Five Days in Buenos Aires

Maybe you are a student, finishing up your study abroad experience. Maybe you are a bored elderly couple, passing through Latin America on a bucket list tour. Maybe you´re in Argentina for business,  and want to make your time count. No matter the reason, you are probably going through the same thought process if you are here in Buenos Aires: What do I do first. Well I´m here to answer that question for you.

In three days I will be picking up my girlfriend at the airport, and so this question is timely. How am I supposed to show her the whole city, my home of five months, in just 5 days? Read on, and you´ll find out.

Day 1:  You arrive at the Ministro Pistarini Airport (EZE). This airport might as well be in Iowa, because it is so far away from Buenos Aires, but since you are coming on an international flight, you are unfortunately stuck with it. If you´re lucky, you´ll be picked up by someone like as kind and awesome as me! You are going to want to get a taxi back, which will cost somewhere between $140 and $170 pesos. The taxi driver will inevitably try and screw you, so be careful.

I´d recommend getting a hotel or hostel in SoHo Palermo, because it is by far the most vibrant and exciting part of Buenos Aires. (Especially for young people as there are lots of bars and Boliches in the nearby Plaza Serrano). On this first day, take the afternoon easy. Head to Plaza Italia, and soak in the beautiful green areas. From there you can explore the Jardín Zoológico and the massive park in Palermo. It is a good relaxing way to start your five days.

I would then go and get lunch at a café in SoHo. That´ll give you a good glimpse of café culture in B.A. Then you should rest up for going out at night.

On this first day, you should go to Plaza Serrano after getting something to eat beforehand. When you arrive (no earlier than 11), don´t be surprised to see hundreds of people filling this outside terrace with bars and boliches all around. This is a great place to go bar-hopping for hours on and end, and you can end it with one of the many nearby boliches. I´d start at Congo, then head towards Tazz, and end it with Kika. Don´t be surprised if you get home to your hotel, and people are eating breakfast.

Day 2: Your activities from the night before, might make you want to sleep in, but since you´re only here for five days, you ought to get out of bed at a reasonable time. Once up, start the day off slow with another visit to a café. You´ll be doing a lot of this here. On day two, you should head to the Obelisko. This large structure, resembling the Washington Monument is southeast of Palermo. After taking your share of photos, walk down to the nearby Plaza de Mayo. This large square is home to the Casa Rosada (Pink House), the executive office of Argentina, and other beautiful buildings.

I´d then walk down Avenida de Mayo, and look for Café Tortonni on your right. Inside you´ll find their famous hot chocolate and other good food. After eating, you can then head back to your hotel either by taxi, collective, or Subte. If you want to find out which Collectivos/Subtes to use, you can go to http://mapa.buenosaires.gov.ar/ and easily type in where you want to go.

That night, I´d recommend going to a Parilla called Cabrera. This place has amazing meat, and although it´s a bit expensive, it´s definitely worth it. As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Well, Argentines love steak, so don´t be shy and go to this parilla.

At night, you should then take a taxi to fun bar/club called Crobar. This place is a lot of fun, and is located in north Palermo.

Day 3: You´ve now been in Buenos Aires for two days, and you are feeling the pressure to see all the touristy places. Don´t worry. I´ll get you there. Assuming day 3 is a Sunday, as it will be for my girlfriend and I, this is the day to head to San Telmo and Boca.  Both are located south of Plaza de Mayo and Puerto Madero.

On Sundays, San Telmo is transformed into a massive market, selling artisan goods of many shapes and varieties. You´ll also find tango dancers, and a plethora of cafés around you. If you get hungry, feel free to stop and have lunch at one of these places. Then head down to Boca. This part of Buenos Aires is one of the coolest parts of B.A. for tourists due to its oddly painted walls. Supposedly, it was designed with paint that was left over from the decorating of the many boats in the area, and this is why they are covered in pink, yellow, blue, and other bright unorthodox colors. You will also find Tango at every turn in Boca. Make sure you visit the massive Boca Stadium in this area. Argentines love their fútbol, so this is a site to see.

At night, you will then head back to San Telmo for one of their famous Tango shows. Ask the front desk at your hotel or hostel for some cheap places, and I´m sure they´ll help. I will be going to a show at La Ventana for just $50 which is not bad, considering the price of some other shows.

If you still want to go out after that day, then you are a champion. Head over to Club Araoz or Lost, both in Palermo.

