El piquete

13/09/12

Tonight I got to go to a protest against Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the president of Argentina.  And it was awesome.  Although in the last election Kirschner was elected with 54% of the vote, Buenos Aires is very anti-Kirchner, and to sum it up, she is popular with the lower class but not the middle or upper.  A lot of her policies in my opinion are semi-communistic and the impression I’ve gotten is that many people think that she thinks she’s a dictator.  Just a couple weeks ago she declared that September 24^th will be a national holiday so there is no work or school.  While this seems cool, my host mom says that there are already way too many holidays, “we have to work at some point!”  And most recently, Kirchner has supposedly suggested amending the constitution so that she could be reelected for a third term. 

So the protest tonight wasn’t for a specific thing, just to protest Kirchner’s policies in general.  I haven’t really been to a protest before, but it was cool to see how the Argentines did it.  If you ever go to an Argentinian rally, this is what you need:

1)      Most important of all, you need “caserolas” aka dishes to make the biggest racket possible.  This can be anything from a metal mixing bowl, which is what we had, to saucepans, to trash can lids, and I even saw some giant porcelain coffee mugs. 

2)      You of course must bring a spoon of some sort to bash against the caserolas.  

3)      You can bring a “cartel,” a poster with your message.  My favorite was “Diosa: No te tenemos miedo,” meaning “Goddess, we’re not scared of you.”  Haha

4)      Your singing voice.  The Argentines were very prepared with songs that they sang together and then even all started jumping at one point.  It was impressive. 

It was interesting to see all these people, but we were only in front of the president’s house.  The main part of the rally though was planned for the center of the city.  Just imagine thousands of people marching through Washington DC with pots and pans.  We saw it on the TV once we got home and that was all the news what covering our whole dinner which is saying something since they typically change stories practically every minute. 

Other random things I found interesting:

Ø  Planes were flying over the President’s house….definitely wouldn’t see that in DC

Ø  The property was HUGE… we must’ve walked almost 10 minutes down just one side of the property.  It was surrounded by a concrete wall though so we never saw much of the actual house, but I’m sure it’s huge too.

Ø  Although Kirchner’s house is outside the city, it doesn’t seem that far that she needs a helicopter to take her to work.  Although I’m not sure if she typically uses it or not, but I know it’s there for her. 

Ø  Cars all over the city around were honking like crazy.

Ø  Even if you don’t go to the actual rally, you can just go out on your porch and bang on some pots haha

Clowns, Prostitutes, and Llamas: Just do it the Argentian Way

11/09/12

So I just have a mixture of funny things that I’ve seen or experienced the last few days, and as I think of all these, I just think of the Argentines living by the lifeguarding phrase “Make it work.” haha

Prostitutes:      My friend Meigan had told me about the transvestite prostitutes in the Palermo Park and we even talked about it again today in my Spanish language class.  Still I did not expect to be seeing them tonight.  As I was telling my host mom about going running recently she told me that we should try out the Palermo Park and we could get a ride with her there tonight.  Being the curious person I am, I immediately was like “OMG this is where the transvestite prostitutes are isn’t it??”  …and then realized how strange it was that I had just asked my host mom that.  Thankfully, she knew exactly what I was talking about and I explained how Meigan had seen them in the park when she was running, one of them without a shirt even.  I found it strange that the fact that there are prostitutes in a main park is common knowledge because it seems like the police would stop this pretty quickly.  But my host mom just explained it that the police allow it to keep them out of the neighborhoods by all the houses where they used to go.  As shocking as it was to run past a group of three or four prostitutes in a giant running park, it does make sense to a point.  I’m just glad they were mostly clothed when I was there.  (Don’t worry though, there were TONS of people running in the park this evening and it somehow didn’t seem dangerous at all.)

Clown:  I MIGHT have a better story for this later, but now I would just like to say that they have a clown seminar at the hospital to keep the doctors more upbeat, etc.  I tried to go with the other volunteers but it had been cancelled haha

Llamas:  Someone asked me if there are a lot of llamas here.  While I do have a sweater with llamas on it, I live in the city so I really don’t know if there are actually lots of llamas here.  At a lot of the parks during the day they have miniature pony rides for kids, and yesterday as we passed a park (same one as above actually!) on the bus, I saw not only a pony saddled up but also a llama!!! I would love to say that I’ve ridden a llama…..

