I haven’t posted in a little while! I have a lot to update on.
I had class on Thursday, and afterwards, we went to the Natural Sciences Museum of Buenos Aires. It was pretty cool, though admittedly, the taxidermied animals were mildly disturbing. Fun fact: stuffed monkeys are absolutely terrifying.
Afterwards, we went to drink mate at a café.
Basically, mate is a strong, green-tea-like Argentine drink that you often share with friends. You drink it from a cup that looks like this…
I wasn’t a huge fan of it, but I could see myself getting used to it with time. It’s an acquired taste.
Outside the café, the view was so pretty!
On Friday, I had more class (SO RIVETING. WOW. I’VE BECOME MORE FLUENT IN BOTH THE LANGUAGE OF SPANISH AND SARCASM.) Though the grammar part of the class is sleep-inducing, I really do love the cultural parts. Our teacher answered all our questions about Argentina, and I learned a lot about Argentinian history, Argentina’s rivalries with other South American countries, and the importance of last names here. Supposedly, last names are big status symbols, as certain last names typically hold more prestige and wealth than others.
She also talked about how hard it is to find a job in Argentina. If you’re over 35, it gets a lot more difficult to find work because companies want fresh blood. (That sentence came out vaguely disturbing.)
Anyways! The lesson was really driven home later that day. There’s a lot of economic unrest, and I even witnessed a socialist protest…
There’s nothing I love more than a few socialists. Supposedly, protests are pretty common here. Argentina might default on its debt near the end of the month, too…which I hope won’t affect me too much…
There are tons of homeless people in Buenos Aires– largely as a result of the difficulty of finding work, I’m assuming. We volunteered with a church to hand out dinner to homeless people, and it was pretty eye-opening. All of them were very courteous, and some talked with us. There was even one man who spoke English fluently…He still didn’t have a job. It’s crazy wondering what some of their stories are.
Today, there weren’t any classes (yay!), and we visited an Argentina cowboy ranch, where the famed gauchos live! We got to ride horses, which I was sort of terrified of because of prior experience with horses… Sadly, I don’t have any pictures because I didn’t bring my phone! But it really was beautiful. My favorite part was the lunch (different types of smoked meat, including asado, or Argentine steak). We listened to some live music while we ate and watched a few dances by professional dancers! They danced the tango and milonga and a whole bunch of other dances which were breathtaking to watch. Then, they opened the floor to the people in the restaurant, and we had a conga line!
Unfortunately, it was super cold throughout the day, and it started pouring halfway through…but I was only wearing a sweater and some jeans because I’m a super smart dresser and all. I didn’t even have an umbrella until later on! I already had a sore throat when I woke up this morning; but, when I returned home (after walking five blocks in the rain), I felt terrible. I wanted to throw up. A few hours later, I was still freezing in four layers of clothes and two layers of blankets! I basically just watched the Brazil vs. Netherlands game from my bed and resembled a shivering corpse.
On the bright side, Holland won! I mean, I feel really bad for Brazil, and at first I wanted them to win after the Germany massacre earlier this week…but this artificial intelligence program called Cortana predicted beforehand that Germany would win the cup and Brazil would win against the Netherlands.
It has made predictions about all the games so far and has been correct every time…so I was hoping it would be wrong about this game…so that there’s a chance its prediction about Germany might be wrong!
I made that way more complicated than it had to be.
Anyways, tomorrow is the World Cup final, and I’m so pumped! Germany seems like the better team, so I’m doubtful that Argentina will win…but then again, that’s how I felt about the Netherlands, and I was wrong. So, I’ll try to be optimistic.
More tomorrow!
Sources
The Backpack Babe 
