look what i bought yesterday!

Tucuman

so I'm coming home in an hour and a half! but i have a little time now and i wanted to write about tucuman, where i went for Easter week. because it was crazy. this is what i wrote when I got back from it: this weekend was a pretty big adventure. like adventure adventure. it makes everything i've done so far not even seem remotely adventurous. it began on wednesday night when after not sleeping for a week i threw a pair of pants, 2 shirts, and my sleeping bag in my backpack and took the 18 hour night bus to Tucuman to see Gonzalo but i didn't sleep then either because i was talking to a woman from Buenos Aires who lives in my neighborhood. so its been literally a week without hardly sleeping and i'm imagining a weekend relaxing with his family or whatever for easter but i get there and he tells me he's organized for us to go camping with some friends for a few days. which i think sounds great until we get to his friends house to plan when we're leaving and what we need and they start talking about where we'll go. and gonzalo asks if we can go to siambon. and his friend says, yeah but it will be about an extra 8 hour hike! an extra 8 hours! that means we're already planning on doing at least 8 hours! and i don't have any shoes or anything. but whatever! so we go. and meet his friends on the bus and they are old! like could have been my dads! and we got off the bus and the first thing we did was cross a river up to our waists! and i only had one pair of paints! and then we crossed the river 28 more times! but holy shit it was fun. so it was me and four boys, or i guess they were pretty legitamately men. fording rivers, camping in mountains, having mate with mountain people, talking about neitsche. etc. man it was beautiful and so great to be out of the city and in nature. i was super weird and withdrawn and just in myself and the landscape but it was really relaxing and pretty much the craziest thing i've ever done in terms of outdoors excursions. and the mountain people who's fields we camped in were really interesting and totally matriarchal and had lived remote in the mountains for generations and generations. i was generally too tired by the end of the day to ever talk to them but it was sick to show up at someone's house in the middle of the mountains after walking without seeing anyone for 8 hours and go into a hut and sit with a bunch of women cooking over a fire and drink mate with them. we spent a bunch of freeeezing nights shaking with cold and not sleeping at all so never sleeping until the sun came up and wasting half the day afterwards trying to wake up. but that is never a problem for me. and we swam in the river and just drank water right from it (and i don't have parasites!) and man i don't even know what to say. it was probably the most bizarre weekend of my life talking about che and philosophy and religion and sufjan stevens and having lucid dreams and life discussions and being the only girl and only non argentine, non spanish speaker, the weakest, the youngest, the only one not from tucuman, the only one not super into outdoors activities and hiking. i don't even know, but they took care of me and i felt sort of like the daughter/princess but it was good and they were impressed that i made it and we had fun. then the last night we set out too late so we had to cross the river up to our waists at night 8 times. and a rock fell on my foot and i was wearing gonzalo's mom's shoes which were way too big and there were lots of rocks in them and they hurt a lot but i ignored it until we finally got back and found a campsite and i turned on the lights and what i thought was mud all over my feet was actually blood. eeeew. gross! i don't even know. walking in the clouds and i found a giant snake! and on the last day i found out that gonzalo's friends really were old. one was 38 and one was 21 in 1992 when for six years he rode on bike all through south america and the usa and canada. one was 22 and gonzalo is 28 so it wasn't like everyone was super old, but when would i have ever thought i would be camping with dudes who were 18 years older than me. that's weird. but that is just what happens when you are out of the us i guess. so that's tucuman in breif. i didn't take too many pictures but here are a few.

tucuman tucuman tucuman! i'm excited. and look, even though i quit so it doesn't really matter, one of the websites that i reviewed was really happy with my review:
March 26, 2007.
"Killer Startups posts a review of Kumquat; without having spoken to us, they seem to have nailed the concept pretty much dead-on (we begin to think we may actually be communicating)"

oh yeah, and i quit that lame internet job. what was i thinking? i need a job where i am out in the city and speaking spanish not spending my days on the internet writing in english. (but if you want to read funny reviews of websites that i wrote you can go to killerstartups.com!) so i have 10 resumes in spanish and next week when i get back i am going to go pass them out and find something to do.