Day 4: Today you are going to go hang out at a cemetery. But it´s not as hipster as it sounds. The Recoleta cemetery, northwest of Palermo is a beautiful tourist site, with lots of great statues, and the resting place of Eva Peron. To get there, I would walk down Santa Fe. This street is lined with shops, so don´t hesitate to look around. However, you´ll quickly find that things aren´t really cheaper than they are in the U.S. After about an hour-long walk from Plaza Italia, you´ll be at the cemetery. Or if you are boring, you can take a taxi, and it´ll take you 10 minutes.

After enjoying the cemetery, you should definitely go to one of the many cafés and restaurants that surround this place. They are expensive and market to tourists, but they are still really good, so you should enjoy it!

That night, you should head down to Puerto Madero. Here you´ll find a series of beautiful buildings on the port (Including my school) as well as many amazing restaurants. You should stop at one of the many parillas in the area, and chow down on the juicy (and expensive) red meat. After paying the bill, and getting filled with a minor depression, you should then walk down to the Casino, just 25 minutes away (or taxi in 10) to try and win it all back.

The Puerto Madero Casino is massive, fun, and has low buy-ins. You can still lose all your money, but you´ll do it way more slowly!

Day 5:  You have just one more day in Buenos Aires. You are depressed. I´m so sorry. You can however make this last day count. After a coffee at a café, you should head to MALBA, the modern art museum in Buenos Aires. I was very disappointed by this museum, but maybe you´ll value this type of art more. After checking out this museum, I´d head down south of MALBA to Las Heras Park on the corner of Colonel Diaz and Las Heras. This is a good place to sit and relax, and take in the last bit of Buenos Aires you can get.

After resting up at the hotel, you can then come back to the Recoleta cemetery area at night. There aren´t wild clubs like in Plaza Serrano, but there are a couple dozen bars lined up in this area, so it´s not a bad place to come and drink a beer with friends. You can jump around a few places, and find one that feels right.  

*** Alternatively, Day 5 can be spent in Uruguay. It is just a quick boat ride away, and is not very expensive. The boat will take you to Colonia, Uruguay a great place for couples, families and people over 30. Montevideo would be more fun for a younger crowd, but that would be hard to fit into one day.

So, there you have it. Five days, and you hit every major site in Buenos Aires. Follow these steps, and you´ll have lots of good memories to take back home.

The Most Beautiful thing I've ever seen

San Juan and La Rioja

            I am surrounded by a soothing silence. There is a light breeze, blowing warm air on my face as I lie on a bed of tiny rocks. My shoes are covered with a dark red dirt and a layer of fresh salt. I peacefully lay down, looking off at the mountains that are in front of me. A wide lake circles around me, passively drifting as the wind pushes it towards the coasts of the ice-filled mountains in the distance.

            I take a deep breath, and feel the air fill my lungs. I am 3000 meters (just under 2 miles) above sea level, and so the oxygen is sparse. After looking around at the beautiful view that surrounds me, I close my eyes. I don’t hear a sound.

***

            This was the scene as I sat on the top of the Reserva de Vicuñas in La Rioja, Argentina. It was truly the most beautiful view I’ve seen in my entire life. It was just two days earlier that I left the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires for a plane at 5:00 in the morning.

            Two hours and a whole lot of exhaustion later, I was at the San Juan airport. San Juan is a region in Northwest Argentina that is just north of Mendoza. The first thing I noticed when I walked out of the airport doors was that there was a wall of mountains in every single direction I looked.

            After a few photos, I then joined the rest of my program in a van to head to our next location. After a three-hour car ride, full of talk about the NBA Finals and The Wire, we reached Valle de La Luna. This beautiful valley had towering red rocks that pointed in peculiar shapes and sizes. It had momentous boulders stacked in inexplicably random ways. It had remarkable spherical balls of pressurized minerals that formed naturally below the surface of the earth before popping up above ground and prints of leaves from hundreds of thousands of years in the past. And most importantly, it had cactuses, one of which I hugged for the first time. As we drove away from the valley, and headed for our hotel in La Rioja, I found myself waiting for a road-runner to come by.

            It was a long and tiring day, and so after eating, we all ventured back to our rooms. The Heat won the championship that night, and although it was depressing, the great experience of San Juan almost blocked it out… Almost.

