Week 16- Iguazú Falls!

This last weekend I went to Iguazú Falls and San Ignacio with some friends! It was an incredible trip and probably my favorite.

I spent Sunday stuck in my room studying all day as I had an exam for one of my Argentine classes on Monday. I feel like it went really well! I should get my grade tomorrow. Tuesday I had class all day and then met up with my friends to leave for Iguazú. Our bus left about 9:00 p.m. and we spent 21 hours on the bus. It was only supposed to be 18 hours, but there was a protest that delayed us 3 hours. Luckily, our seats were very comfortable as we paid a little more to have the nicer seats. We ended up getting to Iguazú around 6 p.m., then we walked to our hostel which was only 3 blocks from the bus terminal. We showered, got settled in and then found somewhere to eat dinner.

Thursday, we got up bright and early to head to the Parque Nacional Iguazú to see the waterfalls. We spent the entire day there and it was absolutely incredible. It started off kind of cloudy, but was nice and sunny after lunch. There were two main trails that we walked. One took you up higher to see more of a panoramic view and then the lower trail took you closer to the falls. At one point, we were right up next to it and got quite wet! After walking both of the main trails, we took a small train to La Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat) where you get to see where all the falls come together and it's huge and powerful. After heading back to the hostel, we went out and ate dinner and then spent some time at the hostel where they had live music out in the back.

Las Cataratas de Iguazú

Me right in front of the falls!

Friday, we got up and ready to go pretty early again. We checked out of the hostel, but they let us keep our stuff in a locker, so we didn't have to carry everything around all day. We took a cab to Güiraoga (Gwee-rah-OH-gah) which is a animal rehabilitation center. They take in animals that can't make it in the wild due to illness or being domesticated and they work with them to rehabilitate them. If the animals can survive in the wild again, they let them go, but if they can't then they stay in the center. There were many cool birds and monkeys at the center! After our guided tour, we headed back to the center and took another cab to las Tres Fronteras (the three borders) where you can see Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil all at one point. There are small obelisks at each observation deck that you can see. It was really neat! We decided to walk back to the center as it wasn't very far and then grabbed our stuff from the hostel and got on a bus to San Ignacio. San Ignacio was about 5 hours south of Iguazú and we got there around 9 p.m. Our bus dropped us off on the side of the road and told us which way to the center. After asking someone where our hostel was, we were on our way. We got to the hostel and then dropped our stuff off and found somewhere to go to dinner. San Ignacio is a very small town, so we didn't have many options.

Toucan at Güiraoga

Me in front of the Argentine obelisk at Las Tres Fronteras. Paraguay is on the left and Brazil is on the right.

Saturday, we walked from our hostel to San Ignacio Miní which are Jesuit Mission Ruins. They were built in 1610 and are still in pretty good condition. It was very cool to see them! After spending some time at the ruins, we ate lunch and headed back into town. We didn't have much time to do anything, so my friend Janell and I walked to the house of Horacio Quiroga (a famous writer), but we didn't have time to go inside. We met back up with Tracy and Tyler who took a quick bike ride to the river and then headed to the bus terminal. Our bus ride back was only 15 hours and was a lot smoother than the other trips.

Me in the archway of the church at San Ignacio Miní.

Now I'm back in Buenos Aires studying for my Psychology exam on Tuesday!

Week 15

First off, where did the first half of May go? Time is flying. Week 15 was a good one with a nice balance of fun things mixed in with a ton of studying. I have my partial exam (can't call it a midterm as we have 4 classes left) for my History of Art class on Monday, so I've been studying a lot for that, because I found out that if I get at least a 6 on the partial, I only get tested on the material after the partial for my final. I don't think it will be too hard, but I want to be prepared. I also have no idea how they are going to grade my test since I'm the only one who doesn't speak Spanish as their first language.

I had a presentation for my psychology class on Tuesday, so Sunday and Monday were spent working on that. It went really well, but it was really weird to speak a little bit of English with my Argentine class. Since they are studying public relations, they have to learn English as a requirement, so part of each class has to have a small English aspect to it.

