Gabe's blog

Bus152g I really enjoyed the Art of Travel course. It was nice to write about things that were happening to me throughout the semester. If not for this course, I would not have been able to articulate thoughts that were stewing in my brain. Study abroad was the best experience of my life. I had very little work both school and otherwise. I had zero responsibilities and no extra curricular activities. I saved enough money so that I could enjoy myself, and that is exactly what I ended up doing.

During my last week in Buenos Aires, I have decided to have steak every single day. I have become an expert on local grill restaurants, known as Parillas, and all the different types of meat that they offer. My favorite is entrana, also known as skirt steak I love Bunos Aires.

The biggest problem I faced during my experience in Buenos Aires was the fact that my host family didn't allow me to shower after they went to sleep. They went to sleep quite early, making my showering a bit of a hassle. I started showering in the middle of the day, or right after dinner which I was not very pleased with. Usually, I like taking a shower right before I sleep because it calms me down, I, however, have not been able to do that. Que lastima!

I will do a couple of things differently when I get home. First of all, I will eat more meat, because I will know a lot more about it. Second, I will go back to my regular shower cycle. Third, I will probably watch more soccer, because I really began to like watching soccer while being here in Argentina. Fourth, I will definitely speak more Spanish when I get back to the states, because I feel way more comfortable with it now.

My biggest accomplishment is my new found ability to speak Spanish. Before I came down to Buenos Aires, I spoke very little. Now, I feel very comfortable with the language and I enjoy the language very much. The hardest part about dealing with a new language is taking what you learned in a classroom setting and learning how to apply it to the real world. For example, when you learn a new word that is one thing. However, understanding that that word is being used being masked by the noise and the accent is a whole different thing. I wish everyone has a chance to experience what I have experienced. Learn Spanish and come to Argentina.

Parilla    I heard that there will be one hundred kids here in NYU Buenos Aires next semester which is more than double the current size. Therefore, my first piece of advice would be to get to know the administrators. When the administrators know you, they will be able to help you when you need it. When you need something from them and they do not know you, they will less likely work hard for your cause. I would live in a home-stay, because it forces you to practice your Spanish. Living with a family also forces you to learn about Argentinian culture. There are some cons to living in a home-stay as well. Some people were unlucky and got families who were not nice or gave them very small rooms. Despite these cons, I would still recommend the home-stay. Bring your home-stay money in cash and pay the whole thing in the beginning so that you do not have to deal with it throughout the semester. Buy a Guia-T as soon as you get here and familiarize yourself with how to use it. Bring as much American cash as possible so you do not have to pay ATM fees. Bring a portable DVD player if you have one, because the long bus rides you take in this country make it worth it. Bring a digital camera so you can record your trip. I would also bring a notebook, so you can keep a journal about your trip. I would bring a guide book if you have one, because they are useful when trying to get around the first couple of days. Don't get your yellow fever shot in New York because you can get it here for free. Bring a hiking backpack, because it will be useful when you carry. I heard bad things about Tango, and Art class so try and avoid those. Creative writing is a great Gallatin class if you have the chance to take it, then take it. There is no peanut butter and hot sauce in this country so if you like them bring them. You definitely need a coin purse or a wallet that has an extra zipper pocket because of the coin crisis in this country. Buses only take change and therefore it is very hard to get your hands on some. Last but not least, make sure to find a local parilla because it is the closest thing to fast food in this country.    

Turkey

  My Thanksgiving story is simple but fulfilling. The holiday of Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because of the food. I love turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and everything else that is essential to a Thanksgiving feast. I started the day by having class. I am in Argentina and they have no idea what Thanksgiving is or that it even exists. I started the day by wishing my classmates lots of “Happy Thanksgivings,” but no one seemed to be in the mood. I don't blame them. It is hard to be in the mood for Thanksgiving when you have class all day. I myself had class from eleven to five. A really long day for a supposed holiday. In the middle of my day, I went up to the third floor of the school to ask the administrators if I could use the phone to call my parents. They told me no because they said that if, “They let me they have to let anyone.” I tried to tell them that I would keep it a secret but they would not let me. I then noticed that a classmate of mine, who I remembered being on Skype in the past, if I could use their computer to Skype my parents. I have a Skype account that I could use on her computer. However, when I asked her if I could borrow her computer, she mentioned that she had a Skype account with unlimited calling and that I could feel free to use it if I wished. I then proceeded to call my parents from the school lobby from Skype.
Later on in the day there was a Thanksgiving feast at school. At eight thirty everyone came out of the wood work for a feast. Even the administrators and there families came out to celebrate. The school had paid for caterers to carve turkeys, bake stuffing, and bring apple pie. The food was plentiful and so was the drink. The best part might have been the waitresses who came around and refilled your soda or water on demand. Therefore, one did not have to stand up to go get themselves more drink. The stuffing was great, because we didn't think Argentine's knew what stuffing was in the first place. The dessert was especially good containing apple pie, blueberry pie, coffee, and lemon pie. After dinner, I was so stuffed I went straight to sleep. God I love Thanksgiving.

