It's Move In Day!

Today was the official "Move in Day" in the dorms for the fall semester. Reading the online article about it in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle made me slightly nostalgic for my own freshman year. Two years ago, at this time, I was moving into Roskie Hall, Room 424. Now, I'm in Buenos Aires, Argentina, already a month into the semester.

Oh, how times have changed.

I had some of the most fun times of my life in Roskie, and that was just the beginning of how going to MSU changed my life. It's amazing how many opportunities going to college opens up, especially moving to a different state to go to college. It's when you finally get to decide what you do with every second of your time. There are so many sports to play, clubs to join, community service opportunities, and ...there's STUDY ABROAD!

Going to college is only the first step in an exciting future. I would never be here right now if it weren't for my decision to go to MSU. Study abroad is truly the best way to experience another culture and learn another language (all for a reasonable price!), and coming here was probably the second best decision I ever made...the first being the decision to go to MSU!

Despite the fact that I miss Bozeman more than anything, I couldn't have chosen a better time to study abroad. "Absence makes the heart grow stronger" is definitely true. But, thanks to my study abroad schedule, I'll be done with the semester and back in Bozeman November 14, just in time for the ski season to start...and to start my job at Big Sky! Because I'm studying abroad and my semester ends at the beginning of November, I was able to get a job at Big Sky and I'll have two months of freedom to start the season, in my favorite place on earth, MONTANA.

Could life get better than this?

BA Photography

I haven't updated in a while, but I have been taking some city pictures of Buenos Aires which I figured I'd post for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Green Film Festival in Buenos Aires

This weekend the Cinemark movie theatre which is a block away from my apartment in Buenos Aires is hosting the "Green Film Festival" [literally...they don't translate it]. It's an international film festival consisting of ten environmentally-conscious movies.

I love the environment, so I watched all of the trailers and decided I wanted to see the French documentary "Home," and went with three of my friends last night.

The trailer was in English, so I was kind of expecting the movie to be in English with subtitles, although I though it was strange that it was French movie with an English trailer. Turns out, since the whole movie was narrated footage with no actual actors, it was entirely in Spanish. I was able to understand almost everything, but I had to concentrate really hard and hang on every word, and then I would forget what they had said before, and in the end I got the main idea but definitely not every detail.

It was overall a very interesting experience; the cinematography alone was excellent. They used the technique of re-touching the original footage of natural landscapes and city scenes to make the colors more vivid and bring out certain details, so at times it looked almost animated. They really overdid a lot of the colors to emphasize their point, like the color red in scenes that showed land degradation, as if the land was bleeding. The movie talked about all of the problems with resource depletion and overuse, the pollution and resources used in big cities, and in general all of the bad things people are doing to the environment. It was actually rather depressing at times, especially when they flashed depressing statistics on the screen. But of course, at the end they tried to brighten the mood by saying all each individual person needs to do is be environmentally conscious in everyday life, and after the movie everybody got an "Urbana & Orgánica" flyer about different eco-friendly places to shop in Buenos Aires. Nice.

One of the points of the movie was that the vast majority of people in the world live in big coastal cities, and that 20% of the world's population uses 80% of the resources. And that we should all stop consuming resources unnecessarily and buying cars. Which led to this thought process of mine:

I live in Buenos Aires, the biggest city in Argentina, thus I do not have a car. I am just one more person on the Subte, or one more person on the colectivo, every day. My transportation-related carbon impact is almost nothing; the same pollution is generated whether I'm there or not.

There are many people living in poverty in Buenos Aires. The unemployment rate is 21%. One thing all of these unemployed people do (approximately 35,000 of them) is walk the streets of BA at night sorting through trash, looking for recyclables. They're called "cartoneros" and they separate the recyclables and bring them to recycling facilities for a refund; that's how they make money (gracias á mi clase de Tradiciones y Culturas Argentinas para la información).

The people of Buenos Aires don't recycle, but the cartoneros do it for them. It's a strange but functional process. If the people of BA recycled, the cartoneros wouldn't have a way to make money; they'd just be more worthless unemployed people. Thus more people have a way to make money and the city is more eco-friendly because the people with money are not eco-friendly. How oxymoronic.

