Entre Rios and Voting

Last weekend I was lucky enough to have my host family offer to take me with them to go to another province of Argentina (provinces are similar to states), Entre Rios, so they could vote and visit family. Though it's only about 3 hours away from the busy city we live in, it was like a whole different world. My host mom's family all lives in or around the city of Concepcion de Uruguay, which is really quite lovely if you get the chance. 

The most striking thing when we first pulled into town was that it felt like a different country completely. The trees were different, the houses were built totally differently, side roads were made just of dirt. Unlike Buenos Aires, which has a very New York vibe to it, this place looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Which quite frankly, is probably why I enjoyed it so much. 

Roque, our dog enjoying the indoor courtyard.

One of the first things anyone from Argentina will tell you about Buenos Aires is that it's not what Argentina is like. It's like the equivalent of going to New York and assuming that, that is what the rest of the US is like. No one place can embody the complete essence of a country, but I believe the rural areas can give you a better idea of the culture. 

I remember being confused when I got here at the hustle in bustle of the city and the lack of siesta time that I had always heard about in Latin culture. Well, turns out that the rest of the country does do that! In Concepcion everything, I mean everything except restaurants closed at about 1pm and didn't open back up until 4pm. Banks close at 1pm and don't open back up till the next day! The pace of life here was much slower and much more what I had been expecting to see in South America. 

The reason we were in Entre Rios was not only so my host parents could vote, but was also because it was my host sister Sofy's 13th birthday! Because of this we had a huge party that lasted the whole day basically and involved all of my host mom's 6 sibling family and cousins and family friends, all speaking in Spanish and trying to feed me more sweets. I swear that I ate my body weight in sugar from all the tartas and macaroons and cake. 

The party was One Direction themed!

While getting to meet everyone was great (I'm the first student they ever took there, so yay me!) but it was also exhausting. My brain was trying so hard to keep up with all the Spanish and when I did understand, by the time I had thought up a response it was past that conversation. Also, it's just really intimidating to try and speak a second language (poorly) to a large group of people. But luckily, they were all very understanding and loved using the 2 or 3 words of English they did know to me. 

On Sunday, we went to vote in the senate primaries because the use the schools for the voting polls, voting always happens on Sunday in Argentina. At first it seemed relatively normal, people lined up in their sections got a paper ballot which they took into an empty classroom to fill out. Then they dropped it into a box. The part that threw me off was when I noticed the large amounts of police and military men around, and the unsettling observation that the military guys were holding what looked like older model machine guns...

Now before you freak out (MOM), I asked my host parents about this pretty scary sight. My host father is pretty high up in the military and let me in on a secret. The guns were fake, they just used them as a scare tactic to keep people in order. In reality, Argentina's army was much too poor to actually afford that. Though I felt relieved, I was still a bit uneasy knowing that they felt the need to scare people with machine guns. 

Political graffiti, basically saying that Hugo Chavez lives in all of Latin American and then it says go Victoria, which is the current president's party. Her and Chavez were tight. I thought this was super interesting. 

As the primary results were announced I discovered something else different about Argentina's fledging democracy (only 40 years old), versus ours. There aren't any real competing parties, at least no significant leaders. Here they have Peronists and Federalists, but each of those parties is divided into at least 6 different subsections which seems to make getting anything down pretty difficult. I'll explain in further detail in a separate post but basically, even though it's a democracy people generally think the government is corrupt. In their defense, they have an awful long history of dictatorships and military rule to back up their concerns. But I'll get more into that later!

Overall, I think that if you visit a country you have to see multiple cities to really get a feel for what that country actually is like. Otherwise, you've only touched the tip of the iceberg!

Searching for Love in Likes

Thinking back to seventh grade, when I told my best friend I had fallen in love because of a mutual fondness for Dr. Pepper, I realize that we often time are looking for the wrong things when trying to find love. When you meet someone and go and peruse their social media profiles, you know you all do it, the things that jump out at you most are probably your shared interests. You thing Mumford and Sons are awesome and he also thinks Mumford and Son's is awesome, it's a perfect match!