Wednesday I had to go back to migrations for the fifth time to get my visa situation resolved. Good news! It's finally done! I have my visa and an extra sheet of paper with the correction of my name. I'm so glad that it's done. I was getting sick of waking up at 6:30 on my days off to go to Retiro (the neighborhood where migrations is). After getting that taken care of, I went to the school to turn in my copy that they've been bugging me about. Now I'm all set to get my transcript and everything! After a bit of studying, I met up with my friend to go to MALBA which stands for "Museo del arte latinoamericano de Buenos Aires" (Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires). We were supposed to go for our lit class a while ago, but never made it, and it was something we wanted to check out. It was really cool! There was a ton of variety with the paintings and it was really interesting! (And free!- On Wednesdays, students enter for free). We saw a painting by Frida Kahlo as well as a painting that we talked about in our lit class.

Abaporu by Tarsila de Amaral (We talked about this in our lit class)

Autoretrato con Mono y Perico (Self Portrait with Monkey and Parrot) by Frida Kahlo

After heading back to Belgrano, I did some more studying at a cafe until 5 when I met up with my friend Karen to go see the new Winnie the Pooh movie (in Spanish of course!). It doesn't come out in the states until July 15, but it was really good! Definitely brought back a ton of childhood memories! This one was a little more tricky to understand than Rio, because some of the dialogue and songs were kind of fast, but I got the gist of it!

Thursday was a normal day of classes and on Friday I went with some friends to the National Museum of Fine Art. It was a nice museum, but I preferred Malba.

Saturday I had to dedicate most of the day to studying for my exam on Monday, but I took a little time to go to Plaza San Martin to see this big exhibit. It's called La Torre de Babel and it's a huge tower constructed of 30,000 books. It's based on a work by Marta Munjín and after the exhibit they are donating the books to start a new multilingual library called La Biblioteca de Babel. After about an hour in line, I got to climb up to the 5th level! It was pretty awesome!

La Torre de Babel

Off to do more studying! Looking forward to Iguazú on Wednesday! We leave Tuesday night and are gone for the whole weekend! It will be a really nice break from the big city!

Week 14

Week 14 started out really great with a trip to Mataderos (a neighborhood about an hour from where we live) with some friends to go to the huge street fair there. Last time we went, the weather wasn't very good, so the fair wasn't in full force. The weather this time was perfect and it was a completely different experience. There were at least four times as many booths with people selling souvenirs made of leather, food and clothes. There was also live music, dancing and a horse show which was really neat to watch.

Monday, I went to class like normal, met up with a classmate to work on a presentation and then ran some errands and headed home. I hadn't feel well, but didn't think much of it. By the time I got home, I was feeling really sick and hurting, so I called my program director to find out where I should go to the doctor. After a few hours of trying to explain what was wrong, I found out that I have an inflamed nerve (not going into anymore detail), so I had to take it easy all week and rest.

Tuesday I had my presentation for my Literature class. It went well and was pretty easy. I lucked out with my topic, because I didn't have to analyze any literature, just present a genre. I also got my grade back from my lit exam. I got a 9.5 out of 10 which is really great! The grading scale is way easier here. They use a number scale from 1 to 10. 4 is usually passing. Here's what it works out to in US grading:

10= A+
9= A
8= A-
7= B+
6=B
5=B-
4=C+
3=C
2=C-
1=D+

Wednesday I returned back to Migrations to pick up my Visa since they told me it would be ready. It wasn't. They said that it was done, but that it was in the office of certification or something and that I have to go back next week. This is getting ridiculous. By the time I finally have my visa it will have been almost a 3 month process. After finding out that I have to come back next week, I headed home and worked on homework all day since I don't have class on Wednesdays.

Thursday I met up with my psychology group to work on our presentation that is next Tuesday. We worked for a little while, copied the textbook, divided it up and then my friend Travis and I went to our two international classes. Got my grade back from my History exam. 9/10! We were also told that our final for that class is turning in a paper on any topic from the class that we want which is really easy. Since I have already done my presentation in that class, all I have left is the final paper.

