Argentina

So I watched the presidential debates and I was quite surprised with all the cold-war type talk. Forming a "league of democracies" that excludes Russia and China? Really? What the FUCK!!! Are we really trying to have another Cold War? Unbelievable. I think the US is going to have a difficult future if we start going back to that mentality. Especially since Russia and China will be economic powerhouses in no time at all. It was very clear in the debate the rhetoric that each candidate was trying to put forth. Obama tried to make the point that McCain is another George Bush, and McCain tried to make the point that he is not, and also that Obama is too naive to understand the concepts at hand. It was actually quite ironic when McCain said naivety because he pronounced it wrong. It was more of a "nigh ehv it tAY." Not important. The candidates had some good arguments but a lot of it seemed to be pretty shallow general stuff that is impossible to prove or disp...

Before I launch into my journey to get my package in the mail I would just like to give props to Brandon, Valley, Noodles, and Valicoff for making the Tour de FRAt possible last night. Basically, last night I was carried around on his laptop from room to room and I got to talk to various people from the frat through Skype. We both had video cameras so it was official. I pretty much felt like one of those celebrity-heads-in-a-jar you see on Futurma. He just carted me around from room to room, it was technology at it's finest. Ok, to the journey. I was very enterprising this morning, and although I had just 6 hours of sleep I pulled myself out of bed at 8 a.m. to go to the International Mail Center in Buenos Aires because the Harvard kid told me that the whole process takes a long time and it's best to arrive early(He had already done it because his Mom had sent him 3 boxes of his favorite cereal Cinnamon Toast Crunch, totally serious). Bread with dulce de leche, 3 cups of m...

It's been a while since I've made a meaningless list so here we go: 1) I understand the thought behind making toilet paper with cute drawing of puppies on it, but in practice, I just feel bad because I am wiping the cute puppies' faces in my poo. 2) I had my first mid-term today, my topic was selected at random and I had to answer how the inter war years between the First and Second World War marked the beginning of the decline of European dominance in International Relations. A pretty good question really. I wrote it in English and finished with 1 minute to spare. The professor speaks Spanish, English, French, and Arabic, any of which the students could answer in. 3) I received a note today saying I need to go pick up my package. Hope is not lost. 4) I bought three t-shirts today for $20 pesos each to add some variety to the 5 t-shirt rotation I have been sporting for the last 74 days. 5) Yesterday, my efforts to go to San Andrés to study were foiled by a train strike....

Well I've been studying all day. And I don't mean it in the exaggery complainy way, I mean, besides eating, and drinking mate, of course, I have been studying all day. Mate is crack for studying by the way. It's great. For some reason writing in my blog seemed like a good way to take a break from studying, not really sure why. The professor is a huge dick and didn't give us any help on what to study. Originally I thought he would give us the ten possible questions and then when we got to class it would be one of them. Instead, he gave us no questions, topics, or ideas of topics to focus on. What does that mean? About 200 years of international relations history which is quite a bit. It also means that 90% of what I am studying will be ultimately useless, except for maybe my eventual appearance on Jeopardy. Hopefully Alex Trebeck hasn't died by then. How old is he anyway... I digress. Before you give me a speech about not studying because I am in a forei...

Really going in cold to this blog. Not even really sure why I'm attempting a post when I don't have anything to say, but I will find something. By the beard of Zeus, I will. So the one thing I have learned from my International Relations class is that the US is a huge dick when it comes to foreign policy. I will give one example. After the WWII when the world was hungry for peace, we risked all out conflict in Korea with China and possibly even the USSR. We provoked war with North Korea with 1,274 border infringements until they declared war on South Korea. North Korea had un-American interests at heart you see... they wanted to have a free and open election to decide their future. The US knew that the puppet-American governement that protected capitalism's investements didn't have popular backing and would lose. Therfore, the US refused North Korea's push for free open elections. Freedom for all, a motto that is so often touted, but only when it's con...

So I don't have school for the next two weeks because everyone is supposed to be hunkered down studying for the mid-terms. Luckily I only have 2 mid-terms and a paper whereas most of the locals have 4 midterms. Some of the other foreigners have no midterms because they are taking classes like Photography and bullshit like that. Turns out I am getting a great deal on San Andrés. I am paying what a semester would cost for a home school tuition, roughly $3,000; people from UPENN, on the other hand, are also paying what it normally costs them to go to school for a semester: $15,000. That means they are paying five times as much as I am. Holy shit. In case you were wondering, the Argentineans pay about what I pay. The sands of time are passing ever faster. Over two months I have been here. Two months is a lot for a short time, but short for a long time, if you know what I mean. It's hard to notice any vast improvements in my Spanish on a day to day basis, but when I look b...

I haven't had a chance to write for a few days so let me recount Sunday-Wed. Sunday morning I woke up, like any other morning you might say, and ate spaghetti for breakfast. These things happen you see. The difference from this morning from any other, was that I had a text from an Argentinean inviting me to a professional soccer match between the number 1 and number 3 teams in the country. So I went. The two teams were La Boca and Independiente, a classic match only surpassed by the game between the number 1 and 2 teams (Boca v. Rivers). Anyway, we arrived to the stadium and had to pay somebody to watch our car so that nobody breaks into it. Pretty sketchy neighborhood actually. Another obstacle was the fact that we didn't have tickets. Apparently getting tickets to La Boca games is really difficult because they only go to the socios (aka Argentineans who have something like season tickets). We had to do reventas, which is a spanishy way to say scalping. So my Argent...