My first impressions

My first mass email:

I've been in Buenos Aires for more than three weeks now and I wanted to get in touch with you and give you a little taste of how things are going down here...this is a bit long...you can skim:

Not only has school started already, it is winter down here! Rainy, then sunny, foggy, one day they had snow, a historic occurrence. I live in a nice apartment a little far from the center of town, but the subway is right nearby. The A line, which I ride, mostly runs old subway cars, wooden interiors, doors you have to pull open, leather straps on the windows to open them...Also people step out as the train is moving and the doors basically shut again barely after the train has stopped. Despite a pace and rhythm that is slower and more drawn out, there's lots of urgency.

I'm taking a couple classes here and there, a couple at UBA, the public, free university that 300,000 Argentines attend. At UBA, the facades of buildings and the insides of classrooms are adorned with graffiti "YANKEE GO HOME!" "US FUERA DE IRAQ" and the like. When you enter the buildings, there is a line of people handing out propaganda. Someone told me that during a lecture, two different sets of students came in and put political posters up on the board behind the professor. The university is totally disorganized, dilapidated, strikes are common, yet maintains itself as the MOST prestigious university in the country. It was only 20 years ago that this country got rid of the military dictatorship; its a young democracy and they take freedom of speech seriously. Evita and Che are far from forgotten and their names are everywhere tagged on walls.

I'm also taking a couple of art classes through UBA's cultural center. This is interesting because old ladies and students and adults, anybody who wants to comes out to register and take these classes. There is so much culture here, it is overwhelming. The government does a fantastic job of funding the arts, music, theater, there is SO much to do!

The city is CRAZY. Literally, emotionally, physically. So many people everywhere, dogs are really popular, so is not picking up their poop. Stepping in poop is so common people say that is good luck. I like the people. Buenos Aires has a huge per capita or whatever you say of people seeing therapists, they really want to be European, it is just as Jewish as it is Catholic and the people are extremely good looking. The men wont stop with their stares and with the comments, "hay que linda," but people are friendly and eager to know where I'm from and my political stance on things. They are not so quick to consider themselves Latin Americans, although they certainly live within the Latin American unreality.

The language is tough, was really hard at first. I still can't understand what people are saying sometimes. All the double Ls are pronounced "shh" and the y's are pronounced similarly. They say "vos" instead of "tu" and they even decided it would be funny if they had their very own tu form of verb conjugation! But I'm getting by....

This last weekend, I went to Iguazu, northern Argentina, boarders Brazil and Paraguay. AMAZING! The cataratas, the waterfalls, there are something like the biggest in the hemisphere. I've never seen anything as immense, threatening, beautiful.