Breaking Up

I've never felt so conflicted before.  I desperately, helplessly love Argentina and my life here, and I don't want to leave.  I'm simply not ready!  But I can't go any longer without going home to my family and friends.  (Ojala se pudiera trasladar toda mi vida aca!)  I only have five days left.  Five.  FIVE.  Single digits.  Less than a week.  I want to cry and scream and curl up in a ball and avoid this heart-twisting experience of the end of study abroad. I feel like I haven't done enough.  I haven't taken advantage of my time here!  I could have done so much more, met so many more people, seen so many more places!  I feel like upon leaving I lose those opportunities, even though I know I really don't.  I know I could come back, or travel more--to other places, new places I've never been.  I think I probably will continue traveling as far as my wallet and my language skills will carry me.  But not right now.  I need some time to get over my breakup with Argentina.  Luckily, tango is sorrow in the form of music, so I have a method of catharsis.  Here are a few treats:

If you can read Spanish...

...here's an article about my residence!

Montevideo

Well, it's official.  I'm done traveling outside of Buenos Aires.  This past weekend my roommate Katia and I took a weekend getaway to lovely and historical Montevideo, Uruguay.  Katia and I had a peaceful weekend seeing sights, sharing in the hostel's chivito dinner Saturday night, and renting bikes and riding along the coast on Sunday before getting on a ferry back across the river to our lovely city.

I wanted to see Montevideo because we had discussed it in my history of tango class as a sort of twin city of Buenos Aires.  My professor continually emphasized that the tango was not argentino, but rioplatense, belonging to both shores of the Rio de la Plata.

And as far as shores go, Uruguay is supposed to have some of the best beaches.  Unfortunately, once again, it looked pretty much like this all weekend:

I mean, I walked on the beach, but it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.  I guess I've just got to get used to the fact that I lost my summer and I can't get it back.  Spring break, anyone?

I had a little border scare on the way into Uruguay: I forgot to bring along my student residency document and all they had to go on was my expired tourist visa stamp in my passport.  So at 2 a.m., we're stopping at the border (we entered the country on land) and I'm standing there, exhausted, face to face with someone who's telling me that at the very least, I'm going to be fined three hundred pesos.  Thank God for technology: they were able to look me up in the computer system and see that, yes, I had obtained the necessary documents and had simply neglected to bring them along.  Won't make that mistake again!

Now it's just a few papers, a take-home exam, a concert at the Teatro Colon, packing my suitcase, and a relaxing few days of soaking up all I can of Buenos Aires before going home.  Bittersweet.  

Recuperatorio

I have an oral exam today, and I'm incredibly nervous.  I had to do the same thing in my lit class last week: give a short presentation (just to the professor, not in front of the class) and then answer a few questions about everything we've studied this semester.  Not my thing.  But what makes it even worse here?  The recuperatorio.  It's an opportunity for a retake, so it should be reassuring, right?  No.  Instead I see it more as, "We expect that enough of you will fail that this retake will be necessary and thus is already scheduled."  It makes me even more anxious, especially since I don't understand exactly how professors determine grades so I can't feel confident about passing.  But luckily, this is my last sit-down exam; everything else is just papers and projects, so once this is over, I can breathe a little easier.  Wish me luck!!

Clapton and the avalanche of work

Okay.  I don't have much time, but I wanted to write a little something about the Eric Clapton concert I went to last week.

I know Clapton is an untouchable god of rock and blues, but I didn't realize how much I admired him until he walked on stage (already jamming the hell out) and I burst into tears.  It probably surprised me more than it surprises anyone reading this.  He continued dominating for two solid hours, with a rotation of three guitars, hitting some of the classics: "Layla," "Lay Down Sally," "I Shot the Sheriff," a faux-closing with "Cocaine" and, coming back on stage for an encore, blew us away with "Crossroads."  I was riding a concert high most of the weekend, and then I realized that this week is the week from hell.  I have an exam tomorrow, a paper due next Tuesday, and two papers due the following week.  So I'm buckling down (finally) and powering through the next fourteen days.  Then I have four days to pack my suitcase, do my final gift shopping, hit the city sights I still haven't gotten to, and get ready to board a plane back home.

