May 23: 21,924 steps in Buenos Aires, Argentina

This morning Kristi and I went out for breakfast because hostel breakfast was not enough! We ordered café con leche (coffee with milk), freshly squeezed orange juice, ham and cheese toasted sandwiches, and delicious croissants. I don’t even like orange juice and that shit was fresh, pardon the language.

We went to the Cathedral of Buenos Aires and there was a ceremony going on inside for someone taking the first step in becoming a saint, I think. The current Pope Francis is actually from Argentina, and this cathedral is where he is from and where he was a bishop at.

We walked by the Banco Hipotecario this morning too. If you look at the doors to the bank, there are marks and dents from the people beating against them. In 2001 the government collapsed and all of the banks closed their doors. The government and the banks took all of the money. The wealthy people and people who worked in the bank took their money before the collapse and put it in off shore accounts because they knew what was going to happen.

Later in the morning we met up with Ana’s brother and nieces and nephews to tour the Kirchner Cultural Center. It used to be the post office, but has since been transformed into a cultural theater. It is 100,000 square meters, and cost $200 million dollars to renovate. Ana knows the architect of the project, Claudio Ferrari, so we got to go on a personal tour of the building with him. The project was just completed and isn’t even opening until Monday (today is Saturday). They have been designing the new space since the early 2000s. Ana’s nephew Thomas even put on a small cello performance for us in one of the new performance rooms!

For lunch we had pizza. Never gets old. Keep in mind lunch ended around 4pm.

After lunch we walked to the market festival, which was booming with people and action! We were walking through the crowd and out of nowhere a drum group just started performing right in front of us! And then they did dancing too! It was epic. There are so many vendors and food markets along the streets. Kristi, Ege, and I bargained for some mate cups.

After that we headed back to the hostel for some down time. Kristi, Ege, and I went up to the roof deck café while the sun was setting to drink beer and listen to music and live guitar (played by Ege). Kristi and I sang along to Time of Your Life by Greenday. It was precious. 

For dinner we had an empanada party!

May 22: 22,118 steps in Buenos Aires, Argentina

This morning Kristi, Spodek and I walked around San Telmo, the area where Ana lives and where our hostel is. We went to a café called Gran Café Tortoni, one of the most popular attractions in Buenos Aires. It was very fancy, reminded me of St. Elmo’s, but café version. We had coffee and croissants. Then we walked around some more and went to the market for lunch. We got a bundle of bananas, 3 loaves of bread, and some cheese. We sat in a little square and ate our lunch. It was a very relaxing morning.

This afternoon we took a bus to La Plata, the capital of Buenos Aires province. We visited Casa Curutchet, the only housing project in the Americas done by Le Corbusier. Not my favorite style of architecture, but I can appreciate the thought process.

Then we went to the La Plata Cathedral, which was absolutely beautiful. I didn’t know cathedrals of that magnitude where even in South America. It was so pretty!

After we got back to the hostel, a group of us walked around the city some more and stopped at a café for coffee. And I actually ordered a coffee! It was half coffee half milk and some sugar, but it was a big step for me in coffee world. Kristi was excited.

We went to dinner at a small pizza place a few blocks away from Ana’s house. Four of us ordered 3 different meals and split them to get a taste of everything! And it was all super delicious. Then we went across the street and got gelato! The eating schedule here is later than the US. Their sit down restaurants don’t even open until 8pm, and that is still an early dinner. It’s nice because we always get right in to where we are eating, but at the same time we are always starving by the time dinner rolls around.

After dinner we walked down to the town square. Monday is their Independence Day, so this weekend is a big celebration. There was a concert going on with tons of people and food vendors and little side street shops. It was a really fun atmosphere! It felt like Disney World at night time during a castle performance before fireworks.

When we got back to the hostel tonight, Kristi and I decided to do some laundry. Since there is no good place to wash clothes here, we just washed them during our showers. I just used a bar of soap and lathered each article of clothing. It took me forever, even longer than my normal showers. I rung out everything and hung it up under the bed slats in our bunk beds. As I am typing this blog now everything is starting to drip because I guess I didn’t ring it out good enough! I hope I don’t wake up soaking wet in the morning! 

May 21: 16,559 steps in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Last night was our first night in the Buenos Aires hostel. Kristi and I went to take showers and accidentally used the boy’s bathroom instead of the girls. We didn’t realize it until we came out of the shower to find a guy peeing. We just assumed they were coed bathrooms until one of the other girls informed us that the girl’s bathroom was further down the hall. Oops!