Una vista del hospital

05/09/12

            Today I went to start volunteering at a public hospital.  What you first ought to know though is that healthcare here is free, to quote my oral production teacher “Ab-so-lu-ta-mente gratis.”  The principle that if you’re sick in some way, you have to first show papers and fill out forms of proof of insurance, etc. just isn’t accepted here because you still shouldn’t have to “walk around with a limp your whole life because you don’t have the money to get a needed treatment.”  While I’m not saying that Obamacare is necessarily the right solution for us, she does have a point.  How cruel it must seem to them that we don’t have the compassion to care for people that are truly sick or in pain, especially since in a lot of cases, it’s no one’s fault. 

            Anyways, there are public hospitals here that are completely free and according to my teacher, people even come here by the busload from other countries in South America just to get free healthcare.  However, this makes for crowded hospitals and you must schedule appointments months ahead of time in the hospitals.  There are also private clinics that you can go to if you have the money to pay for them or if you have some sort of insurance.  I can’t say I’ve thoroughly researched how this part of it works, but all of what I’ve said before I’ve heard from my teacher and some from my host mom and her daughter, so I feel like that’s pretty good a pretty good source. 

            The hospital I went to is a public one, and walking up to it, I felt like I was going to a hospital in a tropical location, I think it was a mix of the trees in the yard and the slated windows on the building.  I can definitely say though it didn’t look like a massive US hospital, especially with a bunch of separate buildings.  The part of the hospital I went though was old but nice, BUT I think what set this apart from the US hospitals what it lacked: chemical smells, extreme sanitation, white walls, and thousands of beeping monitors, phones, and machines.  Maybe it was just the area I was in, but I guess I’ll find that out when I go back to actually do the volunteer work next week. 

            After meeting with the volunteer coordinator (who I successfully talked to and understood for half an hour maybe J), we went to observe a meeting between all the workers in the department.  I don’t know how many people work in the department, but I felt like everyone was there-doctors, nurses, social workers, coordinators-probably 25 people.  For the next hour or hour and a half we sat in a big room as the doctors presented patients’ cases, not just their medical conditions, but also their familial support, etc.  It was definitely different than anything I’ve seen before, but kind of cool to see everyone get on the same page and have a basic history of all the patients.  And as a side note, as we had this meeting the staff passed around a cup of mate and took turns drinking from the same straw….kinda cracked me up to see 20+ medical professionals “share their germs” as they say…it’s not something people worry about so much here.  Maybe it’s their somewhat lack of real winter that makes them not worry about getting sick here. Haha

            I actually also found this website with pictures of the hospital and it happens to be the department that I’m working in and a lot of the people I was with today in the meeting, if you’re interested.  J

http://paliativo-femeba.org/instituciones/ucp-hospital-tornu

¡¡Sorpresa!!

            So if you’ve read my blogs, you know “piropos” are pretty much a daily occurrence here.  (The funniest I've heard would have to be "Los Angeles"=the angels and "Mommy")  Since my roommate and I are both blondes, we attract a lot of attention walking down the street, but it’s actually worse when we’re walking alone.  And it’s more than just the piropos…women will look at us too.  I’ve had a lady shoot dirty looks at me, and I definitely wasn’t wearing anything super tight, short, or anything uncommon here.  Also, when people are on the sidewalks handing out pamphlets, they often will just switch over to English even though I haven’t said a word.  Finally, last week I reached my final straw as I was walking to school.  I was about to cross the street and a woman about 50 was walking toward me and just started staring at me, as I got closer, she came to a dead stop in the middle of the crosswalk and just stared at me as I passed and then turned her head to watch me even as I passed.  I understand that we are clearly foreigners here but there’s a difference between looking and being rude.  I just feel like a zoo animal sometimes.  So we made up our minds over dinner to finally do what we had been joking about doing ever since we got here……“Cheers to good decisions”….

 

After a week of shopping all over town for non-permanent dye, and the clerk asking us, “why would you want to dye your hair?” and just walking away….we finally found it!!!! (I was a bit excited)

   

Attempt #1:

Not as dark as we wanted…..

Attempt #2 turned out to be more what we were going for J

I'm still somewhat blonde and Kristen is definitely a redhead but we're hoping that people might think we went to that color on purpose.  Just an "experiment" to see if we can blend in a bit more with just a change in hair color....Now this is supposed to be gone in 6-12 washes…We’ll see!! :D