Relajarme

The past two days have been pretty standard. Class, work, homework, work, etc. I've never been so exhausted that I've had such little determination to go explore, but my bod is still getting over the week of traveling and full day adventures. I got one 11-hour night of sleep in, and tonight was my first true night of relaxation. All big projects at work are completed and there's nothing hanging on me that I know I should be doing.

This relaxed attitude provoked me to walk home from work, especially knowing that none of my roommates would be there yet. Why rush to sit at home, when you can enjoy the beauty of Buenos Aires? Here are some numbers:

• The walk home is 6.5 kilometers, approximately 4 miles. That's like being at home and just deciding to walk home from church one day.
• I got asked for directions 3 TIMES! To the Hilton Hotel in Puerto Madero, the casino (which is very popular here), and to a specific street.
• I always keep an eye out for people speaking English, secretly hoping that I'll find random American friends or students studying abroad on the street. (If you know me, you know I'm not kidding). Walking for over an hour, I only heard two people speaking English the entire time, hence clearly not a situation occurring often.
• 4: the number of Subte stops I walked by without walking on. Resisting the temptation and getting some beauty and exercise!
• Too bad I didn't have my pedometer with me!
  
  
  I decided to turn my walk into a mental game. Here were the rules:

1. Don't get lost.

2. Don't get robbed.

3. Avoid clouds of cigarette smoke.

And I succeeded with goals 1 and 2! I've been pretty congested and it's probably allergies, but the massive amount of smokers in Argentina is not helping the cause. I don't even think my sister Eleni (shoutout!) could even live here without having frequent asthma attacks.

One exciting part of my walk was crossing 9 de Julio, the widest street in the world.

It's 14 lanes! It's also the same street I transfer on while taking the Subte, so it's cool to see it from above-ground rather than underground.

En route to Recoleta, I walked past this square by Rodriguez Peña.

Things like this remind me how lucky I am to be in Argentina, where I can see

the most beautiful European architecture and palm trees in the same park.

This day was perfect on so many levels, from the sun, to the exercise, to the fact that I didn't need headphones & an iPod, a cellphone or an acquaintance to occupy me. Sounds like too much relaxing, right?

Now that our oven works, Jordin and I have been cooking pasta!

Not even paying for store bought dinners and having the time to cook

without worrying about finishing an assignment.

We have an agenda of tentative plans for the weekend and are looking forward to more local exploration! As much as we've seen, we haven't conquered it all. Have a great Friday!

Back in Buenos Aires

After being out and about for so long, I'm finally back to my current definition of real life: meaning 12 hours of class, 30 hours of work and 5 hours of sleep. I still don't really have a voice after travel congestion, but am loving every minute of things here so no complaints.

Notable stories worth sharing:

• Cooking: After a month of living in an apartment, our stove finally works! We can cook dinner instead of buying takeout, eating leftovers, using the microwave or making sandwiches every night! To celebrate, I cooked pasta for the first time ever with Jordin's help. The verdura & carne ravioli (vegetable-meat) with fileto (red sauce) tasted great, and honestly, it felt great to cook something and then be so satisfied with the meal. Why we didn't overcome this issue earlier, I'm not quite sure, but I foresee the next month full of cooking endeavors when time permits :)
• Signs in Spanish: For some reason, I find professional signs and announcements absolutely hilarious when they are very comparable to things in English. At Iguazú National Park, there was a lot of this. One example was the "don't cross the train tracks" signs when we took the train to the waterfalls. The rest range from stop signs that say "PARE," advisory warnings on food, and my personal favorite- the floor numbers at work. Kind of like we say 2nd and 3rd, the floors her say 2 DO and 3 RA, for segundo and tercera (2nd/3rd) respectively. I can't pinpoint why this cracks me up so much, but I think it relates to Stacey's amusement at seeing stores named exactly what the textbook said they would be. Like when the bookstore is called LIBRERIA. Because in the USA (or as we commonly just say, the states), these stores have names. But here they don't. Heladeria is the ice cream shop, fruteria is the fruit store, and lavaderia is the laundromat. You can't distinguish one from the other, only by location. They're funny because we're so accustomed to seeing them in English, that it looks like a joke translated into Spanish.
• Simone de Beauvoir: For my gender studies class, I read some chapters of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir where she presents a lot of theory about how women have always been seen as "the other" and that you are not born, but become a woman. Our professor also assigned a 50-minute video documentary to watch, so I figured I would watch it the night before so the information was fresh in my brain. This was a poor decision, because when I clicked on the YouTube link last night to begin, the video was in French with Spanish subtitles. En serio. What?! As challenging as this was, I can say I comprehended as much of the video as I would have if I watched it in English. It took a lot of pausing, note-taking, and not blinking to catch every last Spanish word, and was essentially like watching a video without sound, but misleading with the sound of French language. All in all, an obstacle was overcome and I improved my Spanish and gender knowledge by listening so closely!

