Holy week in Uruguay! 2ª Parte.....

The night after having lunch at the Parrilla, we had to take a rest at the hostel to recover from all the meat. Then we decided to head to the Rodeo..... what's that? Yes I said Rodeo, a Guacho rodeo in fact, in a nieghborhood of Montevideo called El Prado at what would be like "fair grounds" in the states, called La Rural. Apparently this is where Montevideo's population had been hiding. It was FULL of people, compared to the rest of the city which seemed to be a ghost town. Everyone came out, Mate in hand to watch the Rodeo games. it reminded me somewhat of the States, yet the cowboys here dress a little different. I really loved Uruguay's rural non-metropolitan feel.

Real life gauchos... I don't think American cowboys would wear French bérets though, do you?

They also had a great Artesan fair at the Rodeo as well, where I was able to pick up some cool souvenirs.

On day 3, we spent most of our day at the Beach. It was great because the sun had finally came out over Montevideo, and the temperature got up to 75º F. It is almost winter down here, so that was great, we did the Uruguayan thing and brought our thermo and mate and hung out on the beach.

After catching some sun, we began to walk along the beach (called Playa Pocitos by the way) we headed to the near by mall, a huge mall with most of the stores you could expect to find at a mall and then some. The mall is called Punta Carretas which, interestingly, was a prison and a torture center during the dictatorship of the 70's and early 80's. Well obviously its been remodeled, and its one of the most important shopping centers in the country.

Our last day, day 4, we spent mostly at the beach, and just hanging out in the city getting ready to leave that night. Uruguay was really fun, Montevideo was dead, but I loved it, I'd like to go back one day. It was a needed trip to get away from Buenos Aires' craziness and to relax before midterms, which start next Monday!

Holy week in Uruguay! 1ª Parte.....

Holy week, weekend, I took off from Buenos Aires, and headed off to Argentina's neighbor just across the river, Uruguay with Jessi. Uruguay is an extremely tiny country, in fact the smallest in all of South America with only a population of 3.5 million, about that of the city of Seattle.

It took us six hours to get to Montevideo, the capital city and home to 1/3 of Uruguay's total population, still making it a pretty small city.

Plaza de Independencia (Independence Square)

We were staying in the Old City, or Ciudad Vieja which had a cool Colonial look, and located very close to the port of the city, you could actually see the water from 3 sides of a street block in most parts of Ciudad Vieja.

The city was pretty empty while we were there, most inhabitants take advantage of the Holidays to leave the city and go to their vacation homes outside the city or to travel, making it much more tranquil and relaxing than the Hustle and Bustle of Buenos Aires.

Although it's a different country, Uruguayan culture is very closely related to Argentine culture, the white European ancestry with heavy Italian influence, the Gaucho and Mate (pronounced Mah-tay) cultures, and of course the Parrillas and leather industry, even the two countries' flags are similar.

Also the Spanish is quite similar as well. Uruguay has been a part of Argentina in fact in the past, as well as it has been a part of Brazil, now its broken away and finds soverignty squeezed inbetween the these two South American power houses.

The second day in Montevideo we took advantage and went out to look at a couple of the many Artesan fairs in the city, to try and find some cool unique souvenirs.

Mate gourds at Artesan fair with Uruguayan Flag. 

Later that same day, we headed out to Mercado del Puerto (Market of the port) where we had a Parrillada (barbeque, Uruguay/Argentine style). For only about $46 dollars, we got a BBQ for 3 and 3 drinks, so roughly $15 dollars a piece (it was Me, Jessi, and another American travelling that we met at the Hostel who hung out with us for the day). But this wasn't any ordinary Barbeque, it was incredible, with every cut of meat you can imagine, with two different sausages, pork, and chicken! It was so much we couldn't even finish it all.

The restaurant we ate at. Estancia del Puerto

La Parrilla

What we started with

What we had left at the end...

Fiesta Internacional, Universidad de Belgrano.

So, Friday night was the International night at the Universidad de Belgrano. This was for anyone interested in representing their country, to build a stand with images, foods, and decoration that represents best their country.
The stands were very well set up and decorated, offering various cultural food and drink.

The French for example brought chocolate cake and other typical pastries as well as some French wine. Please note the "Moulin Rouge" themed decoration as well in the picture of the French stand below.

The Colombian stand offered Pan DeBono (a typical colombian type buisuit), Coffee, and Aguardiente (Colombia's very strong national alcohol!) a long with a pretty patriotic decoration.

