hemos regresado a buenos aires

we all arrived back in ba from rio safe and sound, thank you very much. rio was great--it was wonderful to see a different city and culture in south america. we arrived on sunday, and our schedule from monday-friday was sightseeing and lunch with the group, some freetime, dinner, and more freetime. we hit all of the touristy highlights of rio as well as a few others.

touristy highlight number 1: cristo redemptor. this is a really, really, really, really big statue of jesus. it's a wonder of the world (which i didnt know), and i can understand why--it's incredibly impressive and influences the city in ways i didn't realize. this is me and beth, makin' adpi diamonds!

not so touristy highlight number 2: o flavela. flavelas are the slums of rio, and we walked through one with a guide. we went through rosina, which is widely considered to be the nicest one and is not super-dangerous. we were dropped off at a little market where they sell goods that denizens of the flavela make, and then we walked down through the city. don't be picking up the phone to send me home right now--the slums here have become organized communities, with schoools, community centers, electricity, running water, markets, etc. all of the buildings are solid (not like the tin shacks in india), and i was amazed at the genuine sense of community that we encountered. it was good to see, becuase it's a part of the city that most people don't.

and, finally, touristy highlight number 3: beach day!
when i talked to dad after getting back on sunday, he asked me if i had any new tats or piercings--how do parents always know??? yes, while we were on the beach all of us got henna tatoos--henna is indian ink that they paint on you, so, never fear, it will be gone in 10 days. the beach in rio is absolutely beautiful--fine, soft sand and very clear water. here's a picture to make you jealous:


although rio was a blast, it's good to be back in BA. i'm very comfortable here now becuase i know my way around and can fairly successfully navigate the langauge, neither of which i could do in rio. i can't believe we only have 3 weeks left in the city--i'm determined to take full advantage of it!

besos, ellen

que bárbaro

this is me and alex, being brave souls and dancing the tango at a milonga.

midterms are over (already!)

which means that after this weekend in BA, we go to rio! i know absolutley nothing about rio de janiero, except that they do not speak either of the 1.5 languages that i do. that, and beth thorne and i are going to get a diamond adpi pic in front of the big statue of jesus.

kinda like this adpi pic in front of the cathedral in la plata-->

i'm really looking forward to this weekend to get to explore the city--i live in barrio norte, which is part of recoleta. the biggest parts of the city are san telmo (the old, historic city), la boca (not a very nice part of town, but famous for its brightly painted houses), retiro (where the rich moved), recoleta (famous for the cemetary), puerto madero (the docks, new and shiny), palermo (the new, trendy part of the city), the microcentro and congreso (where the goverment and business district are). on the to do list this weekend are la feria (the fair) in san telmo, the cemetary in recoleta, shopping in palermo, and just walking around!

i've been putting up a lot of pics of where we've been going, so here are some of all of the awesome people on this trip--
this is in acabar, a great bar in palermo. they have lots of board games that you can play--it's one of our favorite spots. we came here on tuesday to celebrate austin's birthday (he's the one on everyone's lap). from left to right, alicia, natalie, stephen (yes, he always looks this way in pictures, he swears he's having a good time :) ), sruti, jonathan, me, alex, madeline, and abigail.

this is some of the best grafitti in the world in uruguay--beth, andrea, alicia, sruti, and caroline.


besos, ellen

las cataratas iguazú

this weekend was a long three day weekend, so me and five other girls decided to make a trip to iguazú falls. iguazú falls lies at the intersection of paraguay, brasil, and argentina, and it's a 20 hour bus-ride away. we were being adventurous.

friday night we boarded our bus at 9:30 in the madness that was the retiro bus station--think punk rock concert, then think of three of them. when i say 'bus', i don't mean 'yellow school' i mean 'full bed, wide seats, lots of leg room, and food', so the trip wasn't too terrible. we got in on saturday around 3, which didn' t leave us enough time to get to the falls that day, but we spent several hours at a very good pizzeria in the town adjacent to the falls. we stayed in a hostel that night, which was clean--all you can ask for.

the next morning we woke up at 6 to make it to the falls when the park opened, since our bus home left at 5:00pm. and once we got there, any ounce of regret we had at missing a weekend in BA flew out of the proverbial window.

the pic on the right is a close up of the falls i'm standing in front of in the pic up top; they're on the argentinan side.


this is garganta del diablo, or the devil's throat. it's the biggest fall, and it is closer to the brazilian side.


querida,
ellen

puede sacar una foto?