Friday I had Psych like normal and then went to the post office to mail in my insurance claim. Luckily I only had to wait 20 minutes this time. Usually the wait is more like an hour.

Saturday I met up with my friend Travis to work on our half of our Psych presentation. It was tougher than expected, because we have to present a part of it in English, since the major is Public Relations. My professor wants us to take the text that we have in Spanish, summarize and translate it to English, then take those slides are translate them back to Spanish. It was harder than we thought it was going to be, but we managed.

And that was pretty much my week. Nothing too exciting. Next week should be pretty normal as well, but on the 24, we're going to see the waterfalls of Iguazú!

Week 13- Midterms

Sorry for the late update last week! May is going to be a busy month.

It's the middle of the semester. I can't believe we're already done with the first week of May. I don't know where the time goes. May is a busy month, because classes have their midterms during May. The international classes all have their exams last week and the following week, but the Argentine classes are on a different schedule. Their midterms (parciales) are all spread out. I had my two international midterms this last week. They were back to back on Thursday, but they were pretty easy! We'll see how easy they actually were when the grades are in, but for the international courses, because everyone is at a different level of Spanish, they make the questions very general. For my History midterm, we only had four questions off of a sheet that we had previously been given. As long as you studied beforehand, this one was super easy since we knew the questions beforehand. My professor gave us a sheet of 12 questions and told us he would pick 4 off of the sheet for the exam. My literature class was a little harder to study for as we didn't have a study guide or questions to go off of, but it ended up being very easy as well. We had 5 questions: 3 short essay and 2 short answer. It was a lot of writing to do in 3 hours, but they were not difficult.

My two Argentine courses have their exams towards the end of May. My History of Art exam is in 3 weeks and my Psych exam is in 4. I have two weeks without any exams, but have a presentation each week. I'm not too worried about my other exams since my professors seem to generally go easier on me since I'm not Argentine, but there is a lot of material to cover in my Psych class.

This last week was pretty uneventful due to studying for midterms all week. On Thursday night, I met up with some friends to have our first goodbye dinner since two of our friends are leaving soon as they were doing an intensive Spanish course for only 2 months.  Friday I had to go to Psych at 8am like always and then had to stay at the school to help with a presentation over migration and psychology. My professor wanted me to talk a bit about my experience here. Unfortunately no one showed up to the lecture, so my friend and I just talked with the prof and one other student from Italy for a while. It was interesting, but not exactly what I had planned on for my Friday afternoon.

Saturday I met up with my friends Virginia (who is leaving on Tuesday), Janell and Tracy to go to a fería since it was a really nice day. We spent the day at the fería and stopped into the cemetery since Virginia hadn't been. Overall a pretty relaxing, but nice day.

Next week I have a presentation for literature and have to go back to get my corrected visa. Hopefully this process will finally come to a close after almost 2 months!

Week Twelve-

Sorry for the late update! Been busy studying for midterms!

Besides a few extra study sessions and a trip to the movie theater, week 12 was a pretty normal week. My two international classes spent time reviewing for our upcoming mid-terms and giving out more presentations to do. My two native classes are still going well. I'm feeling more confident about my Spanish abilities when it comes to listening, speaking and writing. It's a lot of work, but such great practice!

On Saturday, I went with some friends to see the movie "Rio". Since it was a cartoon, it was dubbed over in Spanish, which was great! I was able to understand everything and it was a really fun movie! Afterwards we got some ice cream despite it being fall and colder here and then studied for our midterms.

Fall has finally arrived with the temperature around 60 F most days. My host family said that it shouldn't get too much colder than this for winter, but after getting used to 90 degree weather everyday, 60 even seems a bit cold. Luckily I was able to find a store where I can buy some long sleeve shirts as I was a little unprepared for such cold weather.

And that was week 12. We're half way done.

Again, sorry for the late update. Busy with exams and such. And now off to bed. I have two of my midterms tomorrow.