I'm going to Tucuman in the north on wednesday to visit my friend Gonzalo for a week! I met him in ecuador and we travelled in colombia and he makes documentaries and is coming to live in buenos aires soon but right now i get to visit him and his family in Tucuman for easter and go camping in the mountains! Also I am most likely coming home to maryland for a week. what! holy shit, no way! i know. probably the 21st of april to the 30th. so you have to come see me. because also most likely i am not coming home again until christmas. as in staying here for another semester and graduating one semester late from bard. yeah, kind of a big decision. but really not so big. haven't i known i was going to decide that forever? being here for only four months just makes no sense among a million other reasons that i can tell you if you ask me. so those are the big pieces of news. also exciting: i found 10 gold beautiful picture frames in the trash last night that i am excited to make art in. today i went to a giant design/fashion expo at the convention center kind of by accident but it was entertaining. and i had indian food for the first time in months and i randomly met a bard graduate who lives here in buenos aires!

i love buenos aires so much right now. where else could you have a horrible headache and be overwhelmingly tired but still happily stay up until 4 in the morning without even realizing it was happening? one of my other colombian friends had some people over tonight so i said i was exhausted but would make an appearance since he lives on my same street 8 blocks away. so i got there and what were they making? arepas! which i ate every morning on the beach in colombia with ola and have been missing. and the people here are just soo nice. i didn't know anyone there except juan but they all sat and talked with me as if i was their main friend and the reason they were having a party. and every slang word they used they stopped and explained exactly what it meant and why they say it. so we sat speaking mangled spanish all night sucking on wads of coca leaves brewing in our cheeks to keep us awake. and then i left and walked home and ran into a group of wasted kids who gave me fernet branker and walked me to my apartment and endearingly called me a mother fucking asshole so they could show off thier mastery of english curse words and invite me to their birthday parties. buenos aires, en serio, te encanta.

i played soccer today! with this women's league in san telmo. and i was so bad but it was soo good. it was on turf outside but underneath a 10 lane highway (they use the spaces under highways really innovatively here. even for fancy restaurants!). i only had a coffee and a piece of bread before going though and so now i feel a little sick and exhausted but! they play every tuesday and saturday and were totally down with us coming and playing with them every week. so this is what my hopefully coming together life looks like right now: 2 long days of stimulating classes a week, soccer twice a week, teaching english classes twice a week, going to concerts every friday, working for killer startups internet review thing 3 days a week, hopefully doing something with this organic garden (called la huerta orgazmica) a few times a week, making stencils and collages with friends on the side, baking and cooking once a week with roommates, seeing free movies at the art museums and hopefully figuring something out with this printshop. shit, that sounds pretty good.

address

this is my address:
KellyAnne Mifflin.
Azcuénaga 1064, 8A.
CP: 1115, Capital Federal de Buenos Aires.
Argentina

last night after a long long day of classes i told all three people i know to come over and i baked a peach apple pie and chocolate banana cake. but at ten thirty no one i had invited had showed up and it was just one of those awkward nights where you sit around talking in english to lots of international students about boring things like why they are in argentina so i decided to leave and go to a concert even though it was technically my party. so i left and went to this really funny really fun surfpunk show with some argentine bands and also this guy called daddy-o of los straightjackets (i know you guys know all about surfpunk and know who he is of course). he wears a mexican wrestling mask and speaks really really fast made up spanish that no one can understand while brazilian surf videos and movies from the 50's play in the background. so it was totally worth it but 10 minutes after i left to go to the concert i got a million texts saying that all of these people kept showing up saying they were my friends and i wasn't there. but 3 hours later i came home and they had all just decided to stay and eat dessert even though i wasn't there so we got to have a party anyway. and then totally coincidentally my friend sean had been invited to a party in the basement of an apartment building on azcuenaga 1064. my building! so at 3:30 am we ventured downstairs and found a door with ricky martin blasting out of it and after ringing the bell for a half hour finally got inside and it turns out it was a bachelor party! not with strippers or anything but i did see the groom making out with some girl in the kitchen. so that part was not so great but then i forgot about it and we just danced all night to bad/great latin music with porteños who didn't even care that some weird kids had just knocked on the door and come joined their party. then at 4:30am some old people came in and said hi to everyone and then went into another room and it turns out that this guy who's house it was lives with his parents. who were in the other room sleeping but no one turned the music off or anything and we all kept dancing until 5:30. so a very argentine night. and i met some vecinos. also i found out about this organic garden in the city that is open to anyone to come work and hang out at! they have concerts and movies and stuff too but mostly it would just be soo great to get to be around plants and people into organic gardens and eating fresh food! i can't wait to go. except it's really a shitty situation and they've been there for 6 years or something but don't actually own the land and now the government wants it for a parking lot or road or something so they have to camp out in tents every night and fight a lot to not have it taken away. but it's still really exciting that it exists. now i'm gonna go do some reading and have dinner with some friends at a vegetarian restaurant in san telmo. i'm really really happy being in buenos aires right now.

i hope you are not offended. its just so we have an excuse to bake a lot and wear thrift shop dresses and because we all miss and love our abuelas so much!

oh and i have another roommate named rocky from canada but i'm not really excited about it so i'm not going to write about him. but here are a few pictures of my other roommates. anne (blonde), sarah, and Jeppe. we made tapas all night and got dressed up and ate them at midnight.

