This city is nocturnal…

And I love it! The Buenos Aires schedule is right up my alley. Dinner is eaten later here than in the United States, and it’s not uncommon for people to go out for coffee or ice cream at 11 or 12. Bedtime? Let’s just say my natural clock is in heaven here.

The tendency to gather late at night affects the rest of the day’s schedule, leaving more time for socializing, napping, relaxing, etc. between the work day and dinnertime. Sure, some might argue that the extra hours of sleep at night have their share of positive side effects – beauty sleep, de-stressing, physical health… I’d beg to differ, however. I’ve never been a huge advocate of the prescribed 8-hours of sleep of night, and Buenos Aires is simply reinforcing this. People aren’t rushing to get to bed! Instead, they’re happy to sit and talk for hours, take their time at meals, make time for friends and family, and enjoy personal space. A lot of people do this in the United States, especially in small towns, but I think the tendency – especially in cities – is to prioritize work and sleep over personal sanity and valuable relationships. I’m extremely guilty of it: When given the choice between studying one hour more for a test, going out for late-night Wendy’s with my sister, or just getting an extra hour of sleep, I sadly would say that the random family outing would probably be my last choice. The pressure to perform well at school and on the job can be so overwhelming that it’s particularly tempting to take family and friends for granted. Not so much the case here.

I’m sort of going off on a tangent here, but I have really been impressed by the high regard with which the people here treat relationships. My madre’s ex-husband, their son, son’s wife and four-year-old grandchild meet every Sunday afternoon (ALL afternoon) for tea and conversation. Family ties are strong and always a priority. Observing this here has been a neat wake-up call for me, making me realize how degraded family structures have become in the United States. I’m lucky to come from a family that embodies the “kin comes first” spirit, but I think that it’s increasingly more difficult to run across this attitude in mainstream America. When we stay up late, it’s generally for work, studies, or a favorite television show. Here, people stay up late to go on midnight strolls and catch up face-to-face with friends. Personally, I find it healthy and well worth the difficulty waking up to the alarm in the morning.

More in line with the title of this entry, I’ll give a quick update on Buenos Aires nightlife. Any guidebook will tell you that people stay out LATE here. Fair statement, although I might argue that it’d be better to write that people stay out EARLY. As in six or seven in the morning. People are still arriving in clubs at five! It’s absurd, but kinda cool! It’s living in the moment at its finest, and I’m excited to have until December to take advantage of the extended waking hours. Naturally, this means sleeping in later on Saturdays and Sundays. Once again, this has been just fine by my natural clock.

Speaking of late nights and sleeping in… Since I can’t exactly sleep in tomorrow morning, I’d better tie up this blog entry. Our classes officially begin tomorrow, and I’m really excited about the material. Spanish classes will be particularly relevant, as I am in great need of a refresher in castellano grammar! ¡Buenas noches, Buenos Aires!

**I wrote this blog at 1 AM on Sunday evening (8/31). No Wi-Fi in the apartment, so I’m posting on Monday (9/1) morning!**

Palermo!

This post will be quick, but hopefully the takeaway will be clear: Buenos Aires is AWESOME!! My group arrived in the city Thursday morning, spent Thursday night in a hotel, and traveled all over the city on Friday afternoon. Yesterday (Friday) evening, we moved in with our homestay families. My madre, Mirta, is fantastic. I have my own room, and our apartment has a balcony that overlooks Calle Cabello. I’m located ten minutes (walking) from IDES, where most of my classes take place.

I finally caught up on my sleep and woke up rather late today. I spent the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon exploring the area, and a friend and I had a chance to go jogging through several parks and gardens in my neighborhood, Palermo. I promise to upload photos of the area, my apartment, and my friends soon!

Estancia Don Manuel

Hola! I write this blog with a much more positive attitude than I had 36 hours ago… I’ve met up with my group from SIT, and the loneliness factor has since declined exponentially! There are a total of fifteen students from universities across the United States – UNC-Chapel Hill, Stanford, Claremont-McKenna, Wofford, and several other liberal arts colleges. We have three full-time SIT staff persons, two of whom hail from Buenos Aires and the other a native Chilean. I’ve enjoyed getting to know everyone, and I have a strong feeling this will be a GREAT semester!

