Duke vs. di Tella #1

I've been trying to think about the differences in US universities and the Argentine universities, and believe me, there are a LOT - but most of what I've thought of so far has only dealt with organizational aspects (free printing versus going to a photocopy store, class times, general chaos here in class scheduling and registration, etc.). But I got an email today that really made me realize a more subtle difference in class dynamics that I always kind of knew existed but was hard to concretely see: American college students are a lot more competitive than those down here!

I have a midterm next week in my International Economic History class at di Tella (which is the university that is definitely the most similar to the US) - and the whole class (50 people?) has an email thread going where everyone sends notes and summaries to the entire rest of the class. Tonight, someone emailed out a full first-half-of-the-semester study guide he had gotten from last year. Wow! That would never happen in one of my classes ... not like I would outright NOT give a study guide to other people in the class, but I certainly wouldn't mail it out to every single other student! I guess we're just too concerned with beating curves? Maybe it's just my school? Either way, I do get a more whole-class effort vibe here than I would at a similar class at Duke!

Cooking Class

Last Monday I took an empanada cooking class with Amanda and Emily (birthday present courtesy of Mom!), which was really fun - something a little different, out of the city, and of course a delicious lunch too.

Here is where Mom found the cooking class - this woman (Teresita) runs a bunch of different classes just out of her house in a suburb of Buenos Aires. The town, called Adrogué, is to the south of the city, about half an hour away by train. I knew Adrogué would be a nice town

because my host mom was raving about it (muy lindo! ayy que lindo es!), and she has very distinguishing taste - preferring exclusively the swanky neighborhoods of Recoleta or Puerto Madero or (parts of) Palermo. Anyway, the point is, Adrogué was really pretty and quiet. To the right is a picture of the street Teresita lived on.

We made two different types of empanadas, carne (meat) and humita (corn) - the two most typical Argentine types. We started by cutting all the vegetables and preparing the filling, which had to chill before you stuffed the empanadas. Basically what goes in the carne empanadas is: onion, raisins, green olives, hard boiled egg, and green onions, pepper, cumin, and of course beef. The humita empanadas have: onions, bell pepper, crushed red pepper, and of course corn.

While the fillings were chilling, we had a mini wine tasting where she told us what wines pair well with the two types. I basically no nothing about wine, but apparently a Torrontes goes well and of course Malbecs (which is the famous Argentine type).

We had to make the dough ourselves next and then knead it and make it into flat circles. This part was kind of annoying, and I think I would be tempted to buy premade dough if I made empanadas regularly. Basically you mush lard, brine, and flour together and it turns into the dough. Once we had the flattened circles, you put a clump of filling on them and then seal them. She was trying to have us seal them a fancy way, with rolled fancy edges, but we weren't so good at that part.. Anyway, half of the empanadas we fried (you just dump them in for a couple seconds) and sprinkled sugar on, and then the other half were baked.

Once they were all done, we had a picnic lunch in her backyard garden, which was really pretty, and it was also fortunately a beautiful day out. My favorite combination was surprisingly the fried corn ones ... I thought the fried would be too much, but it was really delicious, especially with the little sugar on the top. We had made about 4 dozen empanadas, and there were only 4 of us to eat them, so we eat got to take home the leftovers too!

The other woman that was taking the class with us, Leslie, was American, but she had been living in BA since last December. Her Argentine husband owns "estancias" (basically big cow farms) all over the country and they export beef to the US. She was living quite the life...in BA for 2 years with no real things to do except take cooking classes and take her kids to their swanky private school every day. Oh, well, she actually just accompanies the kids, they have a full time driver. She travels around the country whenever she can, and her family goes to their "ranch" in the North every 2 weeks. It was quite the extravagant life! I really liked her though, she had some good stories, and an interesting perspective on Argentine life. She took the train home with us (her driver was getting the kids), and it was her first time riding BA public transportation. Haha. The train was enough for her though, when we got back in to the train station in BA, she turned down the last leg of the journey on subway and we took a taxi back into Recoleta with her.

