On the road again

Tuesday the 16th, Tom and I hit the road again. Before getting on the bus to Mar del Plata, we went to La Boca because I refused to leave Buenos Aires without seeing it. La Boca is a neighborhood, or barrio of Buenos Aires, with a "strong European flavor" since many of its early settlers were from the Italian city of Genoa. La Boca is known throughout the sporting world as the home of Boca Juniors, one of the world's top soccer clubs. The stadium looks crazy! It's a gigantic stadium that's yellow and blue and a ver different architectural style than any stadium I've seen. I really wanted to see the colorful houses and pedestrian street, the Caminito, where tangoa artists perform and tango-related memorabilia is sold. It was the perfect last thing to do in B.A.

At 2:30 pm, we boarded the bus and headed on our 4.5 hour journey to Mar del Plata, on the Atlantic Coast of Argentina. Stop #2 here we come. Bye, bye, Buenos Aires!

Whirlwind of Fun, part 3

Sunday was the perfect end to this FABULOUS weekend! We didn't get up till one pm and then we met up with Chris and Cassandra and headed to the San Telmo market. This market is one of those must-do things in B.A. It goes on and on for blocks and is just a huge open-air market. You can find just about anything and all your senses are accosted. I LOVED it! I'm a sucker for jewelry, and I found so much for sooooo cheap! It was great! I got 3 pairs of homemade earrings for 22 pesos ($6) total. Such a deal! haha and I also got a caricature done of me. It's really funny! Of course my cheeks are GIGANTIC!! I expected that one. The artist totally channeled me though and made me a tango dancer on stage :D It's convenient that Jocelyn is flying back to the States cause I can give her the stuff I bought that I don't want to lug around S. America with me.

After the market and a great lunch, that evening we went to a salsa club in Belgrano...died and went to heaven :D I've decided that when I get back to Chapel Hill in the Fall I really want to find a cool salsa place. Tango can't even touch how much fun salsa is. We danced for 2 hours. The first hour and a half was lessons, and the instructor was great. She was so energetic and full of life and excitement, it just rubbed off on you. Tomtom made me smile and laugh so much. It's amusing (in a good way) to watch him salsa :D He's got all the steps down, but he just looks so robotic. I'm trying to get him to flow. Trying to get him to feel the salsa style, but we both just end up laughing cause he doesn't seem to believe he has hips to use. I have faith in Tomtom though. According to Jocelyn, it's super comedic to watch us as I try and teach him to "flow"- I don't doubt her.

Whirlwind of Fun, part 2

When we got back from Colonia, we showered and got dressed and then headed out to La Faina, which is supposedly one of the nicest hotels in all of South America- definitely the nicest one in Argentina. Tom's uncle is friends with the owner, so we got VIP access and treatment at the hotel. The owner was out of town, so we were shown around and set up by the right-hand-man, Juan. The best way to describe Juan is that he was the equivalent of a George Clooney in Buenos Aires. Juan allowed us to pick which of the really nice hotel restaurants we wanted, so we picked the lounge-bar/restaurant that had a younger crowd and a live band setting up. I've never felt so VIP before! Juan made an older wealthy couple move from their table (the best in the place), so that we could sit there. We got a REALLY nice bottle of champagne given to us compliments of the owner. When our waiter took some time to take our dinner order (not that it'd really been that long) Juan reprimanded the waiter and instructed him to wait on us at the ready. While our food was being cooked, Juan gave us a tour of the hotel and showed us the THREE-STORY apartments the SUPER wealthy people who live in the hotel stay in. I can't even conceive having the amount of money that would require. To stay in the cheapest room for one night is $700 and there were $2000 bottles of wine on the menu. REALLY!!

Dinner was AMAZING, to say the least, and the band was unbelievable. Literally. The lead singer of the band was a girl with an Amy Winehouse-esque voice in a bandeau top, short black skirt, beehive-style red turban, and yellow sunglasses. As she sang, she jumped on the couches and tables and danced everywhere. It was definitely an engaging performance. She got everyone up and dancing. The whole evening, I felt like I was living a Gossip Girls episode. It was very clear that everyone in the room was the uppercrust of B.A.- the socialites- and that everything the other women in the room were wearing were designer and bought from an expensive boutique. Can we say I felt underdressed?! It was a blast though cause everyone knew we were catered by Juan, so they thought we MUST be important people, and the place was just hands-down fun. Going back in after the hotel tour, Juan ushered us through the line of people waiting to get in. We just cut through and had the red velvet rope lifted up for us :D Can I also mention that there was a 500 peso cover (= $150) to get it. Yeah, we didn't pay anything. Surreal night! Guess I know now more what it's like to live the life of the rich and famous.