Things I will not miss:

• the toilet being in the shower
• living in an all-girls' dorm
• the complete absence of comfortable furniture ANYWHERE in this country
• being a foreigner
• the glitchy Internet connections
• strange paper products (i.e. napkins that are basically wax paper)

Things I will miss:

• food
• friends
• the opportunity to exercise my Spanish skills
• the wine
• being of legal drinking age
• the city itself
• the prevailing feeling of adventure

Things I'm eager to go home to:

• my family
• my house
• couch
• bed
• kitchen
• my dogs
• my friends
• my town
• English
• my country

I'm going to Montevideo this weekend, so hopefully I'll get a chance to write about it next week.  If not, I'll do a reminiscing entry my last week here.  I leave you with this:

Mar del Plata

Back in June, Maria and I set out to choose our trips, where we would go and when.  We scheduled Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires' #1 beach town, in early October, supposedly when the weather was getting nice and just before finals started.  As usual, the universe laughed at us.  Spring in Buenos Aires is rainy and windy.  And exams started the week before we went on our long-awaited beach weekend.  We were both dying for it, too.  We'd missed our whole summer at home; we'd had to see pictures and statuses from friends who had vacationed at the beach; we'd seen their tans and been filled with envy.  But now it was our turn, right?!

Wrong.

Here's what Mar del Plata looked like the entire weekend that we were there:

But, guess what?  We didn't care.  We rolled with it, as we have become so adept at doing.  Luckily, we had gotten a private twin room in the hostel/hotel we were staying in, and even more luckily, that room had a TV.  Instead of lazing around on the beach all weekend as planned, we lazed around indoors.  I believe this captures the essence of the weekend:

We did leave the hotel plenty: we went out to eat, we shopped in the Guemes area of Mar del Plata (where we both splurged a little on some nice and highly-discounted clothing items), we went out to the Monumento a San Salvador and saw more sea lions, and we went to the Museo del Mar.  The weekend wasn't our typical high-speed, exploratory adventure.  It was more an escape.  With a week or so of finals over and two or three more weeks to go, we needed to get away and just relax.  And that's exactly what we did.  Movies, ice cream, Malbec, seafood, shopping, and mate.  Mar del Plata.

Raya

Tiburon

I don't know what this is.

Ship graveyard

Monumento a San Salvador
(aka "Creepy Jesus" statue)

More sea lions!

 Malbec

Pizza.

I'm hoping to get some beach time if and when I visit Montevideo in Uruguay in a few weeks.  It should be warmer by then...right?  I guess we'll see.

El frío patagónico

On the first official day of spring, I found myself in the dead of winter in the south of Argentina.  Getting off the bus in Puerto Piramides, the cold ran through me as if I were in upstate New York in the middle of January.  I thought Maria was going to cry.

Getting to that point was a challenge.  Tuesday night we missed our first bus and had to leave an hour later than planned, pushing our arrival time in Madryn closer to 4:00 pm, at which time the shuttle leaves to Piramides out on the Peninsula.  We actually arrived at exactly 4:00, hopping off our bus with just enough time to buy tickets and hop on the other.  Unfortunately what we didn't have time to do was buy our tickets for Saturday to get back to Buenos Aires, which would later become a problem.  But before it did, we proceeded to have an absolutely incredible week.

We got to Piramides and sprinted up to the hostel-- not far since Piramides has basically 2 streets and they aren't very long-- with two French girls who had gotten off the same bus.  Diva, the fantastic old woman who we had pestered with questions and estimates and help planning our trip, greeted us.

Look at her.  She's awesome.

We were a little nervous that night when they told us that the sea had been rough and we might not be able to do the water-based excursions (whale watch, snorkeling) that we had planned on.  With some free time, we got a bit of studying done and then went and had an excellent seafood dinner at a really cool little restaurant called La Estacion.  And we slept well that night, thanks to a bounty of heavy blankets and beds more comfortable than the ones we have here at the Resi.

The next day we woke up early for breakfast, which each morning was personally served to us, instead of there being a self-serve buffet like most hostels.  Diva sets a place for each of her guests and makes sure they have everything they need.  A little before noon we went down to the Bottazzi excursions office for our whale watch.

It went well.

Whales are HUGE...and awesome.

The guide (who we later came to know as Miguel Bottazzi) kept saying what luck we were having on this watch, because we saw a whole lot of whales.  There were several mothers with their babies, since it was the start of spring.  They came up close to the boat, rolling around in the water, bobbing their heads up and waving their tails at us.  Despite the cold wind and the constant need to kneel, then stand up, then kneel, every time a whale appeared on one side of the boat or the other (so that everyone could see), it was an absolutely fantastic experience.

