Wellll

Although I'm very behind with my entries, I'm going to start by posting this one on time, and make up the old ones as soon as I can. Right now, the balls of my feet are a little sweaty because I'm wearing little sneakers without socks--finally did my laundry today. Doing your laundry here, for most people, means having it done for you for very cheap. Do-it-yourself laundromats are rare, so all of us international students enjoy the luxury of picking up fresh-smelling, clean, folded laundry for the equivalent of about $7 US. In terms of money here, things are without a doubt cheaper, but not absurdly different, as I would imagine they'd be in sites such as Shanghai or the one in Ghana (is it in Accra?) The nominal exchange rate is a few decimal points above 3 Argentine pesos to the US dollar, and I'd say the actual exchange rate, in terms of the things I spend money on, usually ends up being about 2 or 2.5 pesos to the dollar. I imagine this is different for every North American here, because we all buy different things. This is my personal average, excluding, hmmm, things like public transit, events and wine or other alcohol. Wine is especially cheap, but that has to do with the fact that most of the wine here is actually from this country, not from far away. The whole wine-drinking thing here is of course also different for each person, but in terms of going out, I'd say people do it much more in Argentina than in the States, and do it more on the cheap. The go-out/nightlife schedule here is pretty ridiculous...I'm not sure if Chrissy or Courtney (the other people blogging who are here with me) wrote about this, but an average go-out night, according to the Argentines I've spoken to, includes dinner at about 10 or 11 PM which lasts about 3 hours, "pre-boliche" or pre-gaming with friends, sometimes at a house, and then going to a "boliche" or club at about 5 in the morning. To me, this is really crazy since I am neither a clubber nor do I go out too much. I don't mean to sound like a sour-puss, I think it's great and funny, but it's also sort of intense. The second weekend I was here, I got to go to two Argentine house parties (one Friday, one Saturday), and when I left each of them at about 5 in the morning, they were at their high-point. The first party was thrown by a friend of my host-mother's granddaughter, so I'll use this as a chance to segue into what my homestay is like. I live with a recently widowed single woman named Emma, who is really great and also getting slightly old. She's still very peppy and I always enjoy talking to her during dinner, and speaking Spanish. Ideally, I would hang out with her grandkids all the time, but she doesn't see them too much, so that party I went to was a rare and exciting occasion for me. The reason I want to spend time with them more is because--as I imagine everyone at an NYU site is experiencing to some extent--I am really here to learn the language, and it can be difficult when the majority of my time is spent with NYU people. Also, I really like a lot of people here, so it becomes difficult to balance developing new relationships in English and speaking and making friends in Spanish. I just paused my writing for a minute and re-read the prompt for this entry...think I swayed sort of far away from what I was supposed to write about. Ok--the walk to school from my apartment/homestay is about 13 minutes. The NYU building is sweet and weird...it used to be the Angolan embassy, and it's hard to describe the architecture. When you walk in (or rather when one of our doorman-guard-friends lets us in) almost immediately is our lounge, which is big, with high ceilings and nice black sofas, a fireplace with no chimney, some more small gargoyle-like decorations/reliefs on the walls, and everything sort of brown with un-natural lighting. This is because the only windows are like milky church windows, higher up, some with odd-quality stained glass, that don't let a lot of light in. This big lounge has a staircase with a red carpet (I think it's funny) that leads up first to our computer lab area, which is a sort of mezzanine balcony that overlooks the lounge. From there you can continue up the stairs to the first normal floor, where our main 4 classrooms are. Also, back down to the lounge, it also opens up into a sort of kitchen sitting area, which has lower ceilings. I guess you'd call the architecture and overall-look of this lounge area "gothic," but it's sort of gothic in a very tacky, contrived, cheap way. I don't mean it's cheap (it definitely isn't), but something about the red carpet, with a little NYU-purple here and there, mixed with a clearly replicated gothic look seems funny and a bit tacky. Also, the way that the rest of the building is adds to this: other than the lounge, kitchen and computer mezzanine, the rest of the building is more or less completely normal, modern, off-white institutional. This includes the first floor with classrooms (which is technically the second floor) and the third floor with professors' offices and a very small book collection/library. It's hard to describe this building, because when I think about it, it really is kind of strange. Either way, it's also really nice. We are only 63 people here, and this building was clearly bought by NYU to eventually fit a much larger group. It's funny to imagine the group from last semester, the first to attend--they were just about 30 people in this huge building!Ok I have written a lot and I think it's time to stop. I know I should probably have included a picture of the NYU center, but that would defeat the whole purpose of all my efforts at describing it...sorry :) Maybe later I will show you one and you can tell me if it did it justice. Bye!P.S. This photo really has nothing to do with what I wrote about, it is just an example of hanging out. I am the one eating and making a funny face. Other "nitty-gritty" fact, I guess, is that the weather here is the opposite of New York, so right now we are experiencing a gorgeous shift into springtime...but it was a bit cold for the first few weeks, especially when this photo was taken.

chilly