Iguazú

I have realized that I blog to procrastinate. Right now I have many many chapters of reading in front of me, but every time I start to read, I find myself thinking about what to put in my next blog. Lucky for all the readers, not so lucky for my grades.

Mimi, Leah Snyder (a friend for the University of Pittsburgh) and I started our trip to Iguazú on Saturday at 2 PM. We boarded the bus that was scheduled to arrive at 7 the next morning! The trip felt surprisingly short. The buses here are not your typical Anderson buses. You have three choices when picking your bus: semi cama, cama or cama executivo. We were on the semi cama bus, which wasn’t even that bad. Although the food was horrendous, the seats practically folded into beds (thus the name semi cama).

Anyway we rolled into our hostel, (which was more like a five star resort the only difference was you had 5 other people sharing your room. There was a pool, free breakfast and free Internet all for the affordable cost of $10! What a deal.) We met up with some of our friends, had some breakfast and jumped on a bus to Iguazú at the ungodly hour of 8:30. (Let it be said that we were up since 7!)

The story behind the falls is from the Guarani Indians. The Guarani Indians are the tribe of people that inhabited the area before the conquest. There are many variations of this story, but this is the one I found most often. M’Boi, the Serpent God, fell in love with a beautiful Guarani girl named Naipi. He wanted Naipi for himself, but unfortunately for him, Naipi was in love with another, the mortal Taruba. They planned on fleeing the place by canoe but M’Boi saw them. Outraged, M’Boi slithered down after them creating new twists and turns in the river. He finally caught up with the lovers and turned their canoe over, throwing Taruba to the river bank. He turned Naipi into a bolder and Taruba into a palm tree and then split the river, creating the Garganta del Diablo (the Devil’s Throat) so that they could see each other but never touch. Although it has been said, that they show their love by creating a rainbow, which starts at a palm tree on the Brazilian side of the falls and reaches over to the rock of Naipi in Argentina.

The Falls consist of 275 cascades that stretch over 1.67 miles. Apparently when Eleanor Roosevelt first saw these falls, she remarked, “Poor Niagara.” Poor Niagara indeed. We spent all day wondering around looking at the beautiful falls set in the amazing jungle of northern Argentina and southern Brazil. I found myself unable to stop taking pictures even though the pictures could not to the place justice.

We only were able to see the Falls from the Argentinean side because being American, we would have to get a visa to go to Brazil. This visa would cost somewhere around $200! (American dollars) I have found, that we also have to get visas for Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia. They do this to us because the American government makes it so difficult and expensive to get into the United States that it is their form of retaliation.

When we returned from the Falls we took a dip in the pool and made dinner. We woke up early the next day (8 AM) and walked to Las Tres Fronteras (the three boarders). From this point, I guess it is kind of self explanatory, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay can be seen.

The only bad thing about the place was that there were lots of bugs! There were tons of bees at the park, thankfully I didn’t get stung, although Mimi had some crazy allergic reaction to the mosquitoes and now it looks like she has golf balls under her skin. One thing that was really interesting and strange was that there were masses of butterflies! I felt like I was back in the butterfly garden in Costa Rica.

We had lunch and we were back on the bus to Bs. As. All and all I think that it was a great trip. It was good to get out of the crowded and dirty city, even though it was only for a few days. It was nice to be able to walk in a straight line without fear of plowing into someone or stepping in dog shit.

A Place to Call Home

We moved! Finally we can stop sharing a closet for four and start walking around in our underwear.

I feel like I need to write the whole story in order for you all to share in our feeling of complete and utter relief.

Our landladies, well they aren’t technically our landladies but our understanding of the situation is that the owners of the apartment commissioned these two sisters to rent out the apartment. Mimi knows this girl, Samantha Fernandez, and she was living in Argentina, working. As luck would have it, she was going back to the States just as we were getting to Argentina. She is the one that put us in contact with these two women.

Their names are Susana and Amalia. These two sisters live together and rent out apartments. They do not speak clearly and they are constantly forgetting that they are talking to two girls that do not speak Spanish fluently. When they do try to clarify things, they do so at the same time and then start fighting about how to adequately get their point across. They will tell us how to do something one hundred times and when we do as instructed, they tell us that they never said to do that to begin with! All in all it is really confusing and frustrating.

One example.

They said that we could stop by anytime to drop off some money for the deposit and the first few months of rent because the landlords have stated that we must pay them in cash, not by checks, credit cards or money orders. How convenient for them.

<---our room in the hostel

A few days after Susana and Amalia said this, Mimi and I came back with some pesos. When we got to their apartment they looked shocked and perplexed. They didn’t know why we were giving them money and they then asked us to call be for we came. I think the worst part is they speak to us like we are kindergarteners. (I guess that’s understandable because I do speak Spanish at about the same lever as a 5 year old)

We finally got into the apartment and everything had a nice layer of scum: the walls, the floors, the plates, everything. Not only that but the décor is something strait out of the 1970s… doilies on the tables, black lamps accented in gold and some nice mirrored night stands.

The second Mimi walked in she said, “If my mom saw these curtains she would die.” The curtains are really grotesque. They are a grayish color and at first glance, they look dirty but we have concluded that that is just how they came. Gross.

