Tag Archives: argentina

City of Beautiful People, and Dogs

(Really this entry was an excuse to post more pictures. Cheers.)

A beautiful city needs beautiful people. And they’re here in abundance.

skyline.jpgArgentines dress in dark colors. They’re put together well. Pretty much everyone here is attractive, too. There must be something in the water.

The only other general thing I can say on the subject is that the white-haired men comb their hair back in an old-school, slick way. That and I’ve hardly seen anyone –  actually, I don’t think anyone – obese.

plaza.jpgI also don’t feel so short here. My 5 feet, 3 inches actually seems to hold up.

Other than that, I’m starting to feel that sense of the “routine.” Even though it’s been anything but routine so far, everyday being different, I’m scared of falling into some kind of waste-of-time trap. I’ve needed this day to catch up on posting photos from the past, though, as well as rest up and actually catch some sleep.

This city is freezing, too. I didn’t pack enough warm clothes, that’s for sure. The IES Packing List is obscene. Don’t follow it if you come to Buenos Aires. Not that I did at all, but they emphasize not overpacking and I think underpacking is also a serious problem. You should pack what you know you will need. Period.

students1.jpgWe went to the University of Buenos Aires today. I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity to take more pictures of this, but there were posters everywhere, created by students, promoting the socialist parties. So far it seems to me that they’re a passionate bunch. I’m looking forward to seeing the atmosphere in the classroom here.

students2.jpgLots of dogs in this city, stray and otherwise. Some of them posed for photos nicely. They´re chilling, have a good time.

dogs2.jpg

dogs1.jpg

skyline2.jpg

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Location: Avenida de Paraguay, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Buenos Aires Graffiti and more Brazilian worldview

NOTE: I´m changing most if not all names of the people I meet from this point forward unless I´m given explicit consent to give out their identities. I´ll note any changes in the text, too.

Buenos Aires is a beautiful city.

avenida_julio.jpgWent to Palermo today on a guided tour as part of orientation. I took some photos of graffiti.

tree2.jpg soccerkid.jpgQuick backtrack to thoughts from previous days… I´ll sprinkle photos of Palermo throughout.

Horacio, who I mentioned in a past entry, said that in Río de Janeiro (which Brazilians just call Río for short) he once went with his ex-wife to a samba contest in one the city’s favellas. After the contest was over, they and all the other attendees were escorted by drug dealers – riding motorcycles and wearing brass knuckles on either side of them – out of the favella. This is to make sure that none of the tourists get robbed or attacked.

palermo1.jpgSome of the city’s safest areas are those controlled by drug traffickers, he said. They don’t want violence, because if tourists and such are dying, that means less profit. The power in Río is divided among the government, the businesses and the drug traffickers. All Brazilians I’ve met so far have also said that you must at some point in your life visit Brazil because it’s an amazing country. They’ve all told me that Brazilians are open-minded, welcoming people, that their population is a potpourri of different races and cultures.

graffiti1.jpgIt was also with Brazilians, listening to reggae music in an Irish pub the other night, that I found two people who love The Stranger by Albert Camus just as much as I do. I never learned the girl’s name, but the guy’s name was Antonio, I believe. Like I said, I’d never before met anyone as passionate about it, and we got all fiery and jittery recalling it. It’s crazy – that book was written in French, I read it in English, they read it in Portuguese, and it profoundly affected all of us.

graffiti2.jpgI also talked with a girl, Daniella I believe, about international politics and comparative literature. The takeaway from that conversation was that, these days, everything has become international politics. Art, business, you name it, our world is so global that international politics covers a bit of everything.

graffiti3.jpgWe talked about how China is the complete opposite of the United States in terms of economics. Let’s say that people are investing in some country in Africa. Businesses will generally invest what their profits allow according to the market, which ends up being a limited amount of money. China, on the other hand, doesn’t work according to the rules of market. So it starts investing with the backing of the entire state for perhaps long-sighted goals in the best interests of the country rather than the mighty dollar.

graffiti4.jpgFeel free to elaborate on that, correct it or whatever – I’m just regurgitating information as food for thought.

Today I kept speaking Spanish with Fiorella, and I’m starting to feel really comfortable with the language.

graffiti5.jpgOne thing, is that everything feels so improvised in Buenos Aires. All Fiorella has with her are two bags of clothes. The rest of her things are locked behind closed doors in some apartment building that she’s half moved into. So she and her friend Julia are bouncing around from one friend’s apartment to the next while they figure things out. Julia, who was supposed to meet us at Plaza 11, ended up eating at a restaurant out of nowhere and never came to meet us.

graffiti6.jpgAnd I love that, the fact that every moment here is a surprise.

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Location: Avenida de Paraguay, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Polyglots and ¿corrupt taxi drivers?

This entry will be without photo, and it’ll be a quieter one as I sit to gain some perspective on what’s gone down already (only been here a day, seems like so much longer).

I think that it’s easy to lose sight of original intentions when you go on a trip like this. Because everything is so new and exciting, you caught up in the “what” instead of the “why”. Sure enough, my goal is to eventually start doing small multimedia projects, but I also want to be conscious of how I fit into the big picture — who I am as an American, as a journalism student, as a son of two immigrants, etc.

So far, I met tons of foreigners at the Milhouse party — parties and social drinking are a good ways of meeting people in Buenos Aires (not to mention every other part of the world). I’ve met people from England, Australia, Holland, Germany, Brazil and Paraguay. It’s incredible how many languages people know. Speaking English and Spanish, I feel I know enough to get by, but a lot of people here can speak four languages. Especially those polyglots from Brazil — one of the girls spoke Portuguese, English, Spanish and French.

