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Published: August 11th 2006
¡Hola todos!
I hope everyone is happy and healthy and WARMER than me (it's winter here). No, I don’t really mind that much... it’s just that I haven’t quite learned how to gage the weather here. Case in point: I walked out of my apartment building, donning my flowy black skirt-pants and my saltwater sandals, last week only to realize that perhaps the phrase “when in Rome…” actually does have some meaning. This lesson was made blatantly obvious to me by the double-take looks every pedestrian was giving me on my way to the Subte, not to mention my frozen extremities. I guess it was so hard to part with such a gorgeous Seattle summer that my hopes for warm weather were difficult to ignore.
Well, the main theme in my life since I last wrote has definitely been course registration. I “registered” for about 12 courses, but we go and “shop” the courses, to narrow that down to about 4. Attending classes has been a varied experience, but generally good. Even just seeing the schools, is pretty eye-opening - an experience in itself, I guess you could say (see photo). On Monday night I had a course called
view from the roof
...a nice place to escape to when I need some wide open space :)Rural Anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires Philosophy and Letters School, in which I could barely understand what the professor was saying. Oddly enough, I found out that many of the argentines in that class were in the same boat as me (the prof was pretty old and mumbled a lot). But I went to a course on Tuesday (also at UBA Philosophy & Letters) which I absolutely loved - its called Social Geography of Latin America - because the material is EXACTLY what I am interested in learning about and the profesora was very welcoming to foreign students, not to mention she spoke very clearly (I understood everything!). Then last night I had a course called Latin America in International Politics at the Catholic University of Argentina, which sort of reminded me of high school in terms of the students being pretty clique-y, whispering during class, and overly concerned with fashion but the material reminded me of some Scripps politics courses I have taken (the prof was discussing democratic transitions, and citing Huntington about the three waves of democracy). Still not sure about that one…
Quick Fact: education in Argentina is that it is free, including college.
UBA Filosofia y Letras
An intriguing classroom... Students choose a “career” in specific focus and take the mandatory set of courses for that career. They don’t have “general education” requirements, they only take courses within their career.
Just to clarify about the different schools I can take courses at: UBA = Universidad de Buenos Aires, and it is the largest university in Argentina (something crazy like 200,000 students). Each department has its own building, and these buildings are all over the city, not at a central location. I signed up for classes through the Filosofia y Letras department and the Ciencias Sociales department. There are some amazing profs at UBA, but they don’t get paid very much and they don’t have a lot of resources - although they make do very well with what they have. The thing that struck me the most about UBA Philosophy and Letters was the political culture that was so clearly alive when I stepped into the building (side note: the building used to be a factory but was donated by the state to be converted into a school building). There are information boards and placards EVERYWHERE in sight, supporting hundreds of causes and calling for support. The professors are very receptive to this; for example, a guy knocked on the door of my first class and asked the prof if he could speak to our class for a few minutes about raising money for mentally-challenged students and the prof immediately allowed him, without a second thought. It wasn’t seen as an “interruption” of our class whatsoever. Stuff like that is common-place there. We’ll see what my courses at the Social Sciences buildings are like, as I start those courses next week.
UCA = Universidad Católica de Argentina, a very orderly private school of a couple thousand students with a centralized campus on Puerto Madero - a swanky new part of the city that was built along the river in the 90s (consisting of 6 sleek rectangular brick buildings adjacent to the port). Students pay a tuition of about US $100 a month to go there. You’re not allowed to wear flip flops at this school…maybe God doesn’t like flip flops…
FLACSO = Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, this is where my program (CIEE) is based out of, but it is also a research center which offers about 6 courses related to Latin America and social sciences that we can take. One of which is called “Aprendizaje y Servicio (Learning and Service)” and it is basically a way to earn credit for volunteering 4 hours/week at an NGO in the city - I’m signed up for this one. FLACSO also supposedly has a post-graduate program.
