Dias 1 y 2: el 17 y 18 de mayo

Bienvenidos! I just arrived in Buenos Aires and am sitting at the airport waiting for the other half of our group that flew out of Dallas, Texas. With this free time (it’s 8 a.m. and Carolina, our trip coordinator, bought us coffee…and I drank it), I set some blogging standards. I’ll blog on here DAILY with stories and summaries of daily activities in English…and Spanish. As I sat on the plane, I realized I wanted to keep a blog in both languages and see how my Spanish improves as time goes on.

As with most languages, I think different things in each language. The Spanish blog will not be a direct translation of the English by any means, but will be what my thoughts are in the area of my brain that processes Spanish. So the most frequent updates will be published here, I will write five reflection posts on my experiences prompted from the Missouri Abroad blog that I’ll link on here, and write more in-depth reflections on my Wordpress professional blog. I appreciate anyone who cares enough about me to read what I’m doing!

Let’s start with the English version of the past two days: The first day of our trip was travel time. Jordin, Cally and I are all from the Chicagoland area so we all flew from O’Hare to Miami, and met Armeen, another girl on our trip who is from North Carolina. The four of us roamed the Miami airport and ate a sit-down dinner to kill time. Then, I said goodbye to my cellphone for the summer and put it on airplane mode and turned it off. The four of us were for the most part, the ONLY Americans on the flight from Miami to Buenos Aires. Porteños, Argentinean citizens, filled most of the seats, and I sat next to a nice man who had two daughters at universities in Buenos Aires—19 and 22 years old.

I always learn valuable things from making conversation with the people next to me on airplanes. We had a 30-minute conversation about the cultural differences in the United States and South America, and diversity with both Italian and Spanish influence around Argentina. He even mentioned that our idea of influence might be different compared to theirs, on evaluating how strong Italy & Spain have contributed to developing certain areas of Argentina. The most notable differences that he pointed out were that Argentinean families don’t really move around, and he compared families that move to various states (like mine) are unheard of in Argentina. You live in the same city or neighborhood your entire life—staying close to your family. Secondly, we discussed how the press (especially Clarin Newspaper in Argentina) has a horrible relationship with the Argentinean government. This will be an interesting phenomenon to observe, especially working in the journalism industry as an internship down here.

The overall plane experience was really nice! American Airlines all the way *product placement.* Each seat had its own television screen and remote, so I watched a Glee episode and the movie No Strings Attached on the longer flight. We were given blankets, headphones, pillows, dinner and breakfast—probably the best airline food I have ever eaten! Cally asked the flight attendant what type of pop they had, and he had never heard “pop” referred to as soda before, which was fairly amusing.

Finally after hours of waiting at the airport for our group (it took long because of intense protests), we got on a bus and drove through Buenos Aires! It’s going to be a great season to be here with all of the greenery and vegetation, moderate temperatures and plenty to do! My roommates and I—Jordin, Stacey and Elizabeth—spent a few hours unpacking and choosing our rooms in our beautiful apartment in the middle of Recoleta, one of the city’s barrios (neighborhoods) with a strong Italian and Spanish influence. It has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a living room and kitchen, and a gorgeous balcony overlooking a nice street from our 5^th floor! We are only speaking in Spanish, and had our first hardcore cultural experience ordering a late lunch (porteños, Argentineans, eat dinner around 9 or 10 p.m., so we’re adjusting to their schedule), and trying to order food and beverages we weren’t familiar with in a language we are becoming more and more fluent in. After lunch, we roamed the city streets of Recoleta and tried to pick up on our bearings, finding the grocery store, plenty of places to shop, ice cream and coffee shops, the bank and more.

I love the overall feel of the city because it’s very urban, but each neighborhood is still unique with the various sections of the city. Its busy nature is comparable to New York, and Elizabeth is even calling it a mini-Paris of South America. There’s always energy, everything’s open 24 hours, but the nature of being in Argentina diminishes the American sense of work and pressure. The apartment feels homey because of our living room and kitchen setup, having our own rooms to store things, and sitting outside on the balcony loving life. We even have a landline phone that gets random calls where we must speak to them in Spanish! We so far love using it to call the other girls’ apartment. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s tour to pick up on bearings and the various barrios!

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Ya me siento como una Americana. La mayoría de la avión estuvo lleno de porteños, y es interesante porque no hay un “look” a ellos como los mexicanos. Un hombre blanco puede empezar hablando en español y es como una sorpresa. Llegamos al aeropuerto a las seis de la mañana y cambiamos el dinero. Finalmente encontramos a Carolina y ella nos compró croissants y café en McDonalds. Es interesante porque McDonalds vende comida diferente, como pan, carne y más—y todos los trabajadores llevan denim. Ahora estamos esperando a los otros estudiantes (hay cinco más). Armeen, Cally, Jordin y yo estamos en la misma avión y fue divertido. Tenemos un “cititour” mañana y hoy, movemos a los apartamentos y caminar en los calles para adjustar a la area de Recoleta.

Los apartamentos son bellas, y siente como una mezcla de urban y suburban. Lo siento por mi Spanglish, pero me ayuda a aprender palabras nuevas. Creamos una lista en nuestra refrigerador que se llama "Palabras aprendidas," donde escribimos palabras nuevas que oímos en las calles. La ciudad de Buenos Aires es única y tiene una variedad de tiendas, comida y vida en general. Hay museos, barros, historia, y algo para todos.