Most people are in their early to mid-20s. Some people are here on vacation for a week or two. One of the British guys, James (name changed for privacy), graduated from college, worked for a year to save money, and is now on a two-year voyage around the world. For him, the next step is Vietnam.

I managed to get into a club called Crobar last night where they played tons of American music, remixed electronica style, and really the scene was no different than anything in the States: some dancing, some not, some good at dancing, others not, etc.

I don’t know where I’m going with this necessarily, but these are all pieces of the puzzle and I’m going to be assembling them throughout the semester. By the end, I hope to have a somewhat coherent picture, though I’m not really sure of what.

I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of this, but toward the end of the trip up from the Ezeiza Airport (a little more than an hour’s drive from the center of Buenos Aires), I saw a lot of blasted buildings and slums, which made me feel a little sad. When I asked the driver what city it was, he said it was Buenos Aires. At the same time, both he, my Tio Rico and Maria (my uncle’s friend) loved to talk about the Argentina and how great it is. Maria said that for those who really want to work, as in every part of the world, there are opportunities in the country to get ahead, have a nice home, Internet connection, the works.

Well, every country, city, area and thing in life for that matter has good and bad aspects to it. I’m going to go off and find out more of Buenos Aires’ right now.

Just two more quick anecdotes.

One: A piece of paper (one of those little tourist maps) fell out of my pocket and a gentlemen called out to me, walked halfway down the street in my direction to catch my attention, and kindly told me about it.

Two: I was in a cab coming home with Gabby (changed for privacy), a girl from Brazil, and Nealsen (changed for privacy), a guy from Holland, and Gabby gave the cab driver a 100 peso note to get change. To make a long story short, when Gabby got the note back it was a counterfeit bill. Whether it was counterfeit before she handed it to him or not I’m not sure, but she claims that he’s the second cab driver to give her bad cash.

Apparently the cab drivers here also take advantage of foreigners by taking longer routes around the city. And I heard that cab drivers sell drugs as well. These things are probably true everywhere in the world, but I’ll have to ask around.


Location: Avenida de Mayo 1245, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Of working in factories and other things

It’s a week before I head to Argentina, and I’m nowhere near ready.

I’ve procrastinated the preparations all summer long, so over the past week and a half it’s been a game of catching up – rushing to get vaccinated, calling relatives, booking hostel reservations, etc.

I think I’ve ignored the trip for so long because life in general has been moving especially fast recently. I needed to take a breather for a minute, and I wish things would just slow down while I catch my bearings. Like a lot of people, I’m not sure I know what I want anymore.

This summer, I worked full time at a factory, Hayward Laboratories, producing Palmer brand cocoa butter beauty products. I’ve shoved things in boxes, over and over again, and put caps on bottles, monotonously, for eight hours every weekday for the past two months, all to buy a Canon Rebel T2i camera for the trip. I also wanted to know what it was like to work a “real job” as opposed to silly part times at Dunkin’ Donuts, etc.

The work takes place in a dismal, squat building built in the 1800’s where none of the machines work properly and the concrete floor is caked with decades’ worth of grime. I knelt down to pick a bottle off the floor once and my pant leg was smeared black. There’s no air conditioning, so on hot days, it gets to be more than 100 degrees inside.

It sounds horrible, but it’s an easy job. The lines come fast sometimes, but really the hardest part is fighting sleepiness.

In the short time I’ve been there, though, I’ve seen lots of people filter in and out of the company. Most people don’t last more than a day. It can be “soul crushing,” as my one friend who used to work there says. I’ve had two mild nightmares about being trapped on an endless assembly line and even woke up once saying, “Wait, I’m not at work – I don’t have to do this crap.”

How this ties in is that, on this job, I’ve had time to think. A lot. And while we do have conversations with each other on the line, for most of the day the workers fall into silence. So I’ve been stuck with myself, rethinking my life and all the major decisions I’ve ever made over and over again.

This is hard to put concretely, and I’ll be coming back to this, but I’m hoping to find some direction in Argentina, whatever that means. Somewhere in the back of my head I’ve thought that I might prefer to stay working at Hayward for a while, giving me more time to figure things out. I’ve even thought that I might decide to stay in South America.

Funnily enough, most of the workers at Hayward actually happen to be Spanish-speaking immigrants. I’ve met people from El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico and Columbia, most of which came to the United States looking for the clich�d “better life.” One guy, a supposed chef, even moved here because he was bored with his life in Puerto Rico and he just wanted to get away.

milhouse-edited.jpg

So far, the plan is this: I’ll be leaving on Thursday, July 29, getting there two days before the program starts. My uncle, Tio Rico, who’s lived in Argentina for most of his life and I only met once when I was very young, will pick me up from the airport and drive me to a party hostel at Milhouse Avenue.

On November 26, I leave for Peru, where I will be staying with family, visiting Machu Picchu, the rainforest, Lake Titicaca, etc. I plan to stay there through New Year’s.

After that, who knows?

One thing in particular has been getting me through these days, and it’s listening to this musician, Manu Chao, who is one of the world’s most popular artists but we hear almost nothing of in the States. He sings in six languages and his lyrics really speak to me – more on that later. For now, here he is serenading Diego Maradona, one of the best Argentine football players of all time:


Location: East Stroudsburg, PA