So when I said that my next post would be “tomorrow” I guess I meant “more than a week from now.” I’m not all that surprised or worked up that I haven’t posted; it’s been a crazy, crazy week, what with packing and travel and coming home and running around seeing people and enjoying being home. But here I am, finally, sitting in my dining room at home, typing away and watching Merlin preen himself (while typing…multitasking is fun! Fixing typos, not so much…Merlin, you cause so much trouble!). I think this is the first blog entry I’ve written from home (I can’t remember if that’s actually true and am too lazy to check, sorry).
My last blog post ended rather unceremoniously with my arrival in Santiago, Chile. My four days in Santiago staying with my friend Molly passed without any more unfortunate incidents (yess), but that doesn’t mean I have nothing to say about Chile! Chile is sooo different from Argentina; I sort of assumed that going to Chile would be like going to Canada if you’re from the US, but in reality the two countries (or cities, as honestly I can really only compare Buenos Aires and Santiago) felt SO dissimilar.
I think the major difference right now is that Chile is doing much better economically than Argentina, and thus Santiago had a very different feel from Buenos Aires. It just felt, in my limited experience, like there were fewer unemployed, unhappy people in Santiago than in BA; very little graffiti (as opposed to BA, where every building is covered with angry political slogans) and I didn’t see any demonstrations while I was there (while in BA, there are massive protest marches multiple times per week).
In Buenos Aires, a thriving occupation since the economic meltdown in 2002 has been picking through the trash that is put out nightly looking for recyclable/valuable items. Because of this practice, Buenos Aires is a very litter- and trash-filled city, unfortunately, and in that respect Santiago felt cleaner. On the other hand, because of geography (Santiago is nestled in the foothills of the Andes) Santiago has a terrible smog/pollution problem, while BA has no noticeable air pollution. Furthermore, Santiago is the much uglier city, as much of its colonial architecture has been destroyed in earthquakes or by the Pinochet dictatorship and replaced with Soviet-bloc style concrete monoliths/non-descript high-rises.
Santiago also lacked Buenos Aires’ European feel, both architecturally, as I mentioned, and more generally. In the most concrete terms, I saw very few other tourists in Santiago, and got a lot more attention for my blonde hair/white skin than I do in Buenos Aires. Culturally, too, Santiago felt much less European than BA. Walking around Buenos Aires and going to cafes and sights in BA often feels much like walking around Madrid; I saw fewer similarities between Santiago and Spain, and Santiago definitely doesn’t have the Anglophile culture of Buenos Aires.
The other major difference that made my experience in Santiago feel SO different from my experience in Buenos Aires was that I was hanging out with someone I know REALLY well and who knows me REALLY well, and I was staying with her host family. These two simple facts really made the weekend incredibly special. Getting to see Molly and talk with her—about everything, not just the here-and-now experiences in South America but about memories from Boston and high school, about Yale (she’s a junior at Yale studying abroad), and our families and mutual friends, about America and politics—was SO nice, and SO completely different from spending my days with people who barely know me. What a lovely change! Not that I haven’t met some pretty cool people in Buenos Aires or anything—I have—but it’s just a completely different experience when you’re traveling with someone who knows everything about you, and who is serving as an amazing tour guide and knows exactly what to tell you and where to take you and what you’re interested in. I was SO spoiled by Molly. It was absolutely lovely.
Staying with her host family was absolutely incredible as well. After staying in the volunteer house-hostel situation for seven weeks, it was really cool to experience the host family thing again, however briefly. Molly’s host family is a little nuts, but in the best possible way. I loved seeing them interact and listen to them talk (another thing: the Chilean accent/way of speaking is SO DIFFERENT…there are all these words they just use in Chile, and they cut off the ends of their words…oh wow…). They were all so welcoming to me, and I loved getting a peek into Chilean life.
My trip home from Santiago went completely smoothly (no extortionary exit fees!), and I got home to five fun-filled, action-packed days in Argentina. Among the highlights (from the last couple of weeks):
- The best steak I’ve ever had (and one of the best meals I’ve ever had) at the restaurant La Cabrera in Palermo. The only problem with this meal was that they gave us SO MUCH food that we (me and some of the other volunteers living in the volunteer house) couldn’t finish it all. We asked to get it packed up to take home, which the waiters seemed a little bemused by but seemed to understand; we then accidentally walked out of the restaurant without claiming our doggie bag. We returned, however, and asked for our meat and were given a package wrapped in white butcher paper. The next part of this story is not for the queasy, and should give you some idea of how much of a penny-pincher I was trying to be in BA. The next night back in our hostel, we decided to eat our left-over steaks for dinner. Upon opening the package, however, we discovered that we’d been given random cuts of meat that DEFINITELY weren’t ours (the package included some completely random/foul looking pieces of pork which we did NOT order…). UGH. Facing having to give up on our visions of another steak dinner, however, we…..decided to eat the meat anyway. So we fried it…and ate it in pasta…and didn’t catch some frightening disease. Luckily. Disgusting, but delicious! Yum.
- I bought myself a beautiful leather jacket, completing the boots-bag-jacket ensemble that will probably get me attacked by a rabid vegan or something back in the States. Ah well.
- I went on a few long walks to my favorite places/buildings in Buenos Aires and got some great pictures. I definitely think that I said a sufficient good-bye to the city, and I also rounded-off my BA To-Do List pretty well. It’s a nice feeling to leave after eight weeks with few regrets/pieces of unfinished business.
