I get by with a little help from my friends...

So we arrived here Thursday Feb 19^th in the afternoon and we are quickly approaching the 3 week mark of our stay here in Buenos Aires. What’s so important about 3 weeks? Why not write about the 1 month marker or something like that? Well, the longest I have ever been away from home on my own is 3weeks, so it means a lot to me. Plus, today was a day that really did test me and at one point I found myself talking to Alex and telling him how I wish my mom could just pick me up and take me to Memi’s house. Gah, yeah, that’s how tired of today I was and how homesick I was today.

So it was the first real day of classes, first day of attending school with porteños and first day of having to try out a class that I actually do picture myself taking. So I got up at 8:30am to make sure I had enough time to get ready and show up to my 11:30 Literatura española class at la Universidad Catolica, Argentina (UCA). Did my usual, got ready, made my lunch, ate breakfast and was already out the door at 10am and rushing towards the 152 colectivo stop 2 blocks away. I thought I’d give the bus (colectivo) a shot today because I thought it might leave me off closer to the school. Well, it took basically 45 minutes and I was left off maybe 5 blocks closer to the school than if I had taken the subte (subway), which usually doesn’t take more than 30 minutes. So I think I’m going to stick with the subte for that ride, plus I get a little more walking in, too.

Now let me tell you a little background about UCA. It’s the private university in the city and our coordinators as well as others say that it is much easier than the larger, public university in BsAs. Why you ask? It is a private entity and it has the reputation of letting its alumnos buy their way into a degree. The campus itself reeks of privilege. It’s located next to the water and the ecological reserve. It’s nicely placed behind the Casa Rosada and conveniently set aside from all the noise and craziness of the city. You can actually feel a cool breeze as you walk across the immaculately clean campus, it is probably a few degrees cooler there than in the rest of the city. It’s kinda crazy the whole set up of it, reminds you most private universities ::cough:: oxy::cough. Nicely in the heart of the city but easily removed from the actual community so that a convenient microcosm exists and encapsulates the students, only those who venture out of the bubble get to really experience what really matters to the community. Yup I get that feeling from UCA.

So I found the building that my class was in and according to the map I had and Leandro’s email, Filosofia y Letras (the department that includes language classes) was located in the third building bottom floor. At this point it was about 10 or five minutes to 11 as I enter the building, so I had a little more than 30 minutes to find my class. Simple, right? Not so easy. I went to the bottom floor, found the section my class should’ve been in and found a security guard. She told me to check this one room, I interrupted a professor’s meeting, she told me to check another room, and I interrupted a professor’s phone convo. Yup, apparently I never learned to knock, but once the second professor’s phonecall was done, he told me to go back up to the main floor and check the lists that were posted on the walls. So I had already looked there and didn’t find my class. I looked again, still nothing. So there was a line of kids waiting to talk to someone at a window, so I got in line. This whole time, kids kept happily greeting each other, asking each other how their summers were, cutting in line, being generally happy in a moment when I was freaking out. I was running out of time and Leandro and others had made UCA out to be very strict and orderly and I was scared of showing up late to my class. I kept running the worst scenarios through my head and I was actually going to give up and was ready to go back home and say, Hey at least I tried. But I finally found a couple of girls who weren’t over giddy and asked one of them where I might find the aula for Literatura española. She helped me look over the lists again and she too didn’t find it, but she kept examining the walls and the lists and found that the lists I need were around the corner and on a different wall. I could’ve hugged her, she saved my life. So I found the class but was still confused by the organization of the lists. It wasn’t very clear where the classroom was so I took a shot with what I expected the classroom number to be and made my way up to the third floor and successfully found the classroom, which already had backpacks on every single desk but one.