So what is more eco-friendly: living in a big, polluted, trashy city where public transportation is a part of every person's daily life and everybody rides an Omnibus (long-distance bus) when they want to travel to a different part of the country, or living in a nice, small town where you can ride your bike everywhere if you're motivated, but if it's too cold or just a bit too far you drive in your car, and when you want to go to a different town you road trip in your personal car, or fly in a plane? Obviously the small town is more healthy, if you actually bike most of the time, but the driving is going to happen. And of course, when it comes down to it I choose Bozeman, not Buenos Aires.

Being perfect is just not possible...but I am thankful for the bus to Big Sky for this reason, because that cuts down on the majority of my winter driving, and really it's easy to be eco-friendly in Bozeman because you can bike, walk, or take the free Streamline bus anywhere, and shop at Town & Country or the Co-op.

Basically, I can't wait to go back to Bozeman, but I appreciate Buenos Aires more every day.

¡Riddim en Vivo!

One of my favorite pastimes/activities is going to concerts. If you've read some of my posts from the previous year, you might have noticed several about the road trips I went on for the sole purpose of going to awesome concerts. So, to continue this tradition of mine, last weekend I decided to seize an opportunity to go to a concert in Buenos Aires (no road trip necessary in this city!).

The band I saw is called Riddim; they're an Argentine reggae group. I had never heard of them, but I saw a flyer for the concert on the Subte [Subway] during the week and had nothing to else to do last Saturday night, so I decided to go for it. It was at a club I had been to once before, a good size but not too giant, and the stage is elevated to basically my height, so no matter where in the crowd you are you can see everything.

I couldn't be happier that I went; the show was amazing. Riddim is a band made up of nine people, so the variety of instruments they have going on made for an awesome show. They are made up of a brass section consisting of a trumpet, trombone, and saxophone player, a keyboardist, two guitarrists, a bass player, a drummer, and of course the lead singer. They are apparently really popular in Argentina, because the crowd was singing along half of the time.

I would highly recommend checking this band out if you like reggae and want to expand your musical horizons; their website is http://www.riddim.com.ar/.

And here's another link about the show I went to which includes a music video.

It's almost time for the fall semester to start at MSU...hopefully everyone's enjoying the end of the summer!

The Semester Begins in Buenos Aires

It's probably time for me to write a post that makes it sound like I'm doing what I came here to do...study! Semester classes began last Monday at the Universidad de Belgrano, where I'm studying. I am taking four, all taught in Spanish. They have a cool program here specifically for international students in which you can take classes taught in either English or Spanish, but I of course opted for all classes in Spanish for the added challenge...because I'm here to learn Spanish, right?

The classes I am taking are:

Argentine Literature

Latin American Literature

Argentine Cultural Studies

Español Avanzado A (Advanced Spanish A)

I'm an English and Spanish Teaching major, so two literature classes in a semester is nothing new to me. However, I am notorious for not allowing myself enough time to read the assigned readings in my literature classes, and now all of the assigned readings are in Spanish, meaning it takes me waaaay more time to read them. And ideally, I should read them at least three times to understand them well. This is a slight problem, because I don't want to spend all of my day reading, and then there's other reading in Spanish to be done for my Culture class (which is no joke, the professor is quite scholarly and has high expectations of us). My actual Spanish language class is definitely the easiest for me, which I suppose makes sense, since I am faced with a much higher level of Spanish every day than is taught in my Spanish class (which slightly bothers me, but there's nothing I can do about it really). For a sample of what I'm reading right now, click here (luckily I'm only reading an excerpt of this, but still...).

Long story short, I have approximately four hours to read about 10 pages of Spanish literature and I am instead writing this blog.

Which brings me to my next point, my schedule. The schedule here is every Bozemanite's wildest dream. Classes (for my program) are offered Monday-Thursday from 1:00-7:00 p.m. Each class is an hour and a half long. Hence, this is my schedule:

Monday & Wednesday 4:00-7:00

Tuesday & Thursday 2:30-5:30

Conveniently, every weekend is a three day weekend and I have the majority of Monday free. Most buses out of town leave in the evening, so when I want to travel for the weekend I can leave Thursday night, arrive at my destination Friday morning, catch a return bus Sunday night, and be back with time to spare before class. Amazing! Too bad my bank account isn't on this travel schedule.

So, study abroad in Buenos Aires is no joke, but there's no doubt that being immersed in so much Spanish and reading so much Spanish literature is going to work wonders on my level of Spanish!

Until next time...keep enjoying summer in the USA! If you're there, that is...