The Interior of the Estancia

The group convened at the Buenos Aires international airport on Tuesday morning (thankfully, I made it safely and smoothly from the hostel to the aeropuerto!), and we traveled from the airport to an estancia, or ranch, in the Buenos Aires countryside. Don Manuel Estancia, where we spent last night and will stay again tonight, is beautiful! There are stables, a pool, a polo field, volleyball courts – it’s like a summer camp in Buenos Aires! Our hosts have been wonderful, welcoming us with open arms and being very patient with our limited Spanish abilities.

The grounds at our estancia

Side note: I’m really excited – I just figured out how to insert photos successfully into my blog!!! Anyhow, we leave the estancia tomorrow (Thursday) morning, and will spend Thursday night at a hotel in Buenos Aires. This was supposed to be our first taste of the city, but I guess I sort of weaseled my way into La Capital a day in advance, hence my random and  I’d like to think adventurous stay at Hostel Estoril.

We move in with our homestay families Friday evening. I can’t wait to see where I’ll be living! Classes start next week. The next few days are primarily occupied with orientation activities, safety and health overviews, group bonding activities, etc. It’s very relaxing, but I’ll definitely be ready for the bright city lights by tomorrow. There’s not much going on in the countryside…

It’s beautiful here. The weather is perfect – mid-70s day and night. Jeans and t-shirt weather, although one could comfortably wear shorts. A few students in our group have been brave enough to jump in the pool here at the estancia, but those of you who know me well won’t be surprised to know that I stayed dry on the sides.

A few brave souls actually dove in... I did not take part.

We’ve been eating extremely well. We had an asado (steak meal) yesterday for lunch – different variations of meat that just kept on coming, with potatoes, salad, and fruit cocktail for dessert. Dinner consisted of delicious spinach empanadas and flan with dulce de leche (a sweet caramel-like topping that Argentines put on everything!). Breakfast is generally coffee, bread, and jam or dulce de leche. In the afternoons, we take a light merienda or cafecito that is similar to breakfast. Lunch today was, once again, multiple courses: several leafy salads, a potato salad, roasted potatoes, and a chicken dish. We had a tiramisu-type dish for dessert.

All of this having been said, it’s gorgeous out and I’ve been eating an amount that merits a nice afternoon jog around the estancia. Adios!

Jet-lagged, sans caffeine, and clearly not yet proficient

Tonight will more than likely go down in the books as one of the most random of my life. My lone night in Argentina. Why am I here tonight? I think it’s a combination of several reasons, the most important being a slight hunger for something adventurous, independent, and out of the ordinary. I’d argue I’ve done a fair job of getting myself out of my comfort zone – spending my first night halfway across the world all by myself, sans travel companions and tour guides, has been a challenge. It’s also been a learning experience and a great way to break into the city.

Flying in, Argentina (or my window-seat view of it) seemed one thing: flat. Maybe I was expecting the sharp, staggering hills of Rio de Janeiro, or else the bright city lights that light up the sky on a late-night flight. Not today. I arrived early this morning, after a long and sleepless direct flight from Washington, DC to Buenos Aires, and the rising sun lit up miles and miles of flat green land. Cattle country.

Customs was simple enough. I had no problem whatsoever getting through, and if anything I think they were really lax with me because I was flying solo, and clearly not Argentinean – if my blonde hair didn’t give me away, my feeble attempts to speak porteño Spanish surely did. From there, I managed to get the best exchange rate in the airport and reserve an official airport cab (no scamming allowed…) to my hostel.

I tried to take it all in on the cab ride. The traffic was not as overwhelming as I’d been led to believe. Nor was the poverty as striking. I’ve been told not to compare destinations, but I always ignore that advice: My first impression of Buenos Aires reminds me more of Rome than Rio de Janeiro. Buenos Aires lacks Rio’s breathtaking landscapes and incredible hills, but it also lacks the notoriously visible hillside slums-favelas-that you can spot from the plane as it lands in Rio.  I’d been told countless times that Buenos Aires is a European city South-American style, but I still assumed it would approach a Brazilian metropolis more so than Paris or Madrid (neither of which I’ve actually seen, which sort of renders this whole argument irrelevant) – what I found was beautiful architecture marred by one undeniable feature: dilapidation. I guess that’s the consequence of years of economic turmoil, instability, and neoliberal restructuring, all layered on top of a rich, Iberian colonial history.

