Reflections One Year Later

I’ve been back in the States about a week and a half now, and it has been sort of a strange adjustment.  I have been trying to keep busy.  I read To Kill a Mockingbird, partly because I was genuinely interested in it and partly because I was tired of pretending like I had read it.  I am learning how to drive a manual car (harder than it looks), how to use LinkedIn (leave a comment if you can explain it to me, I would be most appreciative), and how to use banking infrastructure again (forgot ATM pin, had to think for a few minutes while someone impatiently waited behind me in the drive-thru line). 

While I have been experiencing some culture shock, I sort of know what to expect.  I came back to the states after being in Israel for five months when I was in high school, and I was home for a couple weeks in February.  I’ve had occasional slip-ups when I use Spanish instead of English or use a phrase that doesn’t quite translate the same in English.  (I’ve also been saying queue instead of line—unclear why that’s happening.)  It’s not so much a shock as a transition for me.  There’s nothing new here, and I know what is cultural appropriate.  I just had gotten used to the Argentine way of some things, like the aloof servers at restaurants or the friendlier people waiting in line.  It’s been a change adjusting back to small town Indiana, where I rarely leave the house without seeing someone I know. 

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Brownie, dulce de leche, whipped cream.  Delicious.

I’m most in shock by the fact that a year of my life has passed.  My birthday is tomorrow, and I cannot help but think back to my last birthday for comparison.  I had been in Buenos Aires for a week, and I still didn’t have many friends nor a sense of the city.  My birthday was on a Thursday, and we had to go to the Catholic University for orientation.  I went with a group of other girls who lived nearby, but it felt as though we were on the bus forever and I felt so lost and uncomfortable.  The orientation was overwhelming, and by the time I had figured out where to sign up, the few people I did know from my study abroad program had left.  I wasn’t sure what to do, it was raining, and I went home in tears.  As I sat in the dark in the apartment, my host, Delfi, came home and couldn’t figure out why I was so upset.  She went out and came back with a small brownie cake—brownie, dulce de leche, whipped cream—and sang happy birthday to me in English, which is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.  I then went back to the study abroad office to sign up for classes, and I wasn’t sure what anything was or what I was picking.  I returned home, and my (developing) friend Haley wanted to know what we were doing for my birthday.  I didn’t want to do anything because I was so down, and she insisted that we go out. 

The gang at Sugar.

After researching bars online, we picked one, and gathered a few other girls we thought seemed friendly to go.  I left the house and got lost, which was the norm, and ended up taking two taxis to get there.  In both cabs, I seriously contemplated just going home and going to bed.  The bar we wanted to go to was closed, so we talked around until we found another bar, Sugar.  We sat, we drank a little, we chatted with some strange Germans, and I went home. 

None of this was remarkable on my birthday, and for the longest time, I said that August 1, 2013, was one of the worst days of my entire study abroad trip.  However, looking back one year later, it is all incredibly significant – Delfi came to be my strongest support system, the Catholic University came to be a source of great learning and great frustration, the girls I went to the that bar with are some of my best friends to this day, and one month later, on September 1, I met my boyfriend at the same bar.  In the moment, it is hard to recognize all of the progress and positives, but looking back, I see that my twenty-first birthday was important in many ways. 

The other day, I was at the gym.  I couldn’t help but notice the differences between the YMCA and my gym in Argentina: there were more than 2 elliptical machines, the TV wasn’t showing creepy CSI re-runs, no one was drinking mate, and everyone kept to themselves and didn’t chat with their neighbors.  After an excruciating 33 minutes on the elliptical, I decided to walk a few laps to cool off.  The track at this gym is elevated and goes around two basketball courts and the area with the machines.  As I walked, I looked down on the basketball courts to see some young children at camp playing.  There were two kids in Colts Jerseys (#12 and #87) and another kid in a Pacers t-shirt.  There was one other kid, a little taller than the rest of them, wearing a full Argentine National Football team Messi outfit.  He had the jersey, the official #10 shorts, the socks, everything. 

This little reminder of Argentina, thousands of miles away in Northeast Indiana, brought a smile to my face.  I know that Indiana will always be important to me and that Argentina has a special place in my heart too.  I’m looking forward to seeing my friends, both old and new, in North America this fall and getting back to mi Buenos Aires querido (my beloved Buenos Aires) when I can.  

One Month In (Again)

I sometimes have trouble deciding if I am continuing the same study abroad in Buenos Aires or if I should consider my second semester its own separate experience.  After being here for a little over five months, I went to Brazil, home, and then came back.  As I began the new semester, a lot had changed – my good American friends were gone (how much I miss my Quilombos), the classes I had become accustomed to had changed, my schedule was all over the place, and much more.  I wasn’t learning the city again, but I was facing the same bureaucratic nightmares from both sides of the equator and assisting a new set of lost sheep (read: new exchange students). 

