Semana 8

Martes el 6 de septiembre – día 51

Today I got up at 8:30, had some breakfast then took un colectivo a mi clase de castellano.  

Museum where I have castellano

 After class I walked home, had some lunch, and then did some of the grammar exercises we were assigned for homework.  At around 15:30 I took un colectivo a mi clase de psicolingüística en la UBA.  I got there early so I could buy my readings for class. 

And now it’s time for another rant about UBA.  It is now the 5^th week of class, and I just now got all of the readings I need for the first half of the semester.  Why?  Funny you should ask.  The first day of class our professor told us the assigned readings were in CEFyL (the photocopy place in UBA) and La Noblesa (a photocopy shop across from the street from UBA), but that our practica professor would give us more information about what readings we needed.  After my first teorica I went to buy all of the readings at La Noblesa because I was told CEFyL was always packed.  However, I discovered that some of the texts we had to read weren’t there.  The next week I went to CEFyL in an attempt to buy the texts I was missing, but I found they had NO readings available, only the programas (syllabi) for the classes.  The next week I went CEFyL after my class to find it closed an hour and a half early.  Meanwhile, I discovered that some of the texts I had bought at La Noblesa were not actually the texts I needed.  For instance, I bought the text by Chomsky they had, but it was the wrong text (you might assume the professor would make sure the right texts were in place, but that would be a VERY false assumption).  I also discovered that the practica professor only told us about the readings for our practicas, and that there were actually readings for our teoricas as well (why our teorica professor didn’t tell us that the first week I’ll never know).  Finally, this week I went to CEFyL and waited for 45 minutes to get photocopies.  So after 5 weeks, 2 photocopy places and 4 of the wrong texts, I now have all of my readings for the first half of the class, horray!  While I don’t relish the thought of paying $150 a pop for textbooks next semester I definitely won’t miss the disorganization of buying photocopies for my classes.

Anyway, when I got home Clarisa told me she was going out with a friend, but she left me a delicious spinach tarta for dinner.

See that white thing? That's a whole hard-boiled egg...

After dinner I picked out my pictures for my UCA class, showered, and went to bed.

Miercoles el 7 de septiembre

I woke up at 8:15 today so I could go to my trabajo voluntario for biochem.  I had breakfast, then took the subte to la facultad de medicina de la UBA.

Facultad de Medicina

View from the building

Hospital next door

When I got there the lab had a group meeting, and one of the students presented their current research, then I spent the rest of the day working with one of the students to prepare some things.

It was a lot more fun today, and I actually understood what we were doing, so I’m pretty sure I’m going to stick with the research.  After all, it’s a good experience and I’m not getting graded on it, so why not?

At 12:30 I took a colectivo to UCA for my photo class.  I ate my lunch while I read for my castellano class before class.  Here are the pictures I took for my class, the theme was more self-portraits:

I realize the pictures are a little weird, but it’s really strange to take pictures of yourself knowing you have to show them to a room full of 30 people.  It was also strange how many people took strange pictures.  In fact there were a few people who took naked pictures, granted you couldn’t see anything X-rated it was still strange to me.  During out break I got a dulce de leche filled chocolate muffin.  Divine!

Gooooey dulce de leche goodness :)

It was absolutely gorgeous when I got off the bus to walk home.

 I also have a slight obsession with my gate and the flowers ... I think it's really pretty, and the flowers smell great!

When I got home I did some reading then Clarisa and I had dinner (salad and ravioli).  For dessert Clarisa had bought more dulce de batata, this time without cherry, and it was really good!

After dinner I showered and went to bed.

Jueves el 8 de septiembre

I got up at 8:15 again today to go do research.  I had breakfast, made lunch, then took the subte. 

First I worked with one of the students to run some tests on a protein.  We were using a UV-VIS which I used pretty much every week in pchem, so it was cool that I knew what we were doing.  The second half of the time I was using the computer program again, which I find really boring and don’t like at all, but I understood a little better what I was doing this time so it wasn’t quite as bad.

I walked to my lit class at USAL and ate my lunch before class.

I still don't know what this building is but I like it

During our break Emily brought mate and a bunch of the girls from IFSA had some, it was good (my second time having it).  I want to go somewhere this weekend to buy my own mate.

Delicious pastry

<3 dulce de leche

After my USAL class I took the subte to UBA.  I arrived 20 minutes late (as usual) and had to roam the hallways to find a desk to take into the classroom.  After sitting through 4 hours of the most boring class I’ve ever sat through (there was a different professor who I couldn’t understand all that well and I only heard half of what he was saying since I was sitting so close to the door and the hallway was insanely loud) I took the subte home.

I had dinner (salad and left over spinach tarta) with Clarisa while watching “salven el millon” then at 23:00 I met up with Ludi and Alicia.

We went to a bar in Almagro owned by some of their friends from a dance class.  It was a really awesome place with buena onda (basically good vibes).  There was a small dance floor and a band and people were dancing tango and other traditional dances.  Ludi and Alicia’s bar owner friend supplied us with free quilmes all night, and another friend bought Ludi and I a burger with fries.  It was soooo good.  An interesting side note, the burger came with the normal toppings, cheese, lettuce, tomato, but also had a slice of lunch meat ham on it as well.  While this is the first time I’ve actually had a burger like that I’ve seen them at other places as well.  I met a lot of people that Ludi and Alicia knew through their dance class and got to watch some really great dancers.

We headed home in a taxi around 4:30 but the party was still going strong when we left.  I got home and went to bed around 5 (crazy, I know).

Viernes el 9 de septiembre

Unfortunately for me there was a ton of noise outside my house starting at 8, meaning I only got 3 real hours of sleep (gahhhh).  I slept off and on until around 11 when I gave up and decided I should just get up.  I had some cereal and then headed out to find a café to do some reading at.  It was absolutely gorgeous outside, warm with clear skies and sunshine, the Buenos Aires I’ve been waiting for!  I dropped my clothes off at the lavadero and then walked around the neighborhood. 

It always smells amazing outside of here, like fresh clean laundry!

I ended up getting an iced dulce de leche latte at Starbucks (so un-Argentine I know, but they had really comfy chairs outside). 

Yummm

Whipped cream and dulce de leche, what more could you want?

The first person in Buenos Aires to understand my name the first time I said it AND spell it right

I did various readings for my classes for a few hours before I packed up my stuff and headed to IFSA for a meeting with my advisor.

We went over my schedule and my classes and talked about the forms of evaluation for each one.  It was a short, but helpful meeting, then I took the subte home.

It was about 18:45 when I got off the subte and I was pretty hungry so I stopped at a little bakery and got an empanada atun (it sounded kinda strange but ended up being good) and a delicious pastry :)

A tuna empanada

Little pastry of deliciousness

Cookie with dulce de leche covered in chocolate

So much dulce de leche!

I did a little more reading when I got home, then at 21:30 Clarisa called me down for dinner.  We had a noodle tortilla (kind of like a frittata) and salad.  We watched a game show that is exactly like Minute to Win It (called something like Un minuto para ganar”) where people have to do really stupid tasks in 1 minute. 

After dinner I was pretty exhausted so I decided not to go out, and went to bed around 23:00.

Un beso,
Taylor

Random Photo:

Gburg College colored  mouse