Now, if I can just reproduce these when I get back home!

My first actual graded assignment....

...was a success!

I wrote a 2 page summary of a reading we had to do for my International Economic History class at di Tella two weeks ago, and I got a 9/10! Yay! I only had 3 grammatical errors, which is basically nothing!

Also for the class, I have to give an oral presentation to the class on some reading sometime in the semester. Not looking forward to that one. In English, no big deal, but nervous Spanish? Oh well.

Cataratas de Iguazú

I was trying to wait to post this until I got my computer back and could upload my own pictures, but it´s still not ready, and I´m just going to keep falling behind. Every time I call them, they tell me ¨tomorrow, tomorrow¨. So it´s supposed to be ready tomorrow night, but who knows. I´ve really been moderately okay without it, the thing I miss most is being able to update my iPod with new music and podcasts.

But last weekend was really really fun - the waterfalls are really impressive. The first 17 hr bus ride was actually pretty tolerable ... the first couple hours were fun because it was something new, they gave us meal service (which was disappointing, but it was still meal service!), and we brought snacks (which were all eaten in the first couple hours). Then I slept for probably 10 hours (the seats are comfortable!), and then the last couple were tolerable because we were close. So overall, 17 bus ride went well!

Friday afternoon we went on a horseback ride through the jungle to visit an indigenous village. We weren´t sure what we had time for, s

ince we got into Puerto Iguazú at like 3:00,

but we luckily had just enough time to fit that in.

It was really random and unexpected, but I´m glad we went, it was really in

teresting. Our guide explained a bunch of things about the jungle and about the indigenous people...I think their name was the G

uyaní or something like that. He said t

hat they used to be nomads, but now that modern culture is kind of infiltrating their little villages, their c

ulture is totally changing and they´re likely not going to move anymore. Also, a lot of them are alcoholics. (Kind of random and strange)

We stayed at this surprisingly nice hostel on Friday night ... it wa

s 30 pesos, relatively clean, free breakfast, and nice grounds. All the hostels I´ve ever stayed in have been ... quite the opposite, so it was a nice change!
Saturday we went into the park .... most of the time was just walking through the

trails going to different lookout points of the falls.

We took a boat ride underneath t

he waterfall which was really aw

esome...Í´ll post my pictures of that once I get them uploaded. I thought, of course, that the falls were really beautiful, but the park was so incredibly touristy it kind of took away from the whole experience. The national park reminded me of an amusement park, actually. (Complete with thrilling boat rides, overpriced food, and expensive entrance fees!) So I mean I really enjoyed it, but the whole thing seemed a little contrived at times too.
We left to go back to BA on Saturday night...this time the bus ride seemed longer, but I still slept for like 9 hours of it, so it wasn´t too unbearable. Same horrible food (think strange piece of beef and mashed potatoes, a cold dense roll, and a couple shreds of lettuce. even the flan was unpalatable). I had to go through the streets of BA and ride a bus wearing obnoxious Duke sweatpants and a North Face (which of course was the most comfortable to wear on a long bus trip!), looking completely out of place. I literally have never seen anyone wear sweatpants on the streets here, let along bright blue with a huge D-U-K-E down the leg. Oh well.

(I think I have a strange affection for using parentheses.) I will post pictures on this post soon!

Weekend plans

It´s Thursday at 2:30, and it is officially weekend for me. My last class is 10-1 on Thursdays, so I have 3 day weekends to be able to travel with sufficient time if my friends and I want to....which this weekend I am!

This weekend, Emily, Amanda, and I are going to Iguazú Falls, which are in the far north of Argentina, directly bordering Brazil. Iguazú is the 5th biggest waterfall in the world, and the biggest in South America. It´s a 17 hour bus ride .... which could be horrible, but I´m looking at it as a part of the whole experience. It isn´t any regular bus either, Argentines ride buses in style. This is the company we booked through - Via Bariloche. You can kind of see pictures of the buses throughout their page. Anyway, we leave tonight at 8:40, get there tomorrow at around noon, and leave again on Saturday night to get back to Buenos Aires on Sunday at around noon.

