Finales, revoluciones, y museos!

Hola gente linda,

This week has been finals-filled! I wrote essays for history and literature and composed some advertisements for Spanish.

I learned a lot about the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions while working on the history final. I was surprised to find that the sources I was assigned about Cuba here were less enthusiastic about Cuba's communist system than the ones I'd read for a class in the US (which made Cuba sound like a great place to be)! I learned about the causes of both revolutions (bad economic times and a lack of political representation), what the revolutionary governments of each country were like, and the United States' reactions to both. The Nicaraguan revolutionary government instated a mixed (capitalist) economy and remained democratic, but the Cuban government declared itself exclusively Marxist-Leninist (eliminating political freedom), executed or imprisoned much of the opposition, and set absurd, nationalist goals like Mao had done (just replace the steel in Mao's Great Leap Forward with sugar). The United States funded counter-revolutionary attacks against both governments. We were sued by the Nicaraguan government for disrespecting their sovereignty and international peace agreements and were found guilty, but continued funding the Contras through weapon sales to Iran (and possibly also through drug sales). Very interesting stuff!

Although I undoubtedly learned a ton, these classes have been very tough! Reading in Spanish at the college level has gotten much easier for me, but writing is still really hard: I can't articulate myself in Spanish! Fede has helped me out a lot by fine-tuning the Spanish in my papers. I'm really glad finals are over! =)

Tomorrow I'll have a graduation ceremony at the University of Palermo to celebrate us exchange students' success! It should be really great!

I didn't do anything except study, work, and plan (to stay here!) this week, but here are more pictures of what I did last week (a very exciting week)! =)

 This is the Museo de Arte Hispanoamericano. It features colonial art. It's a shame I couldn't take pictures inside — it was really beautiful! My favorite works were miniature paintings of the Virgin Mary dressed in gowns covered with blue, red, gold, and white flowers and paintings of the holy trinity featuring three Jesuses in different poses (there were lots of different versions of each one).

 Here's a picture of the garden. I love ceramic tiles like these, and thought this flowerpot, overflowing with flowers, was pretty, too.

 

More great tiles, and an interesting tree! =)

 

Here I am in front of the museum with my Milla de Museos (Mile of Museums) map. I have definitely done what I came to do in Buenos Aires: I saw muchísimo arte lindo (lots of beautiful art) for cheap or free! This picture was taken by a museum guide I befriended, lol. I was a sort of guide myself for Fede at MALBA. He said I should make a career of it! =) Honestly I would love to, but if that doesn't work out, I'll at least have thoroughly enjoyed so much time around art!

 Marina, a friend of a friend in Chicago, invited me to a karaoke party at her art gallery. The party was really fun, and the band — El Tronador (The Thundering), a folk group — was amazing!

 For my last "educational day trip" with my study abroad group I went to La Boca to see El Fulgor Argentino, a musical about Argentine political history. It was amazing! I recommend it to everyone (although you should brush up on your Argentine history first). =)

 This is the fanciest mall I've been to in my life! Most of the shoppers were wearing business attire! I sat on a bench and read about Cuba, lol.

 Here are some of my friends (Katie, Kate, Nigam, and Kate: lots of Katies and Kates in our group!!). The buses (colectivos) here are sometimes decorated. You can see one decoration on the back window in the picture here. Most buses have blacklights and play 80's music at night: it feels like commuting in a disco! =)

 Here is more choripan (chorizo + bread). Yum!! =)

And these are sandwiches de miga (basically, crustless sandwiches). They're cheap and popular for lunch. They're good, but I prefer thick, wheat bread! =)

 I thought this cat-whiskers graffiti was pretty funny. Tragic, considering all the work it took to make that beautiful statue... but funny.

 And finally, a picture of Fede looking spiffy! =) He went to Venezuela this week for Model UN. He was on the news (TV!) talking about the program he's with, which helps young people get acquainted with the politics of Israel!

Besos! Gracias a todos for helping me through my finals stress! =)

Kaeli

Ferias, mate, cosas argentinas

Hola Todos,

Here are some pictures of what I've been doing (besides taking tests!) over the last week!

 This is the feria (crafts fair/flea market) in my neighborhood — Parque Centenario. It happens every weekend, and people generally sell books (Poetry by Mario Benedetti? 25 cents!), used clothes (I got two pairs of perfectly-fitting pants for $7!), antiques (coins, pictures, chandeliers, gaucho stuff, etc.), and crafts. This woman sold carnivorous plants.