Hopefully I can snap a photo of each school, though I am particularly interested in taking more photos inside the UBA buildings, with all the action going on there…
In other news, I got pretty sick this week. I had a fever on Saturday night and then completely lost my appetite on Sunday night and got pretty nauseous and faint. Then I proceeded to be nauseous for all of Monday and part of Tuesday. It was the worst when I was standing up, so I rested a lot, and tried to lay down whenever I could. This made for an interesting start to the week, trying to get to classes halfway across the city, but it wasn’t completely debilitating. One of the worst moments was Tuesday afternoon during rush hour (about 6:30-8:00) trying to get on a subway home when I had shooting pains in my stomach and nausea and was forced to cram (literally) into a the subway car (seriously, you are in physical contact with everyone around you and, possibly, the door of the subway). But luckily, my lovely friend Joanna was there to help me along and let me rest in her apartment after in case I needed to be taken care of. It must have been some weird virus because my friend Lindsey had the exact same thing, and I my host mom, Emi, also had something similar, but not as strong. Anyways, I am completely recovered now (don’t worry Mom). Oh, and while I was sick I also learned how to rent a movie, and I recommend that every one of you see an Argentine independent film called
“Whiskey Romeo Zulu” (director Enrique Piñeyro) which is a excellent drama about events leading up to a plane crash in Buenos Aires in 1999 (but please don’t take it as a generalization of how all business works in Argentina)…
One of my favorite things I discovered last week was the National Library (which is walking distance from my apartment, about 20 blocks). I went to three free and amazing events in the library: 1. A panel discussion about the youth culture in Argentina (which is in a weekly series called “La Cultura Argentina Hoy”, dealing with every topic from technology to violence) 2. A screening of film shorts by Argentine director David José Kohon (which had a surprise opening act of a live modern tango music band called Fernandez Fierro) 3. Performance by the Tango School Orchestra with director Emilio Balcarce (coincidence: I actually saw a documentary about the formation of this school and this amazing long-time music director during the first week I was here!). And yesterday I went to the Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) which had some amazing pieces (even an original Diego Rivera and a Frida Kahlo), and an exhibit of Buenos Aires photographer Horacio Coppola, which I loved. There is such a lively cultural scene here, and I am really enjoying discovering it, bit by bit.
My host sister Rosario (14 years old) returned on Sunday from her vacation to her grandparents’ house in the north, so the house is full again, in that respect, but we’ve all started classes again (the girls were on winter vacation for the last two weeks). I had some really nice bonding time with my host sisters on Sunday night as my host mom had gone to sleep and we attempted to make a pizza from scratch - it gave us some time to chat about the trials and tribulations of being teenagers 😊 I’ll try to post a photo of all the ladies of the house, as soon as I can get them all in one room!
Love to all and feel free to send me your thoughts, stories, questions, and ramblings…
Un besito,
Maggie
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Uncle Bill
non-member comment
Sooo Big :-)
Hi Moose, We miss you around here, but it sounds like you are on a true adventure! I am curious about the size of the city and what Winter is really like there. Can you see any hills or will you have a chance to get to the country side? All is quiet around here, Aunt Kathy and I have inherited Billy's Black Lab Puppy Puck, as he has moved to Connecticut for a few months on his new job. Tim is in love with Liz and into hiking and biking. We just pledged money for his charity 100 mile bike ride for MS. Chris is done with his internship in LA and lived with Tim all summer. He is now headed back to Seattle for the last month of his summer break. Aunt Kathy just won the Lady's Golf Championship of Seattle Golf Club. so now I am known around the Club as Kathy Pettit's husband. Oh well, she played very well this summer. We are going to start building at Tumble Creek this fall. We plan to build our garage, seperate from the house but with a guest house upstairs, this fall. Your Mom and Dad are planning to start next spring as well so we will all have a place to hang out while the houses are going up. I really enjoy the updates, so keep writing. Uncle Bill