Little did we know, Juan is super legit. The next day, Maggie informed us that Juan is the big man of B.A. Everyone knows him and he runs the nightlife; kind of like a Paris Hilton, but without all the negatives. A mix of Paris and George Clooney. He comes from old money and is in his 30's and attractive, so he's always being photographed by the tabloids. She said she wouldn't have been surprised if there had been a picture of Juan and us on the cover of some magazine that day. haha now THAT would have been funny!

Colonia

Here's a video of the motorcade campaigning. Blast to the Past!

Whirlwind of Fun, part 1

This has probably been one of the BEST weekends (Fri-Sun) of my life!

Having a native Argentinean friend really has made A LOT of difference in how we've experienced BA...especially since our friend (MAggie) is super eager to show us everything the city has to offer both on the tourist track and on the native-track. Maggie's family consists of a ton of super artistically talented siblings, so Friday night (the 12th), she took us to her sister's Improv Tap show, in which another sister was singing and one of her brothers was the technical director. Her tapping sister is in a professional troupe and they were INCREDIBLE! I'd never seen an improv tap show before and it blew me away. SO much talent involved and SUCH a full body workout. I don't know how they were able to keep tapping so quickly and so emphatically for so long! The tap club had a very bohemian feel and it was very intimate but fun. One of those places that's really cool to go but you only know about if you're in the know. Everyone there was Argentinean and it was a cool atmosphere and way to spend our Friday night. Then after the show they played salsa music, so people randomly got up and danced. Of course I was on cloud 9 :D

Saturday, Tom, Jocelyn, and I took a day trip to Colonia, Uruguay, the oldest city in Uruguay and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. How baller is it that I can say I took a day trip to Uruguay! It's SO random! We took a fast ferry at 10 am, so we arrived an hour later. The historic quarter of Colonia is such a quaint, cute town- I really felt like I'd stepped back into time. Municipal elections are happening soon, so there were motorcades going up and down the main street of the town honking horns and waving signs to convince people to vote for their candidate. Cars, wagons, buses, you name it, drove by covered in signs or ads. Everything about it and where we were really made me feel like I was in some tiny American town in the 1950s. It was gorgeous and warm outside in Uruguay, so the three of us absolutely loved the day. It was so nice that we opted not to go into any of the museums, which everyone told us were really cool and different, and instead just wandered around outside all day. And I don't regret our decision. I wish I could describe in words how lovely Colonia was....anyway, great town + fun people + another passport stamp = MAJOR success.

Tango Fusion style

The professional tango show we saw at the tango club was Tango Fusion. Here's a clip from the performance:....prepare to tilt your head, though, I shot the clip vertically.

FABULOUS cultural night on the town

Last night, Tom, Jocelyn, and I along with 5 other people (a combination of Jocelyn’s Argentinean friends and my UNC friends here for other reasons) went to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Teatro Opera. It was INCREDIBLE!! Unbelievable! I was amazed and impressed by everything from the singing to the stage backdrops and pieces to the special effects. The Phantom of the Opera is one of my favorite pieces and I know all the music, so it was such an amazing experience. It was also really cool to hear it all performed in Spanish. I’m so impressed by the person who translated it to Spanish and still managed to get all the words to fit the rhythm of the music. Uhh, such an unbelievable experience! Soooo worth it! And it only cost the equivalent of $12. This is the life!

After the show, we went to a tango club, where we watched people tango, attempted to tango, and then watched a professional tango performance. Couldn’t have asked for a better end to the evening :D Tango is sooooo much harder than it looks. I am doubly impressed now by anyone who can tango well. It was an interesting experience to be doing a dance that didn’t automatically come naturally and easily to me. My partner literally taught me the same steps over and over again, and it was fun and I’ve got the steps down now, but I was SUCH a hot mess on the tango floor. And it REALLY doesn’t help that there are a bunch of other couples dancing on the same floor super close to you and everyone dances around in a circle, making bumping inevitable unless you’re good (which I’m not). Considering it was my first time tangoing in 4 years, I wasn’t bad. But considering I was expecting to just pick it up and be great, it came as a shock. I definitely would love to take actual lessons in the future. Currently, I prefer salsa to tango…yes, probably because it comes so much easier.