Source

While it may sound silly simplified to that extent, think about it. How many times have you found yourself having a conversation with a person you may be interested in about just the things you have in common? The shared interest in music, movies, food, all petty and quite honestly meaningless things about them and yourself.

I think a major problem this generation is suffering from, at least in the romance department, is defining ourselves by our interests rather than who you are. Social media and a list of our virtual "likes" perpetrate the problem further.

Shared interests are maybe a great way to get a conversation started or to find an activity to bond over, but we seem to confuse them with the substance that can build a relationship. Unless you are writing a thesis on the impact of The Godfather on the perception of the mafia in popular culture, there is not much about that being your favorite movie that defines you as a person (even though it displays an excellent taste in movies!).

But seriously, Marlon Brando, amazing.

Think of how many millions of people listen to the same music, watch the same movies, and enjoy the same food as you. My chances of walking outside and running into someone of the opposite sex that has watched and enjoyed the same movie as me is extremely probable, and I'm in a foreign country!

The point I am making here is that we should center the conversation around getting to know people's passions rather than their pop culture interests. Knowing what drives a person tells you significantly more about their character than the fact that you both like spicy foods.

That being said, it should encourage you to look for people outside of your general scope of thinking. For example, just because I am an aspiring writer who enjoys 90s pop, that doesn't mean a computer programmer that likes bluegrass couldn't be my perfect match values wise.

So stop defining yourself by what your Facebook page says you're interested in and start going off of what makes you get out of bed every morning, whatever that may be. The change could very well help you find the right places to be looking.


As Always, Stay Classy
XOXO

Hayley Kiah

What I've been up to.

It seems as though no matter where in the world I am, I have a knack for finding ways to keep myself extremely busy. Before coming to Argentina I thought I would have all the free time in the world because I wouldn't be an RA/Student Senator/VP of Programming again this year (last year doing all of those things was crazy!). But never fear, I've managed to find ways to keep myself occupied by doing what I love doing, writing.

I'm extremely excited to tell you that I am now a contributor for Go Girl Travel Network, which is an online resource for women that travel. I will be writing a monthly column titled International Love: Dating Cultures Around the World. My first article for that goes live next Wednesday. In the mean time I will also be contributing articles as topics come up. You can find my articles here. I'll be sure to give you all the link when my column starts!

Also, on the topic of travel I have been writing articles for Students Gone Global, which is basically a collection of study abroad students blogs. My posts have been more directed at being informative, rather than antecedent based which is why I share them there, rather than here. If you're interested in reading them you can find them here!

I occasionally also post on random blogs and sites when the opportunity comes up. You can read my post on The Study Abroad Blog here. I will also be having a non-travel related article published soon on Finding My Virginity, a blog ran by one of my close (as in we've been communicating via our blogs for the past couple of years) blogger friends. She writes mostly about issues concerning feminism and my post will be discussing the culture of street harassment (aka catcalls). I will let you all know when that is happening.

So that all seems pretty overwhelming when I look at it. Today alone I've written this blog post, the post for Finding My Virginity, and two posts for Go Girl. Now I have to actually write a paper for class that I've been putting off by doing all my fun writing!

As a side note, I have added a tab to the home page of this blog that will have links to all these sites for you to have easier access to them.

Hope you enjoy!


Besos,
Hayley

Patience is a Virtue

Patience is extremely useful when living abroad or trying to deal with basically anyone in a foreign language. Before coming to Argentina, I thought I had quite a bit of patience. I mean I could wait for my order to come at a drive thru for a whole 7 minutes and not complain. I could wait in line at Walmart for 10 minutes and not throw a fit. But after living here for the past three weeks I realized that meant nothing!!

Before I get into my rant I just want to clarify that I do still love Argentina. I hate it here sometimes, but I am also learning so much about myself and about how to adapt and be an adult. Sometimes I want to cry and other times I want to just punch the guy who works in the bookstore, but dealing with these emotions has helped me grow as a person and I know will benefit me enormously in the future. But on to my stories.

