Carnivale!!!

So immediately following a night of partying(my birthday), my classmates and I took a bus up to Gualeguaychu, Argentina for a full weekend of feasting, partying and letting loose, getting everything out our systems before the season of lent started this Wednesday.

The bus we took was awesome, very raucous with most people getting ready for the weekend with a few cocktails. I personally, did not partake in much of the cocktailing, perhaps because of the festivities that had transpired the night before but I will let the reader infer what they will. We left BsAs at 9pm on Friday and arrived at our hostel at about 1am, just in time to leave for a huge beach party! The beach party was pretty cool, tons of people grooving to the tunes of Bob Marley and various American pop and Latino hits. I ended the night early at around 5am heading back to the hostel to get a few hours of rest before hitting the beach at 9am the following morning.



Saturday was a tad bit overcast but that did not stop us from hitting the beach at around 10am. Upon arrival almost everyone laid out a nice towel and took a quick siesta before really starting the day of activities. Some had gone a tad too hard the night before and was not really showing signs of life until later on in the day. I, naturally, was not one of those people, I was up and moving about checking out the volleyball games and buying a few drinks to ease myself into the day. Fun was had all around but the real fun didn't start until that night.





Carnival is similar to what I picture Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street would be like. Craziness on all sides with a fantastic parade, showing off the years worth of work that had gone into each float and the floats, as you can see, were amazing. That night after we watched the parade we headed back to the beach to party it up until around 6am the following morning.


Sunday, it rained all day so we didn't get back to the beach but I don't think any of us really minded because we all slept until around 1pm. We left on the bus at midnight on Sunday following another great asado where we got to try all the different parts of the cow, including the kidneys, intestines, blood and all the other wonderful sections that you could probably think of. I still enjoyed the blood sausage more than I thought, which might really say something for my own Irish blood.

Well, that's all for a little while. I head off to Mendoza this Friday to taste some wine, ride a few rapids and maybe ride a couple of horses!! Don't worry there will be pictures.

My Birthday!

My 21st Birthday finally came! I am now officially permitted to drink alcohol in the United States, but since I am not in the states this fact was almost forgotten. Almost is the key word, my friends did not allow me to forget that this birthday was one to celebrate to its fullest, which is exactly what we did!

My party started with a nice wine and dine at my house with some of my friends that I have acquired in the past few weeks. You can see some of them in the picture above. My host mom made some very delicious empanadas for dinner and wonderful cake for dessert, which you can see me cutting in one of the first pictures above.

After we ate dinner, us youngsters went out to a club called Asia de Cuba. It's a Sushi bar by day and a raving night club by night. The night went well from there on out, a lot of dancing and a lot of partying amongst friends. The full crew can be seen above (minus the cameraman).

It was a great night for all involved, I believe, and I am glad that I was able to experience it in BsAs!

La Segunda Semana

It has been a good second week, I have accomplished many things already since arriving here almost three weeks ago. Since I last wrote, I have been to a football game (I have decided that I will now only refer to soccer as football and the other as American-football as to give it a hyphenated name, implying a deviation from the original and better.), which was awesome, went to a tango show and also to an authentic family asado (BBQ). They were all great experiences, but only the former and latter would be worth a second chance.

The football game was at the Boca Juniors stadium against the Newells Oldboys, located about 20-30 blocks south of my house. I went with the two other people living in my house, the 25 yr old American and the British guy. We sat in the general section, squeezed amongst the ever enthusiastic fanatics all jumping and singing in unison, cheering on their warriors. Last time Boca played against their arch-nemesis, River, 5 people died... Football here is amazing, I would definitely go again! (Boca lost 0-2 against Newells Oldboys....)

The Tango show was ehhh. The dancing was fun to watch, the food was good but the singers were a snooze-fest. There were three couples, two singers and a live band of old men playing various instruments. The best part of the show, hands down, was the helado (ice cream) that we were served for dessert, it was very tasty (for lack of a better adjective...).

The Asado was very nice, it was at a friend of a friend's house. The house was located about an hour outside of the city, in a nice suburban town. For food, we had sausage link sandwiches ( and remember this isn't processed Ballpark Franks either), pork tenderloin, and blood sausage. I was actually suprised by how much I enjoyed the blood sausage but I am still fuzzy on what exactly is in it....some things are better left unknown I guess.

Well, that concludes this week's adventure in Mi Vida Loca

Ps I don't have many pictures because these events haven't really been picturesque. Other people took pictures though so when i get them I will just put them on here.

Mi vida en BsAs

I guess the logical place to start my tale would be from the beginning, which for me, took a lot longer than expected. My itinerary was to fly from Buffalo to JFK then from there to BsAs, but unfortunately the shortest leg of the trip ended up being the longest. About 45 minutes into the flight from Buffalo, the captain of the plane announced that an indicator light showed one of the reverse thrusters on the plane being deployed and we were going to have to emergency land in Syracuse. He said that it was more procedure than true emergency, but it was still a little unnerving. I had effectively ended up where I had begun, which was very disheartening. Luckily there was another student aboard the plane in my program, which made taking the provided bus trip from Syracuse to JFK, arriving circa 4am, a little more tolerable. Delta put us up in the Romada next to JFK for the night but since checkout was at 11am we had to leave and stay at the airport from 1130am-10pm, which was not fun at all especially since we had not been given secured seating on the plane, just seat requests. So we sat around exchanged small talk for about 10hrs until finally the gate clerks showed up. They then announced to the crowd that the plane had been overbooked by about 20 people and Delta was offering $4,000 plus first class tickets to BsAs the following day if anyone volunteered to give up their seats. Since we didn't even have seats to give up, this wasn't an option and we had to patiently wait to see if were to be cleared to fly that night. Luckily for us Delta knew of our troubles and rewarded us by giving Caroline and I first class tickets! Yes, we did fly first class for 11 hours straight to BsAs! So, my journey from Trumansburg to BsAs was frustrating at times but as Niccolo argues, "The end justifies the means".

Now to the fun part, my family, my city and my daily routine. I am living with a very nice grandmother, who cooks for me every night a ridiculously scrumptious meal, and another American girl about 25 years old. They are both very nice, but the mother does not speak English at all so I must speak Spanish at all times in the house. After only 5 days here I think my speech has improved 10 fold. The apartment is located on Avenida Belgrano just north of the neighborhood of San Telmo and about 15 blocks from Puerto Madero, which is where my school is located. Here is a picture of my school, it's newly constructed and directly on the canal...
Right now I am taking my "intensive" spanish class in this building until Feb 20th. My class is 4 hours long every day starting at 2 pm, which makes site seeing kind of difficult at the moment.

In Argentina dinner is not eaten until about 9-10pm and is very formal, which means sitting down and talking for at least an hour about each person's day. For me, this means one-on-one convos with the host-mom, improving my spanish with every conversation. I have already tackled all the political topics with her, such as Che, Fidel, Hugo, Obama and I think I understood about 3/4 of what she told me. And since dinner doesn't get over until about 1030-11pm each night, going out is pushed back a few hours. It is commonplace for students/youth to go out until 5-6 am which is not so different than college(?) but as of yet I have not gone out for that long since it's during the week. Here's a photo of myself plus a few classmates taken outside a local pub in Palermo.
Well, I hope my first post has quenched the thirsts of most of you and I will try to update my blog every week, probably Saturday or Friday night, starting next week.