On a different note, today for lunch I found a new empanada place, Hausbrot, that actually sells whole-wheat empanadas (click empanadas y tartas) with vegetables inside instead of meat. Who knows if they´re actually any healthier (probably a little), but they certainly made me feel like I was eating something good for me, with all their all-natural and organic advertising.

I´m about to go meet Emily to go find a hostel and plan our day and a half in Iguazú, but I will post again early next week with my pictures!

Argentina - Brasil Fútbol ....

....we lost, 3-1, in the World Cup qualifiers last night. I went over to my friend Emily´s apartment and watched it with her host brothers and their girlfriends in an attempt to watch the much-anticipated game with Argentines. I fell asleep through most of the game (that is somewhat sacreligious (sp?)to say here, but it´s true) .... and I think the reason was because there were no commercials to get up and take a break during. Overall, the game was not that exciting, or at least not as exciting as I had expected.

Interesting thought that occurred to me during the game:

What languages do referees speak when the opposing players speak different languages? Especially when its during a type of game that the players can go talk to the ref, like basketball or soccer? Last night, Emily´s brother told me that the ref just spoke Spanish, and because Portuguese is similar, the Brazilian players could understand. But without that handy convenience, what would they do? Maybe just speak English, I don´t know!

Ice Cream

Here are the 3 well-known ice cream chains throughout the city...this afternoon my friend Emily and I tried the 3rd one, so now I can post about them in entirety.

Freddo - the most common brand...8 peso cones. I´ve eaten Freddo twice, both times I got banana split flavor (which is banana base with chocolate chips and dulce de leche swirled in) and dulce de leche. There are Freddo´s all over the place, and they´re always tempting!

Persicco - a little bit higher end than Freddo ... I´ve only seen 2 stores of Persiccos throughout the city. One is right by the Subway stop going to di Tella, so I always see that one as I pass. It always looks so inviting, especially since it has lots of outdoor seating (which is almost always full on warm days).

Un Altra Volta - The one I ate at this afternoon, and I think my favorite so far, but the cones were 12 pesos, so definitely the most expensive. The inside was super chic and sleek, and there was a patio inside. I had dulce de leche with bombón, and banana with chocolate chips. Both good choices.

All the ice cream here is delicious ... and they don´t really give you huge portions, so you never feel thaaat bad about eating it. I can see all the temptation getting dangerous when it actually gets hot out here!

Final Classes....

I finally turned in my final class schedule, so enough with the whole shopping period and going to like 15 classes!

This is what I´m taking:
International Economic History - at Universidad Torcuato di Tella, which is a small private school that has a pretty good name internationall for Econ....I don´t think this class is actually very hard, if it was taught in English, but it´ll probably be my hardest one just because there´s so much reading and there´s the most amount of class time. i´m getting major credit for this back at Duke though, so that´ll be worth the extra amount of work.

Argentine Lit. in the 20th century - also at di Tella, I really like the professor, he´s really funny and keeps things interesting. This class is a seminar for foreign students, so we actually do most of our reading in class so he can tell us words we don´t know....so it´s pretty easy, but I like the reading we do.

Hist. of the Ideas and Political Processes of Argentina - taught at Universidad de Salvador, which is a private university, but still kind of a mess. The professor is really easy to understand in this one and his lectures are interesting, so i think I´ll like this one.

Spanish class with my program - everyone has to take one of these classes, but you do get to pick your focus. Mine is Documentary Film in Argentina, but I think it´ll actually end up being more a literature class which occasional documentaries that we watch on our own.

Because most of these classes just meet once a week for a longer period of time, I don´t really end up having that much class time. Also, I don´t have class on Fridays, so in case I´m travelling one weekend, I can do a 3.5 day weekend!