The curious case of the iron pills...

So just a warning, this might be TMI for some of you, but I'm a little annoyed with this. So last December my doctor told me I was anemic, probably due to the fact that I was vegetarian last semester and started to believe that thai veggie wraps from the coffee cart were entire meals. Go figure. Anyways, I didn't really take my iron pills at that point. I went to New Orleans and didn't need them, I was fine w/out them. I know, Robert, you wanted me to take them, but I didn't really feel like it. So this week I started taking them, just because I thought, ok I'm in a new place it might be good a idea to take care of myself... Bad idea. I have had the WORST stomach aches and grossness all week, and yesterday when I came home from FLACSO and going out in the afternoon, my homestay mom, Rosi, was talking about how her mother used to have anemia and how the pills would destroy her stomach. Then she said that the doctor recommended they go to Barrio Chino and get this powder called Teca, which dissolves in water. So she did that and her iron when up and her stomach was back to normal. The lesson, goodbye iron pill, I knew I never needed you! I'm going to Barrio Chino today, plus my stomach wasn't gross today! So I'm rather happy now!

So this was a rather amazing week! Last weekend I went to my first club here in BsAs, which was ridiculously huge and ironically called Amerika. It was some guy from the program's birthday, and he chose that particular gay club to celebrate at. There were different levels and floors and stages, and we did the porteño thing and stayed out til 6am! Fun night...

Monday we had our consultas with our coordinadores, which weren't really with our coordinadores, they were with Juan, which is a good thing because I cannot speak in front of Leandro, my coordinador, he's just too much of a cutie. But it was really helpful and this meeting helped me find a class on Embarazo y Maternidad, Pregnancy and Maternity, which will look at pregnancy rates and issues with adolescent chicas here in BsAs. Since abortion is illegal here, there are tons of illegal abortions that occur in shady places all over the city and I have heard that it's the leading cause of death among adolescent girls in the city. Pretty ridiculous, so yeah I'm really excited about this class and I'm glad I heard about it.

Monday, after our consultas, me and my friends went to the movies and saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which I'm obsessed with now. This was my first Woody Allen movie and was very surprised to love it! Kind of a nice message about having balance in one's life. Vicky was too obsessed with having the perfect life that she set herself up for blandness for the rest of her life. Cristina was too discontent with everything and trying to hard to find an ideal feeling of otherness in her life that she missed the love in certain situations and finally was just never content. Basically, no one should really live to the extremes, a nice balance between the two could provide a nice outcome. Anyways, it was rather awkward watching the movie, we were being very loud Americans, laughing at everything because I don't think that that type of move could accurately be translated into spanish. Ooooh, and that was the day that I found out that Pochoclos is how you say popcorn here, in Castellano. Crazy word, it sounds more like it could be a mexican word, it definitely has a Nahuatl sound to it, but I guess it's how you say popcorn down here. Anyways, I've been obsessed with the word and Alex King and Natasha tend to call me that now.

Tuesday, we had a Día Cultural, the coordinadores took us out to a canche, this big outdoors club for fútbol and swimming and tennis (omg, the tennis courts here are CLAY!!!! I NEED to find a way to play here, it would be sad if I missed this opportunity, not to mention my family would never let me here the end of it if I didn't take advantage, but hey, I want to too! Just need to find a raquet and a partner!) So back to the día cultural, they planned a whole bunch of summer day camp like activities to get to know each other a bit better and to play around and have fun. I felt rather silly most of the time, but whatever. Me and my friends got to play on the teeter totters, which was so scary, I don't remember them being that thrilling. We would have enjoyed it even more, but the tennis players yelled at us to get off them, all the way from were they were playing which wasn't close by. So I found out that tennis players can be jerks everywhere, I'm always amazed to find how the many varying degrees of jerky tennis players, some of my favs include the old men at Elder Park who get mad because I suck and hit the ball on to their court. =( I know we were screaming and yelling because the teeter totters scared us, but they were so far away, I can't believe that we were actually desturbing them. Meh, whatevs. But the Día Cultural was rather fun. We played Taboo in Spanish, which was fun, I got CARTERISTA, really, really, Leandro? He gave me the hardest word. It's such a specific word, such a specific type of pickpocketing. But hey, I got to act it out with him, which is fine by me. hehe...yeah but the words they chose were specific words to bring up topics on cultural differences and things to be aware of. They chose "bailar" as one of the words and Leandro and some of the other kids acted out the differences in dancing styles. Basically, grinding and booty shaking here is an open invitation to go further with guys here. But overall it was a great day to really interact with our coordinadores because we usually have to deal with paper work with them, it was nice to see their personalities comes out and be more informal with them, especially with Leandro, because he's usually pretty quite and shy. Oh, and we also got a lesson on Mate sharing. So yerba mate is a type of tea they drink here in gords and it's a socialable thing. You sit and drink mate with your close friends, it's something that brings people together. So Meli, one of the other coordinadores showed us how to cure our mates and then how to serve it and explained some of the many rules of sharing. It's pretty complicated, but pretty tight because it's such a common thing and apart of the lives of porteños here, I can't wait to try out my gourd that I bought yesterday, handcarved and with flowers and a mariposa, it's gorgeous!

Wednesday, signed up for more classes, don't remember what I did afterwards. I think that might have been the night that Marcela and Lili, my homestay family's daughters, came over for dinner. Marcela has a 3 year old who's so CUTE! And smart! So it was nice to have a big family dinner, just like at home! I love my homestay family, it really was a perfect match, it's very much like being at home, but still not. I miss you guys!