The Mexican table was decorated with your typical paper maché Red, White and Green decorations and offered up plenty of Chips and Bean dip as well as Tequila and Corona.

And the USA, well we brought typical American pancakes, Mac N' Cheese, and the game of Beer Pong, played with Budwiser.

As you might have notice, yes, Alcohol was present, and you might be asking yourself "wasn't this a University function?" The answer is yes. Welcome to Argentina. In fact the University said "this is the only time you'll be encouraged by the University to bring alcohol to campus."

The party began with everyone sticking to their country's stands, and not really interacting with anyone from a different nationality, until the alcohol started being brought out and the music began, and everyone became quick friends, everyon from Germans, Swedes, Mexicans, Colombians, Italians, Russians, Spaniards, Americans, Italians, Venezuelans, Koreans, Japanese, French, etc... began to dance and interact despite some language barriers! And if it were a competition, the Swedish has the biggest hand in bringing everyone together. As everyone ran out of their alcohol after an hour or so, the Swedes kept providing their Swedish Vodka until the night ended!

The USA and Venezuela putting aside differences! haha

Overall it was a fun night, meeting new friends and learning about other cultures! Wish we could have another one before I left.

Buenos Aires, the "Paris of the South," Porteños, the "Parisians of the South"???

So what is the Argentine identity? Well according to my history teacher, one's identity as an Argentine is composed of 4 components, "your name, your mother, your football (soccer) team, and your political views."

The Argentines are a very unique people, and porteños even more so. The Argentine race is 90-some percent of European decent, in other words they're a lot of white people. And since they're such a race built upon much recent (in other words at the beginning of the 20th century) immigration, they have a very strong sense of European culture, which makes them very unique in comparison to most of the rest of Latin America.

Most Argentines feel a connection to Europe in one way or another. Many in fact, almost 50% of the population has obtained or applied for double citizenship in a European country (mostly Italy and Spain, these being the two biggest migratory groups) because they were able to prove that a grandparent or a great-grandparent had come from one of these countries. This is beneficiary to many because they're able to travel more easily with a European passport to many parts of the world without a visa (such as the United States).

Porteños seem to have a special pride in showing off their "Europeaness." They're very fashionable, they live in a city that tried everything it could to copy Paris architecture, they have poodles and dog walkers (like one things of a French park with dogs and dog walkers). The Spanish (even though Spanish is a European language already) spoken here, especially in Buenos Aires, is very unique, it has an unmistakable Italian tone to it, with many Italian words working their way into the every day Spanish vocabulary of the Argentines, one example being saying the Italian word for beer many times instead of the Spanish word cerveza here they prefer to say birra which you see on many signs of businesses even.

Argentines in general tend to have (from what I've witnessed, not all, but many in my opinion) a resentment of being considered Latin Americans, because they really don't share in common many characteristics with other Latin American countries, such as Indigenous blood or cultures (Except in the north of Argentina, like Salta and Jujuy... I'll be there in a month by the way). The Porteño attitude is very much the stereotype one has of Parisians, in that they are very fashion-forward, very proud of themselves and their city, and have an over all "snob" attitude towards people. Another Parisian characteristic is the "Cafe culture." This applies to me right now in fact, I'm sitting in a Cafe, drinking a Café con leche (Café au lait) eating some facturas (Argentine version of what we would see as a French Pastry)

Another thing that I have talked to others here about, is that they seem to have this "snob" attitude because of the fact that it is a huge city, and its hard to trust people that aren't you're extremely close friends or family members (being that Argentines, like most Latino, Spanish and Italians, are very family oriented people), so they seem to have a shield up when it comes to strangers.

That being said, I've witnessed them to be very kind people as well, for example on the buses and the metro trains, when ever a pregnant woman or and elderly person gets on, not only one, but many people will gladly give up their seats and offer it to them. And just the other day waiting in line to buy a ticket for the Subte, a man in front of me, 3rd in line, saw a pregnant woman just get into the station and stand at the back of the line, and called her up to the front to go a head of him to get her ticket so she didn't have to stand all that time in line.

The Argentine political scene is very potent and divided. It seems to be rich vs. middle/working class in terms of political views, especially towards Peronismo a political movement born in the 40's with Juan Domingo Peron, and his very famous wife "Evita" (who Madonna played in the movie of the same title). I can't really give my opinion on this political system, because I don't know all of the facts, you have to take everything an Argentine tells you about politics with a grain of salt, because you don't know what facts they're giving you and what they're not to make the opposition look worse. Think; a republican teaching you the ideals of the democrats or Vice-Versa... Further more, most all Argentines, especially Porteños are very politically active and beginning at a very young age.