Then after we went down to the lobby to use the wifi for a little while, Kristi and I headed back up to our room where our roommates were already sleeping. They had locked the door already and assumed they would still be up when we came back. But a long day of travel will make even the lightest sleeper drift off into a deep sleep, which is exactly what happened. So there Kristi and I were stranded outside our hostel room, when we remembered that the window was open! Our window was fortunately facing out towards the hallway that our room was off of, so Kristi opened it up, crawled into our room ever so quietly, and opened the door for me.

This morning began our first full day in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is a province of Argentina, similarly to how we have states. Buenos Aires City is the equivalent of our New York City, and Buenoes Aires province is similar to our New York state. There are around 40 million people living in Argentina, and roughly 4 million of them reside in Buenos Aires City alone. Buenos Aires City is also the capital of Argentina, similar to how we think of Washington DC. The people here will say “God is Argentinian, but his office is in Buenos Aires.”

The relationship to the river in Buenos Aires compared to Montevideo is much different. Montevideo was open to the street and pedestrian friendly, with natural grasses growing alongside the streets up to the river. Buenos Aires, on the other hand, has ports all along its water’s edge, closing it off to the city for most of the coast line.

Buenos Aires has a very unique dividing line from the city to the more “suburban” area. As we were driving out of the city this morning, we drove by something I had only heard about but had never seen in real life – slums. I don’t even know how to properly describe them, but they were just stacks of living units, some not even fully enclosed, and they were piled everywhere, and very close together. I couldn’t believe that this type of living condition was happening so close to the heart of the city. Less than a mile away were normal apartment buildings, with some of the balconies even looking into the slums. The people live there because they want to/need to be that close to the city but can’t afford to do it any other way. We were driving by on a highway so I couldn’t get a close look, but the living conditions were unbelievable. Homeless people in the states live better than these people did. As sad as it was, it was also very fascinating to see how these people had adapted these “units” to be what they needed them to be.

The reason we were driving by the slums in the first place was because we were on a bus headed to see the university where Ana went to school, The University of Buenos Aires. It is a national university, which is different from a state university. We do not have national universities. It would be like having a university for the entire United States. The students who attend the university do not have to pay tuition, so their education is virtually free, but it is a very difficult school to get accepted to. They have to have high test scores to get in. There are multiple majors at the school, ranging from mathematics, design, sciences, etc. Regardless of your major, to get a degree you have to go to school there for 7 years. They do not have a separate bachelors and masters degree. But when they graduate they have the equivalent of what we would consider a masters degree.

 We came specifically for Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño, y Urbansimo (FADU), the architecture and design building. There are 12,000 – 15,000 students in this one building alone. Majors in the design program range from architecture, fashion, urban design, etc. They have a common first year program, similar to Ball State, where all majors take the same sequence of classes to be placed into their specific program after the first year. Unlike Ball State, there are a lot more students. They don’t have desks for each student, so they all just rotate in and out of hot desks, if they are available. A lot of students were gathered in the main atrium space at lawn furniture studying, building models, and putting together their assignments.

The environment in the school is very chaotic. I would have a hard time learning there. There are so many students. Teachers are just off to the side of a large room with a group of students gathered around them. And there are at least 4 of these groups in each room, so you can imagine the noise level. The building isn’t in the best condition either because the education is free, so there isn’t a large amount of tuition money coming into their funds every semester. But going here is what every student dreams of from Argentina. The status of the school is equivalent to our perception of Harvard or Yale.

Since Ana attended school there, she knew some of the professors. We were able to meet with a couple of them during our time there, and all of the students walking by just looked at us because it is uncommon for a group of professors to be devoting that much time to a group of students. But just because they have the title of professor doesn’t mean they have the paycheck of one. Their pay is actually very little, but being a professor is still looked very highly on. They genuinely do it for the career and not the paycheck. Being a professor at this school is one of the best jobs you could have as an educator. The title professor in the states isn’t as prestigious. In the states you would look at a dean or a tenured faculty member as a higher status than a regular professor. The other professor on the trip, Jonathan Spodek, said that when he travels to universities in other countries they treat him with a lot of respect because he is called a professor, but their definition and perception of a professor there is a lot different than our definition of a professor in the states. We call our professors by their first name, which is a very informal relationship to us, but would probably be seen as disrespectful to them.