            The next morning, I was up, and was already late for breakfast. Luckily we were running on the exceptionally tardy Argentine time, so it didn’t really matter. Just as the day before, we all piled into the van, before driving an hour to the Talampaya Cannon.  For five hours, we trekked through the beautiful wilderness, full of towering red walls of rock, and miles of large hills of sediment. I’ve been using one word to describe this cannon when my friends have been asking: Unreal. I have never seen anything like it in my life.

            At one point, after marching for a couple of hours, our tour leader, Fabian stopped us and we all sat down at the end of the large valley. We looked across the wide landscape, and I realized that I might be one of 30 people in miles of where I was sitting. We were in the center of a valley, disconnected from society and anything associated to it. We all yelled “Che” at the same time, and it bounced from wall to wall, for a good 4 seconds, before coming to a stop and filling our ears with silence.

            Four hours later, we were back at the hotel, eating empanadas and talking basketball. After breaking into a wild argument about which gangster was better in “the Wire” and watching “Live Free or Die Hard” in Spanish, my room once again went silent and I drifted off to sleep.

            For the record, Marlo Stanfield is a better crime boss than Avon Barksdale, Kieran.

            I woke up late, and I was last shower just like the day before. Luckily, we were still in Argentina, so timeliness was more of an idealistic impossibility than a real expectation. I ate some medialunas and then jumped back into the van to go on our biggest and most exciting voyage.

            And that brings me back to where I started with this blog. I sat on top of this mountain, thousands of meters above ground, and felt at peace like I hadn’t felt in a long time. As I lied down on this sliver of land, overlooking the beautiful scenery of mountains and ice, I thought of a quote a great hero of mine, once said. It was none other than Forest Gump.

            “There was always a million sparkles on the water,” he said to Jenny as she sat on her deathbed. “Like that mountain lake. It was so clear… it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other. And then in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It’s so beautiful.” 

            I honestly did think of Forest Gump. I love that movie.

            As I sat there, I wanted to somehow capture the moment so I could return to it when I was back home. Without moving from my position, I pulled my camera out, and snapped a photo. My feet, crossed with a layer of salt and dirt on the soles, calmly pierced the sky ahead. The ice-filled mountains reflected off the lake and the sky was as clear as I’ve ever seen it. Forest Gump was right. It was beautiful.  

Violence, Sex, and Human Conquest: Popular Culture in Buenos Aires

            A graphic flies across the screen, and a woman wearing a little less clothing than she should stands in front of the camera. In a quick Argentine flow, she tells the viewers of the latest tragic event:

A horrible train crash.

A mother, who killed her son.

A series of cars broken into by men in masks.

An explosion downtown.

            This is the local news in Buenos Aires. When I walked into the kitchen on that first week I was here, my host mom sat in front of the screen shaking her head. “¡Qué barbaridad,” she would say as she watched the headline flash across the screen. “¡Este país!”

            Just by watching the news, you would think I was living in a war zone. I learned quite quickly though that this was more a signal of the news quality than the city itself.

            This trend towards dramatization in the news is just one of the many interesting things I’ve found as I’ve watched the TV in B.A. These news broadcasts, along with the city’s advertising, movies and entertainment combine to form a uniquely Argentine popular culture.

Local News: 

            To begin, the local news is as I mentioned, way more negative and terrifying. More than simply the content though, what shocked me the most was the way it was delivered. In the U.S., tragedy is covered with a reporter on the scene, and a few quotes from those involved to add color. Meanwhile, in Argentina, this color is the whole story.

            For example, it is not odd to have a crying woman stand in front of the camera, sobbing as she speaks, for a full five minutes without break. As the camera watches her speak through tears, music that easily could be from Die Hard or the Titanic plays in the background. Clearly, this type of coverage would not pass in the United States. Here though, it is the norm. They want high ratings, and people love violence, personal drama and excitement. The content shows violence, the tears show drama, and the fast-moving cameras and music bring excitement. And while, the United States has a long history of neutral impartial coverage, Argentina does not. So this powerful ratings combination flourishes.

Advertising:

            Freshman year of College, I took a class on American sex scandals. The main thesis I gathered from the course on governmental scandals from JFK, to Lincoln, to Clinton was that Americans are terrified of sex. We live in a country where Michelle Obama get’s critiqued for showing her arms, and sexuality in public makes you a pariah. This is not the case in Argentina.