I’m frustrated with the language. I am having a really tough time with the Argentine “vos” and the peculiar way of pronouncing “ll” and “y” here. Granted, it’s been twelve hours and I’d do well to remind myself that practice, after all, does make perfect. Nonetheless, jet lag and difficulties in communicating to purchase a phone and a computer charger (of ALL the things to forget…) left me exhausted. Needless to say, my Spanish vocabulary expanded rapidly in order to make the aforementioned purchases…

The hostel experience has been a refreshingly pleasant one. Hostel Estoril is beautiful, with colorful rooms, not-so-reliable Internet, friendly staff, and visitors from all over the world. I’m embarrassed to say I double-booked a two-person room so that I could have it to myself, but I didn’t want to have a stranger sharing a room with me my first night in Argentina. Some, including myself might call me paranoid, and I admit it was an unnecessary precaution, but I don’t regret the decision. It’s been a straining and stressful 24 hours, and I’m enjoying the relative peace and quiet in my private room. The room itself is very nice with a balcony overlooking the Congreso building. I have yet to see the building up close, but from a distance it saddens me that this beautiful historic building has become so neglected-looking. After a summer in Washington, I cannot imagine our White House or Capitol with a weed at the far end of the lawn, much less a rugged-looking paint-job.

 Exhausted, yes. In fact, I wasn’t going to blog but figured I should record my first day and first impressions, as negative as they might be. Once again, I’m jet-lagged, sans caffeine, and frustrated with my feeble Spanish (which only gets worse as my energy levels decline), and I’m calling it a night soon. But what a day it’s been! I mustered up the energy to grab pizza with some fellow guests at the hostel – a couple from Canada and a guy from Australia – and heard all about the glories of universal healthcare and the endless problems of the United States. Still, cool company, good food, and fascinating surroundings. I cannot wait to see what the semester has in store!

Close to Full Circle

If it wasn’t clear already that the terrorism unleashed upon the United States on September 11th has come full circle, making its dreadful presence increasingly known in the Middle East, then the events that took place today in Iraq should remove all final doubt.

Like most people, I find the headlines monotonous and tragic. I don’t know if the front pages of despair come more from the headlines themselves or from the fact that I see the same themes rearing their ugly heads again and again. Read:  3, 15 , 56. 172 dead in blasts/bombing/(insurgent)attack(s). Retaliation. Sectoral violence. Rebels. Extremists. Death. Destruction. For a journalist writing on the array of conflicts in the Middle East, a Thesaurus of Depressing Terms would sadly be of use. It’s an ironic lesson in creativity, in innovation: put it in the passive tense, active tense, change the verbing around so that there is some day-to-day and year-to-year variation in the stories covering what has become a permanent conflict zone.

Today’s New York Times article, “Major Attacks in Baghdad Reveal Iraq’s Vulnerability” by Sam Dagher, was particularly upsetting to me. Huge blasts in Baghdad, calculated by groups yet unknown but likely affiliated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and its cohort, the Islamic State of Iraq, killed nearly a hundred and wounded six-hundred more. These initial figures, like most, will likely only augment if and when rescuers make headway sifting through the structural and human debris.

More than other attacks, this one to me is reminiscent of September 11th in that extremist groups are targeting symbolic symbols of power (in this case the Foreign and Finance Ministries in Baghdad) and in doing so killing innocent civilians. Asymmetric warfare at its finest and most disgusting. Islamic extremists that first took out their hatred halfway across the world, bombing and killing thousands of unsuspecting Americans on September 11th, should realize that their actions gave further impetus to a trend that uplifts hatred and negates all possibility of peace and reconciliation.

America’s positive or negative presence in Iraq aside, the simple fact remains: extremism operates globally and locally, and its presence in one place merely fuels counter-extremism in another. One act of terror opens up the proverbial can of worms that no one seems to know how to weld back together. Hatred proliferates, the violence continues, and the headlines remain the same: monotonous and tragic.

My hope? America has left Iraq to handle security on its own. That makes today’s strike one that hits closer to home, one that marks what could be one of the lowest point in Iraq’s modern history. For the Iraqis – moderates and extremists alike-, there is no third party to blame, and I have faith that the forces of moderation will prevail in calling for a security force capable of preventing future attacks like today’s. My feeble hope comes from the very fact that acts of terror make us all – Americans and Iraqis alike – eager for a peaceful future (relatively) free of attacks. Perhaps the events of today will serve as the catalyzing factor that converts that eagerness for peace into action.