It was interesting to observe the students at the school. Knowing that they were all the same age as we were, it was easier to compare the similarities and differences between us. We definitely stuck out. Their fashion is different from ours, especially their shoes. Tall platform shoes are a trended I have started to notice more and more as we have traveled to different places down here. We were able to speak to some of the students who spoke English too, which was really cool! It’s funny because a lot of people assume that because we are from the United States, that we live in New York City. It would be like if we met someone from Australia, then we would automatically have this idea in our mind that they live in Sydney. So I think it was slightly disappointing to them to hear that we were not even close to New York. Also something they do down here when they say goodbye is to kiss each other on the cheek. It’s more like a side graze of the face with the kissing noise rather than an actual peck on the skin, but you get the point. So when one girl I was talking to, Lucia, went in for a kiss, I handled it very awkwardly! We both laughed about it and she asked if we don’t do that in the states, and I was like NO! But then we did the little kiss anyways after a good laugh and I felt more cultured.

After the university visit, we got some empanadas for lunch and then took taxis back into town so we could get to our bike tour. The 9 of us students rode bikes without the professors, but we had 3 tour guides to get us through. It was scary at first because I’m not the best bike rider in the world, plus people drive like maniacs here. But after a few blocks and a few intersections crossed, I got the hang of it. We rode all over the city and learned about the history. It was a long bike ride, almost 4 hours! But we stopped a lot to look around, plus it was a pretty casual ride when we were on the move. Just had to hug the side of the road to not get hit by any cars!

In the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday a group of women known as “the mothers” walk around the circle as a form of protest. The history behind them stems back to the Dirty War of the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. The Asociación Madres of Plaza de Mayo is an association of Argentine mothers whose children “disappeared” during this time. The dictatorship would essentially take children and even adults if they or their families were showing any signs of rebellion to scare people and show control. To this day 30,000 of these abducted children have never been found, so the mothers walk around the plaza on Thursdays in remembrance. They read off the names of each if the missing and say a short chant after each name is read.

After the bike ride we went back to the hostel, rinsed off quickly, and walked over to the Santiago Calatrava bridge. It looked amazing at night reflecting off of the water.

Dinner last night lasted about 4 hours. We went out to a restaurant that was basically a fancy buffet, providing all different types of meats, cheeses, wine, and desserts. We feasted and laughed the night away. Even after 5 days it already feels like I already know these people. 

May 20: 10,793 steps in Colonia, Uruguay

Currently on a ferry from Uruguay to Argentina. It looks like a giant airplane on the inside, with seats with trays and aisles. We spent the day in Colonia, Uruguay, which is the complete opposite of Montevideo. It is very European and very quaint. The streets were all cobble stone, with hardly any cars. It was like a storybook town. Every little building had character and detail. It is very expensive to live there, though. The homes along the street cost millions of dollars.

 We spent the first couple of hours there just sitting at a café, drinking mate and sketching. We split off into two groups, so I spent the day with Kristi, Ege, and the two professors, Ana and Spodek. Ana and I both got mate, which is a very popular tea in South America. They drink it out of mugs full of tea herbs and you pour hot water into the herbs. Then there is a spoon straw that filters the herbs out but you drink the liquid it produces. The first sip was very bitter, so I loaded it up with sugar and that seemed to help. Then we sat and sketched the beautiful street where we were sitting outside and listening to a live guitar. It was so relaxing. I could have sat there all day.

After our morning sketching session, we went to lunch at a restaurant on the river called Charco. It was very nice and also reasonably priced! I had some mushroom ravioli combo, and it was delicious. During lunch my stomach started feeling off, and I think it was the sugar hitting me. Luckily it was a relaxing day!

We went up in a lighthouse that overlooked the whole town. It was picture perfect. The sun was starting to go down over the water, the flowers were all a perfect collage of colors, little mopeds were jetting down the streets…it was just a phenomenal little town. Definitely my favorite day of the trip so far. 

May 19: 23,097 steps in Montevideo, Uruguay

Today we took a bus to the project Church of Christ Obrero in Atlantida, designed by engineer Eladio Dieste in 1952. The bus ride was a bumpy one, but it was neat to drive through the city then outside of the city limits. It transitioned from high rise buildings and apartments to single family homes. The social culture of Uruguay is much different from America. In America, if you drive through a town where people are walking along a busy street or if their front yard isn’t perfectly maintained, you get a perception that the community is poor and run down. It could be that I am unaware of the poverty stricken communities in Uruguay, but here it is the norm to walk along the streets. People actually spend time outside socializing and just sitting around to spend time together. In America we are always just trying to get to where we are going, but here someone would stop and talk to you for 30 minutes because that is more important to them than getting your errand done. As we left the city there were still people out and about doing things. What would have turned into suburbia in Indiana was a completely different culture outside of the city. It was still majority single family housing, but it didn’t feel like a suburb. A lot of people were out walking to work, walking their dogs (a lot of people have dogs), riding bikes, gathering anywhere and everywhere to stop and talk.