Closet: not actually my closet

I like the idea of “room travel.” I think that “room travel” is first of all indicative of the fact that travel does not need to be long distances or even new. One can travel around one's room or one's country while receiving the “travelers experience.” By travelers experience, I simply mean whatever is gained from traveling. Room travel is especially interesting because it is in a place where you spend so much time that to find new things in your room are even more interesting than finding a new place on a walk, or trip, or whatever other way one travels.
I tend to travel around my room a lot. It is not my room per se, but it is the room I have been sleeping in for three months. In the dressers in my room are not my clothes, but rather stacks of hand written notes of my host moms about all her clients. My mom is a social worker that works from home. In my closet there are many jackets that are owned by my host family and not even not enough room for my clothes. There is a desk in my room with no chair and a computer that is busted. Every once in a while I will travel my room by reading the things in the dressers or going through the family's albums that are stored underneath the computer.
In some senses, when I travel my room, I invade the privacy of my family who keep things in my room with a tacit agreement that I won't touch them. On the other hand, I am so curious as to what is lying in my room that is so much a part of me. It is where I sleep, wake up, eat, watch television, and talk to my parents. In such an intimate place, there is so much unfamiliar. In that respect my room is slightly mentally uncomfortable.
My room is also physically uncomfortable. It is too hot with not much ventilation. There is a door to the balcony that when open cools the room, but also literally opens the door to the noise in the street. Therefore at night when I try to go to sleep, I either die by noise or heat. Usually, I choose to die by noise.
When I travel around my room, it is important to understand the physical and metal comfortableness of my room which adds another aspect to traveling around my room. Not only is traveling around my room investigatory, it is also a search for something that just might make my room just a little bit more comfortable.  

housekeeper My housekeeper Marie is idiosyncratic, funny, and kinda primitive. She comes for a small town in Paraguay called Rio Verde which literally means green river. She moved to Argentina when she was fourteen to get a job. She never finished High School and has no interest of going back to school. Her job is simple, she cleans the house, helps cooks the meals, washes the family's clothes, sometimes goes grocery shopping, and does other odds and ends as necessary. She sleeps in a very small room in the corner of the apartment. It does have its own bathroom, but she has very little personal space. Her day is simple. She wakes up, and makes breakfast for herself and everyone else. Then she does the dishes, and begins to clean the house. She starts with the kids rooms, makes her way to the master bedroom, then the bathrooms, and finally to the common rooms. Once the cleaning is done, and really while it is still going on, she watches telenovellas. She watches them during all of her free time. Sometimes I come home and she is watching them in my room. It is kinda odd, but mostly I just find it funny. I feel bad for her sometimes, because she is not allowed to eat meals with us. She always eats by herself, in the kitchen while everyone else eats in the dining room. I once asked her why she ate by herself and she said because my host mom won't let her eat at the table with us.
Maria loves cracking jokes when we spend time together. She also is not used to technology. She loves playing with my MP3 player and my computer. I showed her Skype the other day and she was really impressed. She thought my friend on the other end was super cute and asked if he was ever going to come to Argentina. He said you never know and that she should wait for him. I also showed her YOUTUBE so she could see all her favorite musical artists. We both like Calle 13 so we listen to him together on my computer while she watches telenovellas in my room. I asked her if she liked any artists from Paraguay and she said not really and that music from the United States was much better. Sometimes she sings when she is walking around the house. This is when I like her the best. I love my housekeeper.  

