Gualeguaychu!

Gualeguaychu! or, Argentina's answer to Carnival.

If you don't want to be stampeded to death, or you don't want to pay lavish amounts of money just to sit at the back of a football stadium to watch the carnival parade then go to Gualeguaychu instead. One girl who had gone to carnival in Rio that year as well said this one was better because you could actually see what was going on.

Gualeguay is about a two hour bus ride north of Buenos Aires on the rio de la plata, close to one of the border crossings with Uruguay. Carnival there consists of massive beach parties, by far the highlight for our group, and then later every night the carnival parade at the fair grounds.

I have never been to the real deal in Brazil, but I don't really see how anything could be more lavish. All of the floats were at least 20 feet high and resembled floating palaces. Our close proximity to them increased the experience because we were able to appreciate the detail, and not just the overall shape as we would have been able to if we were much farther away.

The Adventure Begins!!

I feel like that is the title of a movie?

After four months of LSAT and personal statement hell I finally emerged on the other side, cowed, but not broken. To reward myself I decided to do absolutely nothing for about three weeks, which kind of fun but I found myself subconsciously dissecting paragraphs to find flaws so it really wasn't that fun. I decided that instead of languishing in agony until March when the decisions start rolling in I would get out of the country with all due haste and go somewhere warm.

I arrived in BA tired, disoriented and feeling a bit freeze dried, all the usual from a 10 hour flight. I somehow, looking back I have no idea, managed to go look at apartments that first day and found one that I think its going to be quite awesome. It is in Las Canitas, a relatively new and posh barrio beyond Palermo. A quick overview of the main different barrios in ten words or less:

Palermo - Young, trendy, bars, nightlife, parks

Racoleta - old women in fur coats, posh, classy nightlife, expensive shopping

San Telmo - Old/historic, antiques, tango

La Boca - Football, bright colors, tourists, dangerous

Downtown - Downtown...

Las Canitas - upscale, green

Others - too far from downtown for me to get to class and wake up at reasonable hour

Anyhoo,

This apartment is in a nice, safe area, close to the main subte line and within walking distance of Palermo Soho, where many of the bars and restaurants are. It is in an old two story house, with four bedrooms, one of which is shared by a couple, bringing the occupants up to five. The floors are all red spanish tile, and the interior design is indigenous. There are two cats, one black and one tabby, both of which are already sleeping on my bed, but the best feature of the place: a roof deck!! Its actually quite big, with potted plants everywhere. There is a huge jacaranda tree that covers half of it a nice Parilla (grill).

My plan for the next four months are as follows - take lots of spanish classes and probably fail miserably, then go to Torres del Paine for a week and hopefully Chile for a week. My padres are coming to Salta in the middle of march and staying until June, so I will hopefully be able to spend time up there as well.

So far most of my adventures have been with cabbies - one taught me how to identify fake bills and the other one told me I was going to marry an argentine.