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.