Living Room: Not actually my living room

My living room is so very cozy. As you walk into my house, you kiss the Mezuzah on the door. Then you pass the picture of the Chabad rabbi on the door. The rabbi is holding a Jewish prayer book in his hand and has a long white beard. Basically, the rabbi looks like a very stereotypical Jewish Rabbi. Then you enter the couch area. There are three couches in a “u” shape, leaving the side closest to the door open. The chouchs are very comfy and are the type where each seat on the couch has its own pillow both for one's back and as the seat. Unlike the United States, couches here are pillow based instead of the couch being one long individual piece. The couch against the left wall is white with black lining. The middle couch is brown with black lining, and the last couch is also white with black lining. Inbetween the right and middle couch is a night stand with a black lamp on top of it. The night stand also has three family pictures on it. One of the photos is of my two host parents and their two daughters. The second is of the oldest daughter, Maria, and her now husband Marcello. The third picture is of the youngest daughter with her now husband Joshua. The two daughters come over for lunch a lot so I know them very well. Therefore, having their photos around is reassuring. In front of the couches are some cabinets. On the first cabinet is a stainless steal bowl which is some kind of family heirloom. On the other cabinet is two golden candle stick holders that the family uses to bring in the Jewish sabbath. Inside the cabinets is where my host family keeps their nice china. The silverware set is gold with silver trim. It is extremely expensive so there are actually locks on the cabinet doors. Behind the couches is the giant table, where my family and I have dinner every night. Sitting in the middle of the table is always the two salt shakers because one is certainly not enough. On the table always is a beautiful white table cloth with a snow flake design. It is a glass table, and therefore, you must be very careful about how much weight you put on the table because it might crack. The round table sits ten seats easily around it. On the wall next to the table is a giant mirror. There are not that many mirrors in the house so it is common to use that mirror for dressing purposes. Behind the table is the door to the balcony. The door is glass and a beautiful white curtain blocks the view of outside almost at all times. Now that Buenos Aires is starting to warm up, The curtain has been more and more open in order to allow the door to be open to cool down the room. I love my living room.

Manu Ginobli

Yesterday, NYU in Buenos Aires got a unique chance to play against a club basketball team in the barrio Quilmes (Shares a name with Argentina's most famous beer). Quilmes is a suburban neighborhood outside of Buenos Aires that is known for its hospitality and middle to upper class homes. In Quilmes, there is a recreations center called Club Bertelli Athletico where we were invited to play their team in basketball. We arrived and there was almost no one there. We began to shoot around and eventually, more people started pilling in. The NYU team consisted of six guys and six girls. The team as a whole was not very good. Three of the six guys did not really play basketball. The other three including me played on a regular basis but that was not enough. The first quarter started out actually pretty close. We started out with a two-three zone, and they started with man to man defense. Their man to man defense was tough, but they were awfully confused by our two-three zone. We got a few quick points by dumping the ball into our big men, while they stayed in the game by going three for four from the three point line. The first quarter ended with NYU down one. The score was fifteen to sixteen. The second quarter was when things started going down hill. The first four minutes were fine. Then my team started loosing its wind. It happened slowly like a snowball. The other team started getting fast break points left and right. Even when we managed to score, they were getting fast break points off of that which is basically unheard of in basketball. By the end of the second quarter, we were down big. In the third quarter, we allowed the girls to play. This of course did not improve the level of play, but rather decreased it. The other team played their less good players, but that did not matter much. The gap between scores started to grow out of control. I think the other team was up twenty points after the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, my team started to get their wind back and both teams had the same amount of points in the fourth quarter. After the game, both teams came together for pizza and soda. It was super good. We had corn pizza, tomato pizza, and onion and cheese pizza. My favorite was the corn pizza. We discussed different styles of basketball over the food, and was all in all a good time.

Sistein Chapel

Well I don't wish to explain or dare say I understood Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar, but one quote did stick out in my mind. “Why have we had to invent Eden, to live submerged in the nostalgia of a lost paradise, to make up utopias, propose a future for ourselves?" (162) I think the answer to the rhetorical question is that we need purpose and we want to believe. What I mean exactly is this:

Religion is prevalent in the world not, because of the need for people to be close to God but rather because of need to have something to strive for. Thats at least, my take on the matter. People set goals and lists just to cross them off. Have you ever wondered why news years resolutions are so popular? It is simply because people love to set goals. I am not saying that goals are bad, but rather it is just human nature to perceive life as setting goals and reaching them. My take on eden is that people were not satisfied with death as the ending to our goals so a new end goal was invented. We needed a goal passed death to insure that we kept continuing to set goals as if death was not an obstacle. If death was the end goal, then people would have a real hard time doing all the intermediate steps to get there. With eden as the last step, it is very easy to keep pushing, because who wouldn't want to live in a utopia.