           

            I was shocked when I first got here by the amount of “nudity” in public advertisements. Obviously, there are no completely naked bodies, but compared to what is deemed appropriate in the U.S., the content is shocking. Victoria Secret posters look like ads for a sweater company compared to the ads for even some of the most innocent of products here in Argentina. I’ve seen commercials saying that a gum will get you action at a club. I’ve seen gigantic ads posted along buildings claiming that a perfume will ensure that you get a night with a shirtless Argentine man in his boxers. And I’ve seen billboards saying Digital TV, will get you attractive nearly naked girls to come and watch soccer games with you. Clearly sex is prevalent.

            With this in mind, it seems clear why cat calling is such a phenomenon here. I’m sure many city dwellers in the United States think that they get these calls a lot, but compared to Buenos Aires, they’ve seen nothing. My girlfriend is coming up to Argentina in a less than a month (Whooo! Excited!!), and I’ve warned her that she might want to wear a full suit of armor if she wants to avoid the calls. Boyfriend at their side or not, women are always targets for relentless Argentine men to scream out sexual calls at nearly every passing.

           

            While this behavior might be reserved for only the most dubious and despicable people in the U.S., it is commonplace amongst Argentine males. Whether they are construction workers, teachers or lawyers, the conduct is typically the same: A whistle, a sexual innuendo and a lingering stare over their shoulder. Oh, Argentines.

Entertainment:

            When people are not watching the news or goggling over women, they are usually looking for some sort of entertainment from the TV or movies. Most of the entertainment is from the U.S. From episodes of House or Law and Order on TV to Hollywood hits like The Hunger Games or Men in Black III in the theaters, it is not too hard to stay up to date with U.S. entertainment. More interesting to me though are the Argentine shows that have a distinct B.A. feel to it.

            There’s no better place to start than with the Soap Operas. A few times a week, my host mom excitedly gathers herself in front of her TV to watch her shows. During these occasions, she watches the screen, sometimes yelling through the phone at her friends about what is happening. “Estúpido,” she’ll sometimes scream at the TV, as a character does some scandalous action, whether it is a woman betraying her best friend, a man sleeping with the mistress, or the politician killing the competition. It is truly spectacular drama, of which I will never understand.

            Then there are the game shows. My favorite of them all follows a fairly simple formula. In this show, contestants attempt difficult activities and if they succeed, they are given a prize. What makes it interesting though is that the tasks are absolutely absurd.

            For example, in one event contestants are asked to drive a car into a bouncy ball to try and knock down ten setup bowling ball pins. In another, if a contestant slides a pitcher of lemonade across a table, without it falling, they get an LCD TV. It is absolutely ridiculous television, but just as with those Japanese game shows on SPIKE, people love it, and the viewers keep coming back.

            So there you have it. The key to Argentine popular culture: Violence in the media, sex everywhere, and human conquest on the television. The combination leads to a fun and interesting display of B.A. identity. 

- Evan Koslof

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

            A group of wise men once said “cash rules everything around me. C.R.E.A.M. Get the money. Dollar Dollar bill y’all. This assessment by the Wu Tang Clan certainly has some truth to it. Whether it’s a dollar, a Euro, a pound, or a peso one thing remains true. The more money you have, the better.

            For this reason, I’ve decided to write a blog on my top five methods for keeping your wallet happy in Buenos Aires. Ironically though, one quick glance at my checking account will show that I don’t listen to my own advice.

1) Dining
            Let’s start where my blog posts typically begin: Food. There are hundreds of restaurants in Buenos Aires, many as famous as they are expensive. When you are a tourist visiting for only a couple weeks, the price is something you can handle, but when you are here every day, it’s best to avoid eating at these fancy restaurants too much. But that doesn’t mean you can’t eat good food. In Puerto Madero, there is a plethora of expensive restaurants. But if you cross the river and walk three blocks towards the Ecological Reserve, you’ll find a paradise for meat eaters. Lining this long walkway, is probably 50 different food stands, all selling Choripan. This Argentine dish is basically a juicy sausage, sliced down the middle and served on a bun. This delicious meal also is very cheap, being sold for as little as 12 pesos. (~3 U.S. dollars).

Also a tip: Sauce selection shows meat quality. When choosing which stand to stop at, always go for the stand with lot’s of sauces. If there are no sauces stay away. 5 sauces, think about it. If it's a table with 15 or more sauces, you found your stand.

