Politics
This probably isn't true but one of the exchange students told me they were watching Fox News, the guardian of fair and balanced news, and it said "Obama + Biden = Osama bin Laden, Coincidence?" And then, John McCain chose the Sarah something the governor from Alaska as VP. Let's be honest for a second, the republican party isn't altruistically trying to advance women empowerment. They are trying to piggy back on the success of Hilary Clinton to possibly suck away female votes from the Democrats. It seems like the Republicans realize that in order to win the election they are going to have to pretend like they are more liberal to snatch up democratic votes. I feel like the United States was stagnant during the presidency of Gee Dub, and I fear that if we foolishly elect McCain our power will slip further. With our deficit, the war, and a rumbling economy we can't afford any slip up and China and the EU are more than willing to pick up any slack we give them. It's interesting to note that in the 1960's a well known historian/policital scientist Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a book describing the fall of the USSR, and sure enough it fell by the late 80's. This author wrote another book in the 1980's, this time he described how the structure of the United States was unsustainable and it too would fall. Fuck. Well obviously all empires fall eventually due to "long-term structural problems: ethnic unrest, economic crisis, declining legitimacy, and the military burden": Greece, Rome, Britain, but I'm not trying to see the US fall for another couple hundred years. Alright enough of politics.
I had a great week on the whole. I'm steadily understanding more and more of what's going on around me. I will always have an accent, I've resigned myself to that because I have met many Argentineans that have been studing English for many years and their accent is very detectable. I always try imagine what the Spanish version of me would sound like if they were speaking English and they had the exact same level as my Spanish. It's probably sounds pretty bad. Today in the supermarket I had a very simple question so I asked a lady for help in Spanish and she tried to answer me in broken broken English. I told her that I understand Spanish in Spanish but she kept trying to explain it in terrible English. I don't know what to make of this.
But back to the theme of a good week, I did a group project today with three Argentineans and I actually contributed some ideas in Spanish that weren't retarded. I still get dominated in my Business Case class where there are class discussiones, though. Probably not going to be able to do very well in those until November. Yesterday I went to an American themed party at somebody's apartment with Argentineans and exchange students. We played Kings in Spanish (rules don't make as much sense when they don't rhyme, except "dos es para vos" translates perfectly for "two is for you"), and later we played beer pong. There was a catastrophic flaw with the beer pong in that the cups were not the universal standard red cups. We had cups. They were red; however, they were about a third of the correct size. What does this mean for a seasoned player such as myself? Well, normally I aim for the cup I want and I'm generally pretty close, with baby red cups your degree of error is signifcantly less and luck is much much more of a factor. I rimmed out so many times its not even funny. So in the end, myself and a tri-Delt from UPENN ended up losing to a Beta from UPENN and an Argentinean. De-va-sta-ting. And I didn't have a chance for salvation because we had to leave for the boliche. I hate losing. Alright, I'm over it. Last night during the prefunk, (translation guide: Argentina "pre", East Coast "Pre-party", France "Before" (said with a French accent, I kid you not) or "pre-chauffe"), I made the mistake of Triple Threating. In case you are unfamiliar with the term Triple Threating it means I drank beer, wine, and hard alcohol. The combination is great for achieving the level of intoxication needed for a boliche, but side effects may include feeling like a piece of shit for the whole next day no matter what you do. Todavia me duele la cabeza. Don't worry Mom, I go out once a week.
I have my first soccer game tomorrow. I had one last week but I couldn't go because we changed apartments. The team has like 20 people so we'll see if I play but it's nice to get invited to the game because there are around 30 people at practice so not everyone can come. There is also a intramural league within San Andres for soccer 7 a side. That alone is a testament to the popularity of soccer in Argentina because San Andres only has 1600 people yet enough people interested in soccer to create a 7 v 7 men's leauge. We've created a team of foreigners. Legitamately we have 5 good players and then 3 that were space fillers. Also we lack a true goalie which could be bad. Our strategy is to have a solid organized defense (something Argentineans lack) and to score goals too I suppose. Mid-terms are in three weeks and I guess they are a big deal. The school doesn't have classes for 2 weeks so that you can devote your time to studying. Yay. For my international relations class for the mid-term there will be 10 questions which you will be given ahead of time. Then when you come to the mid-term each person reaches into a bag to see which question they will answer for the next THREE HOURS. That means I have to know 10 questions well enough to answer them in 3 hours. That's 30 hours of knowledge. I'll keep you posted.
