Tanghetto

The Essentials: Leftover Empananda, ashtray, Passport, Ciggarettes, and PesosMy life in Argentina would be absolutely perfect if it weren't for the fact that I had to go to school. Yes I know I'm in college, and yes I am here for a semester abroad but I can't stand the NYU program in Buenos Aires. First off I got stuck in an intensive spanish program that starts at 9AM every single bloody day. Waking up after a night of pounding steak dinners and drinking jugs of Malbec is nearly impossible but each time you miss class 3% gets knocked off your grade. See the NYU program might be in BA but it has no correlation with Argentine culture. No one goes to class at 9 in the morning in Buenos Aires in fact barely anybody is even up. Those who are awake are about as dreary and depressed as I am when I walk the 20 plus blocks to school. The only way for me to even try and speak spanish at 9AM for 4 hours straight is to pound three cops of coffee and let my caffeine induced brain do the rest. Besides the spanish course which is the bane of my existence I have a couple other courses that just really don't do it for me. Though the professors are intelligent and mean well they just don't really have there shit together. I dread going to most classes and sometimes I sit in class rooms for hours on end pondering why the hell I signed up for this program. When I Skype with my friends at other NYU study abroad sites most of them seem to love their courses. Good for those bastards, sucks for me. I wondered what people from past "Art of Travel" courses thought about this program as well, so I did some research and found out I'm not alone in my opinions. I think the program has a lot of potential, but its so knew that it hasn't quite figured out had to run itself, which is a shame because the staff is fantastic.
But nobody really wants to hear me complain about my lack of enjoyment in class, its all about what happens outside of school that truly defines the study abroad experience. Life in BA is cheap and delicious. Ive found numerous restaurants and bars that appeal to my interests and find myself in them almost every night. I have already bantered in previous posts about how amazing the steak and wine are, but there are other delicacies as well that I have discovered wandering the streets at 4am. My new favorite pastime if such a thing can exist is late night choripan next to the Recoleta cemetery. Choripan is a sausage sandwich that is best served doused in onions, tomatoes, peppers and chimichurry sauce. When one stumbles out of a bar and encounters a choripan stand its about as close to heaven on earth as possible.
Before I ever reach the bars, clubs, boliches and venues that dominate my late night routine there are plenty of places to enjoy the beautiful weather and atmosphere of Buenos Aires. A park very close to my apartment is always filled with scores of dogs, being walked by dog walkers, which seems to be a very popular job in BA. During the day I grab my computer, a cheap liter of wine and peer out at the dogs as they interact. Sometimes dogs can be way better to hang out with than humans. They don't talk back, they just listen. They always want your affection and if you feed them you have a new best friend who doesn't need to borrow money to bet on his favorite racing horse prospect. If I'm not at the park I usually make my way to a charming cafe in which I am known as "JudioFro" or Jew fro in english. Though the workers and I can't communicate entirely that well, we understand each other on a level that surpasses language. I love being able to feel like a local in the most foreign of realms.
Besides hating school, pondering what the hell to do with my life come next may and struggling to my colloquium rationale life is essentially perfect in Buenos Aires. This weekend I'm off to Cordoba in order to celebrate the Octoberfest they host there and the weekend after that the program heads to Iguazu falls, so at the end of the day life could be worse.