2) Clothes and Electronics:

            Where to buy clothes and electronics? Nowhere! While studying abroad here, I’ve talked to plenty of Argentines, and they all tell me the same thing: Don’t buy electronics or clothing in Buenos Aires. These products are unexpectedly high priced, and so I would recommend avoiding buying them. It’s a common practice amongst Argentines to head to Miami to visit family, and to bring an empty suitcase with them. While there, they stock up on the cheap clothing and valuable electronics. You get the point. Don’t buy clothes or electronics in Buenos Aires.

Speaking of Miami, Lebron sucks. Go Celtics! (They are up by 20 as I write by the way).

3) Groceries:

            There are plenty of places to buy groceries in Argentina. The most visual one that I’ve found has been Coto. Although, this place isn’t too expensive, if you really want to get the best deal, you should go to the Chinos. These small stores, which have the best prices, get their name from the people who own and manage them. Chino literally means Chinese in Spanish. Hence by using racial profiling in a way that would make Arizonans proud, one can literally find a cheaper store with a glance.

4) Nightlife:

            Buenos Aires is home to one of the best nightlifes in the world. I haven’t been to many other major cities, but I have seen DC, New York and Boston. And hands down, Buenos Aires beats these cities with ease. Even New York City, which claims to “never sleep” is no match for the B.A. bars and boliches, which can go on until 6 in the morning or later. That being said, these places can be pricey. However, there are plenty of places where your cover goes towards drinks. These are much better buys than those places that charge just to get in. Then again, the nightlife is worth seeing, regardless of its price. When in doubt, drink before leaving, and save money on that. (Drinking age is 18 here). You can get a cheap Malbec (Argentine red wine) for less than 40 pesos. That way you’ll have good wine, and an even better wallet.

5) Travel:

            When I first started organizing my trip to Buenos Aires, I planned out elaborate large trips to far and exotic places. These trips are awesome and necessary for any traveler, but they are also expensive. So, I’ve found that the smaller weekend trips have been similarly as fun and way cheaper. Uruguay for example, is a quick, hour-long boat ride away and is less than 100 pesos if you take the slow boat. You land in the quaint town of Colonia, a place I went to with my parents. It was fun and interesting, but if you are young and with friends, I’d recommend taking an hour-long bus from there to Montevideo This city is way more of a party-location than Colonia, which is more appropriate for a romantic getaway or a family vacation. Another good, cheap place to travel to is Mar del Plata, a beautiful beach town to the south of Buenos Aires. I think Argentines look at Mar del Plata in the same way that Bostonians look at the cape: Close, beautiful, and like home.

So there you have it. The Wu Tang Clan had it right. Cash does rule everything around us. So buy more, spend less, and live like the Wu.

Mid-Semester Review

It is mid-May, and I am officially more than half way to the end of my study abroad experience. At home, my friends are on their way to their homes, and the warm summer weather that awaits them. Meanwhile, here in Argentina, we still have quite a lot more to go.

So, my program and I joined together in an apartment in Palermo to discuss. Marcelo our program leader, who is very popular with the ladies on our program, sat in front of us, as various breads and croissants were passed around the room. He handed out a sheet of paper, we filled out when we first got to Argentina, which listed the goals of our trip. He asked us what we have achieved and what we have not while we’ve been abroad.

I took a look at my sheet, and made a quick analysis of how much I’d achieved.

1 - Eat everything. Check. (My host mom literally told me that she thought I had a Earth worm today because I was eating so much).

2 - Have fun and experience nightlife. Check.

3 - Stay in my long distance relationship. Check.

4 -  Take more than 500 pictures. Check. I underestimated the amount I would be taking. (I’ve easily taken a couple thousand photos already)!

5 – Travel to 5-10 places. Check. (Mar del Plata, Uruguay, Iguazú, and I will go to Salta, Mendoza, Bolivia and Chile in July).

6 – Speak at least an hour of Spanish a day. (Between my host mom, my classes, basketball and random interactions on the street, I easily do that daily.

Then I took a look at the expectations I didn’t quite meet:

1 - Do community service once a month at least. Nope! I haven’t even gone once.

2 - Work out five times a week. Nope! (Granted: That was an ambitious number to expect, but I’ve been here 3 months, and I joined a gym just two days ago…)

3 - Skype with friends every one or two weeks. Fail. I’ve Facebook chatted sure, but I’ve not had many long skype conversations with my good friends. I’m sure they understand, as I’ve been very busy here in Argentina.