A block away from my apartment is a High School, and when I walked past it two days ago, it had a big home-made sign that read in Spanish "School taken, until we get gas, we're freezing to death." This basically means they don't have gas-heat in the school, and the students have taken the school over, by sit-ins and not letting anyone into the school, hoping this will get the city's attention and they'll install the proper heating in the classrooms. And this is just one of many examples. Public schools and Universities (such as the University of Buenos Aires or UBA) constantly are protesting for the government to correct something either in the buildings or with the class system because they're discontent. This is because Public Universities are Free in Argentina, and so tuition isn't paid to go to education, rather people's tax-pesos go towards public education to anyone who would like to further their education, this means more and more people are concerned about how their tax-money gets spent.

There is a protest every single day in this city, usually in the "Centro" or the congress square. Especially now because presidential elections are going to take place in October. It is fascinating how politically charged this country is, in comparison to the states, where NOBODY ever protests, they just let the government get away with whatever they want really. Although the form of protesting can be a little annoying here, such as blocking main, important avenues off, or shutting down the bus system or the subte system, which makes it hard for people to travel to different parts of this giant city.

Argentineans are a unique group of people, they definitely stick-out among their Latin American neighbors in many ways. They're not quite Latin American, but not quite European either, they seem to be caught some-where in the middle.

Malditas monedas... and breaking change.

So it has been a while since I've posted, and this is due to the lack of a TON of events to comment on, but today I thought I'd write about something that seems to be one of the hardest things to get used to here in Argentina, not only for me, but for every exchange student that finds them self this way below the equator. What I'm going to talk about is the "Coin shortage" in Argentina and the need for one to always have coins on them.

 

the ash tray in my room that I use to save my coins

Monedas (Spanish for coins) are not really hard to come by even though there is supposedly a shortage of them, you get them for change all the time (I'll discuss change in a minute). The only problem is, that the easy form of public transport, the Colectivos (local word used for buses), only accept coins as a form of payment. And this payment varies depending on how far you are traveling, you pay either $1.10, $1.20, or $1.25 (pesos of course, think around $.30-$.40 cents US). If you don't have coins, you can't take the bus, you have to resort to the Subte (name in Buenos Aires for the Subway or Metro system), the Subte can make change for bills yet the lines tend to be long, personally I've missed the train and had to wait for the next because someone had to get change or bought a ton of tickets at once. Also the ride on the Subte is a lot less pleasurable, you're underground, its hot, its a less extensive network, there's a ton of people and you have to watch all of your pockets and bags and belongings. (Not that you don't have to watch your stuff on the Colectivos too, they just tend to be less crowded). 

Recently the public transport system has gotten better and on most (but not all) of the Colectivos and on the Subte you can use a new card called a Monedero (literally translates as coin-purse) which is a card you can load money onto and swipe it to get into the trains or the buses instead of worrying about having coins. The only problem with these is that they're hard to come by. Supposedly they can be purchased at the ticket stands inside the Subte, they're even advertised at these ticket stands. However, for the last month, every time I've asked to purchase one, they don't have any left. (At this point I just deal with the lines and search for coins, because I don't think I'll find a Monedero any time soon.)

Breaking Change is SUCH a hassle here in Buenos Aires and in all of Argentina in reality. For one thing, the ATMs only dispense bills in denominations of $100pesos (I've found one that gave me 50s but have yet to come across another one). $100 Argentine pesos is about the equivalent to $25 US dollars. However, if you attempt to purchase anything with a 100 bill, you will always, and I mean ALWAYS get the question "¿no tenés algo más chico?"  ("Don't you have anything smaller?") And many times, you may find yourself getting $75pesos back in change in all 5 peso bills, OR you just can't purchase whatever it is you want, plain and simple, because they can't make change. For example if you want to purchase something like 3 empanadas for lunch, which would be about $12 pesos ($3 dollars US), and only have a 100peso bill, you might as well pretend you have no cash in your pocket.

You might ask, "Why don't you just use your debit card?" That would be a good solution, the only thing is the charge for using your card at most, if not all, businesses is about 30% of the purchase. Which is kind of a deterrent for wanting to use your card... However this is one thing you have to get used to here in Argentina. It is for sure teaching me to be more patient about such things.