After the church we rode the bus back into Montevideo and had lunch. We all got chivitos, which is meat with eggs and cheese on top of a pile of fries, a very common dish in South America. Meals are viewed a lot differently in South America compared to The United States. At home, you have a meal because you have to eat. We get impatient if it takes too long to go out to dinner because we are in a rush. In South America, having a meal with people is special. It takes time, but they are in no rush. You have a meal with someone to sit down, talk to them, and enjoy their company. Not that we don’t do that in America, but it is a general understanding that dinner out will take roughly one hour or so. In South America it takes at least two hours. The waiters don’t come to your table to see if you need the bill ten minutes after you get your food. Also, their eating schedule is much later than what we are accustomed to. They eat lunch around 2 and dinner around 10. Most dinner places don’t even open until 8.

In Uruguay, it is common to see people carrying around matte cups and a thermos. Matte is a type of tea that is very common down here. It’s similar to how Americans always carry around starbucks cups. Matte cups are a little mug with a straw and they put the tea in the cup and carry around a thermos full of hot water to keep refilling their mug. We saw a lot of these as we walked along the river’s edge.

For dinner 5 of us stopped at a little pizza place. The waitress didn’t speak English, so we pointed at what we wanted. Luckily, pizza in universal, and it was delicious. After dinner, showers, and packing up, we all went up to the rooftop to sit and hang out. There’s something about traveling together that’s makes you really get to know people really quickly. It was the perfect ending to our last night in Uruguay, then it got ugly.

We went down to our room to go to bed, and were doing our nightly bed bug check, when three of the five girls found bugs. Apparently the room we were staying in had some back backers in it a couple nights before, and they think they may have brought them in. Kristi and I didn’t find bugs in our beds, but to be safe we all slept in the boys’ room. Bed bugs aren’t the worst thing that can happen to a traveler, but you want to avoid them if you can. They leave little bites on your skin in rows, usually on your stomach or upper legs. The problem is when they get in your suitcase and lay eggs, because they will just take over your clothes. The only way to kill them is by getting your stuff dry cleaned because that is the only water hot enough. So hopefully no bugs found their way into our luggage!

Tomorrow we are taking a bus from Montevideo to Colonia for the day. Colonia is a very small city in Uruguay, with a touch of European flavor. Tomorrow night we are catching a ferry to cross the Rio de la Plata from Colonia to go into Buenos Aires, Argentina. Adios for now! 

May 18: 22,853 steps in Montevideo, Uruguay

Today was our first day in Montevideo, Uruguay. We took a van from the airport to our hostel, Che Lagarto. We dropped off our luggage and explored the surrounding blocks for a few hours before we all met up to walk down to the town square, which ended up being about a 45 minute walk from our hostel.

They live a much more chaotic lifestyle here in some ways, but in other ways they are more laid back. For example, the streets are full of people, dogs, vendors, speeding cars, etc. There aren’t many quiet streets. My eyes were constantly darting around being drawn from one thing to another. This isn’t the cleanest city, but I guess the constant bustle of people would make it difficult to keep up with. They eat at later time here too. We ate lunch around 3pm and didn’t eat dinner until 8:30pm. They also take siestas here, which is like nap time in the middle of the day, even if you are at work!

For lunch I had some dark chocolate gelato and an empanada with queso and something else. I also tried Ana’s suggestion of the drink media y media, which means half and half. It turned out to be a type of carbonated wine, made with half red grapes and half white grapes. It was very sweet, and reminded me a lot of moscato wine.

Everyone speaks Spanish here, and so far it seems like unless the people work at an established business, they most likely don’t speak English. The receptionist at the hostel and our dinner waiter spoke English, but the food we got at the small cafes or the street vendors scattered throughout the streets don’t speak English. I just ask them “hablas ingles?” (Do you speak English?) and most of the time they answered no, so we resorted to finger pointing at what we wanted and trying to make out basic words to communicate. The people here are extremely friendly, even with the language barrier. I think they appreciate that we are trying to speak their language, even it is unsuccessful. Uruguay as a country is supportive of tourism for their economy.

