Che Boluda

Hello Family & Friends,

            Today was less of an exciting day than yesterday. This morning the group met at Alto Palermo in order to go to a clinic where they would receive yellow fever vaccinations (we will be visiting Iguazu Falls in the future). I however, did not have to go because I received my vaccination in the US. I slept in today. I woke up and ate breakfast with Claudia. We had a great conversation about the different Latinos ethnicities in the United States. I told her how you were likely to encounter Mexicans in the South, DRs & PRs in the North and Cubans in Miami. She wanted to know what were the motives behind each ethnic group's location in the United States. We also talked about different dialects. It was funny listening to Claudia trying to pronounce words like Spaniards. Even though she is a native Spanish speaker it was really hard for her to pronounce words that begin with s as "th", which is common in the Spanish dialect. Claudia once again praised my Spanish and told me that she has had students in the past that couldn't understand anything that she said. I don't think she's lying anymore.
          After that I walked to Alto Palermo mall to meet the rest of my group. Although  I only had to walk a couple of blocks to meet my friends, I was a little apprehensive because it was my first time walking alone in Buenos Aires. As I was leaving the apartment all of the neighbors spoke to me. Everyone seems really friendly here. Walking down the street was kind of crazy. Here it is not uncommon to see dogwalkers walking 5-7 dogs at a time. Dogs randomly start barking when you walk past too. Haha!  I walked past a light post that literally had twelve dogs of all different sizes tied to it. As I approached the dogs, a lady with a dog was also walking on the opposite side. All of the dogs began barking. I'm barely ever afraid of dogs, but that was startling!
       Kassidy, Aki and I ate lunch in the Alto Palermo mall. As we were heading to the food court, a group of college aged guys in gray suits overheard us talking. Their teacher told us they were from USC (I'm not sure which one) and they were in Argentina on a business trip. We enthusiastically told them we were from UGA and received no response from any of the students. LOL! We ate at a restaurant that had all sorts of chicken. I was nervous at first because this was my first time interacting with someone outside of the program. The cashier was really friendly and told me she liked my hair (everyone is mesmerized by my foreign hairstyle here). The other cashier asked me where I was from and told me that my Spanish was great. I guess my Spanish is much better than I expected. We still had an hour before our orientation so we walked around the mall once again. El 23 y 24 de Mayo are Argentina's Independence Days. Tonight we are going out to a club to celebrate and we had no idea what to wear. We asked a worker in one of the stores to show us how ladies dress when we go out. She was really helpful and showed us different styles. Once again, everything here is so European. The clothing, the people...everything. Here casual shoes with platforms are really popular. I would probably fall and bust my behind if I wore them. Every store we go into has them.
        After the mall we came to the University of Palermo (UP) for orientation. We learned a little about the history of Argentina and the classes that we would be taking. One interesting thing that we learned and that I've noticed is that cursing in Argentina is not as much of a taboo in the United States. Che Boluda, the title of this post, means "hey bitch." It's used very commonly here. I've also heard my host mother say "puta madre" several times when speaking on the phone. I would NEVER say that, but I guess it is not as offensive here. I'm still having a hard time getting used to the Argentine dialect. Argentines use vos instead of tu to refer to you. Whenever my host mother refers to me as vos, I look around as if someone named vos is standing in the room before I remember that vos means tu here. I'm rambiling...back to orientation. Next, we took a tour of UP. UP is very similar to Georgia State. There are many buildings along one road. Most of the classes are located in the same building so hopefully I won't get lost.
I'll spare you from reading more about orientation. It was long and boring. Afterwards I came back to the apartment alone. Several times I thought that I had passed the apartment, but I hadn't gone far enough. When I finally reached the main entrance to the apartment two men were standing outside of the door. This worried me because my host mother had warned us not to let anyone in and to make sure the door locked behind after we came in. To make things worse I was struggling with the key to get into the building. One of the men approached me and tried to help me. When I gave him a death glare, he pulled out his key to show me that he also lived there. I think he may have been a landlord because he had a large key ring with several rings. He turned out to be an angel in disguise because I would have been standing out there like a fool had he not helped me. I had even more trouble getting into my apartment. It turned out that I just had to push the key a little harder and I finally made it in.
         When Kassidy came home we went walking around Palermo. We walked in and out of several drug stores hoping to find something to store our laundry in...no luck. We'll have to ask Claudia for where to find laundry bags. At one store an Asian woman helped Kassidy with her purchases. Her accent was very thick and made it very hard to understand her Spanish. After we left, we walked down some of the other streets. Argentines are just like Southerners (if not worse) when it comes to staring. Everyone stares, especially at me because I am Black and we are a rarity here. It honestly just makes me crack up. I wanna be like "hey girl hey!" or strike a pose. The men are the worse. They just stare at us in awe like we're two goddesses. LOL! I've been warned about both the stares and catcalls. So far there have been no cat calls but I'm preparing for the worse.
         When we came home, Claudia had bought us the famous empanadas that everyone raves about. These were not too foreign to me as Puerto Ricans eat empanadas (we call them pastelillos) & I LOVE Jamaican beef patties. They were delicious!!! I will be eating lots and lots of these.
        We are now heading out! Sophie came home with a friend and told us that they were heading to the same place. I am becoming increasingly annoyed at the fact that I still haven't been able to take any pictures. Tomorrow we take a city tour of Argentina, so I'm assuming that I'll be able to take pictures then (as we'll be in a more touristy part of town). For now I'm off. This will be an interesting experience!

Besos y abrazos,

Jackie