The porteña in the room was explaining to another American student in the room that they their classes in the same place all day, so they just leave their stuff where it is and then go on break, which is where everyone was. So pretty much two minutes later the class was full again and the professor was back and she was giving her intro but more and more students kept pouring in. They had to keep bringing in chairs from other nearby classrooms. And I slowly noticed that there were quite a few FLACSO students in the class, which eased some of the nerves. The professor went over her required reading and authors orally, she didn’t have a syllabus, which confused me. I didn’t know if that was normal or if I should’ve asked for one. But she finished and we had our break and switched to another classroom where the other professor was going to explain her half, which was another thing that confused me. I wasn’t expecting two professors. She also went over the authors orally and kept saying that she would have a syllabus next class. No one seemed to object so I figured that this was normal, but seriously, no syllabus? I don’t even know if we have homework. I’m thoroughly confused by the class and I have no background in Spanish literature, I know more about Latin America, not Spain. I understood one reference to other pieces of literature that the professors made. Gah! It’s so frustrating.

So I really don’t want to go back there, but I don’t think I have a choice because I have to take a literature class for my Spanish major. Blah, never thought I’d be going to Catholic school either, my dad went to Catholic school his whole life and vowed to not put us through it, but there I am throwing myself into it. The school is so different from the rest of Buenos Aires, I can definitely sense the lack of liberalism and free thinking there on campus, it’s a bit weird. From what I’ve heard about UBA, it sounds like the Berkeley of BsAs, and I’m so ready to start my class there. I know I’ll feel at home there in the free thinking, rebellious, no B.S. campus of UBA.

Speaking of nonconformist, today, after the class, me and my friends went to one of the many cafeterias there. I had packed my own lunch and didn’t need to buy anything, but I went along to check out what they had. All the food looked so good, and most of it was just sitting there. I don’t know why, but I’ve been having urges to steal food so bad here in BsAs. Hahaha, but not just that, I was eying all the leftover food people left on their trays, wanting to devour it. I guess it’s New Orleans freeganing coming out. See, since the Common Ground Collective in NOLA was started by a whole bunch of anarchists, many of the people who still run it and work there now are anarchists. Case in point, Tommy, who would go freeganing through dumpsters behind super markets to get us food. He scored us boxes of Krispy Kream donuts that lasted us days. He didn’t believe in paying for food and to some extent I feel like that sometimes. Get the concept of the word? Like VEgan but Freegan! Because the food is essentially free if you just found it. So I have greater tendencies to freegan here because this is the first time I’ve ever had to buy everything for myself. And unlike most kids in the program, I worked for most of the money I brought with me. I don’t have my parents busting out the bills to pay for all everything that I’m spending here. They did give me some and I’m so grateful, but my budget is nowhere near as much as other people. Someone said their parents gave them an extra $2000 to spend down here and I was like, excuse me? That’s what I saved up myself, so yeah… I may go freegan sometime soon, I don’t care, but I am happy I met those punks at the party, but I need to go to more free events, no more paying for everything. It’s ridiculous.

So anyways, I also got a yellow fever shot for free at some vaccination place. It was great. I love that it was free. A healthcare system that takes care of you, crazy huh? But I love how I just totally used the system and am not paying taxes and just got a free ride. Good job. But this trip to the vaccination place made me realize that I didn’t get my typhoid shot. That is on my next to do list…

I ended up the day going back to FLACSO and trying to figure out if there was any lit class I could take at UBA, my options look grim. But I sat there for a while and the whole walk/trip back to Palermo thinking about how I wanted to be home, how I wanted to just sit with my mom and vent about my day. I wanted to just chill with here, preferably at Memi’s house, in the perfect LA climate in Memi’s garden. Yup, I wasn’t a happy camper walking home. Blah, yeah, I really do need a hug and someone to just crawl up on a couch with and watch TV for hours. I miss home. I miss you LA. I miss you perfect weather, the kind that doesn’t rain on me in the middle of summer and leaves the rest of the day humid and sticky. I miss veggies and tofu and beans and rice and tortillas and boba and noodles. I miss my family and sitting and laughing at stupid things with them and playing tennis with them. I miss my friends and all those beautiful faces back home. I really do miss hugs and being held, and no, it doesn’t come from not having a boyfriend, he was never a daily presence in my life anyways. It comes from the fact that I have the most amazing and loving family and friends that make my life so beautiful and amazing. I realized in college how lucky I was to be blessed with such constantly amazing family and friends in my life, but now I know how hard it is to be without them, too. I hate that the farther away from home I go, the more I love it. Gah, these months are going to be hard.

P.S. the milk here is so whole and fatty, it tastes like cream…it’s pretty gross.