sonhar e descobrir: Week 1 Roundup

The last two semesters, we had several second-year students who had recently come back from doing fieldwork talk to us about their experiences. The advice <<"talk to everyone you can;" "email, call, knock on doors;" "be persistent, keep asking until you find people who will give you answers">> basically all translated to --

The Nike Collection Continues

.Hit the ground running.

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That's very much how I feel about the last handful of days. I started reaching out to the people I was in contact with a few months back, and most seem to be very responsive and very willing to help, which has led to lots of running back and forth across the city for appointments. It's definitely been a week full of new experiences :::

Metro Card for the Subte

*The "Subte" (metro) -- WAY nicer than I had anticipated. Though the lines seem to be inefficient (i.e. if you're not planning on riding all the way into the Centro, you can forget about transferring lines. This makes it fairly easy to get East-West, but North-South is not the simplest of tasks). Also, passes are 2,50 ARS (which is about $0.55), which is way more justifiable than the New York passes, which actually DO cost $2.50!

*Gold Star Navigation -- for whatever reason, I've had great luck with navigation so far. I'm sure this means that I'm bound for a disaster in the next day or two, so I'm sure that will make for an excellent story in a future post...

Fancy-Pants Elevator Ride

*Hanging out at Recoleta's "Alvear Palace Hotel" -- went here for an appointment, and the place is unbelievable. Long, carpeted hallways. Swanky restaurants downstairs. Intense jewel displays in the lobby. Each floor has a butler. Our apartment is pretty nice, but um, I think I should have budgeted more into my grant application and gotten a room there! I was also glad to visit this neighborhood, because I walked through the neighborhood where I'll be staying as a part of my NYU course, so it was good to get a feel for another area where I'll be spending a decent amount of time a few weeks from now.

*Meeting people in cafes that I've only communicated with online -- I met with a woman who works for an NGO at Bartok, which is about a 20 minute walk from the apartment. At the last minute she emailed me a description of her so I knew who to look for. The English translation is something like "I'm short, chubby, have dark eyes and dark curly hair, which I will wear down." I figured she didn't need a description of me, because it could pretty much be summed up to, "Well, I'm American. You'll notice me." I definitely don't stand out as much here as I have other places, but I at the same time, I don't entirely blend in.

I arrived about 20 minutes before she did, so in the meantime, I made friends with some of the waitstaff. When I told them the description of the person I was meeting, they laughed, and said that described over half of the women in the country. But I DID find her, and the meeting went really well. She set me up with her friend who works for ANSES (the government organization that runs the grant program that I am studying)! Hopefully this pans out to be as beneficial as I am anticipating it will be.

At packet pickup

*7k Maraton Contra el Chagas -- I signed up for a road race on Sunday. I went to packet pickup today, and it sounds like a few things will be kind of different.

1) It's a 7k race -- awkward?

2) All participants must wear their race shirt while running. Also awkward.

3) But at least the start is pretty nearby a subte stop that I can get to pretty easily, so that should make transportation to/from pretty easy. We'll see!

*And now for some random pics -- I'm really easily a-muu-sed by simple things, so I found these to be funny..