I have been able to deal with every meal taking an hour or more. I have been able to deal with the elevator occasionally deciding not to work when I need to go to the tenth floor. But what has really rubbed me wrong is trying to buy my school books.

The Taller 4 (read tah-sh-ar cuatro) has become a place of frustration and tears for myself and most of the international students over the last few weeks. Just when I thought I was okay doing everything in Spanish, this place came along. At a normal University, you can go to the bookstore, show them the list of classes you have and have all your books magically appear. Or you can go to Amazon or Chegg or a multitude of other sites to order or rent your books online. Not so in Argentina.

All of our books are literally copied off then bound on these giant copy machines in the Taller 4. So on top of massively contributing to global warming and the killing of trees they deny you the ability to get your books anywhere else. But when you take them your class list and point repeatedly at the class number you need the book for saying "Necesito un libro" like a broken record all you will usually get is a shoulder shrug and the person walking away.

This happened to me twice and the third time I found out they didn't have the book I needed but got no further explanation of how to get it. Nearly in tears and frustrated I left again with not a single book I needed. The fourth time (today) I brought along a friend that spoke enough Spanish to explain the situation. This time they had one of the books I need (though the other I had been trying to get was apparently in the bookstore at the school all along! UGH!!) so I asked to have one copy of it and paid the man.

The cause of all this hoopla.

Then patiently, as always in this infuriating country, I wanted to be given the book I had just purchased. Well, I waited and then waited some more and watched several others come and go. When Morgan (my friend) asked the guy where my book was he just shrugged again and walked away. This happened, I kid you not, five more times before we finally got the manager to speak to us in English. We explained that I had just paid for the book but never got it. Turns out it hadn't even been copied off yet! So after another 20 minutes we finally got my book.

The whole experience was beyond frustrating and made me 20 minutes late for class. I hadn't accounted for it taking 40 minutes to buy a book. The language barrier wasn't even what caused all the trouble this time because Morgan was speaking in Spanish!

Thank God she came with me to explain or I may have been going back for my fourth time to just yell at them in English that they didn't understand. Luckily the whole mess is over and I don't have to ever step foot in Taller 4 again, hopefully.

It was just one of those instances that exceeded cultural barriers and went straight to being rude. I know that my Spanish is bad and I don't understand what a lot of locals say to me. But I'm here to LEARN so cut me some slack and don't ignore me because my Spanish sucks! Geez!!

Okay, that's the end of my rant and I came home to have a nice hot cup of tea and a banana with dulce de leche which made my day exceeding better. Dulce de Leche can fix just about anything.


Besos!
Hayley

Recoleta Cemetery: A Maze of Mausoleums

This was supposed to go up Friday, but the wifi was not having it! So sorry it's late, disfruta (enjoy)!

Today, my BFF Jill (remember like that old ATT commercial?) went to Recoleta Cemetery to check it out. Though our origin intention was to go to an art museum we were kind of fascinated with the mausoleums. I'm sure you can see why!

The basic run down is that it's one of the best, most beautiful cemeteries in the world. All the Argentine elite are buried here and mausoleums are still for sale! So if you have the money and the desire you too, can be buried among former presidents and Nobel prize winners.

The biggest draw of the cemetery is the tomb of Eva Peron, former first lady of Argentina and notable women in Argentine history. Her tomb is nothing fancy but her life after death was an interesting one. Apparently her body was stolen numerous times and had to be guarded constantly. After her body was eventually recovered it was put on display in her widowed husband and his new wife's house! How weird is that? It now safely remains in Recoleta, undisturbed.

Eva's Grave

The place was a massive maze of tombs. While there were many that were well kept and had fresh flowers, there were others that looked like they hadn't been touched in years. Which is odd considering the amount of money the family must have spent to buy the space. Those were the most interesting ones and Jill and I even attempted to get inside several but the locks seemed to be the only thing still in tack.