Argentinean Hospitality

I just find it all FASCINATING! I could go on and on. I met with Marina Lembo, who is an autonomous midwife and the country contact for the International Alliance of Midwives. I talked to her for 3 hours! She was the person I was looking forward to meeting the most this whole summer and she was so kind and helpful. She just got back from presenting at a conference in South Africa about midwifery and she was kind enough to give me a copy of her presentation. She’s put me in contact with past patients and other midwifes who work in the public and private sector, so she’s been an invaluable resource.

Another research contact here in B.A. named Hernan Chavez has also been so helpful and kind. He’s a medical student and his uncle is good friends with a Morehead alum, which is how we got his information. He talked to Tom and I about the healthcare system, gave us a tour of the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine (he is in the Anatomy department, so our tour included seeing cadavers on the dissecting table), and set us up with a School of Medicine lecture we could attend the next day. Argentinean hospitality is incredible! After talking to us about stuff related to our research, he asked if we wanted to get lunch and then took us touring some around the city. And then at the end of that, he invited us biking with him Sunday afternoon because he had 3 bikes. SOOOO NICE!! So Sunday afternoon, Tom and I did a bike tour of the whole city. 4 hours of biking = sore legs the next day, but it was a blast!

Research Update

Regarding my research, it’s going well so far. I’m absolute positive that whatever I do in life I want it to involve maternity. There is no doubt about that. I’ve discovered some really interesting things about midwifery in Argentina and the healthcare system (at least I find them interesting :D if you don’t, feel free to skip this part):

For starters, the public healthcare system is free for both Argentineans and foreigners. You don’t have to be a citizen to get free treatment in a public hospital. WHOA! Crazy, right! There are so many foreigners who come to Argentina to get treated because of this. It’s just not fair though, for example, cause Chileans flood the Argentinean hospitals (paying nothing towards it of course), but Argentineans don’t get that same benefit or treatment when they’re in Chile. And healthcare is divided into different parts. There’s public healthcare, which is government paid. Everything is free and you’ll always get treated, but if you need a surgery for example, you go on a waitlist. Then there’s private healthcare, which is divided into obra social (paid for through your job) and prepaid, which you pay for individually. In both of those, you go to private clinics. Essentially, which type of healthcare you have is determined by how rich you are. Wealthy people don’t use the public hospitals even though they pay for it through taxes.

So that was healthcare system background. In regard to midwifery, there are several interesting paradigms and current phenomena:

1) Midwifery is based on the principles of more personalized maternity experience and natural delivery and birthing with no drugs, whereas obstetricians focus on induced labor, making the delivery as quick as possible, and they use drugs. However, in Argentina, the majority of midwives work in hospitals and in the hospitals you have to use drugs, so midwifery has lost the essential of what it is.

2) The government tried to eradicate midwifery in the 1950’s-70’s so that only the professions of doctor and nurse remained and they banned home births. Doctors used the fact that some out-of-work midwives started doing abortions (which was illegal) to discredit the profession and make people not respect them. Eradicating the profession failed so the government eventually brought back its midwifery programs, but ironically, nowadays doctors are the ones doing illegal abortions. Because of this attempt to eradicate, there are now some provinces in Argentina where midwifery is gone- those programs never reopened.

3) The less autonomous midwives are (which it’s not common to find autonomous ones here), the less they can do. Autonomous midwives can do anything: they practice continuous care, they deliver the baby in a home, and they determine their own schedule; however, if a pregnancy becomes complicated and she has to go to the hospital with her patient, the midwife loses all her powers and autonomy and becomes merely a doula. Midwives in the public and private hospitals have to work in conjunction with a doctor and don’t have the same abilities. Public hospital midwives don’t practice continuous care, they share the pressure with doctors during complicated pregnancies, and they work in shifts, doing also family planning and sex education. In private hospitals, midwives aren’t allowed to deliver babies and they function more like nurses. They do parent classes and inducements/drug injections.

4) There’s a phenomenon of increased student interest in the profession of midwifery. Education is not as good for medicine nowadays because there are sooooo many students interested in becoming a doctor. There are more doctors that needed doctors. Frustrated medical students are changing career paths to midwifery because it’s very similar, and nursing students are becoming midwives because they’ve finished the nursing track and want to do more.