Presenting...my other blog

In addition to this page as some of you know, I also have a Wordpress page for more professional life endeavors than accounting every realization and comical aspect of my day and sharing vacation photos.

My fascination with social media news used to be evident on here under the social media and news tags to share my favorite stories, but I'll be transferring these posts, analyzing additional news stories and sharing some of my essays on my Wordpress blog.

Don't stop looking here; I'll be actively updating both, but feel free to check the other one out when you're in a more intellectual mood :)

Besos!

Last day in Iguazu (part 4): 6-26

Since Stacey and I booked new flights, we did not leave until later in the evening, so we arose early to hit the National Park and the waterfalls one more time! We walked the trails for the upper and lower circuits, seeing gorgeous views of the cataratas from above, the side, and right in front of them! It was much colder so we were glad we didn’t schedule any water activities. We saw the same group of Americans from the Butler program that we ran into yesterday, which is pretty ironic considering the size of this National Park. Small world! We spent about five hours appreciating the beauty of the waterfalls and the nature trails…until we realized we had to get to the airport.

Exploring with coffee (cafe con leche) to keep us warm

The waterfalls from the lower circuit

Stacey and I!

The toughest part of the hike- on the side with all the rocks!

Back to la Garganta del Diablo- Devil's Throat

The gorgeous path from the park to Devil's Throat
Goodbye Iguazú National Park!

Our taxi driver to the airport was fascinated by us after half an hour of socializing in Spanish, where she explained how there were elections in Iguazu that day and not only were they all paper—but they were on a Sunday. She gave us her business card to keep in touch, reminding me of Rosa from my flight from Mexico last summer. The Iguazu airport is barely larger than the Columbia Airport, with three gates and minimal staff. When we asked the LAN airline employee a question, he told us he remembered us from the waterfalls yesterday and told us he was with his kids. We’re pretty certain that he remembers us from taking a photo of his family, since that’s something we usually do (offer to take pictures of random adorable families). Small world! Although we arrived a bit early, we were most thankful that our flight was not cancelled due to volcanic ash. The other girls on our trip didn’t even make it to Iguazu, so we were glad to make it there and home safely. The same man from our flight there started a huge applause as the flight landed, which was pretty amusing. We bused and Subte’d back to Buenos Aires and have never been so happy to be HOME. I realized how much I’ll miss our apartment.

Stacey laughing at my eagerness to open the Havanna alfajores on the flight...

so excited that I broke open the box

Now, back to real life…work, classes and a sleepless week!

"We're flying halfway across the country [Argentina] to make it back to work on time tomorrow...and there are people stressing out about driving from St. Louis to Columbia!"

-Stacey

Iguazu Part 3: Las Cataratas

Saturday afternoon, we continued onto the grand event--seeing the cataratas (waterfalls). We had seen the entire town of Iguazu, the three borders, and it was time to actually see the national park. Here's Wikipedia's explanation, but we entered the national park and took a train out to the waterfalls exit since you can't just walk there. Jordin, Stacey, Keith, Lacy and I started at La Garganta del Diablo, Devil's Throat, which is the furthest and biggest fall. We walked a trail above the water for about 20 minutes before seeing this fascinating waterfall. It was so strong that we couldn't help but stare at the beauty.

Devil's Throat

Right side

Left side

After this, we took an ecological boat tour that took us from Devil's Throat to the other area of waterfalls, the upper and lower circuits. We chose to first see them through Iguazu Jungle, our "Great adventure" and speedboat ride that we soon found out would take us INTO the waterfalls. The tour took us on the Macuco Trail, one of the trails of the park, and provided ecological facts about the rainforest. There are over 2,200 different types of species in the Iguazu National Park alone! It was great to know that although this tour was in Spanish, we could comprehend the entire thing.

The tour ended here, where we put on life vests and went to our speedboat.

Stacey, Jordin and I

On the boat, we headed in the direction toward the falls!

me, Jordin and Stacey after round one of getting wet

In the waterfall! (And my camera didn't break!)

Standing on the lower circuit trail after getting soaked on the Great Adventure

Look how close they let you stand!