4 – Have many Argentine friends. Unfortunately not as many as I hoped. (I have made many Argentine friends on my basketball team and through my classes, but for the most part I have gone out at night with just international students. This is expected since they speak the language, but for the second half of my abroad experience, I hope to increase my amount of Porteño friends.

As I took a bite into the passing croissant and took a sip of my burning maté, I evaluated how I have done on my trip so far. I am definitely having fun and improving my Spanish, but I wonder if I am culturally involving myself enough while abroad. My friends from my program and I all agree that maybe we’ve spent too much time together, going out and speaking English. As I look to the next two months, I hope to break myself from this pattern. I will make it my goal to spend more time with random Argentines I don’t know. Not only will this improve my Spanish, but also I hope it will allow me to learn more about this complicated Argentine culture.

So what do I rate my trip so far. In the level of fun, I’ll give it an A. In my Spanish growth, I’ll give it an A-. With my Cultural knowledge acquired, I’ll give it a B+. Clearly, all I need to do, is live like a Porteño, and I know I’ll leave with an A-rating.

Lazy Sunday

With all the postings of life-changing trips to marvelous natural waterfalls and spectacular beaches, it may seem hard to believe that a study abroad experience in Buenos Aires ever has a dead moment. For this reason, I am here to delineate what the average lazy Sunday looks like. Far from the extravagant excursions of some weeks, this Sunday morning started where most begin: my bed.

           

Gliding out of bed, shortly after noon, I opened the window, to look out at the city shining under the bright sun. Checking my phone, I was happy to see that it was still 65 degrees, despite the fact that it is supposedly winter in Buenos Aires. After a quick shower, some fresh fruit, and a cup of coffee, my host mom gave me a kiss on the cheek and sent me out the door.  

After meeting up with some friends, I headed to a world famous bookstore, with a name I can’t remember. Getting to the store, we found that it was closed for the holidays, so we settled on Burger King coffee instead.

After gobbling down the coffee, we then headed towards the Buenos Aires Book fair, a festival we were urged to go to by our Spanish teachers, who was sure to ask about it in the following class. Expecting a small outdoor book sale, I was shocked by the actual enormity of the event. There were literally thousands of books and a few thousand people spread throughout more than 4 massive buildings.

Inside the buildings, there were hundreds of bookstores, selling novels, biographies, poetry collections, magazines, children stories and every other imaginably readable document Buenos Aires had to offer. There were stores sectionalized by region and author. There were others separated by publishing company or genre. There were a plethora of authors, reading their books and taking questions. Children were sprinting after friends, couples were holding hands and going from store to store, and in every direction, all I could see were books. After a half hour or so, I left the momentous event, and headed towards a park to play Frisbee.

This park, located at Plaza Italia is massive. Located by the Zoo, this large green area is filled with people as it always is on Sundays. From fishing to fútbol, to paddle-boating and drum circles, this park is always packed with men, women, children, and dogs. Lot’s of dogs. On any given day, this park probably has anywhere from 50 to 100 dogs, of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Many of these dogs, would be delighted to chew on our Frisbees, so we try and throw away from them.

This afternoon, we met up with a group of people who come to the same area every Sunday at the same time to toss the disk and drink Maté. This group of people, part Porteño, and the rest foreign, is a collection of couch surfers, who plan events together.

Jumping in with them was an positive experience, as we got the chance to meet many different people of distinct cultures. At the same time it was a good opportunity to get a small escape from the constant Spanish, since there was a large group of English speakers in the group. From the unfairly tall Minnesota student to the Irish girl who thought we were hilarious for saying “trash can,” the eclectic group offered a unique opportunity to meet other people from a variety of cultures.

After a few hours of playing, my friends and I then made our exit for a bar to watch the Knicks-Heat game. Televised basketball games, even during the playoffs, are hard to find in Buenos Aires, so we had to go to one of the few places we know to find it: The Alamo. This bar, typically full of Americans, and preying Argentine men, is a fun bar, full of cheap beer and delicious nachos. Even better, there is no cover charge on Sundays.