Now understanding that Eden would be a goal is I think easy to comprehend. I think the hard part lies in having faith that it exists. Faith is a little bit more tricky to talk about. What I wish to say about it is simply that when what we need to have faith in is positive it is easier to let ourselves have faith then when the faith has to do with a negative topic. Eden connects with this point by being the ultimate end of religion. In religion there are both positive and negative things to believe in, like God rescuing people from the flood and bad like thinking God gave your dad a heart attack. However, in Christianity, and other religions, it is not an accident that eden is set as the pinnacle of the believe, arguably equal to Jesus (This point is debatable but I'll save it for a different post). Eden is the pinnacle because it allows a follower to disregard all the bad faith and focus on the one good faith at the top.

skydiving

At the end of my spring break, I spent two days in San Juan Argentina. It is a small town two hours north of Mendoza. We found on the Internet that a flight school there offered tandem skydiving for $165 U.S dollars. An incredible price for skydiving. Therefore, my two friends and I decided to pounce on the opportunity. We arrived at the bus station at ten in the morning. We called the people taking us skydiving, and they said they would pick us up in fifteen minutes. After fifteen minutes, we noticed two people walking towards us, one girl one guy, and they just made a “b” line for us and kissed us on the cheek (A typical Argentinian greeting). We were just like um... are you the skydiving people. It of course turned out they were. They then proceeded to take us to their club. I was the first to go. They spent ten minutes explaining to us what to do when we get in the plane. It sounds like not a lot of time, but there is not a lot of explaining to be done. As I was in the plane getting ready to take off, the instructor who I was going to jump with noticed a problem with the plane. The plane had to be repaired and it took about three hours to do so. Then came my turn to actually jump. We climbed to 10,000 feet and I had a great view of the whole city and even the Andes Mountains. Then you get strapped into the instructor. Sit on the edge. Afuera, Aldentro, Afuero the count goes. You sail out of the plane like a ride in Disney World you forget where you are and just feel the wind hit your face. You flip and spin and close your eyes and pray. Then, all of a sudden you feel a pull and you notice that your parachute is up and the hard part is over. You then have five minutes to sail tranquilly down to the ground. I had kind of a tough landing. When I hit the ground, I couldn't stick the landing, and I fell backwards onto the instructor. I thought I might have hurt him, but it turned out to be fine. The people on the ground rushed to our rescue, picked us up and detached the parachute. It was the craziest thing I have ever done.

Empanada

Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings does a good job of demonstrating that society itself creates in essence a semi-fake stage and tries to hide the back stage. However, I take offense to the quotation, “The term 'tourist' is increasingly used as a derisive label for someone who seems content with his obviously inauthentic experiences.” I do not plan to contradict the claim that the label “tourist” is used as Dean MacCannell describes, but rather give insight into why and how this label has come to arise and give examples on how I have or have not fallen into that trap. I consider myself a tourist, and therefore, I feel free to use myself as an example of what a tourist does and does not do.

First of all, the term has become so negative because it seems, as MacCannell describes, tourists seem content with the false experiences they, being tourists, receive. I do not agree that tourists are content with false experiences, but rather that they do not know they are receiving one. I know that when I feel I received a “touristy” experience, I feel swindled. I also know that I try and eat at non-touristy places because its cheaper and a more authentic experience. The problem is inevitably that the tourist never knows what is real and what is fake, but can only try and figure it out. Of, course sometimes the tourist will be successful in this respect and sometimes not.

Now to do something authentic is in some respects a catch-22 because if the tourist is doing it, then by definition it is not authentic. This catch-22 I feel is one of the reasons the perception of tourists liking inauthentic experiences is generated. This is because while the tourist is doing an activity, he thinks he is doing something authentic. At the same time, someone observing the tourist knows that it is not authentic and also thinks that the tourist knows that because of the inevitable truth that the tourist can only do something touristy. Therefore, I think it is not that tourists are happy to do inauthentic things, but rather simply have a different vantage point then the local as to what is authentic. An easy way to avoid this catch-22 is to only observe authentic behavior, however this would be contradictory to the point of traveling in the first place and therefore, I cannot offer this course of action to resolve the tourist's catch-22.