Getting settled/educational system differences

The exchange rate is climbing again, now at 3.69 (an all time high for the past 30 days :) ).

One of the things I love most about studying abroad is that almost everything is new! I couldn't possibly put into this blog all of the new things I learn and think about. Everything from walking around this apartment, taking the metro, to eating dinner involves something new and different.

Yesterday I bought a cellphone and some groceries. I could spend hours in the grocery stores here, not because they are big, but because it's really interesting to look at a culture through what they eat. There is a huge section just for dulce de leche here. They sell their milk in bags. They have so many different types of creams (they don't just use those cows for carne). They have tons of Italian foods, all types of pasta, tomato sauce, etc. They even have a special section of home made pastas. The first day I made the mistake of shopping at "Jumbo" which is a huge store that sells everything. I thought it would be similarly priced to walmart, big store, cheap stuff. I was wrong. It was more like the prices in Corte Ingles, a complete rip-off. My argentinian friend told me that only the rich people go there.

I went out to eat with my argentinian friend Carito (short for Carolina turns out, not for little expensive like I originally thought). Carito is a friend of a woman I met at my neighbors party before I left. What luck I had to get connected with her because she has been so nice and friendly in welcoming me to Argentina. The other day she stopped by and we went for lunch. She told me all these cultural things I need to know. For example you always have to order a drink because they don't just bring water to the table and you usually leave a 5-10% tip at restuarants. She also taught me in the grocery store all the names for food and cooking implements. Now that I have a phone, I'm sure I'll be hanging out with her more.

I've also been learning a lot of slang and lunfardo (sp?) which is the italian that has creeped into the spanish here. For example they say "colectivo" instead of bus or "laborar" instead of trabajar. There are also slang words such as "boludo" which literally means something like ass-hole but is used in a friendly way to call a friend (among the youner generation) such as "che boludo, que tal!" My host family taught me how to say slang wth the word "pedo" which can be confusing. When one says "al pedo" it means with luck something happened. For example, you don't study for a test, but you end up doing really well on it. You would say it happened "al pedo." One says "de pedo" when they aren't doing anything. For example, "estoy de pedo" means I'm not doing much, I'm idle. Finally, one would say "en pedo" to mean drunk, for example "llegue en pedo" means I showed up drunk. This same frase "en pedo" can be used in the frase "ni en pedo voy vos" which means "not even if I were drunk would I go with you." This is good to know in case there are some pushy guys inviting me to have a drink!

Another interesting event today was our visit to UCES. UCES is a private university here in BA. We entered into this ritzy looking building and went to a very professional looking meeting room. Men dressed in fancy suits and ties gave us glasses for water and soda and handed us a bunch of pamphlets. These men turned out to be teachers. What a difference from our tipical professors in the US. It felt like a business transaction in this room with these suited men trying to sell us there classes and the benefits of their university. Although there is a bit of colleges selling themselves in the states, this feeling was very different. I feel that in the states, all the money that a well off school makes is shown in its facilities and academic focus, not in the finely pressed suits of its teachers. This made me think about where schools do and should lie on this spectrum from non-profit to for-profit. In general I think of schools as organizations run by people who highly value education and love their subjects that they teach, but in this room today I felt like these suited men just wanted my money. Is that bad though? Eh, for sure it's different from the image protrayed at most US schools.

Tomorrow, more orientation! Classes start the 16th of March so we have to brush up on our Spanish.

iki, ("bye" in Lithuanian)
Kati (This is not a spelling error, this is what im called here because no one can pronounce Katie)