My new mission :P

I’ve already accepted the fact that I will be eating my way through South America, starting of course with Argentina :D The food is sooooooo good!! Where to even start! Our first night here we went to dinner at Los Inmortales, which is supposedly the best pizza in Buenos Aires. Deliciosa!! It was that first night that I realized I’d be eating my way through the next 10 weeks. Even when I was full, I kept going because the food was so good and new. Probably not the healthiest thing, but it’s part of the cultural experience, right…if I’m going to learn as much about the culture as possible, then I gotta keep eating :D Since that night, we’ve hit up all the city’s best restaurants and cafes. And the best part is that it’s SOOOO cheap! En serio! You can have a super super nice meal and still not have spent more than $20-$25. Our meals have averaged $8 including tip (and that’s with all our food exploration). For those people who’ve been here or plan to come here: Los Cuartitos (another great pizza place; in my opinion, better than Los Inmortales); Cumana (out-of-this world empanadas, cazuelas, and calzones); Freddo (BEST ice cream); Café Tortoni (tartas to die for); Café Las Violetas (pastries galore); Torquato Tasso (UNBELIEVABLE steak and flan accompanied by really good tango and samba bands performing); the list just goes on and on.

I easily see myself coming back here again in the future. I could more than easily see myself living here for a year after college…the only possible impediment being the ‘ja’ speech thing. But I will say it grows on you. My mind is already going through all the possibilities for how I can come back and considering the possibilities. You know me and how my life plans are ever-changing and modifying. This could possibly fit perfectly in those 4 years between graduating and 25.

Buenos Aires, "la París de Sudamérica"

While in Buenos Aires, Tom and I are staying with Jocelyn in her family’s apartment, which is in a GREAT location! It’s super safe and near everything. It’s essentially the Upper East Side of B.A. Staying with her and hanging out together has been a fabulous experience. It’s really shaped in a favorable way how we’ve experienced the city. I know our experience would have been so different and not as cool or thorough as it is now had we been staying in some random hostel. Thanks to Jocelyn and her family’s friends here, there are a bunch of places we’ve gone and cool things we’ve done that we never otherwise would have known to do or experienced. And we’re going to be able to use some of her family’s connections in Peru to do more cool stuff there, so everything is just working out really well.

B.A. is such an urban city that it’s easy to forget that you’re in a third-world country. When we go out at night, especially, I really feel like we’re in NYC. There’s a part that looks a lot like Times Square, an area similar to Broadway, we take black-and-yellow taxis everywhere, there are big billboards everywhere and electronic ads…other than the people or families begging for money or the homeless people sleeping in parks (which any city has), there’s not any reminder within the city center or nearby areas that we are in fact in a developing country. Driving into the city from the airport (seeing the outskirts) it was visible, but since then, no. We are going to tour La Boca, the B.A. neighborhood most people know because it’s super colorful and was the home of tango, so I expect that’ll be more of a reminder of where we are because it has a lot of poverty.

ESTOY IN BUENOS AIRES :D

BLOG TIME AGAIN!! I've yet to succeed at keeping a blog for an entire experience, but maybe this summer will be the charm. I'm following Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries path, so if I'm going to be inspired to write, this ought to be the summer. He kept a diary, so I should too. So here's to recording my adventure through South America as I follow Che and research the role of midwifery in South American society. Hope you enjoy the ride! :D

STOP #1: Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires (called B.A. by everyone) is AMAZING! I love the city! It really reminds me of NYC at times. There is so much to see and so much to do, both during the day and at night. And it really is a city that never sleeps! Great transition from Spain because the lifestyle is so similar :D While the lifestyle hasn’t taken much adapting to, the Spanish definitely has. It is so…different (I shouldn’t say bizarre just because I don’t like it). It took a lot of adjusting to. I’ve gone from one extreme of Spanish to another. In Spain they cut off the final ‘s’ sound of words, spoke with a lisp, and pronounced all their v’s as b’s. Here in Argentina, they don’t really open their mouth when speaking (MAJOR lack of enunciating) and they pronounce all their ‘l’ and ‘y’ sounds as ‘ja.’

How ridiculously confusing this can be is best exemplified by a woman I was talking to who was saying “I already called her.” In Spanish: Yo ya llamo ella. When she spoke, all I heard was ja-jibberish: Jo ja jjamo eja. Umm, come again! I know I understand Spanish- I left Spain confident in my understanding abilities, but when I first got here I had to think so hard. There’s a friend from UNC who’s also here and her family is Colombian. She’s spoken Spanish and been around it all her life and she even said that her first week here she had major difficulties. Glad to know I’m not the only one! Slowly but surely, though, it’s gotten better. I’ve adjusted to the vocabularly differences (such as the use aca instead of aqui, etc) and I’m finally at the point where the ‘ja’ doesn’t completely throw me off. I expect it now, woot woot!