When we got back to shore, we stopped at the little market and bought some bread, cheese, wine, sauce, and pizza crusts, having decided to cook for ourselves in the hostel.  We made a really excellent pizza and enjoyed the wine.  Staying at this hostel was sort of like being at someone's house, most likely a grandmother.  It was cozy and relaxed and homey.  I loved it.

The next day, while sitting outside Bottazzi, waiting to head out on our land excursion across the Peninsula, Miguel, the guide from the whale watch, saw us and came over to chat.  He asked us if we were on the whale watch the previous day, and we said yes.  He asked if we were staying in Piramides, and we said yes.  Then he invited us to an asado that night, to which we undoubtedly said yes.  This was just after we had been invited out for drinks by the adorable kiosco boy across the street.  We ended up missing that opportunity, but it didn't matter, because the asado was one of the best nights I've had since I've been here.  We arrived and realized we were the only outsiders there.  Everyone else was either a Bottazzi employee or a local business owner.  It was like we had been invited to hang out with the cool kids.  I'm not sure why we were the only tourists welcomed into this inner circle, but I'm glad we were.  We were with the core of the Piramides social scene.  These people were the life of the party.  After we finished a delicious meal, we went across the way to a little bar where we sat and drank and chatted well into the night.  They didn't let us pay for a thing.  I think my favorite character-- because these people were really characters; I think a movie should be made about this town-- was the ship captain, a wizened old guy who got really drunk and started whispering life's secrets to Maria, then later told me I was an angel with soft hands.  They all seemed to be calling him Nene, which is an affectionate term that means little boy.  He was hilarious.  They all were so much fun; I hated to see that night end.

The bar we went to

The next day, our final day in Piramides, we did the most exciting and expensive excursion yet.  We donned wetsuits, hopped on a little boat, and went out to snorkel with the sea lions.  I don't know if I can put into words how excited I was or how incredible the experience was.  We went out on a private excursion, with Juan, who has thirty years of experience doing this.  Although most of the sea lions weren't really interested in us, four or five hopped in and swam around us.  The image that sticks in my head is the sea lion (lobo marino in Spanish) lying on the floor of the gulf, staring up at me curiously.  None of them wanted to play with us; they just wanted to check us out (and their apparent disinterest knocked fifty pesos off the price), but I was not disappointed by the experience at all.

Let's roooooll

A sea lion wandering the beach at Punta Norte

After the snorkeling expedition, we paid, changed, said goodbye to Diva and, at 6:00pm, got on the colectivo back to Puerto Madryn.  We had been calling the bus services for nearly two straight days with no answer, so we were hoping to be able to buy tickets to Buenos Aires for that same night, once we got there.  That did not happen.  All of the guys at the ticket windows looked at us in disbelief when we asked for a bus that night.  They didn't have to check their computers; they knew there was no way we were getting out of town that night.  In disbelief, we literally asked every different company and they all said the same thing.  Without really grasping our situation, we bought tickets for the 2:00pm bus the next day and found ourselves a hostel for that night.  We both had the blues, thinking that if we were going to be stuck down here for another night, we'd have liked to at least still be in Piramides, instead of stupid Puerto Madryn.  (It's not a bad town, really, we were just bummed and in shock).  At the hostel that night, a drunk guy offered us free dinner and gave us a bottle of Fernet.  We drank, we ate, we finally got on the computer-- since Diva's hostel hadn't had reliable WiFi-- and we went to sleep.  The next day we got on the bus, and twenty hours later arrived back in this beautiful city, where it had to have been nearly eighty degrees.  It felt like a homecoming, which I guess it sort of was.  Though this is obviously not home (I'm noticing more lately the absence of the little comforts of home that I'll go without for six more weeks), it's a home base for the time I'm here.  And I love it.

Here are some things we saw on our land excursions...

The beach in Piramides

A mother elephant seal and her pup

Magellanic penguins

Male elephant seal

The view on the 5km walk to see some sea lions

Punta Norte and the elephant seals

Punta Norte

So, in sum:

• Days away from Bs As: 5
• Nights in hostels: 4
• Nights on buses: 2
• Hostels stayed in: 2
• Mind-blowing meals: 3
• Nights where we got free food and alcohol: 2
• Nature excursions: 3

This week begins the part of the semester where I actually have to do work.  But next weekend is Mar del Plata, the weekend after is Eric Clapton, and who knows what I'll be up to in the last two weeks of October. I'll be sure to write about it.  Chau!