Sorry I haven’t written in a while, I have been so busy with orientation stuff and choosing out classes that I barely have any down time! This weekend I had a little bit of time so my friend Lauren and I went to La Recoleta Cemetery for a couple hours. The cemetery is one of the largest attractions in Buenos Aires. Here lie the tombs and bodies of the rich, powerful and famous of Buenos Aires. Even though it sounds creepy it’s extremely beautiful and oddly calming. Outside of the cemetery there was a small group playing the violin and the cello whose melodic sound floated through the quiet cemetery. We found the tomb of Evita basically by following the crowd. Apparently those of the upper-class were extremely upset when she was buried here due to her low class status. After we spent some time at the cemetery we walked through the neighborhood of Recoleta, which is one of the more upscale neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. It was extremely cold that day so we were overjoyed when we found a cute café with all types of tea. For dinner Lauren, Cate and I went to a parrilla (steak joint) that had been suggested to us by many called Las Cholas in a neighborhood close to ours called Las Canitas. Although we had to wait for about an hour to get a table, we were able to wander around and check out the cute and quaint neighborhood. Norma had told us what to order so we had the provoleta as an appetizer, which is basically just fried cheese and absolutely delicious. We also shared the parriada completa, which basically has a little bit of everything. And when I say everything, I mean every part of the cow haha. It came out on a sizzling plate and was loaded with prime rib, flank steak, chicken, chorizo, blood sausage, liver, intestines, everything! On top of that they serve it with french fries. Even though we tried almost everything between three of us we barely made it through one third of it! All together it cost us around 40 pesos each which is about $10! It was a great, very Argentine dinner!

On Sunday I mostly stayed around the house due to the horrible, rainy weather. Since then I have been preparing for signing up for classes and for actually taking classes! While I’m nervous for classes to begin I’m anxious for orientation to end, which has become extremely repetitive and boring. I’m still unsure what classes I’m going to take and where I am going to take them but within the next few days I will have signed up for all my classes that I may be taking (which right now is around 14!) and then next week I have a period of what they like to call “shopping” in which I go to all my classes to figure out which ones I like, which ones I don’t, which ones I won’t be able to understand the professor, etc. Lately in orientation we have been talking a lot of Argentine politics which has been extremely interesting. Basically what I picked up on is that no one likes Christina Kirchner. At all. Besides that there is a huge range of political ideologies in Argentina, all the way from socialism to extreme conservatism.

Just a quick story that I thought was funny, a friend and I were walking to the subte (subway) when we heard a marching band playing and saw a large crowd on the street. In the middle were people dancing holding blue and white umbrellas singing some song that every seemed to know. As I have heard, Argentines have a lot of national pride. After explaining this to my friend, he proceeded to ask someone “what are you celebrating” he answered, “we are celebrating nothing!”. Anyways, I’ll write more soon! xoxo