ok so there are about a million things to write about. 1. i got a job! not so sure how i feel about it but i'm gonna try it for a little while. my friend rosie is basically my boss and its for this company called killer startups that writes reviews of startup internet companies so i have to look at lots of webpages and write whether they seem like they're going to bomb or would be a good idea to invest in. the good part is that they're all kind of interesting websites so it hopefully will be a little fun. and i do it from my computer whenever. and i get $8 an hour which is mad dough for buenos aires. and maybe i will start doing graphic design work for them instead. obviously i am totally unqualified for all of this but apparently that is irrevelant. so we'll see. 2. i went to the class i was super excited about, sociology of art, and it totally totally sucked. so i'm gonna drop that but the religion one surprised me and is really interesting and taught by these two young really excited professors. they walked in wearing a beastie boys t shirt and dirty sneakers and i can't understand a word they say cause they speak so casually and like they have food in their mouths. but judging from the enunciation and hand gestures i think its gonna be really interesting and if i get through it my spanish will be soo good. also already the professors are on strike so classes are cancelled on wednesday. 3. i met this amazing person named sean who is sarah robinson's friend and we went and saw The Evens (you know, ian mackaye's new band) and it was so good. probably the best concert i've been to in latin america. cause it's so rare that big underground bands can come here since it's so far and expensive but it was so fun and good and thought out and it was exciting to see Argentines into a dc band. and afterwards we went out and met these argentine girls who dance tango in the street for tourists in la boca on caminito (remember mom) and its cool to be able to look at those tourist areas from a different perspective. 4. and then yesterday was the 31st anniversary of the military golpe del estado in '76 so there was a really big demonstration at plaza congreso and plaza de mayo which was phenomenal. really different than any protest i've bee to before and really interesting to see especially compared to santiago. for one there were no police! no police interaction at all with the demonstrators. i didn't realize how used to tear gas and riot gear and molotov coctails i had gotten but it was really nice being here. the left is super divided in buenos aires so there were millions of millions of different organizations present and everyone there was part of some group or other, which was sort of intimidating at first but then we talked to a bunch of interesting people and joined up with some students and it was ok. i don't know, it's always really intense to think about the desaparecidos and actually be in the spaces where extreme acts of violence happened and see pictures of people my age who went to class one day and then were gone. but inspiring to see so many people still out and remembering and speaking out against it.

i just got done with my first day of classes which was surprisingly really really good. really long but i´m hopeful too. the ethnicity one in the morning is going to be good (although two thirds of the class are extranjeras from germany) and the argentine art history one, although almost unbearably long is exicting because we get to spend the next three classes in the bellas artes museum instead of the classroom. its a little ridiculous that i´m taking an upper level art history seminar in spanish when i´ve only ever taken one art history class ever and don´t know what any of the terms mean but i guess that´s what makes it fun. and tomorrow i have a job interview!

apartment!...

so i'm all moved in. i stayed up all night on friday and painted my room blue and i love it. you can see the before and after pictures. we're still looking for a 4th roommate. the colombians were back with plans to all there live in the tiny back room but the other girls thought that would be too much so now we're back to looking for someone else. i am a little disappointed because this means i won't be living with spanish speakers and also the apartment is so huge it feels really empty with only 4 people living in it. but maybe it will be less chaotic. ...

Classes start wednesday for me. 9am to 9pm. it's a lot. i'm taking 4 which are: sociology and anthropology of art, argentine art history, theory and practice in anthropology of religion in latin america, and anthropology, politics and economics of ethnicity. probably i'll drop one since each class is either 4 or 6 hours all at once and that is a lot of lecture in spanish. The filosophy and letters "campus" where I am is pretty special. It's a converted tobacco factory and is probably the most disorganized place ever with millions of conversed stringy haired kids running around all day handing out flyers for communist concerts, protests at the us embassy, miming workshops and a lot of other things that make me laugh at how stereotypically it is the facultad de filosofia y letras. by which i mean its fun being there but also impossible to ever know what's going on and today i was trying to check my e-mail in the computer lab and realized that i was actually in the middle of a class and had to get up and run out. and i got lost for 2 hours on the bus trying to get to campus so i have no idea how i will get there on time on wednesday. but i guess that's what being in a new city means. I surprisingly know a whole lot of people here and am finding lots of stuff to do. i went out for a drink with this guy i met at a bookstore and his good friend owns a printmaking workshop and he's going to introduce me and see if i can get a job or just help/hang out there. which would be phenomenal. and its still warm enough to eat breakfast on my balcony every morning and wear dresses and eat icecream. actually i'm here in Freddo's, my favorite icecream place, which is only 2 blocks from my apartment and has free wireless internet even if you don't buy an icecream (which obviously never happens)....ok, its been 2 hours and clearly these pictures are not loading. someday, sorrry.