This is one of those life situations that was so fascinating, it can barely be described in words. I hope the pictures do it SOME JUSTICE, although they could never fully express how gorgeous and strong these waterfalls are.

Some quotes that described our day....

"Screw UT! [University of Texas] They’re all like…we have a partnership with the University of Cordoba and we’re like…well WE have a partnership with CAROLINA." -Stacey

"I always wonder if there are secret things under the waterfalls.” –Han

"And they have all these signs that say “cerrado” [English translation: closed] but you can just go past them. There are really good views!" –Han

Iguazu part 2: Aventuras en el bosque 6-25

Adventures in the Forest: We started our Iguazu adventure by paying for Iguazu Forest, a company that picks you up from your hostel and takes you ziplining, trekking through the forest and rappelling! We woke up at 7 a.m. and got inside the excursion car outside, which took us about half an hour away away to begin our activities.

The area we drove through had a montón (good amount) of wild animals, and smaller homes. It reminded me a lot of San Jose de la Zorra and the Indian Tribe there from Project Mexico last summer, except with greenery. It was a wet and muddy morning, but clear enough to see all the forestation where the Guaraní reside, as well as residents outside of Iguazú.

Our first excursion was wet rappelling, and although it's usually done against a waterfall, we did it in more of a rock-climbing sense. Here's me rappelling down the hill!

The next stop on the trail was this waterfall, big in real life, but small compared to what we would see later that day!

Stacey, Jordin and I

If it weren't for our tour guide providing us with mate,

I don't know if I would have survived the day.

The people on this adventure were from all over the place, ranging from Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, to the United States! We met Lacey and Keith, two students from the University of Texas, studying in Cordoba, Argentina for the summer (pretty far from Buenos Aires). We became friends with them and hung out the rest of the day to travel the national park!

We realized how fun it is to get to know people on such adventures because our two other favorite people on the truck were newlyweds who just moved to Uruguay. The husband had put it on his bucket list that he wanted to see all seven continents, and he DID. We told him about our trip to Uruguay and learned about the wife's family from there, and they moved back there after meeting in Hawaii and attending college in the USA. They gave us recommendations of places to travel and were really cool!

Stacey taking off to zipline!

Me ziplining! Thank you to Lacy who took this picture

from the ground!

Lacy and Keith were taking a bus to the cataratas as well, so we stopped at there hostel, which was much nicer than ours, to freshen up and prepare ourselves for what we actually went to Iguazu to see. But these excursions were a pretty fun addition to the waterfalls!

Tres Fronteras! Iguazu Part 1: 6-24

Jordin pointing at Argentina, Stacey - Paraguay, and me - Brazil at the

Tres Fronteras, or Three Borders, point in Iguazú, Argentina!

After our quick night at home switching out bags, I woke up Friday morning to an email that had arrived at 4 a.m. from Despegar telling me my flight was cancelled…good thing we were way ahead of this obstacle! In an effort to perpetuate the stereotype that college students studying abroad are cheap (kidding), we took a bus and the Subte to the airport for the low cost of 50 cents. When in the United States can you get transportation to an airport for 50 cents?! Stacey and I used an awesome machine that let us scan our passports to check into our flight, proceeding to print the tickets. I compared this technologically fascinating machine to the ability to extract a PDF with images as well, how cool! The flight was less than two hours, but a much better option than 18 hours on a bus considering the time we had.

Mocking Despegar

I woke up from a nap on the flight to two old women tapping my shoulders, opening my eyes to the tray pulled down with a box of food on top. At first, I was aggravated by this, but I opened the box and looked at Stacey’s smile from across the aisle to see that the box was filled with 3 Havanna alfajores! Alfajores are popular cookies in Argentina, and Havanna is comparable to Starbucks. Can you imagine receiving the three best pastries Starbucks has as a complimentary addition to your short flight? Stacey and I were beyond excited. We arrived to Puerto Iguazú which already looked foresty, and took a taxi to our hostel about 15 miles away.

The town of Iguazu, Argentina has a population of only 70,000 and is located in the Misiones province, which is the most ecological province of Argentina. It’s known for its natural resources, production of yerba mate, the herbs used in the popular mate drink, and of course, the cataratas—waterfalls that are the highlight. Iguazu National Park and its waterfalls are the main attraction, because other than that, the rest of the town is pretty impoverished. Puerto Iguazú and “el centro,” the main area of the downtown shops, is at least five miles from the park itself, so the hotels and hostels have buses that take you to the cataratas (waterfalls). There are a lot of cool places to trek and go hiking whether you are inside or outside of the national park though, and excursion companies definitely take advantage of it.