 The tallest plant in the background attracts and eats roaches (cucarachas!).

 This is Parque Centenario, the park that my neighborhood is named after. People go there to exercise, chat, and feed the birds (there are swans, geese, ducks, and pigeons). I saw some tai chi, jogging, and kendo stick classes going on.

 Fede and I went to el Barrio Chino (Chinatown) and had a delicious dinner! The San Telmo tea (in the yellow teapot) was both beautiful and delicious! I had lychee (an Asian fruit I love) for dessert. Yum!

An interesting cultural thing you can see in this picture is where Argentinians put their hands at the table during meals. Apparently it's considered rude to put them in your lap. (But I still haven't broken my habit!)

 This is the feria at San Telmo, one of the oldest regions in Buenos Aires. It's a famous feria and always full of tourists. I love the old buildings around!

 These are some suéteres de lana (wool sweaters) from the fair. There are usually a variety of wools: sheep, llama, alpaca, etc. I love the patterns and the brightly colored sweaters!

 Here is some cool shell art. The Colombian at this booth was really nice. He came to Argentina to study culinary arts. Lots of South Americans from other countries come to Argentina for university because it's cheaper here. The University of Buenos Aires, UBA, is free (!!!) and offers majors in medicine, law, and a huge variety of things. I met one porteño (a guy from Buenos Aires) who is studying pharmacy but wants to become a dancer. That would never happen in the US because of the insanely high cost of studies! Affordable higher education is great!

 On Wednesday I went to Tigre, a touristy city, with some friends. We visited the mate museum (mate is a traditional Argentine tea, pronounced MA-tay). This picture shows a traditional mate cup, made from a mate gourd, and la bombilla, the filtered metal straw. It says: "Between mates, a thought was born / Between mates, a friendship was born / Today it has a place / It's stimulating / Nutritious / Helps you think / This is the recipe / Of mate friendship."

This is the "heaven of mates," with all sorts of different materos (mate cups). Mate is an ancient traditional drink in Argentina and Uruguay (and has since become popular in Syria!). The only place in the world where it grows is the Patagonian region. There are traditions involved in mate preparation and drinking, too. It's an activity you share with good friends!

Argentine helado (ice cream) is delicious! It tastes more like gelato than the ice cream in the US. Many shops sell helado artesanal, homemade ice cream. Fede took me to Freddo, a chain ice cream shop, on our first date. I was really confused about the ice cream system back then, but now I've got it down! lol. You can order two or three flavors (dulce de leche — rich, milky caramel; banana split — which in Argentina apparently means pure dulce de leche with banana ice cream; and fruit flavors like pineapple and melon are my favorites!), and the bowls are sold by weight.

The brown ice cream is dulce de leche. Yummm... Here they call vanilla "crema americana," American cream, lol.

A typical bakery display (bakeries are everywhere and sell sandwiches, medialunas (croissants), bread, cookies, empanadas, etc.).

Malls and chain stores are common, but there are also lots of boutiques: shoe stores, clothing stores, kioskos (which sell candy  and drinks and recharge cell phone minutes), and unique cafés. Many stores and restaurants have Italian names (there was a huge Italian immigration here in the late 1800's and early 1900's). Here you can see a children's clothing store called "Bambino," which means baby in Italian.

This beautiful building is a bank! Wow! I absolutely love the relieves.

Here you can see some little girls enjoying the view at Tigre. Peddling is not strictly forbidden here, and you can buy pirated DVDs or jewelery on almost any big avenue. You can also buy CDs, candy, and random things like markers, flashlights, and scissors from peddlers on the subway or public bus. Unfortunately, it's common for children to peddle, too. I often see children on the subway selling stickers or coloring books. Worse than that, some little girls hand out fliers asking for some coins to buy food and clothes. I suspect that many of these children's parents are exploiting them and taking most or all of the money for themselves. At any rate, it's terrible for children to have to work. I'm interested in doing anthropological research about child labor here.

Today I'm planning to book my trip to Uruguay (we all have to go in order to renew our visas for Argentina), work on my history essay about the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions, and film some videos for Spanish. Busy day! I have many more things to blog about even now, but have to get to work!

Thanks for reading! Besos!

Kaeli

Calafate y Ushuaia

 

Hola, gente linda!

Here are some photos of my 5-day trip to Calafate and Ushuaia! It was beautiful (and cooold) down there!