I did have one incident today where I was a complete ignorant tourist. I went to a public restroom (baño) and there was a woman sitting in a chair in there. Turns out she was a restroom attendant. She handed me toilet paper so I was like "ok cool gracias" and went on in to the restroom. I came out, washed my hands, and left without thinking anything of it. I guess in public restrooms it is common to have a restroom attendant as a way to provide someone a job, and you are supposed to tip them a few pesos. Oops! The currency here is roughly 25 pesos to 1 American dollar. It varies daily though.

For dinner we went to a pizza place called Pizza by the Meter (Like a foot long sandwich but pizza version and in meters). It had its own South American twist to it, but it was delicious.

After dinner we came back to the hostel and checked our mattresses for bed bugs per the suggestion of world traveler Kristi Pearson. Good thing we did because one girl found one underneath her pillow and another girl found one in her drawer. Bed bugs can be an issue if they get into your luggage and lay eggs because the only way to kill them is basically by dry cleaning all of your stuff to get the water hot enough. Shouldn’t be an issue now, but wasn’t the best way to start out our first night!

My feet are tired from walking 9.7 miles total today in my new hiking boots, but every day will get a little bit easier! 

May 17: Indianapolis -> Miami -> Montevideo, Uruguay on a Plane

Just took off from Miami! Officially won’t be back in the United States for 25 days! So I guess with the blog thing I am supposed to discuss the trip, my experiences, and my feelings along the way. Personally, I would rather just talk about my feelings and experiences with another human being rather than try to form sentences on a computer, but I’m open to trying new things.

We flew from Indianapolis to Miami, and I am currently on an overnight plane from Miami to Montevideo, Uruguay. We were served dinner and breakfast on this plane. Dinner was hot rice and chicken (with a slight plastic flavor to it), cheese and crackers, carmel brownie, roll with butter, and a little tiny salad with dressing. They even served it on a little tray! And breakfast was orange juice, strawberry yogurt, and a warm cinnamon muffin (also served on tiny tray).

Luckily this flight isn’t even half full, so almost everyone on the plane has a row to themselves to sprawl out on and sleep. They gave us a little packet with a pillow and blanket in it. I plan on keeping the blanket.

On my flight from Indianapolis to Miami, I sat next to a guy who worked at Indiana State University. He was flying down to the Amazon for a couple of weeks to do some sort of research. I told him about our trip and he had been to a few of the place we were headed.

This is my first study abroad experience. Now don’t get me wrong, I have traveled to a lot of places, mostly in the United States. I have ventured out to Canada and Mexico, but on the majority of those trips I was merely a tourist. This will be my first time being a “traveler.” This will be my first time leaving the continent I have called home for the past 23 years of my life. This will be the first time I have traveled without my family and instead with a group of mostly strangers, with the exception of one close friend (Kristi Pearson) and two professors I have been fortunate enough to have in classes during my undergraduate education. This will be the first time I have been put in a situation where I can’t “back out” and go back to my comfort zone.

This trip will challenge me. It will test my patience, my taste buds, my comfort level, my reliance on material possessions, and my ability to trust and rely on myself as well as the people I will be spending every waking moment with.

I have a tendency to rely on other people, which isn’t always a bad thing. But as I have recognized this in myself over the past few years, I have noticed more and more that I can’t just go and do things for myself or by myself. I always like to have a pal with me. Maybe it’s the extrovert in me, or maybe it’s because I get lonely without having people around a lot. I wouldn’t have even came on this trip if Kristi hadn’t also been going, simply because I would have been afraid to try something like this by myself. I always say, “I’ll do just about anything, as long as I have someone to do it with me.”

I have even noticed how much I rely on social media as a form of human interaction. Why else do we post things on social media? Just for our own amusement? No. Because we want to show other people what we are doing and win their approval through it. And I know I do it. We all do it some way or another. Which is why during the course of this trip, I am unplugging from all forms of connection to the world (expect this blog, obviously, and a few people back home). No facebook. No instagram. No snapchat. Rather than thinking about how I can show my experience on this trip to other people via social media, I’m just going to experience it!

I want to teach myself to experience this world. How to look at a tree and see it for its beauty rather than its worth. How to smell fresh air and recognize the difference in it rather than just inhale it. How to immerse myself in a new culture and appreciate it rather than compare it to what I am familiar with. Too often do I find myself thinking that what I know and what I am familiar with is the best solution to life, which is far from the truth. I know very little about this world and the people that inhabit it. I want to learn about their lives and discover how I can better myself as a person as a result.

This trip, for me, is about self-growth.