this is libertador ave, a big avenue that runs the lenth of the city along rio de la plata. it's huge--all of this is one way.










this is the plaza de mayo and the casa rosada, where the president (cristina kirchner) lives. all of those people and signs in the plaza de mayo are protestors. argentinians are always excersizing their right to petition and protest--right now there is a huge problem with taxes that the government is trying to put on imports and exports. the really, really rich land owners are protesting this along with the poor campesinos, and this is a new, strange dynamic. it was amazing to see all of the protestors so close to the casa rosada, but this has been happening for years.
this are the mothers of the plaza de mayo, the women who have protested the disapparence of their children in the dirty war in the 1970s every thursday since then. i didnt realize they would be there when we went, but at 3:30 all of the other protestors made way for the mothers. it was very emotional--they all had pictures of their childen, and there were so many of them. i wasn't sure if i should take a picture or not, but when i turned around there was a local who discretly snapped a picture with his camera phone, so i did the same.

chau!

fuimos a uruguay

hola a todos--

we have now been in BA for a full week, but it feels so much longer than that--we have been going everywhere and doing everything. i feel like i now have a pretty good geographic sense of the city, especially the barrios where my friends and i live--the microcentro is a little more confusing.

about 7 of us got up at the crack of dawn today to make it to the buquebus station at the port to sail across the rio de la plata to colonia, uruguay. it's about 3 hours away by buquebus (the buquebus is basically a bar, beds, and a duty free store on a very large boat). colonia is an old port town from the portugese and spaniards, who fought over it for years. mostly it was used to smuggle british goods into buenos aires, when the spaniairds kept really tight control of the port. it was incredibly picturesque and quaint--very touristy, but beautiful.

for some reason the picture uploader isn't working, so check back tomorrow for some pictures from the last week.

besos y abrazos!

la americana estupida

here's the breakdown of la familia inchauspe, the family that i am living with:
marcela, the mom
santiago, married with three kids
pepe, engaged
ines, engaged
luis, a law student
biche, an economics student
gonzalo, my age

there's also another american student living here, mitch, so it's a crowded house, but it's a lot of fun. on sunday, everyone came over for empenadas. we were eating and talking about a politically contentious topic, the taxes that the argentine government is trying to put on all of the country's imports and exports. the family has 2 big farms, so they've been talking about this a lot. well, right in the middle of a lot of yelling and hand waving, pepe, blurts out, "well, ana and i are getting married!" everyone paused, and marcela asked, "en serio?", pepe said yes, and everyone jumped up and down and said felicitaciones!

so i was relaying this incident to mitch on monday when we were getting coffee, and he was very excited. we got back to the apartment and were hanging out in the living room with marcela, biche, ines, and mitch asked ines, "so is pepe getting married?" ines's eyes got very big and she said "no, no, no, i'm getting married." my heart started racing. my spanish isn't that great, but is it really THAT bad? how could i have misunderstood the whole situation? weren't they talking about un anillo, a ring? i was mortified. biche asked mitch, "who told you pepe was getting married?", to which i answered, "oh...i guess i didn't understand correctly..." then the subject was dropped.

so last night at dinner, marcela and luis started talking about pepe's wedding. mitch kept looking at me, and then listening to the conversation, and i was just getting more and more confused. finally he asked, "so is pepe getting married or not?" and luis said "oh! yeah!" we relayed what happened on monday and luis said, "oh, that was becuase biche doesn't know yet and pepe wants to tell her himself! so ines just blamed mitch's question on ellen's confusion...biche still doesn't suspect a thing!"

this was a HUGE relief to hear--i'm not a totally stupid american. even if ines did use my "she cant really understand what's happening" status to keep biche unawares. as long as i'm not going crazy!

this picture is me and beth from a walking tour we had of the city. the statue is the monument to the spaniards in palermo.
beso y abrazos!

ps. last night, we toasted to barack obama, and our waiter joined in.

el vino

mendoza, the wine-growing region in northwest argentina, specializes in malbec, which is a red wine whose grape was imported from france a long time ago. abby, caroline, alicia and i ate at la biela this afternoon, in recoleta, and had our first bottle of argentine wine--malbec, of course. it was delicious--very, very smooth and fruity. we spoke spanish with our waiter, and he asked me if i was russian or american. herm...well, i guess i need to work on that accent...

recoleta has an fair every sunday outside of the cemetary, and it was packed with people.
the people here are all very friendly and very beautiful. i succesfully navitaged el subte (the subway) back to my apartment, so i'm thinking of today as a success!

besos!