I was a little late to school in the morning, since I pressed off on my alarm instead of snooze by accident. We were supposed to have another field trip activity, but since it was raining, it got cancelled. We broke for lunch, and I ended up going home for something, and then needing to eat quickly on the walk back. I stopped at the Burger King a few blocks from my house. It was the biggest nicest and cleanest BK I have ever been in. The food was actually really good, since they use local beef for their burgers. Comparatively to other lunches I have eaten, it was actually really expensive.
Back at the school around 1.15pm, we had a chance to meet and listen to the teachers of the classes taught in Spanish through IES. After my advising meeting, I thought I should go and talk to all of them to see if I could comprehend what they were saying and if any of the classes sounded interesting. I stopped by most of the classrooms were the teachers were holding little briefings about their classes, and the most interesting and favorite teacher of mine was a woman teaching a class called Cultural Icons as Global Commodities. This class is about the tango dance in Argentina culture, movies, plays, and media. It is a very interactive class that studies the history of the dance, its place in the Argentine self identity, and how it is portrayed across the world in different forms of media. I am really excited to take this class since I think the topic is interesting, and my Spanish will get challenged, which in turn will help me learn much more.
After meeting with the professors, I walked to the IES Center since I was hoping to talk with the advisors. The other half of students had meetings with them, so it did not happen, but I bumped into Alex, Kate, and Elise on my walk there and we ended up just kinda hanging out for a little while at the IES Center. After a while Kate and I started the walk home, since we live so close to each other. We took our time and poked into a lot of different stores, and Kate finally bought a pair of boots that she had been looking at the entire time. We walked into some really interesting stores, the coolest of which was a leather jacket place. I tried on some of the coats and looked really good in them. I have always wanted a leather coat, but have never actually bought one. Im not sure how often I would wear it, but I think I would like to have one on hand if I wanted to wear it. The guy at the store didn’t have the color and style I like best in my size, but said that if I paid in cash, he would have in made for me in one week. I told him I would think about it and come back later. Not sure if I will do it, but for a really nice leather coat priced around 545 pesos (182 dollars) I definitely need to do some thinking.
I walked Kate home after a while and then went home to do some things. I then went to the closest locutorio, a phone booth internet store which are very popular here. I couldn’t get through to a lot of people, but I was able to talk to Blaire for a while. We actually talked for about 25 minutes only in Spanish, and the conversation was really good!
I left there when my 10 dollar card expired and I went to meet Nell for a drink. I walked the 15 minutes to her area, which is beautiful. It had a much different feel then my area, but I liked it a lot. On our walk from her apartment to a café we passed a few gorgeous mansions that used to be home for the rich and have been converted to museums or hotels.
After a few drinks and an afternoon snack for me, I went home again to check my email and have a little down time. Around 10:00pm, Kate, Elise, Nell and I all met up for dinner at the same little restaurant that Kate and I had drank the bottle of wine at the night before. The same guy greeted us at the door and sat us at the same table with the same waiter. He came over and we ordered the same bottle of wine. We ended up having a really nice meal, and although the place was relatively expensive, it was 12 dollars each for a nice meal and two bottles of expensive wine for the table.
We left the restaurant and decided to meet up with other GW students that are in Buenos Aires for the semester on another program that Nell knew from her trip in the summer. We had the address of the bar they had, so we got a cab and gave him the address. He was very interested in us, giving us tips of places to go and asking how we liked the city. On the way, we passed through and area with 4-way stop intersections, which obviously no one in this country stops at, and came to the quick stop to avoid another cab coming from the other road. It was a very awkward silence in the car after that. We got to the place that the GW kids were, and we got out of the cab. It cost 10 pesos (3 dollars) and took us from one end of the city to the other. The bar that Nell had the name of looked really empty from the street, and we decided to go to the one nextdoor because we could hear some live music coming from it. It ended up being Bar Seddon, a good bar that I had read about in my travel book. We got into the bar, and found a table somewhat close to the band and ordered some drinks. The band was awesome. The guys had a good sound and were playing mostly American covers with some latin improv on top of the music. The lead singer and guitarist loved me, since I was the only one in the bar singing along to Steve Miller Band, Led Zeppelin, and Eric Clapton. It ended up that Deepa and Nick, Nell’s friends we had hoped to meet, were in the basement of the bar downstairs. They came over and sat with us for a while. After a few drinks, Deepa and Nell left to go to a club two blocks away that they had heard really good things about. Nick, Kate, Elise and I wanted to stay for a few more songs.
The four of us left a little later and made our way to Club Museum. The cover was 25 pesos, and I didn’t get any drink tickets like the night before, we entered through the metal detector and walked into a giant hall with thousands of people dancing. The entire place had black walls and two levels of VIP balconies. It looked to be about ¾ as long as a football field, and a little less wide. It was really big. Althought it was a really big club and a lot of people were inside; it was not that hard to walk through the crowd to the opposite end towards the bathrooms. After reconvening in a few minutes, we headed to the bar. There were two lines, and of course I got on the wrong one. The system was made so that you paid someone at the register at the bar, they handed you a receipt, and you gave the receipt to the bartenders, who served you the drink.
I ordered two Quilmes, the local beer I have come to really enjoy, with the guy at the register and got a receipt. I handed it to the closest bartender I could find, and he gave me two wine-spritzer-esqe drinks. I tried to argue with him to get two beers, but I didn’t make any progress. I decided to suck it up and drink the fruity girly drinks for now.
The four of us started dancing and quickly found Nell and Deepa, along with a few other faces I recognized from GW in the middle of the dancefloor. Not sure how we found them, but it was pretty lucky I think. We danced for a long time, and I was having lots of fun. Around 4.30am I started to get a little tired, and realized that I had to be awake soon, since I needed to meet at the IES Center at 10:20am for a city tour the next day. We ended up leaving around 4.45am, and the four of us from dinner caught a cab back to Recoleta. We first stopped and dropped Nell and Elise off, since they live really close to each other, then we ended at Kate’s apartment.
I walked home and got back around 5am. By the time I fell asleep, I was determined to wake up on time and make it to the city tour by 10:20.
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