Funny quote:

Katie: "Where's Paraguay?"

Jordin: "Oh..just right past the bank I think." And it WAS.

We spent our Friday afternoon checking out and taking a boat tour of the three borders- down the Paraná River and Río Iguazú to watch the sunset over Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The guided tour taught us a lot about geography and Iguazú in general. We learned that the Paraná is the 7th largest river in the world and the 3rd largest in South America. We also passed the Fraternity Bridge, Puente Tancredo Neves, that connects Brazil and Argentina. After learning about the Guaraní Indian Tribe, the boat tour company has a partnership with them so we even got to pull up to Paraguay and see one of their ritual dances! Great way to spend a Friday night- and allow us to see four countries in 24 hours!

Bienvenidos a Paraguay!

Watching the beautiful sky and sunset with Paraguay on the left

and Brazil on the right! You can even see the town of Puerto Mayo, population 350,000,

and its buildings in the back right!

A ritual performed by the Guaraní Indian Tribe in Paraguay

As it got dark outside, we went to the bottom floor of the boat for a DANCE PARTY WITH A LIVE BAND! This is my dream right here. It was like the Odyssey boat cruise on Navy Pier but in South America, and better! The Latin American band even played the Zorba Greek dance! Definitely a great bout tour.

We went for a lomito dinner (a huge steak sandwich with amazing Argentine red meat) and to the heladería, ice cream shop, where we somehow paid basically $1 (5 pesos) for two ginormous scoops of ice cream. We told him we'd be back tomorrow and he laughed, but we weren't kidding. We don't turn down good ice cream. Funny quote:

Jordin, about the owner of the ice cream shop: "He loves us."

Stacey: "We tend to have that effect on people here."

Stacey: "I learned about the Guaraní in my Latin American history class...and now we're just here, SEEING them! This is our lives!"

We booked bus tickets, adventurous excursions and boat tours for Saturday, so figured we should actually sleep for once. Our hostel was called El Guembe, named after a hemp plant, and was everything we expected a hostel in the forest to be. The rooms were decent, with spiderwebs, semi-sketchy, weird blankets, the usual. Made me appreciate our apartment even more. Stacey & I shared a room, and Jordin & Elizabeth shared the other. Thankfully we booked private two-mans instead of sleeping in a huge room with strangers! Not the most real first hostel experience, but the cold water and loud nature definitely contributed to the stereotype.

Uruguay!

Bienvenidos a Montevideo, Uruguay! Where according to our tour guide, just about everything is either old and abandoned, or refurbished by prisoners (just kidding, keep reading for the details). While the country may kind of seem thrown together, the beaches are beautiful and it's been a great vacation spot in the middle of my Buenos Aires trip. After our 30 minute flight over here, we took a driving tour of the city and started in Carrasco, the wealthier part of Montevideo (the capital of Uruguay where we're staying). We drove past multi-million dollar homes on the beach, then stopped at Plaza de la Armada, a lovely garden on the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean.

Plaza de la Armada

Beach, flowers, city, what more could you want?!

The entire group on the trip

The tour ended at Plaza Independencia, the most prominent area of Montevideo. It is important not only because of the buildings here, but because it divides the Ciudad Vieja (old city) from the Centro (center). The tomb of General Artigas, the man from the statue, is beneath the statue, and the president works near here as well. Teatro Solis, a big opera house and theater, is on one side, and Palacio Salvo, an older important building is in front of the statue. We were honored to have our hotel here as well!

Plaza Independencia

One downfall of moving countries is always having to exchange money. Let's grasp this:

• US dollar = 4 Argentinean pesos = 18.3 Uruguayan pesos

Finally, we adjust to Argentina amounts, and are now thrown off when dinner is 200 pesos. What does that mean?! Elizabeth devised the formula of going a decimal point back and dividing by two (if the dollar were 20 Uruguayan pesos) to get a better understanding of what we were spending, but sometimes our brains are just so fried from a long day that it doesn't matter.

Uruguayan pesos- $1000 bill

We realized that Uruguayan citizens have been kinder to us, even giving us separate checks at dinner last night! Their accent is easier to understand than Argentina's too. We had our first real "family dinner" with everyone on the trip, which has been difficult to organize in Buenos Aires since our apartments are so far away. Out of convenience and pricing, we ate at our hotel casino (which happens to be one of the more popular attractions in Montevideo) and then swam at the pool. Jordin, Stacey and I had an excellent "chivito al pan" for dinner, which was a steak sandwich with fried egg, lettuce, tomatoes, 'muzarella' cheese and ham. YUM.

