If you wanna see more pics of me at la rural and at other places and you’re not friends with me on facebook you can follow the link at the bottom of the page (HA now you hafta read the rest of my post cause you don’t know how scrolling works).
Mmmkay so this program that I’m doing is through this organization called the Institute for Study Abroad which is this really expensive thing that sets the whole shebang up for me and holds my hand while I’m living here if I want them to (hope they don’t have coodies, y’all). I’m also doing this Gender and Minority Studies concentration through them (because INSTITUTIONS, MAAAN) which means I take a class related to human rights and then they set me up with this internship thing. Argentina just passed an equal marriage law last month so I thought it’d be pretty kool to work with a GLBT organization. So yeah. That’s what I’m doing.
Bueno. Y’all wanna hear about my first week of classes? ‘Course you do, duh. Even though I was aloud to take classes at four different universidades, I’m taking all of them at la Universidad de Buenos Aires, the state university which apparently, along with some universidad in this country called México1, is considered the best in Latin America, even though it’s completely free.2 Now, whenever “la UBA” was my answer to the question “¿grrrrrrl whut school u go 2?”, I would always get looks as if to say “oh, I’m sorry.” Because here’s the thing: the school is a chaotic heap of red tape barely contained by it’s dilapidated walls. And while it’s frustratingly disorganized, I can tell this is going to be one of the most interesting aspects of my time here. It has an extremely activist-oriented student body, with political posters on every wall, people handing out flyers of upcoming demonstrations, and ubiquitous Marxist graffiti. So yeah, who wants to live with me in Carrboro when I get back?
Anyways, my first class was last Monday and because I had heard that the school is wont to be like “hey your class isn’t in this building it’s in a different neighborhood you ever taken a bus before?”, I got there like a half hour before my class was supposed to start. Which was totes awesome because of course I was in the right place and of course I forgot that NOTHING starts on time in Argentina. Like the professor got there fifteen minutes late, put his things down, and left the room to get some coffee. Anyway, the class was supposed to be a seminar on the social aspects of AIDS. En realidad, the first clase was basically just “hey these are the ways you can not get AIDS, let me show you with real live condoms, wooden penises, and graphic drawings of people having sex the right and wrong ways.” So yeah I was a lil taken aback. Let’s just say I learned a lot of new vocabulary that day.
My second class was part of the concentration thing I was talking about earlier and there’s not really much to say sobre esto other than the fact that I found afterwards that the women that taught it that day is a really big deal and anyone who’s familiar with Latin American academia would have been like “whaaaaaa Dora Barrancos came to talk to 15 americanos who barely understood what she was talking about?”
Nothing really happened in my next class, although lots of things were probably supposed to happen, I just didn’t understand anything. Like we divided into groups and the argentinos in my group basically gave up tryna ax me questions because I couldn’t understand them when they said “féfwnfЍЖpfdá fá návó͠zz f ¡ fdsòáضعـf Ÿ¿きぜゆこ?”3 So yeah totes droppin that class.
For my last class of the week, UBA was so kind as to do the thing where they move the class to another building on the other side of town and then act like it’s Argentina’s best kept secret. By the time mis amigos and I got to the right building we were fifty minutes late but that didn’t matter because oh yeah, they changed the time of the class as well. So we went to wait at a café where I was berated by the waitress for ordering both fries and coffee at the same time.4 The class was worth the wait and me committing that gastronomical faux pas though because OH SHIT I FOUND OUT THE PROFESSOR IS A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER. It’s a seminar se llama “culture for peace and human rights” and the first lecture was as uplifting and inspiring as that one time Ira Glass came and spoke to us, like 4realzies that’s what it reminded me of. So yeah think I’mma try and stay in that.
In unrelated news I lost mi celular at a dance club this weekend because I was just dancing so hard and my phone was like “look I can’t chill with you if you’re dancing so hard” so it just left. And apparently stores here are never open on weekends or Días del Libertado José de San Martín which is today so I can’t get a new celular until tomorrow so that makes me really sad and this is a run-on sentence now.
Also, you might be wondering: hey Hoosteen, have you been participating in culture and sights and tourism and other things that you are putting yourself in student debt to EXPERIENCE? And I will tell you, yeah a lil bit I think. Pictures of those things will prolly be on my facebook in a sec or if you’re an old person you can go here instead.
Al fin, I promise to try and do this thang at least once a week (that’s not really happening).
1 Sidenote: México is also considered the safest country in Latin America. ~~~*>THE MORE YOU KNOW<*~~~
2 Effin socialists. Who do they think they are, investing money in education instead of in killing people in other countries?
3 DON’T THEY KNOW THAT’S NOT SPANISH? Silly argentinos.
4 Hey food snob friends shut up that’s what I wanted.
Sorry I have no clue why the paragraphs are like triple spaced.
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