The gang from last semester (minus one, Katie) all together.  

I’m happy to help the new students, but I think there’s a value to having to struggle and learn by oneself.  I’ll say something if it’s a serious situation – I told someone not to buy a boat ticket to Uruguay with her credit card (currency exchange fees plus the bad exchange rate), explained that metro cards can go into debt, helped show the dangers of taking the wrong rama, or branch, of the bus, and shared the value of getting coke light at the supermarket instead of a kiosk.  But I kept my mouth shut when someone unwittingly joined the priciest and most chic gym in the city or when another person went to a restaurant I knew had bad food.

Some of my challenges remain the same too.  I am constantly dealing with silly bureaucratic rules, and I can successfully say I know how to navigate the Argentine system better than IU’s now.  I was able to get exceptions made to get the classes I needed as well as schedule two classes at effectively the same time.  I just now await IU’s response on syllabi to complete my course schedule.  Likewise, just like last semester, I still am having difficulty finding my readings at the Catholic University.  I’ll post about my experience in my class in the future. 

But after one month here (again), I am truly starting to appreciate the improvement in Spanish I have made.  I understand a good deal of what is going on in class and am able to resolve problems with a good grasp of Spanish.  I have already spoken to more students in my UCA class than I did all last semester.  My speaking abilities, which still aren’t great, are coming along—my speed is a lot better and I have to consciously think less about how to conjugate a verb or phrase a sentence.  The other night, my Argentine boyfriend told me that I sounded really Argentine when we spoke on the phone, which might be the biggest compliment I’ve gotten since arriving in July. 

I’m excited to see what the next (or final) four months of my adventure bring.  I hope that I can keep exploring new parts of South America and continue being amazed with my life in Buenos Aires.  And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally learn to roll my rs. 

Hoping for more moments of happiness and beauty in my final four months abroad.

School These Days

A big portion of my time in Argentina will be spent at school.  Even though I would have come here anyway, studying abroad is a requirement of my International Studies major and is strongly recommended for my Spanish major as well.  Lots of students who come on this program can take really anything that interests them—their school just gives elective credit for the study abroad experience or their grades don’t come home with them. 

My academic situation is a little more complicated, since I don’t have room in my schedule for electives or other non-essential courses.  I will be taking the majority of my classes at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), which serves as the headquarters for my program.  My classes there will be with only other American students, but taught by Argentines exclusively in Spanish.   I anticipate taking courses to improve my Spanish, a film class, and a class about cultural questions in Argentina.  In addition to these courses, I have to take at least one class at a local university as a direct enrollment student.

On my program, we have the choice of attending three different universities for our direct enrollment courses.  The first is the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)—the largest and most prestigious university in the country.  It has 360,000 students (yes, you read that correctly) spread out at different facultads, which are like different schools within a university.  It’s a similar set up to Indiana University, where many different schools like the Kelley School of Business or the College of Arts and Sciences are separate entities within the same university system.  Except in Argentina, it’s much more complicated.  Each facultad is located in a different part of the city and has its own registration process and academic calendar.  Since UBA is a public school in Argentina, it’s free to all students.

Our next option is Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA) the most prestigious private school (read: you pay to attend) in Buenos Aires.  It has facultads, too, but all of its buildings are near to each other, much like a campus in the United States.  All the buildings are named after saints, and we get a lot of extra holidays due to saints’ days and births of important Catholic figures.  Its facilities are very nice.  The last choice is an arts university—I don’t know much about this one, as I didn’t attend the information sessions about it.  In addition to not having time for art classes, my art talent is limited to courses like Stick Figures 101 (Muñeco de palitos I would be the Spanish equivalent). 

To register here, you sign up for everything you think you might want to take, and then participate in what is called a “shopping period.”  You can try out the class for a week or two, and then drop whatever you don’t like.  Also, if more people sign up for the class than there is space, they have a ballotage or lottery to determine who gets to take it.  Likewise, when you make your schedule you need a map, as you have to account for how much time it takes you to get to each of the class locations.  Oh, and if not enough students sign up, they will cancel the class and put you in another one.  Needless to say, this has been a stressful process. 

This week, the two classes I’m trying out at UCA began, and I’ll write about that experience in another post.  Next week the rest of the courses begin, and then I’ll decide what I am actually going to take.  Registration here has been a logistical and strategic nightmare.  Yesterday, I even called my Spanish advisor in the United States with questions about what credits would count.  (Me: “Hi, I’m calling from Argentina right now.”  Advisor: “Oh!  How’s the weather?”)  So vamos a ver, as they say here, we will see.  Though I’m sure I will learn something meaningful and interesting from any course I take, I would greatly prefer to take classes that will come back as useful credits at IU.