But I think this has been my favorite place in Buenos Aires so far because it was just incredibly beautiful, eerie, and historic all at the same time.

We also visited a beautiful Catholic church on the property and went inside the small museum there!

There are more pictures in my Argentina Facebook album!!

How leaving the country brought me closer to my family.

When I first decided to come to Argentina for four months one of the most common responses I got from people was about running away from my family. Granted most of the people that said that didn't know me well enough to know that I'm extremely close and have a wonderful relationship with my family. I talk to my brother and sister nearly every day. Even when I was living in Kansas City it was sometimes hard to be away from them.

My adorable family, minus Aub.

What I didn't think about really though, was how studying abroad would affect my relationship with the rest of my family, extended not immediate. To be completely honest, I didn't give it much thought. I love all of my family on both sides and truly wish I could see them more. But because I don't see them that frequently to begin with, leaving the country for four months didn't seem like it would be that big of a deal to them.

My very best friend in the whole world. I love you Aub!!

To my pleasant surprise, I think studying abroad has brought me so much closer to all of them. The biggest change is that they know what's going on in my life. Before to find out what was happening to me on a day to day basis they could call or email but that's difficult to do with 20+ people consistently. I guess they could check my Facebook, but I don't post that frequently, and rarely disclose personal details about what's going on in my life. 

But through blogging, I've been able to connect with my family and friends on a daily basis. It's almost as though I'm giving them an insight into my diary. They get to read and experience with me my good days and my bad and know what it's like to walk in my international student shoes. 

Also, since deciding to go on this trip I've been receiving an outpouring of love from so many different people. I received a wonderful message from my Grandparents telling me to push through the difficulties of being abroad. My Uncle told me that reading my blog was like getting a daily newsfeed of my life. Even my Professor's from home have given me their support after reading this blog. It's really just an incredible feeling to have so much support from so many different people. 

Being literally 5,000 miles from home can make you feel lonely at times. But writing about my experiences and receiving feedback from them has made all the difference in the world! Honestly, I wish I started doing a personal blog like this year ago. I have never felt more connected to my family than I do now. 

So I guess I just want to thank you for all your love and encouragement and for reading! I can't explain what an impact it's made on me. And, of course, I love you all very much!

Mundo Lingo and Meeting Locals!

I'm sure that I previously mentioned that one of the most difficult parts of being here is that I can't communicate with anyone. While I now know enough Spanish to get by: order food, ask the price of things, use transportation, etc. I still don't really know enough to have a full on conversation with an Argentine that doesn't speak English, which is most of them. But, it turns out there is a place for people with exactly that problem!

Mundo Lingo (mundo means world FYI) is sort of like a social mixer that happens every Wednesday night in the back room of a bar in Palermo. When you arrive you get stickers with the flag of every country whose language you speak. You put the languages in the order of your fluency, so your first language is always on the top. This makes it a million times easier to interact with people because you finally know how to greet them.

Source

It's pretty intimidating to go up to an Argentine and try to initiate a conversation in Spanish when I am barely understandable. But here they are fully aware that you're not from here and you can also talk to people who maybe know a bit of English too.

I say that it's a social mixer because as soon as you walk in people will come up to talk to you. They want to know where you're from and why you're here. I still find it odd when people ask, "why on earth did you come to Buenos Aires." In case you didn't know, it's the second largest city in South America, behind Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. That makes Buenos Aires the largest, Spanish speaking city in South America. What better place than to learn the language!

I meet several Argentine guys that were all in college and could kind of speak English. The kind of part actually made it better because then I was forced to actually use Spanish. I've noticed recently I have a terrible habit of expecting people to figure English out when put in a situation where neither of us understands the other's language. But if I want to learn I better start figuring it out in Spanish!

It would be really awesome if we had groups like this at home. It's such a nice way to meet people from all different places and practice your language skills. Plus now I may actually get some Argentine friends!! (Not that I don't love all my American friends here still.)



Besos!
Hayley