Post- Buenos Aires post

I arrived in Viña del Mar from Buenos on Thursday. Since then, I have labeled just about everything in my room and bathroom with its spanish name, spent all afternoon toddling around Café con Letras, and had leche con plátanos for the first time. Ok, so it has not been an eventful four days, but they have been relaxing... and I believe I will be making leche con plátanos for the rest of my life. All you do is put a banana, a bunch of milk, and some sugar in a blender and voila! Try it!

I didn't take very many pictures in Buenos Aires. Five, to be exact. Why? I have come to realize that I have a love/hate relationship with pictures. I love to look at them and use them to spark memory, etc. but photos never quite do the scene justice. I enjoy the moment more if I am just focusing on the moment rather than the focus of my camera. I am kicking myself now for only taking so few pictures, though. Which brings me back to the hate... I do think that the moment is tainted if you have a lens in front of your eye.

Thus, I have a skim-on-pics blog. I will try to be better about this... but am making no guarantees.

Here is what I do have.

My new friend, Coren, and me in the center of town. We went to the Sunday market and saw all kinds of cool things. Who knew "the invisible man" really existed?

Here are Carlin and Coren in the kids section of the El Ateneo bookstore. :) Take a look here, it is quite a store!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ateneo

One of the other things we did in Buenos Aires was take a look around the Recoleta Cemetary. Samantha went

there. Her crew did do some picture taking. Check it out:

My current life-quandary (and I do realize that in a world of real-life problems, I am a lucky dog to have this be my biggest one) is learning Spanish. I am constantly wavering between feeling no pressure - only excitement to learn, and a feeling of total deluge... like I am never going to get to "fluency," why even try? I know that that is the wrong feeling to have, though. I am here for self-improvement. For myself. No one else. I am here to learn Spanish. In the best way I know of. I am definitely able. I am just having to take a deep breath from time to time, settle down... and make some more flashcards.

So this weekend, the ISA group is having an excursion to La Serena. It will go from Friday to Sunday and should be a lot of fun. We have a good group... it always tends to make for a pretty good time, and La Serena is supposed to be beautiful (just like everything else here). Annnnnndd Friday is my 21st Birthday! Ha, I have always had ideas about how my 21st would go down. I remember talking with my roommates when we were freshman about how all of us had our 21st birthday on weekend days. So I believe this will end up being a little bit of an unconventional American's 21st, but I have nothing to complain about!

P.S. I was inspired to make a post today by my roomie, Johanna. (This is your shout-out, Johanna.)

Amor a Buenos Aires de Argentina!!!

Hola, Amigos!

Greetings from Buenos Aires! It is a truly beautiful city... I have watched a Tango show, shopped, met fun people, eaten good food... it has been a good time, hopefully with more to come.

Since it has been more than I while since my last post, I will include...
More about Chile:

Things are gradually getting easier. I can now get around Viña and Valpo rather easily and the Spanish is coming along. Watching movies in English while reading the Spanish subtitles has been really beneficient.

I can see the man on the moon better here... perhaps because the ozone is damaged, but it is beautiful nonetheless.

An excursion through ISA to La Serena is the plan on my birthday weekend. It is supposed to be beautiful. ...Wont exactly be the 21st birthday I have imagined in the past, but that may not be a bad thing. It hit me here a few minutes ago, sitting in my hostel, probably because I have been reading facebook status updates, that I am in a damn good situation. I cannot even imagine being in my little apartment in College Station studying for a test or going to a meeting or something, which is what I would be doing if I had not come here. It is really kind of a euphoric feeling I get when I think about the possibilities that this trip brings about. I found some cool quotes to possibly get you in a sentimental mood like mine: :)


“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” - Paul Theroux

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” - Mark Jenkins


“A wise traveler never despises his own country.” - Carlo Galdoni

So I have been feeling temblores still pretty often since the terremoto, but less and less so as time goes on. One of them comes with a pretty good story. A couple of weeks ago, the new Chilean president was inaugurated in a building just down the street from my university in Valparaiso. I figured, hey, might as well go and check out the little parade situation they have got going on down there. It was really cool. I am very glad that I went. A historical event doesnt happen ´down the street` every day. (The new chilean president, Piñera, is the first right-wing leader since the Pinochet era. Since that time, every president has been a socialist.) Anyway, A tremor happened while I was standing out there. Everybody moved away from the power lines for a minute, but there was no need for alarm because these tremors come so often. After the president came by, I headed back toward the beach area where the buses were. Suddenly, I noticed people running the other way. I just kindof hessitated until I heard the policeman say "tsunami," and I joined the others in running. I am pretty sure that the whole town was running up hills. Like, these people were not wasting time. Even the buses (all of them) were zooming up the hill. I got toward the top and ended up running into a leader of another study abroad group. We went into a house on the hill where one of her American students was staying. It took a long time for the go-ahead to come saying that everything was safe. I stayed there for about 4 hours. You know, when I heard "tsunami" and saw what looked like a scene from Godzilla, I thought that that meant there was a tsunami and that tsunami was on its way to Valparaiso. There was no tsunami. The right conditions for a tsunami to develop were in place but there was never a tsunami spotted. What made that tremor different from others in causing "perfect tsunami conditions," I dont know, but perhaps it will be a different situation if another threat like that comes. I think that the word tsunami just scared everyone and that is why they went crazy rather than merely finding higher ground.

Classes are going well. It is a pretty humorous situation. There are 5 people, the same 5 people, in all of my classes. It is 3 guys from ISA and a Japanese guy. I really like all of my profs and they have made class interesting so far, which I am really impressed with because I dont know how I would feel about preparing a lot for only 5 students.

Chao for now, from Buenos Aires!