Submitted by Aubrey Inkster on the 2017 winter session program in Argentina sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures…
If you ask anyone who knows me well, they will assuredly confirm that I like telling people that I have been traveling since before I was born. I say this because my mother is a well-conditioned world traveler, who in fact traveled around Europe for a few weeks while she was pregnant with me. Five passports later and here I am in Buenos Aires, Argentina, taking advantage of the opportunity to follow my wanderlust the furthest south I have ever been, and getting six academic credits out of it as well. Although, this isn’t my first time visiting a Spanish-speaking country, the local dialect of Argentina is somewhat different than other Latin American countries. While in most countries, the informal second person (you) pronunciation is spoken as “tú,” in Argentina they typically use “vos” instead. Verbs used in the second tense in Argentina are also conjugated slightly differently than in other countries. On top of that, they pronounce their “y”s and “ll”s with a “sh” sound, which is also slightly different than in other Spanish speaking countries. These slight differences created some confusion for me during the first few days here, since mi cerebro (my brain) was originally wired to a slightly different dialect of Spanish. It also made finding an Argentine SIM card for my phone slightly problematic as many of the employees in multiple different cellphone stores around the city looked at me like I was a stupid, American tourist when I used tú instead of vos to ask for assistance (they understood what I was saying, they just felt less obliged to help me).
Argentina has a history of foreign ethnocentrism, in which throughout the past Spaniards and later governments alike went on campaigns to try and attract Europeans to immigrate to the country, while oppressing and killing the poor, indigenous, and minority populations of the country. In saying this, I don’t necessarily mean that inequality is still directly evident today, more so that as I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires, there are quite a lot of Anglo-Saxon/European looking people around. in my opinion, the only Spanish-speaking country where you would find more European looking people living there would be Spain. Coined “the Paris of South America,” the architecture also resembles that of various European cities I have been to in the past such as Paris (how ironic), Rome and Barcelona to name a few.
So far, I am very pleased with not only my fellow classmates on the program, but also with the professors who came along to teach us. It hasn’t even been a week and I already feel like I’ve known them all for years, maybe that’s just the type of person I am though. Our second day here, we went on a tour of the city to various districts such as one of the main city centers where the Teatro Colon and the giant Obelisk of Buenos Aires stands, Puerto Madero, the old city center of La Plaza Mayo (Masho in Argentine Spanish) where La Casa Rosada (the president’s office) and La Catedral Metropolitana are located, and to La Boca, which was the city’s original port way back in the day. Visiting the district of La Boca was interesting because the colors, architecture and history of this barrio (neighborhood) of Buenos Aires resemble much more those of Central American cities and other South American cities. I would list a few, but many different Latin American countries have cities with the same names from country to country. Either way, the neighborhood of La Boca is where the Tango dance originates from, which is very characteristic of Latin American culture in general.
On Friday, we went out to the town of Tigre, right outside of Buenos Aires, and then took a boat about an hour and half up through a string of rivers to a little villa along the water with horses, canoes and trails galore. Tigre is located in the delta between Argentina and Uruguay, and similar to the Mississippi Delta of Louisiana, I felt as if I was on the bayou. It was named Tigre (tiger) by the Spaniards because of the jaguars that used to live there. Sadly, they have since gone extinct in the area. After the second day of the program, I had come down with a fever and a cough, so leaving the city and getting out into the fresh air was much needed for me. We spent the day here, having lunch together and splitting up into groups to go on various excursions around that section of the delta (I went hiking and canoeing).
I am very lucky to say that I have a very nice and relaxed host family. This makes things especially easier for me since I am the only student out of the whole group who doesn’t have a roommate to directly confide with for the duration of the winter session. I live with a mother (Belén), a father (Juan), two of their daughters (Florencia and Belén), and one of their sons (Matias). They have four other children, but they all live elsewhere. Saturday was the youngest son’s birthday and to celebrate we all went out to their house in the countryside in a small town called Bella (besha) vista. Here, I met the rest of their children and once again cleansed my body, mind and spirit with the fresh air of el campo (country). Although it was the youngest son’s birthday, he turned 23 so I am still the youngest member of the household by a few years. Although my sickness put a slight damper on things for me at the beginning of the program, I believe that I have moved past the worst of it, and feel ambitious and eager to see what the rest of the program has in store for me regardless. This coming week we will be taking our first set of tango lessons and going to the area of Las Pampas where the gauchos (Argentinian cowboys) roam.