Thoughts on the USAL housing options...

One of my biggest struggles here in Argentina was with the places I was living. It took almost 3 months for me to find a situation that actually worked for me - I'm now living in my own apartment more or less in the center of the city. As one of the reasons for this blog is as a resource for my University, and therefore potentially a resource for students looking to study abroad in Buenos Aires in the future, I thought it would be good to write about the different housing options available to the exchange students, so that maybe they have a little bit more information than I did when I made the decision on where I'd be living.

For my first month here, I lived in a student residence called Proyecto Alfa 2000. I generally enjoyed my time in the residence (here, endearingly referred to as "la resi") but I think if I stayed for more than just my first month, I would have a very different opinion. I came to Buenos Aires a month before the beginning of the semester to participate in USAL's Curso Intensivo de Español, and it was for the CIE that I was staying in the residence. This time was good for me because the majority of the other people participating in the CIE lived in the residence as well during this time, so it was a really great opportunity to get to know and build friendships with people from all over the world. The best thing about living in a student residence like Alfa 2000 is the opportunity for meeting people and making friends. Chances are you'll be paired with an Argentine roommate, and the residences are packed with people from all over Latin America, who are generally all really friendly and fun. The main drawbacks to the residences are the rules - drinking is not allowed, most of them don't allow visitors from outside the residence to be anywhere besides the common areas, and having guests in your room (even people who also live in the residence) is generally frowned upon. A lot of American friends who stayed in the residence after the CIE have gotten very frustrated with the lack of privacy, and many of them feel as though they aren't treated like adults. However, out of all of the housing options, the residence is definitely the best for making quick friends your age who help you figure out the quirks of the city and can show you some of the best places to go out and have a good time.

After the CIE I lived with a Argentine host family. This is the experience that would probably be the most variable, and I've heard different stories from friends who have also lived with a host family, but there are some things that seem to be cultural common denominators. For example, Argentines (and perhaps Latin Americans in general) tend to see their home as being a very sacred and personal space - you should be honored that they've opened their home to you. They tend to accept you immediately into the family - but you have to be open enough to take advantage of that. If you're shy and you think that you'd have trouble with the idea of participating in a huge family function where everyone has known each other for years and 8 different conversations are going on at once, all in loud, fast Spanish - you might want to think about another option. In order to really get all the host family has to offer, you have to really participate in the life of the family. Have dinner with them, join them for their asados (basically, barbeques that last all afternoon), ask them questions and share information about yourself, too. I think that with the host family experience, what you get out of it is about equal to what you're willing to put into it - from what I've heard, the people who have had the best experiences have been the people who were really willing to participate. But in regard to what I said before about the home being sacred - the biggest problem for me about life with a host family was the fact that (like in the residence) visitors are a problem. Just having a friend "drop by" or have someone come back from class with you to study generally isn't allowed. If you bring a friend by, you should ask permission first and be prepared to introduce the friend to the head of household. Your host family is generally going to want to know who comes into their house and when, and to bring somebody by without notifying them first and getting permission is considered extremely disrespectful. This was the once cultural adjustment that I couldn't make - it was too important to me to have my own space where I felt comfortable inviting people over for whatever reason.

If, like it is to me, it's important to you that you have your own space and the freedom that that comes with, the apartment is the option for you. If you organize it through USAL chances are you'll be placed with other international students, but it is sometimes possible to be placed with an Argentine student (better for practicing your Spanish) if you let them know that that's what you want. It's also fairly easy to find an apartment on your own once you're down here (cheaper if you have a roommate, obviously) and something that many people from the CIE did was to stay in the residence for the first month and begin their search for an apartment while there. It's usually possible to find something and get everything set up within about 2 weeks. What you miss out on in an apartment (especially if you're on your own or with international students who also aren't familiar with the city) is the information resource that the residence and the host family provide. In the residence and with the host family, its easy to figure out which bus to take to get where, what's the deal with the latest protests going on around the city, etc.

Hope that might be helpful to some future intercambios :)

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

For my third trip out of the city of Buenos Aires, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro with my friends Lennart and Shannon.

It's difficult now (afterwards) to think about what my opinion of the city was before going there. I think that I had impressions of beauty and lots of color and culture, but I know that those impressions would have also included ones of violence, danger, and poverty.