A devoted Boston Celtics fan, I’m usually anything but a Knicks supporter, but when they’re playing the talented Miami Heat, I can’t help but root for them to ease the path to the championship. Much to my delight, the Knicks got their first win of the series. As the game came to an end, we all paid, and went home to “study,” eat, and in my case stream the Celtics game. As if to add to the great day, my Celtics not only won but annihilated the Atlanta Hawks.

As I got back into the same bed I arose from that morning, I thought back on my day. No magnificent waterfalls. No splendid forests of spectacular greens. And yet, I felt like singing Ice Cube’s “It was a good day.” It was just another day in Buenos Aires. I closed my eyes sad to see the lazy Sunday come and go, and went to sleep. In seven days, I’d be at it again.

Cultural Differences

When I first arrived in Buenos Aires, I was told to wait in the main terminal for a driver to bring me to my hotel. While waiting I saw a police officer dressed in full body armor. He had a large gun and multiple sticks, which I was sure he could use to beat me down in a moments notice. He walked past me in a slow stagger towards another officer of a similar height and complexion. This second officer had a tattoo on his neck and wore glasses straight out of the Matrix. As the two men neared each other, they looked at each other in a masculine way, and then all of a sudden, gave each other a kiss on the cheek.

Shocked at first by this interaction, I was soon to learn that kissing was just a way of life here. I got to my hotel, and my administrators gave me a kiss on the cheek. I got to my home a few days later and my host mom practically picked me up and launched a kiss at my cheek. A month later, I showed up for my second basketball practice, and was shocked to find a teammate sending me a kiss after I entered. This is just the way it is here. And after I got over the initial shock, it was actually a nice gesture.

This is just one of the many cultural differences that I have encountered while being here. What I’ve found to be the solution is to think with an open mind, and embrace whatever comes my way. Fighting it, and trying to stick to U.S. traditions will just make things harder.

Another cultural difference I noted the first day of school was clothing. In general, Argentines dress better than people from the U.S. On the first day, I show up with one of my friends from the program, and as we run down the steps, a security guard flags us down with a yell in our direction. As we turn around, we see a man pointing at my friend yelling, “No podés entrar sin pantelones y zapatos.” My friend who was wearing shorts and sandals was breaking a dress code we had no idea about.

Beyond these defined rules though, there was also a norm of dressing well. To this day, I’ve still never seen an Argentine wearing sweatpants. They hardly ever wear sneakers and they rarely even wear T-shirts that aren’t expensive and trendy. The average man wears designer jeans, tight button up shirts, and enough gel in their hair to appear as if there is no gel. The average woman wears tight jeans of every color, but the traditional ones, and high-top boots. After a few days dressed in the GW attire of Jeans and a T-shirt, I made the change to button ups and blazers at school. It’ll be nice to return to GW, and show up to class in shorts, sandals and a hoody.

Another cultural difference, that I’ve wrote about a little bit in past entries, is the culture of coffee and dining.  On one of our first nights in Buenos Aires, my program and I went to a restaurant with our administrator, Marcelo. We ate plate after plate of delicious meat for more than an hour and a half, and when we were all prepared to then pay the bill and go, as we would in the U.S., we were shocked to see Marcelo just sitting at the table calmly, demonstrating no signs of expecting to leave. We drank some more wine, and sat for another half hour for so, and then he asked if we wanted coffee and desert. Obviously not turning this down, I ordered a Café con Leche and a desert. In total, we sat there, for way more than three hours. I would learn that this is the norm in Argentine dining. They enjoy dining for the experience, and making a night of it. Granted, Argentina is a developed nation with McDonalds Burger Kings and TV dinners, but on average, the norm is to enjoy a long dining experience.

The coffee places follow the same logic. When you order a coffee here, it comes in a tiny cup, which you are meant to drink with friends in the café. Expecting the same type of service I get in U.S. venues, I was at first upset that I couldn’t just grab a coffee on the go. Although, Buenos Aires still has many Starbucks cafés, which can provide this service, the majority of the other places, find the practice of “café para llevar” or coffee to go, to be an odd concept.

As with the kissing and the clothing, this cultural difference was best dealt with when I embraced it as well. Once I opened my mind to the change, I started to appreciate the new way of dining. When I sit down and have a coffee with a friend, even for just five minutes, it is a much more satisfying experience, than simply grabbing a coffee on the way to work like we do in the U.S.

These are just three of the many cultural differences I’ve encountered here in Buenos Aires. Many of them, I’m definitely going to be bringing back with me to the U.S.