Part 1 of 2: The Last Few Days

I wanted to write a two-part post about both what's been going on for the last few days in Rosario and also giving a brief update of how I'm feeling about the experience as a whole. My plan was to write about both of these topics in one blog post, but since I wanted to get something published tonight, I decided to break one long post into two shorter posts. So below is part 1: a summary of the last few days in Rosario:

After coordinating plans via email to turn the final version of Mi Aventura in to Karie (since I couldn't email it to her because the file was too big) and meet Mary at Starbucks, both of these plans were realized Saturday afternoon. Starbucks was quite an experience. I felt obnoxiously American when I walked in because I was supporting an American company while in Rosario (when I told Eugenia I was going to Starbucks, which is maybe 6 blocks down our street, she asked me what Starbucks was. I almost died. That might be an exaggeration. I'm not obsessed with Starbucks.), wearing letters, and carrying Vera Bradley. When we went to order, the man working the counter spoke in English, so we placed our order for alto (tall) dulce de leche frappuccinos. After ordering, he said he didn't have any cups in that size, and would it be okay if he gave us a larger size (it would be easier for him to give us change that way too)? He was holding up a cup for a warm drink, which should have been my first hint that we weren't getting our frappuccinos. When they called our names, we were surprised to find not alto dulce de leche frappuccinos, but venti dulce de leche lattes! You could tell I was mad about it by the way I drank the entire venti latte. After Starbucks I went home briefly, only to walk back to Starbucks about 2 hours later to meet the gang for our evening activity.

Even though Karie's class ended a week ago, she's been hanging out and going to events with us. Saturday was her last night in Rosario, and we wanted to spend the evening with her. We had found a bowling alley while shopping on Friday, and we thought that would be something fun and low-key for all of us to do. After meeting at Starbucks, we made our way to a different bowling alley around 9:30, and the place was dead. We still had fun, and when our game was finished Karie went home to rest up for her day of travel and Mary, Melissa and I headed to an Irish pub. We sat at the bar because there were no tables available. After we had been sitting at the bar for a while, the bartender told us that the bar was cerrado (closed) and that they would get a table for us if we wanted to stay. We then looked around at the rest of the people sitting at the bar, only to find that we were the only women sitting there. There were also 3 men standing by the door behind us, and it looked like we were getting kicked off the bar in order for these men to sit there! We were a little confused about why we were asked to leave, but then we found out that in Argentina people only sit at the bar while they're waiting for a table. Instead of taking the table, we decided we'd have an early night so we could get up the next morning at a normal time.

I had told the group that I went to church last Sunday, and everyone talked about how they wanted to go with me this Sunday, even though no one else is Catholic. We found a church that's much closer to home than the Catedral, and it ended up being just me, Mary, and Melissa that went to Mass. When we arrived, we were approached by who I suppose was the Mass Coordinator, and she told us that since we were young and there were three of us, would we mind taking the gifts to the altar during the preparation of the gifts? After some confusion about our nationality, I told the Mass Coordinator that we would do it, ignoring the fact that neither Mary nor Melissa are Catholic nor familiar with the Mass and its rituals. With some guidance from the Mass Coordinator, we presented those gifts like we knew what we were doing the whole time.

Sunday evening ended with many games of solitaire played on my phone and a research project/presentation over the differences between Argentinean public and private schools. After class on Monday and lunch at Zona, I was off to do some shopping on my own! I'd been dying for a pair of boots, and Karie had left me with a list of recommended boot stores around Rosario. I set off on my own, peering at boots through windows, wishing that the cute boots I kept finding weren't $699 (pesos, not dollars. But still expensive!). I went back to the bookstore that Cain, Mary and I had found on Friday and bought a book called Te Invito a Creer (I Invite You to Believe). I read the introduction on Friday, and the author, Maunel Lozano, writes eloquently yet simply enough that I could understand. It looked like a fascinating book about the different realities that Manuel encounters while traveling around Argentina, and I'm really excited to start reading it! (Manuel also has this really cool TED Talks video where he discusses why he became interested in learning about different realities in Argentina, which you can watch here. You"ll have to turn on the captions since it's in Spanish, but if you have 20 minutes his story is really inspiring). I'm excited to have this piece of literature that was written and produced in Argentina so that I'll have a tangible memento of the language to bring home with me to practice reading in Spanish.

I also witnessed an attempted theft while at the bookstore! This guy came into the bookstore while I was checking out, and was just loitering near the front of the store. I could only see him out of the corner of my eye, but he was giving me the heebie jeebies. As I was finishing paying, he walked up to the woman working and tried to hand her some little cards, but she told him to stop loitering and get lost. So as he tried to leave the store, the alarm starts going off, and the woman working runs over and stops him. He pulls a book out of his bag, mumbling something about "how did that get in there?" and I didn't know what to do but I had already paid so I just kind of walked past them and left. As I was leaving, the worker yelled "Ladrón!" (thief!) and the guy came running out the door behind me, and I was afraid he was going to try and steal my bag out of my hand or something, but he didn't. It was just really creepy and definitely not the way that situation would have been handled in the United States!

After I had checked out all the recommended shoe stores once, there were a few I thought had some promising boots, but I was tired and didn't feel like walking back into the same stores that I had visited already. So I made plans to go back Tuesday after classes. I decided to go on a walk for exercise, so I decided to eat the equivalent to Oreos for energy and left for my walk. I walked along the river and ended up in the Catedral de Nuestra Sra del Rosario, where I took some pictures of the catedral and shopped in the gift store. The lady working in the shop asked me what I was doing in Rosario, and when I told her I was studying Spanish in the university, she told me that I spoke Spanish very well! On my way home, I decided to take pictures along Tucumán, the street I live on, and I came across a shoe outlet where I found 2 pairs of boots that I really liked. I didn't have any more money on me and I needed to think about which boots I wanted, so I promised I would return and went home.

Today started out as a not so good day (only because I had class at 8am and it was freezing outside. Otherwise everything was fine). After class, Mary and I had plans to go to Starbucks for Frappuccino Happy Hour! We found out this weekend that Happy Hour had been going on for the last week and that today was the last day, so even though today was one of the coldest days we've had in Rosario, we made our way to Starbucks. On our way we stopped in the boot outlet I found yesterday and I bought a super cute pair of boots WITH A 25% DISCOUNT. Then we walked across the street and got grande dulce de leche frappuccinos for half price! In that moment I might have been enjoying the happiest day of my life! (that might also be an exaggeration. But it was seriously pretty happy.)

I didn't have any classes after lunch but I hung around the site and journaled while sitting by a warm fire and talking with the students from the other summer program. The day ended with a movie called Victoria, a documentary about a girl born in captivity during the Dirty War trying to find information on her biological parents. I finished my Spanish homework while at the site, so I had time for blogging AND going to bed early so I can get up round 2 of 8am class tomorrow. Unfortunately I don't have time to finish part 2 of this blog post tonight because I want to go to bed, but my mid(ish) program reflections will be posted soon!