Tonight Mimi and I made dinner. (Thanks to Mr. D’s lovely recipe of meat and potatoes.) Everything was in the pan all ready to be put in the oven, and then we realized, we had no idea how to turn the damn thing on! It is a gas stove and after a few seconds with the gas on, we concluded that it didn’t have a polite light. As we are waving around the lighter in the stove, I am having visions of us getting blown up. We ended up deciding that this was not the best way to go about lighting the stove. Perhaps it was time to consult the neighbors.

There are four apartments on our floor. We knocked on each one once and then rang to doorbell for each one. No one was home. Finally one person was home. His name is David (said daveed FYI) and he answered his door in basically his underwear (apparently he likes to walk around in his underwear too) and said he would gladly help us out right after he put something sensible on. He was really nice and tried not to laugh when we told him that we didn’t know how to light our stove! Haha

All in all, we really love our apartment. It is located on avenida Santa Fe and Puerredon. It is literally right across the street from the metro and it is in the neighborhood of Palermo. Our building has a security guard at all times as well. (AKA it is nice and safe… parents and grandparents you can now take a breath.)

We have a nice balcony and the picture of outside is a view from it. The only drawback to living on such a central place is that it is loud! I’ll just have to put my notesinspanish podcast on every night while I fall asleep. (maybe I’ll start dreaming in Spanish faster!)

Lots of love,

Jenna and Mimi


<---Our little kitchen!



Our room in the hostel
View from our balcony and our living room.

A moment to rant

Here is the thing, I am having some trouble adjusting to the Argentinian lifestyle and perhaps my main problem is, I don't want to adjust.

Let me explain.

Argentinians (and perhaps everyone south of the United States) run on an alternative time schedule I just cannot grasp. When they say they will meet you at 8 they really mean 9:47. And when they want to do something, you could run a marathon waiting for them to get ready... not a bad idea.

The steps to getting to a restaurant are as follows:

1. Wow, I'm really hungry. Let's go out to dinner.
2. But first, let's lounge around the couch for a few hours
3. Walk the dog
4. Do some yoga
5. Perhaps take a shower
6. Change clothes
7. And pick up the apartment
8. And finally, when they are outside, it dawns on them they have yet to pick a place to eat...

You get the point.

I guess I will never truly be a real porteño because I see this process happening and all I want to do is jump out of my skin. The mere thought of having to go through these slow, agonizing steps makes me feel like a person stuck behind an old couple in the ticket line to see the midnight viewing of batman. you know that there are only a few tickets left and the couple cannot decide if they want to go see Wall-E or the latest Woody Allen flick. They are fighting and going back and forth (I picture them fighting with Yiddish inflections... it makes it more strenuous) on which one they want to see and all you can think about is getting up to the ticket line to buy your damn ticket!

Now you know how I feel.

Although let it be said that Mimi has adjusted beautifully to this way of life. I need to know how she does it...

The first post

Well here is the skinny, Mimi and I have moved to Argentina. We have no return flight to the States and as of now, we are living out of our suitcases and sharing a room with four people that is smaller than Becky's in D.C. (For those of you who do not know the size of Becky's room, take our word for it, it is SMALL!)

It is Jenna who is writing this little tid-bit, so I will give you my update (and stop writing in the third person)... Mimi's is to follow just as soon as I tell her I have created a blog for us...

Since it is me who is writing, I just want to worn you, although you all prob know, so I just want to remind you again, that I am a TERRIBLE speller. I will do my hardest to catch all the mistakes via spell check, but over the course of the year, I will prob not catch every single one. So word to the wise: just sound them out!

Today is my first day of school. (YIKES) I know that some of you are thinking, it is nearly 5PM in Argentina, I must of had school already. Not true. Since I just officially registered for my classes this morning, I was left with the bottom of the barrel classes. The time options were either 8-11 AM or 7-10 and sometimes 11 (my marketing class). Knowing that I am not the morning type, I opted for the latter.

Just a small note: I feel that I must write words like yikes and use the parenthesis all the time while I blog. I'm not sure why...

Here in Argentina, we only have class once a week... for three hours at a time. I know that by the end of those three hours my brain will be something along the lines mush. I'm looking forward to that I must say.

Finally reaching this point of being able to go to school is, in and of itself, mind blowing. When I went to orientation on Friday, I honestly thought that I would never be able to get here. Let me tell you what happened...

So sometime in early June, I received a "welcome packet" via the Internet about what I should expect from Palermo (my universidad) and how to get a visa etc. When I walked into Mario Bravo 1259 (the building) I was one of 20 foreign exchange students all looking like we were about to throw-up. Our intercambio adviser, Natalia, walked in and began the orientation. The orientation consisted of Natalia standing up there and rereading what she already sent us in the mail! Thanks for the help, Natalia.

So finally I found my way to the facultad de economias (college of economics and business) with some other people on my program, if you can call it a program. There in the hallway was a list of about 100 classes (size 10 font). We all had to huddle together and try to pick out the classes we needed. I knew I should have packed a magnifying glass!

Well anyway, I found three of the classes (Marketing, production and services, and human reassure management) but I still needed to find Literature in Latin America and foreign policy of Argentina. I had to wait in a long line to talk to this woman, who informed me that I could not sign up for those classes here and I had to walk back to the building I had orientation in! Pain in my ass to say the least because Mario Bravo 1259 is a good twenty min. away walking.

With it all said and done, I'm glad to be actually going to class! I just hope the professor doesn't ask me any questions, because I will make a FOOL of myself.