Now, looking back, I have to say that its one of the cities that I absolutely have to recommend going to if you have the chance. (Unfortunately, the cost and inconvenience of getting a tourist visa for a U.S. citizen might be enough to persuade you otherwise - about $170 and several trips to your nearest Brazilian consulate are involved) But, if you get there, you will be able to experience what is without a doubt one of the most aesthetically beautiful cities in the world, populated with some of the warmest, friendliest, and most attractive people you'll ever have the chance to meet.

The city is located on the eastern coast of Brazil, far enough north that it has a relatively beach-worthy climate all year round. By some natural phenomenon that I'm not aware of, the landscape is made out of these crazy, steep, rounded mountain that seem to simply just rise straight out of the ocean. There would seem to be some kind of battle for the livable territory that these mountains provide between the city and the forest, a battle that the forest would appear to be winning. Rio is perhaps the only major city I have heard of to be situated not beside, but AROUND a national park. It almost seems unfair that Rio be able to possess all of these different kinds of beauty - the whitesand beaches with tall, surf-worthy waves, the towering mountains from which you can watch breathtaking sunsets over the city, and the rich forest populated with the kind of exotic wildlife (toucans, monkeys) that one would normally associate either with a zoo or the untouched tropical rainforest.

Towering above everything else is the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer). The amazing statue perches in a way that seems impossible on top of Rio's highest peak. The size of the monument coupled with the difficulty of its erection (a special train had to be built going up the side of the mountain - "steep" doesn't even begin to describe it) has earned the Cristo status as one of the new 7 wonders of the world, and with reason. The statue is truly breathtaking, as is the view from its feet, as you can see almost the entire city (including the innumerable favelas) stretch out beneath it, and the smaller mountains rising out of the sea in the distance. And the best part of about the Cristo is the way that it represents the Brazilian view on Christianity - there is no sense of sadness or guilt involved as with the more common image of the crucifix - the Cristo's arms are stretched out in a warm gesture of love and welcome. The grandeur combined with this somewhat unique portrayal make the visit a rather inspiring one.

Besides the amazing imagery and people, possibly the most interesting and affecting thing about Rio are the stories of its famous favelas, or slums. These ridiculously expansive communities are remarkable not only for their size, but for the fact that, unlike in most cities where the slums lay on the outskirts, these are scattered all through the city, often in the shadows or between the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.

I wasn't sure how I felt at first about doing a tour of the favelas - to me it seemed kind of like voyeur. But Shannon and Lennart wanted to do it, and the first thing that the tour guide told us was that the people in the favelas wanted us to be there - they felt that it gave them a chance to fight against the prejudices of violence that were widespread around the city and around the world. They succeeded in doing that - it seemed as though all of the people we encountered were warm and friendly, interested in us and what we were doing and eager to be sharing their own stories. I half expected the favela experience to be a depressing one, but instead it turned out to be something inspiring. In the areas where the people had taken an interest in making the places better, the favelas had a strange but palpable beauty to them, rich with colors although the closeness of the quarters shrowded most of it in shadow. It was an amazing and eye-opening experience. I could never imagine living life with the same hardships that these people dealt with every day - drugs, violence, poverty and discrimination were simple facts of life for them, yet the kind of mobilization that was being undergone to change these "slums" into close-knit, often beautiful communities where family and education were the priorities was truly amazing.

The favelas give another side to a city that might otherwise seem like something out of a dream. Some of the memories border on being truly surreal - sitting on beautiful Ipanema beach sipping on coconuts while watching beautifully tanned and muscled men playing soccer seemed like something out of a dream. In a lot of ways, Rio seemed like a kind of black hole, something you could just get sucked into in a matter of hours and then never again have a desire to go back to where you came from. It didn't help that the area around our little community of hostels was always packed full of people from various places who had come to Rio with the intention of just seeing the city and then passing through but had then never left. It was easy to see the appeal of such a scenario, with the beautiful landscape, always-perfect weather, and gorgeous, warm, and inviting atmosphere that Rio's people gave the the city. In many ways, it was a true paradise.

I was glad that I went and experienced the city, but I'm not sure if I feel as though it is a place that I would need to return to some day.