The pool's roof had a cool reflection, so we took a picture!

We woke up to a phenomenal complimentary breakfast on the 25th floor with a great view of the city. Pancakes with dulce de leche, an egg casserole, fresh-squeezed orange juice, real milk that's not powder, yogurt smoothies, fresh fruit, and the best medialunas (croissants) I have ever eaten. What's not to love about Montevideo?!

Elizabeth, Stacey and I took a walk through Ciudad Vieja (the old city) to kick off the morning.

The architecture in Ciudad Vieja

Teatro Solis- a big theater in Montevideo

The view from one side of the hotel restaurant

Carolina planned a media tour to various outlets in Montevideo, specifically the Monte Carlo radio and television stations. At the TV station, we observed how Uruguay imitates the US but tends to fail, and saw an overall lower quality of news delivery. They are in the process of switching the station to HD so we heard about that and watched the 1 p.m. newscast live.

Monte Carlo TV station

The radio station not only gave us a bag of goodies including a digital recorder, alfajors (cookies/galletas in South America), a notebook and a calendar (what could I love more?), but also provided a phenomenal hourlong presentation on the station and journalism in Uruguay. Robert, a manager at the radio station, discussed its history and more. This was more interesting because it can easily be applied to the majority of South America and its status with the news. Monte Carlo's goal is to provide strictly informative news content and music without analysis or talk shows, and they stick to it and receive good ratings.

From here, we left for the US Embassy, which I talked about in my last post. Directly following, we walked the Rambla (Promenade) of Montevideo and lasted for about five miles! Our determination began in finding a park from the original tour where all the stone was laid down by prisoners. We remembered it being a beautiful park, and finally found it! Also an example of Uruguay's buildings being abandoned or refurbished by prisoners. Here's what we saw on the walk along the way! Why not walk down one of the most beautiful shores ever?

Sunset from Uruguay!

The park

Montevideo is quite a conquerable city considering its small size!

We even walked from point 1 to 2 and back on here :)

After another chivito sandwich for dinner (had to get it again, at a different restaurant), we returned to the Radisson exhausted from our long day. The hotel happened to have the first "Hielo Bar" in South America, so why not check it out? Hielo is the Spanish word for ice, and the entire bar--stools, glasses, wall frames, bar tables--are made of ice in a room that's -7 degrees Celsius (about 18 degrees Fahrenheit). After a trip to the ice bar, the night ended with socializing in our rooms, getting called out twice for being too loud (whoops, might as well happen while we're young) and overall nice fellowship with everyone on our trip.

Stacey, Jordin and I in the ice bar

With the exception of the Despegar flight incident that took up more of the day than it should have, we arrived safely back to Buenos Aires just to leave again. Adios Uruguay, hopefully I'll be back for either the State Department or your beautiful beaches!

Dream job

This week in Uruguay, our last guided visit was to the United States Embassy to Uruguay. None of the group was quite certain exactly what we would be doing here, but after about three rounds of security, we were finally let in for a presentation. Here, I learned that embassies' main priorities are to serve the American people abroad, and discussed the various goals and services embassies hope to provide. We heard from the head of research, an intern, a consular affairs employee, and another higher up position--and these presentations turned me around.

I was inspired by all the work they do on a daily basis and the strong impact it has on so many individuals. One woman is interviewing Uruguayan citizens in Spanish and deciding whether to grant them a visa to the United States. Theoretically, her analysis and decisions could singlehandedly control someone's future hopes and dreams. Another is receiving news wire/cable information from the Capitol and offices in Washington DC, and deciding how to best share it with the Uruguayan citizens. These are important positions and are happening in just about every country. Best of all, these presenters were real people--they were American citizens who graduated from state colleges (ironically, all journalism majors) and went on to work in an industry combining journalism, politics and public affairs.

The US Embassy to Uruguay, overseeing the beach

So what was my next step? Researching the US Department of State internships for next summer. Or for future employment. Employment becomes difficult because the majority of these positions only remain in one location for two to four years, so it's a difficult job to settle down in but definitely something respected. As I felt after Project Mexico, this visit once again sparked my determination to help people of Hispanic heritage fulfill dreams and enter the US. Thankfully, I have a professional project or thesis for graduate school where I can pursue this interest, but working for consular affairs or in the Bureau of the Western hemisphere has become a goal that will hopefully soon be achieved, come January!