while they were here; they were spoiled by me talking to everyone for them! Dad conquered "un agua sin gas" (uncarbonated water), and was happy to be able to apply in real life one of the few Spanish phrases he knows: "uno más cerveza por favor" (one more beer please).  I made the mistake of telling Mom how latinos call each other "gordo" (fat) as a term of endearment, and now she only greets me with "Hola gordita!" :[

El Ateneo bookstore. 

     I made sure to teach them all the words they might encounter on bathroom doors, "señores/señoras, caballeros/damas, hombres/mujers"(misters/misses, gentlemen/ladies, men/women), only to have the next bathroom they went to read "reyes/reinas" (kings/queens). Of course!

Clad in our snazzy new leather jackets from a shop in Recoleta!

    My parents' 27th anniversary happened while they were here, so we went out to a nice dinner in Puerto Madero. The restaurant brought them champagne and tiramisu, and we returned to the hotel to find more champagne from the hotel staff!

Ferry ride to Uruguay

     They got to share in the frustrations of city/foreign living with me, like the necessity of cash, subpar service everywhere, always needing a bathroom, lack of dataplans, and public transportation (we only got nearly-stranded in a shady area outside the city once....)

     Mom said when she gets home she's going to drive around in her car aimlessly and buy random things with her credit card, just because she can. And then go to Cracker Barrel. I was not amused.

Tour of La Casa Rosada (the Argentine equivalent of the white house.)

Mom was happy to leave the graffiti and noise of Buenos Aires for a day in quiet Colonia across the river. It was nice to be able to see the sky! :] 

Self-timer means multiple pictures. I warned them about poses but... no. Look what I have to work with!

     I was incandescently happy to be able to spend a week with my parents and show them my strange little world here. I am one lucky girl to have such great parents who will fly so far to come see me. They spoil me too much!

     I've got a good two months til school starts up at A&M, which seems like a long time until you realize that is:
  --3 weeks left in Buenos Aires (what how??)
  --2.5 weeks traveling through South America (WHOOP)
  --9 days at home, then move into my house in College Station!
Time is going to FLY! I've got a list of things to do before I leave here (like recording a music video perhaps? stay tuned) so these next few weeks will keep me busy.

Thanks for stopping by!
Love always. <3

Pinnacle of Classiness.

Good friends, red wine, and a quite impressive jazz band.
Just a regular Thursday night in Buenos Aires--we decided to try out a jazz club in Palermo. Turned out to be an intimate venue, sitting about 30-40 people, with an incredibly talented quartet: piano, trumpet, tenor sax, and stand-up bass. There were no other non-Argentines in sight, which is when you know you've done a good job finding a place :]
Sitting in the dimly lit second-story club, wine in hand, listening to the sax man wail on stage, soaking in Buenos Aires, I realized: I'm not sure I've ever felt so classy in my entire life.

After the show Claudia and I--through a series of events--ended up walking over 3 miles in search of tacos, only to find none and have to settle for 2am shawarma instead.

Such a great night.
I love this city.

A benchmark, and thoughts on fluency.

     Before I came to Buenos Aires I watched one of the more famous Argentine films, El secreto de sus ojos, with the intention of helping my ears get more used to the accent.  I was unable to find a version with subtitles in either language and was forced to rely on my ears alone. El secreto de sus ojos is not an easy movie, it's an intense crime drama with lots of police jargon, thrown at you in the fast slang-ridden Argentine-accented Spanish and.. needless to say, when I watched it in February I was suddenly very discouraged and overwhelmed by how little of it I'd been able to understand.

     It's easy to feel as if my Spanish hasn't greatly improved since I got here, as change happens slowly over time and you don't notice it from day to day. Additionally, I've come to realize that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know, and the thus the stupider you feel. I am no longer pleased that I can express myself; I am frustrated that I cannot express myself well. I get frustrated when I don't know the word for "bulky," even though I could give you a dozen that mean "big, large, wide, huge, intrusive, clumsy." But I've made myself take note recently of all the words, phrases, or concepts that I hadn't yet mastered four months ago, and have to admit that maybe I've learned something here.

     My goal is and has been for awhile "to be fluent." But when my friends from back home ask me if I'm fluent yet, I realize that the concept of "fluency" is a lot more ambiguous than I had previously thought. My immediate reaction is "ha! no." because I know just how much I have left to learn, and I know I am far from expressing myself as well as a native speaker. But taking a step back, I guess it depends on how you define fluent. I've taken essay tests on marketing without using a dictionary. I've gone on dates with boys who don't speak English. I don't plan out my Spanish presentations word-for-word anymore; I write some bullet points and improvise. I've been the only English-speaker at social gatherings and had a great time. And any sort of anxiety related to Spanish in any situation is pretty much disappeared. Do I feel ready to give a report on the evening news? No. But I feel as if I could confidently go into a job interview in Spanish and not make a fool of myself. I don't know if I will ever get to a point where I consider myself straight-up fluent, but I'd like to. I know it's a long process, but here I am, in the process.

     I had to watch El secreto de sus ojos for my cinema class and almost started laughing tonight when I realized I understood at least 85% of what was said at all times. It seems so simple too! I'm not sure how I couldn't do it four months ago. What a fantastic feeling.

Buenas noches,
Abby

Translation: agglutinated. Stop Spanish. Just stop. 

P.S. I get continually frustrated too by the number of words I underline in a text, only to look them up and find I don't know them in English either. How can they expect that from us? Like lustro--what is a lustrum? (A period of five years). And polivalencia? It means multifacetedness. That's not even a word in English. Or, the very very specific. Like escardador--a man who weeds cornfields. Yes, let me add that to my knowledge bank.

Piercings y panqueques.

Good news! Piercings in Argentina cost about $8! (As opposed to the $40-50 in the States). I think the only responsible thing to do is to get about 12 piercings per ear and then decide which ones I want to keep when I get home. We went to a galería (kinda like a mini-mall off the street) called Bond Street. I have never seen so many tattoo parlors in one place! It was the hardcore/punk center of Buenos Aires, seemed like.. tattoos, piercings, stores that only sell combat boots, stores with ACDC/Megadeth shirts. Despite my Gap dress, I do have a blue streak in my hair so I'm pretty sure I fit righttt in.

Canadian is displeased with the lack of maple syrup.

     I mentioned to Sydney a few days ago how much I missed pancakes, and my puppy, and my bed back home. She said "well I can help you with one of those things," and surprised me with pancakes yesterday! She made Claudia and me a pancake feast, complete with chocolate-covered strawberries after school.  Pancake syrup is hard to come by here though, so we had to stick with dulce and peanut butter (I'm not complaining!)
    One of the boys we met in Bariloche had to come back to Buenos Aires for a few days, so he joined us for piercings and pancakes (he did not partake in the piercings, despite our implorations). We were so happy to see him again! Isn't modern communication handy? I love how it's so easy to keep in touch and reconnect with people! He's Canadian, so we had a NAFTA reunion (I stood in for Mexico, obviously, as I am the most qualified.)

NAFTA reunion.

Oh, and last week we went to Sydney's choir concert! She's in the choir at our university. It was a benefit concert, and was in the gymnasium of a medical center out in the suburbs... definitely one of the more random things I've been too, but we had a fun evening!

That's all the updates I've got so far... I've got about 25 pages worth of papers to write between now and Monday so I'm about to head to a café and block myself off from the world.
Love you all!