Vale la pena

The title of this week's post is the Spanish equivalent of "Worth it," but literally means "Worth the pain."  And thus, I think it is an apt way to sum up my experience here in Buenos Aires.  This may or may not be my last post, seeing that I've become incredibly inconsistent in finding time to write and that my last month here promises to be very busy.


First, let's talk about la pena.  I came to Buenos Aires four months ago, with no friends, no idea how to navigate the city, and no ability to communicate without sounding like a complete idiot.  At first it was fun and exciting, but it quickly grew old.  I thought about the United States a lot, and for the first time in my life I was homesick.  Other than the language barrier, there wasn't anything really obvious about what I missed; rather, an every growing list of "small things" -- a shortage of yogurt that could be eaten with a spoon instead of a straw, the inability to recycle all of the plastic bottles that I had to buy because Nalgenes don't exist here, and the lack of people that I could talk with and relate to.  A month passed, then two, yet things hadn't really gotten better.  I felt like I was wasting my time here.  I knew that I would leave Argentina with no friends, without having learned a single thing in my classes, and, worst of all, without the ability to speak Spanish.


But, thankfully, things got better.  Much better.  And now, as I write this, I'm feeling a bit melancholic about the fact that I'm leaving so soon.  I don't want to leave my friends from the program, who have become some of my best friends.  Although there aren't yet any Argentines that I would call friends, there are a few acquaintances with potential.  And unbelievably, I can actually speak Spanish.  Not always well, and always with a few grammatical or syntactical errors, but I can maintain legitimate conversations.  Taxi drivers, hostel workers, and people met in the airport have started saying that I speak Spanish very well -- last week, my taxi driver said I spoke perfectly.  Yes, perfectly.  Obviously I just hadn't been speaking to him very long, but still, it's a huge step.


There are so many things that I will miss when I leave.  I will miss mornings spent at my neighborhood café, drinking strong coffee and eating medialunas while reading about Argentine news in Página 12.  I will miss the afternoons spent on the beautiful terrace on the roof of my house, doing homework while enjoying the refreshing breeze.  I will miss conversations with taxi drivers, my excuse for not taking the bus, even when they are really racist and tell me that Bolivians are dirty yet hard-working, while Peruvians are dirty AND are drug-traffickers and thieves (in English this sounds much more horrible and less funny, but just trust me).  I will miss Marxist classmates explaining to be how literally every social ill can be traced back to the capitalist exploitation of workers.  I will miss my host siblings saying "te quiero" and asking for a hug.  I will miss cheap wine, delicious steak (always with a mountain of chimichurri), swearing in Spanish (infinitely more entertaining than in English), and inconspicuously drinking fernet and coke on the colectivo to Palermo while kids in the back pass around a box (yes, a box) of Fiesta Vodka.  Perhaps most of all I will miss mate and its lengthy list of customs, best of which is that you share with anyone, even complete strangers, and no one thinks twice.  I will miss the one-kiss-on-the-cheek rule, which everyone follows, even the sweaty bodybuilders at the gym, and which eliminates those awkward moments when you walk into a room and don't  directly acknowledge everyone present.  Also, the fact that there is no word for "awkward" here.  How different I would be if I had grown up here...


Anyways, I love Buenos Aires.  This experience has been one of the best of my life, and I'm so grateful for everything I've learned and experienced.  I have a feeling that once I get back to the U.S. there will be an unceasing tug coming from the Southern Hemisphere.


Let's get down to specific things I've done since the last post:

Football
I went to another fútbol game, this time to see my hometown team, San Lorenzo de Almagro.  Our tickets were entradas populares, which meant that we were surrounded by the most rabid fans in the stadium.  The experience is best explained through video evidence:

A calm moment before the match even started

And the colectivo ride after the match was fantastic, filled with intoxicated fans and lots of shouting and singing, despite the fact that the game ended in a 0-0 tie:

Speaking of fútbol, I had the chance to go to a World Cup Qualifier match between Argentina and Chile with a few friends.  The highlight was, of course, seeing Leo Messi, the greatest futbolista in the world, play in real life and even score one of Argentina's four goals.  The goal shown here was an absolutely beautiful score by Gonzalo Higuaín:

The only guys in Argentina that can make me feel short

Politics
The majority of my time in Buenos Aires was spent in the midst of election season, meaning that student activists spent a lot of time interrupting classes to plead their candidate's case and plastering the walls of la UBA with propagandas políticas.  The elections finally happened three weeks ago, and the incumbent, la presidenta Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, unsurprisingly won a landslide victory, 40% ahead of the nearest competition.  Being that the election provided una oportunidad imperdible, I of course went to Plaza de Mayo with some friends on election night, where Cristina's supporters gathered to celebrate.  There was much drinking, singing, and flag-waving in anticipation of her address to the crowd.  I got really into it, shouting some of the ridiculous campaign slogans whenever I felt it appropriate.  If you understand Spanish, watch the below example (and if not, it's a campaign ad featuring a woman dramatically telling the story of the government installing a satellite dish at her house.  Real quote: "Now, I have more channels than children!"):