HUSKY FOOTBALL kicks off tomorrow. Too bad it will probably be impossible to watch the game because FSN is garbage. I'm told I can stream the radio feed online but it's not the same. There's a guy down here from USC and we're going to watch the UW USC game together when it comes in a feeble attempt to recover what we are missing. That means I only have one season left of Husky Football.
Ok, I can't think of anything else to say. I'll let you know when I can. Until then if you have time to kill, I recommend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs and if you like that watch the sequel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-3qncy5Qfk&feature=related
later.
I had a great week on the whole. I'm steadily understanding more and more of what's going on around me. I will always have an accent, I've resigned myself to that because I have met many Argentineans that have been studing English for many years and their accent is very detectable. I always try imagine what the Spanish version of me would sound like if they were speaking English and they had the exact same level as my Spanish. It's probably sounds pretty bad. Today in the supermarket I had a very simple question so I asked a lady for help in Spanish and she tried to answer me in broken broken English. I told her that I understand Spanish in Spanish but she kept trying to explain it in terrible English. I don't know what to make of this.
But back to the theme of a good week, I did a group project today with three Argentineans and I actually contributed some ideas in Spanish that weren't retarded. I still get dominated in my Business Case class where there are class discussiones, though. Probably not going to be able to do very well in those until November. Yesterday I went to an American themed party at somebody's apartment with Argentineans and exchange students. We played Kings in Spanish (rules don't make as much sense when they don't rhyme, except "dos es para vos" translates perfectly for "two is for you"), and later we played beer pong. There was a catastrophic flaw with the beer pong in that the cups were not the universal standard red cups. We had cups. They were red; however, they were about a third of the correct size. What does this mean for a seasoned player such as myself? Well, normally I aim for the cup I want and I'm generally pretty close, with baby red cups your degree of error is signifcantly less and luck is much much more of a factor. I rimmed out so many times its not even funny. So in the end, myself and a tri-Delt from UPENN ended up losing to a Beta from UPENN and an Argentinean. De-va-sta-ting. And I didn't have a chance for salvation because we had to leave for the boliche. I hate losing. Alright, I'm over it. Last night during the prefunk, (translation guide: Argentina "pre", East Coast "Pre-party", France "Before" (said with a French accent, I kid you not) or "pre-chauffe"), I made the mistake of Triple Threating. In case you are unfamiliar with the term Triple Threating it means I drank beer, wine, and hard alcohol. The combination is great for achieving the level of intoxication needed for a boliche, but side effects may include feeling like a piece of shit for the whole next day no matter what you do. Todavia me duele la cabeza. Don't worry Mom, I go out once a week.
I have my first soccer game tomorrow. I had one last week but I couldn't go because we changed apartments. The team has like 20 people so we'll see if I play but it's nice to get invited to the game because there are around 30 people at practice so not everyone can come. There is also a intramural league within San Andres for soccer 7 a side. That alone is a testament to the popularity of soccer in Argentina because San Andres only has 1600 people yet enough people interested in soccer to create a 7 v 7 men's leauge. We've created a team of foreigners. Legitamately we have 5 good players and then 3 that were space fillers. Also we lack a true goalie which could be bad. Our strategy is to have a solid organized defense (something Argentineans lack) and to score goals too I suppose. Mid-terms are in three weeks and I guess they are a big deal. The school doesn't have classes for 2 weeks so that you can devote your time to studying. Yay. For my international relations class for the mid-term there will be 10 questions which you will be given ahead of time. Then when you come to the mid-term each person reaches into a bag to see which question they will answer for the next THREE HOURS. That means I have to know 10 questions well enough to answer them in 3 hours. That's 30 hours of knowledge. I'll keep you posted.
HUSKY FOOTBALL kicks off tomorrow. Too bad it will probably be impossible to watch the game because FSN is garbage. I'm told I can stream the radio feed online but it's not the same. There's a guy down here from USC and we're going to watch the UW USC game together when it comes in a feeble attempt to recover what we are missing. That means I only have one season left of Husky Football.
Ok, I can't think of anything else to say. I'll let you know when I can. Until then if you have time to kill, I recommend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs and if you like that watch the sequel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-3qncy5Qfk&feature=related
later.
Comments
But I still think you're right. American chauvinism and laziness are at their peak, and the general consensus is that a lot of money needs to be poured into the education system to keep up with the inevitably rising China and India.
Of course the Republicans are going to piggyback off of Palin! But from what I've been able to gather, she's the type of conservative that will fight to keep women as second class citizens in the US -- how appealing do you think this will be to women voters (vis-a-vis Hillary)?