Thursday I had to get up at 5 am to get to migraciones to finish the Visa process. We got there and Leandro wasn't there yet so we asked around and found the line we should've gotten in, which was amazingly long, it was probably half a mile long. So we were all in line, a good amount of us. But then Leandro showed up and told us to follow him. So there were are, a huge group of Americans getting out of line and cutting everyone to get to the front. I couldn't believe it. We really did cut everyone else who had been there since before 7am. So we got in and it was a long wait, but I wasn't complaining because our hook up really made it so much shorter than it had to be. It only took about 5 hours as opposed to a whole day. It was cool too because I made some new friends, one on the bus adventure to migraciones. I also met some girl who Leandro and Juan were confusing with me. She's short, same body type, short curly hair, but that's about it, we dont look alike, she doesn't even have glasses, but I had a few awkward moments where Leandro and Juan kept staring at me and telling me how I look like her. Whatever, she's cool, got to know her and some other kid Rob. The whole process was pretty tolerable, good people around, there was even a vendor outside making bank selling cafe, te con leche, medialuna, y empanadas.

Later that night, we did what all tourists do on their nights out and went to trendy Palermo Soho, which is a gentrified neighborhood slightly east of where I live, but still in walking distance. So there's a very cool plaza in the middle of it with tons of bars and boliches (clubs) surrounding the plaza, me and Natasha and Elizabeth were going to sit around and wait for Alex King so we could all go to this drag show. Well, waiting and sitting is what we did all night. While we waited for Alex, a vendor came to our table and was showing us earings. Elizabeth made the mistake of being too interested and didn't buy anything, so he proceeded to make very cute and amazing little decoratative things out of metal wire right in front of us. So in the end we ended up having to buy them. Eventually Alex showed up, then he called more people who were on their way. They showed up, and then called more people, who we also had to wait for, and then we realized that two other FLACSO students were at the table next to us, go figure, what other place do we all hang out at? So they joined our table. Then some guy came running up to Natasha and hugged her, turns out it was some old friend from her college who had done the FLACSO program last semester but is sticking around just chilling. We all got scared for her because we thought some creeper was attacking her. So he was added to our table, along with the girl he was hanging out with. Then two more people came and it was a gloriously huge table of Americans in the middle of the plaza. We really need to figure out other places to hang out, beucase it's gross having that many Americans together in such a touristy place. Anyways, we waited more, Alex bought a round of shots for everyone, the biggest shots I've seen and eventually everyone slowly dispersed and it was 3 am and kinda late to show up to the drag show and get our moneys worth. So I wanted to go home and saw that Rob was walking in my direction and he gladly walked me to Santa Fe, very nice of him, and from there I was on my big street and walked home. Don't worry, 3am sounds unsafe, but that's when most kids are just going out, so there were still tons of people on the street, you can't ever really see emptiness on the big avenidas of BsAs.

Friday, signed up for UBA classes, awkwardly turned in my papers to Leandro as always, not able to speak. jajaja I need to fix that, I need to be able to talk to him, he's my advisor. Then me, Katy, Natasha, and Elizabeth ate our lunch at the plaza near FLACSO, did some shopping there as well, lots of nice local artesanos, which is where I bought my mate! They bought some jewelry and bags. Then we decided to walk all the way from there to Recoleta to see the old cemetary there. Basically, we lost Elizabeth along the way, she was too tired to continue. We made a nice stop at a park and had some helados (ice cream) and I bought pochoclos, my fav. We finally made it to the cemetary and it was gorgeous. It's pretty much unbelievable to see all those mini houses for caskets. There were tons of cats around too. Alex joined us at one point, which was when the heat started to get to me and I proceeded to lay at the foot of one building. They really had to work to get me talking straight again, so at that point we realized we needed a cafe, found one and sat there for maybe two hours. Some good conversation though, on everything from Ms. Frigid to MSI to Pedagogy of the Oppressed! =) We walked back to the subte, I ate with my family, rested, showered and then back to it.

I walked to Natasha's, then we met Elizabeth, then proceeded to walk from Palermo to el centro where this girl had invited us over to her apartment to chill. We bought some cheap wine to take over to her house, and found ourselves in a rather small awkward gathering. It wasn't what we were expecting, and it seemed that she had just invited random people. But I chatted it up with this girl who was on her second semester at FLACSO. She was really cool. Rob and that girl Natalie who supposedly look like me were there, along with Natasha's friend from home. He eventually picked up his guitar and played us one of his very own songs, it was amazing. It was even funnier to see his porteña girlfriend sit there and completely gaze at him in admiration. Poor girl, Natasha told us of his history of being a jerk to girls, including herself, so yeah, that poor girl is probably on the road to heartache.

All in all, it was a good night. Katy and Kris and Naomi eventually joined us there, and we left the apartment at 3:30 and went to chill somewhere else. Nice night, made it back home at 6:30 am, traveling the subte with people starting their day. I really do want to break out of this tendency to just do touristy things and hang out in large groups of FLACSO people. Sometimes I just want to have one of my best friends from home here, to explore the city with and talk to random people with. It seems like there's just a tendency to want to have more and more people around to go out with. I'm cool with that sometimes, but not for everything. I just want to have someone to do random things with, someone to call up and explore the city with, without having to deal with calling up a million other people.

So I might hang out with Katy tonight, her homestay is with a porteña who's like 25 years old. Her name is Ceci, and she wants to get to know Katy's friends so I'd love to do something different and just hang out with them.