Adventuring
Two weekends ago I went to Iguazú Falls, in the northwest region of the country, with my friends Will, Zach, and Imran.  The falls are located on the border of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, so there is a small airport in each country.  It so happens that when I bought my plane ticket online, I didn't think to double-check the country in which I would be landing, and I accidentally paid for a flight to the Paraguayan side.  Unfortunately, Americans need a visa to travel to Paraguay, and the company that I bought the ticket from wouldn't change my flight without a ridiculous charge.  So I instead paid the $100 USD for a Paraguayan visa.  Two days before I left, I decided to look at the Google Earth image of Iguazú, and realized that there is no bridge that crosses directly from Paraguay to Argentina without passing through Brazil, which also requires a visa.  Not believing my incredible lack of luck and foresight, I asked several people if there were any way to cross directly to Argentina, but no one seemed to know.  As it was too late to get a Brazilian visa, and I didn't much feel like paying the $150 either, I decided to not worry about how I was going to get back to Argentina and cross that bridge when I came to it (lolpunz).  At the airport, I found a taxi driver to take to me to the main city, and while we drove, I asked him what I could do.  He told me it was no problem, and he would drive to all the way to my hostel on the Argentina side.  As we approached the Brazilian border, he told me that people cross all the time without a visa, failing to mention until we had snuck past an unattended window that it was, in fact, definitely illegal.  As we came to the area to exit Brazil, we parked, and he told me to stay in the car, staying completely silent, while he went to talk to the attendant.  As I pondered the inanity of my situation, my taxi driver was explaining that he was crossing the border without passengers, so they let us pass through another unattended window.  He told me that even we had been caught, we could have just bribed the cops and they would have let me go.  I guess that's Latin America for ya, right?

The Three Borders.  To illustrate, I started in Paraguay (top left), crossed
 illegally through Brasil (right), and finally arrived back in Argentina

Our first full day we went to Parque Nacional de Iguazú to see the falls.  La Garganta del Diablo, shown in the video below, is without a doubt one of the most amazing places I have ever seen.  The sheer volume of water crashing violently over the cliffs, sending an enormous cloud of mist in our direction, was absolutely humbling.  You can sort of get a feel for it from the video:

One of the smaller falls.  Honestly

These kids are actually pretty cool

La Garganta del Diablo

Our second day, we awoke to the sound of light rain, so we spent the morning hanging around the hostel, chatting with the other guests and the hostel staff.  As we sat around the table talking, someone feverishly motioned for us to look outside.  If I hadn't known better, I might have said that it was 11pm instead of 11am.  Thirty seconds later, the power went out, and we realized that the light shower had gone; in its place was a hurricane-like thunderstorm, complete with sideways rain and a growing river running through the middle of the street.  Being us, we of course decided that this was a once-in-a-lifetime storm, and that we should surely strip off all of our clothes and run outside to fully experience it.  Within ten seconds we were completely soaked and freezing cold, so we came back inside and sent Imran to fetch towels from our room, a semi-basement, several steps lower than the rest of the building which opened directly up to the courtyard.  He came running back a few seconds later without our towels, saying that our room was flooding.  The stairs had become a mini-Iguazú.  We frantically threw our belongings on the top bunk, and as the water rapidly rose we became children, swimming around and laughing uncontrollably.  Realizing that the room would probably not be inhabitable, we decided that we should run to a hostel up the street to reserve a room there.  Of course we didn't put on any more clothes, and the sight of 4 lanky, mostly naked American boys running barefoot uphill in such a huge storm must have made the days of quite a few locals.

I will never forget this scene.  Or this trip in general

How much awkwardness do my boxers add to this photo?

Cover art for the debut album of our boy band Carne sin Nombre.  
Not pictured: backup dancer Zachary Solomon, aka El Gran Atún

Last weekend Creamfields came to town, the largest electronic music festival in Latin America.  It was one the most fun nights I've had in Buenos Aires, and I'm proud to say that I finally pulled off a truly porteño night: We arrived at 11pm, danced like fools for hours, and watched the sun rise before we headed home.  Passing porteños on their way to work as I walked through my neighborhood at 7am, covered in dirt and glowsticks, I felt truly accomplished.  The video below of David Guetta and Afrojack demonstrates well how insane of a party it was (note especially the robots):

Instead of blogging, I really should be starting on the mountain of readings I have to do about the Chinese revolution, the New Deal, and the Socialist betrayal of Trotskyist ideals in modern-day China and the Soviet Union, but this is more fun.  Luckily, once I finish this paper and another for my internship, I will be completely free and on my way to Patagonia with my parents and my friends.  But until then, ceaseless studying is in order, with a small break to celebrate Thanksgiving, complete with roasted chicken and pumpkin pie (though probably made with squash instead of real pumpkin).


The idea of leaving Argentina gives me anxiety.  There are many things and people that I miss in the United States, but I have grown to love a lot about this place, too.  If anything is bittersweet, the day I head to the airport will be.


But I will absolutely be coming back -- perhaps next summer?


Vamos a ver.