See the sunlight, we ain’t stoppin’ Keep on dancing till the world ends

I started my Spanish lessons last week! I really really like them so far. My teacher is really nice and I like how she runs our class. All we do is talk the whole time. When I say a phrase that has errors in it, she writes it down, tells me how many errors are in it, and has me correct it myself. I like that. She also writes down all the words I don’t know and for homework has me pick 5 words and write sentences with them. She has me do a lot of work outside of our class too, which is really great, but this past week I was finalizing all my applications for graduate school, so I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked to do some extra work. I look forward to going each time, so that’s great! Hopefully I’ll be able to study more this week.

I sent in my graduate school applications! Feels good not to have to worry about those. Now all I have to do is wait for February to come, and I’ll find out if I’m officially a Dawg or not.

One of my friends left Wednesday morning, so a group of us went out to dinner Tuesday night. We went to this small to-go restaurant where the pizza costs 7 pesos ($1.75 for a whole pizza…yes please!) and went to the park near by and ate our pizza there. It was a lot of fun, but sad to see my first friend leave.

On Wednesday, a couple friends and I went and looked at a church that is right next to the Casa Rosada. From the outside, the church looks like it’s a Greek temple. It looks nothing like a church from the outside. The inside was pretty nice. It has a really big tomb on the side of it with a huge Argentine flag draping over it. I’m terrible with names, but the guy in the tomb was a very important figure here in Argentina, he did a lot for the country a long time ago. He may have been a president, but I’m not sure (ha sorry, this is terrible). Anyways, when he died the people wanted to have his tomb in the church, but he wasn’t catholic so the church didn’t think it was right for him to be there. However, the church ended up allowing it, but built a separate part within the church for his tomb to be kept. It’s an interesting story, sorry I don’t have all of my facts straight.

After the church we went on a tour of congress. It was free, so I figured I’d tag along. Surprisingly, it was actually pretty interesting. The tour was all in Spanish, but the woman spoke slowly and was easy to understand. I was pretty excited that I understood most of what she said (I got the picture, just not all the details).

Thursday night my program organized a tango night. We went to this restaurant/dance place to have a free lesson. I remembered that I really enjoyed my first tango lesson, but forgot how much I really loved it. The second class was sooo much fun! I really enjoyed it, and I think I did really well. I was a lot more comfortable dancing with people I didn’t know, and I was comfortable with them leading. I didn’t try and fight being led like I did my first lesson. I’m a little sad that this was only my second time tangoing. I really wanted to go tango more, but I have been surprisingly busy on my weekends. Plus none of my friends want to go tango, so that doesn’t help. Like I said, after my first lesson, I really hope I take some classes once I get home. So many people have hidden creative talents; like they can draw/paint, sing, speak five languages, take really good pictures with a camera (cough cough my sister cough), or etc. I don’t really have any talents like that. I just think it would be really fun to take dance classes. I really like to tango and think it would be really cool to learn how to salsa too, but those dances and others similar to it are sexy dances (ha). I think it would be so fun to take swing dance classes. I love that kind of music and I like how fast pace it is. It’s more of a good time, a not so serious type of dance. You don’t have to look sexy while you swing dance, you just have a really good time. I don’t really watch dancing with the stars, but I think I would rock that show ha…too bad I’m not famous in any way, shape, or form.

I had a little reality check on Friday while I was at work, it was really sad. The kids that I work with are really great kids, but the environment they live in is just terrible. The road ahead of them is going to be really rough. Kids can be really cruel to each other. That’s the truth anywhere you go in the world, but it just seems worse here. The older girls (11-13) bully the younger girls (8-10). When the older girls are away, the younger girls turn into the bullies because then they are finally the “top dogs.” It makes me sad when the younger girls become the bullies, because they are really sweet girls when they don’t try to appear so tough. I don’t understand what the girls say to each other because they use slang and other words that I obviously don’t know, but it’s pretty obvious when someone is being mean to someone else. Also, some of the time my friend tells me later what the girls were saying. It’s sad.

The boys are a whole different story. I don’t get too many chances to interact with the boys because not a lot of them come. Normally when the boys play with each other they are a little rougher and will push each other around every now and then. That’s pretty normal, and it’s pretty easy to calm them down and move on. This Friday two boys started pushing each other and were rough housing around, nothing abnormal, and then something changed in a split second. One of the boys wrestled the other boy down to the ground and then started kicking him in the stomach and face. All this happened with in 5 seconds. One moment the kids were jump roping and then all of a sudden this craziness happened. I intervened and pulled the kid who was kicking the other kid away and my friend went inside to go tell one of the mother’s what happened. Once I felt like the kicking kid was done I focused on the boy on the ground. He was crying and was curled up in a ball, but got up fine. The other kid ended up just running away. The mother inside didn’t really react to the situation, which was kind of surprising. Five minutes later the kid who had been crying was running around playing tag, so he didn’t get too badly hurt. My friend and I have never seen anything like that. These kids were younger than 10. That day of work was a big reality check, and it makes me really sad.

Another one of my friends went home Saturday, so Friday night we went out for one last big bang, and we also celebrated another friend’s birthday. One of the dance clubs that we can get in for free (through our program) had a free dinner that night, so we went to that. I wasn’t really expecting the food to be that great since it was free, but it was actually pretty tasty. The appetizers were a little strange, but still good. There was an eggplant dip (I actually really liked that. It was pretty similar to salsa), some wraps that had ham and some cream in it, and then smoked salmon on a cheesy cracker (I’ve never had smoked salmon before and I really liked it). For the main course, there was pizza (which was really good!) and a plate with an assortment of different kinds of chicken (crunchy chicken fingers and chicken nuggets), meatballs on a stick, and a fried carne empenada (I love it when emenadas are fried, the flaky crust is really good). For dessert we had a plate full of mini brownies and a few shot glasses filled with different flavors of this mousse/pudding/yogurt thing. Not too bad for a free meal!

On Saturday, I took a day trip to Tigre with my friend Tamara. I’ve been to Tigre a few times, but I never went into the heart of the city. It was pretty cool. It’s a very relaxing city compared to BA. It’s right on the river, and being by the water gives the town a nice vibe. We had lunch there, walked around the market place, got ice cream, and explored the town for a bit. The market there is different than the other markets I’ve gone to. There was a lot of furniture and bigger things you could buy. A lot of the stuff was actually pretty interesting, but not practical to buy if you’re flying somewhere. It’s a cool town. I’m looking forward to the delta tour when my family gets here.

Naturally there was a Mate museum...check out the giant mate cup!

Sunday was a pretty big day. I went to the Britany Spears concert with my friend Talia. Brit has definitely seen better days, but the concert was pretty fun. I knew about half the songs. This band called Teen Angel opened up for her. They are an Argentine band and were pretty terrible. After Teen Angel, Howie D. (ex-backstreet boy) came on. That was a surprise. He was pretty terrible too ha. But he totally redeemed himself when he sang the most classic Backstreet Boys song ever…I Want It That Way. The crowd, myself included, went nuts. In true Buenos Aires style, of course there was a stray dog inside the arena just hanging out. It was a little crazy to see this dog fun up and down the stadium. Only in BA…

Until Next Time,
Liz