 This is glacier Perito Moreno: named after a scientist who studied the insects who live on it. The bugs look like black crickets and are able to survive because of the sticky coating on their skin. Luckily I only saw the little guys in photos, not in person! lol.

 We trekked on Perito Moreno for about an hour.

 ...Wearing these spiky shoes! We had to walk like ducks when ascending (with our feet positioned like this: \ / ) to make sure the all the spikes hit the ice in front of us at once, and descend in sort of a march.

 Glaciers, we learned, are formed from the accumulation of snow in between the mountains. When the gaps between them fill up completely, the snow all compresses, and the eventual overflow forms glaciers! They're millions of years old. Compared to these glaciers, our entire lives are a snap!

 I love the color of these témpanos (icebergs)! I like, too, to see all the trees at the bottom of the mountains. Guanacos (like orange llamas: my favorite Patagonian animal) live in these mountains. They're a natural thermometer for residents, because the colder it is, the lower on the mountains they go!

 After all of our iceberg adventures (which lasted two days), we got the chance to go out and explore the pueblito (the little town). One of Christina Kircher's (the president's) houses are there! We explored the souvenir shops, ate calafate-flavored ice cream (Calafates only grow in this region: that's why the city is named Calafate! They're similar to blueberries, but a little more sour), and went to a wonderful vegan cafe (pictured here) where I ate mushroom pizza and drank Patagonian tea. I bought my first souvenir from Argentina in a wool shop we visited. The Patagonian region is famous for its wool (they have sheep, llama, alpaca...). I thought the style and colors of this scarf were really cool, so I bought it! It's sheep's wool, $25.

 We took a 4x4 to the top of a mountain and looked at the mountain pieces the glaciers and old rivers left. The landscape reminds me of the moon!

 I love this graffiti! An homage to indigenous art. (I've learned so many words for "indigenous!" Indígena, autóctono, indio... I'm proud of both what I've learned about the American Indigenous and my vocabulary advancement! lol)

 Now, some photos from Tierra del Fuego in Ushuaia! This old lighthouse (which was replaced by another, which looks more like the lighthouses we're used to seeing) marks "the end of the world" — it marked the last place explorers could stop on their journeys to Antarctica. Darwin passed through this area on the Beagle, and Jules Verne wrote about this lighthouse.

 We visited the prison museum in Ushuaia and took a guided tour. In the old days, Ushuaia only had about 300 residents, and this jail held about 500 prisoners. It was a high-security prison (at "the end of the world!"), and sheltered political prisoners (anarchists, etc.) and the most dangerous of criminals. The prisoners learned crafts and made things like tiles and doors. The cells were all tiny, and some of the prisoners wore ankle restraints and weights. It's terrible to imagine innocent political dissidents living this way!

 I thought this was funny: a door between the iron bars of a jail marked "Salida" ("Exit").

 After another 4x4 trip (this one off-road), we ate choripan (Argentine beef cooked over a fire and eaten with bread: "chorizo" and "pan," meat and bread) and chorizo in a refuge made of leña and chapa (timber and sheet metal) and heated with an old stove. We also drank wine. Argentina is famous for wine: it's delicious and relatively cheap!

 The next day we rowed inflatable canoes in Lago Argentino. It was beautiful out there, and fun to row a boat!

 The forests we walked through were full of lichens called "barbas de viejo," old mens' beards, which only grow in places where the air is really pure. It was full, too, of fallen trees. Because the glaciers that passed through made the land a lot less fertile, the trees were forced to spread their roots across the top of the land instead of growing downward. The wind (which is strong!) blows them over a lot. We walked for four miles through this forest and stopped to look at foliage and views around the lake.

 I love the colors of these rocks!

 The shells were also beautiful! My pictures of them didn't really turn out, but you can see one (a purple color) towards the top right.

 I loved the colors of the water!

 We stopped to rest on some hills by the lake. They felt like they were covered in turf. The guide told us that they weren't formed naturally, but are mounds of old remains from the Yamaná natives' food wastes (seashells, bones, etc.). The guide found an arrowhead right at the top! Here you can see us all looking for something cool of our own (with no luck, lol). The Yamaná ate sea lions and covered their skin with the animals' greasy fat in order to develop a warm, waterproof coating. I wonder what happened to them! I'll have to do some Wiki research about that later.

 Here is a view of the same hills.

 ¡Qué lindo! How beautiful!

I had a wonderful time, but was glad to return to Buenos Aires (pictured here)! I love being in the city, and this one in particular! =)