- May 1-2 (a long time ago, I know, but I never got around to talking about it) was my final full weekend in Buenos Aires. Saturday of that weekend, May 1, was International Workers Day (a Communisty thing…?), so lots of interesting people were out to play in Buenos Aires! Lots of red T-shirts and banners and drums and stuff. Many shops were closed, and the city had a very festive/holiday atmosphere. This atmosphere was heightened by the presence of the Feria del Libro, the largest book fair in the Spanish-speaking world, and a free outdoor concert by Brazilian crooner Caetano Veloso. The concert was definitely a highlight of my time in Buenos Aires; I now LOVE an artist I had previously never heard of, and have a heightened appreciation for the truth of Buenos Aires’ reputation as being an artistic/cultural center. Caetano Veloso’s music is sort of cool jazz with a Latin twist; it’s romantic and relaxing and beautiful, but not necessarily what I would think of as crowd-pleasing music. The outdoor concert was completely PACKED (like, oh-my-god-I-can’t-sit-down-or-really-even-breathe packed), and the crowd was singing along to these soft, lullabye-like lovesongs. It was lovely and different. The Feria del Libro, in a huge convention center right next door to where the concert happened, also sort of showed me how cultural Buenos Aires is—a reputation I had read/heard but hadn’t had a chance to really experience on a non-tourist level. The Feria, which was open until 1 am on May 1, was also packed; Argentineans take their books seriously, and you could see that in how many people were browsing at midnight, and how extensive the collections where in the stalls in the Feria. Very cool.
That’s all for specific updates. Now that my international travels are over and done, I’ll be posting much less frequently. Sometime in the near future I will be posting some thoughts about Argentina and China and Egypt in general; just some comparisons and thoughts and observations. I’ll also probably post some gap year reflections as well, things I would do differently, highlights, take-aways, etc. And then maybe I’ll post a couple times this summer, depending on how busy I get with my job and everything. And then…that will be it! Thank you for reading this as I’ve traipsed through continents and countries and mishaps and adventures! It’s been an amazing nine months!
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
¨What To Know When You’ve Been Detained¨, And Other Lessons
What an eventful couple of weeks it has been! My time in Argentina is rapidly coming to an end—I leave Saturday night. That’s the day after tomorrow. I’m definitely excited to go home, but also definitely in denial that all the fun I’ve been having is ending and real life has to start again. How has my gap year gone by so quickly? True, I have more than three months and a whole summer ahead of me before I start college, but my summer job starts in a month, and my exotic travels are over....EEKS. But at the same time, this year has been absolutely perfect, and feels like it has run its course. I’m ready to back in Boston, ready to be done with airplanes and packing and unpacking, ready to be with the people I know and love the best.
Alright. Enough with the gap year angst. I have so much to say about what I’ve experienced in the last two weeks, and so much to say about Argentina in general. Let’s go.
The most exciting event in the last two weeks was a long-weekend in Santiago, Chile by way of a day in Montevideo, Uruguay. I had an amazing time, as I got to live and spend tons of time with my friend Molly, who is studying abroad and living with a host family in Santiago. Before I jump into all my observations about Santiago, etc, however, I have to talk about the adventure that was getting to Santiago. It was quite the adventure.
Basically, I proved to myself last weekend that, as much as I would like to think of myself as this grown up, adult, ultra-competent person, this is not the case in some respects. I am still a 19-year old girl, who, when faced with the consequences of her own inexperience, more often than not ends up crying on the phone with her parents. My big mistake was that I left Argentina last Wednesday night without my American Express card—I just had my debit card. This was not a very smart move on my part, even if it was a complete accident. I meant to bring the card, I just didn’t double-triple check that I had it. So I get to Montevideo and my hostel and spend a nice day wandering around Montevideo (cute town, pretty buildings, some cool museums, but definitely not a place I would want to spend an extended period of time...Montevideo really is a boring, smaller, less important cousin of Buenos Aires. But I’m glad I’ve seen it.). When I’m preparing to return to the airport to catch my flight to Santiago, however, I go to an ATM and realize that I have about $30 on my debit card, and I don’t have my American Express card—and I realize that I left my AmEx on my desk back in Buenos Aires. Shoot. I spend about a half hour trying to find a phone to call my parents, can’t contact them (turns out they were both in an astronomy lecture.....???), contact my sister, explain the sitch, hang up, and desperately board a public bus (super cheap..yes) to the airport. The bus takes longer than I expect it to so I’m now really late getting to the airpot, and I almost don’t get off the bus at all because it’s SO crowded that I had to climb over people; once I’m in the terminal, I go into auto-pilot because I’m freaking out that I’m going to miss my flight. I run to the check-in counter, wave my E-Ticket at the lady at the check-in desk and practically yell that I’m not checking any luggage, and turn to go to rush to my gate. The lady has to practically yell at me, twice, in order to get my attention, that I can’t go directly to the gate. Why? Because Montevideo charges a $36 ¨airport fee¨ to all people flying out of the airport. Uh-oh.
I run to the desk where I have to pay my fee and hand the lady my debit card, the whole time saying that I don’t think there’s enough money on it to pay the fee and I don’t have any other credit card. Obviously, the debit card doesn’t work...for about 30 seconds I’m standing at this counter just staring at the lady and spluttering, wondering not only how I’m going to get on my plane to Santiago, but how I’m even going to be able to leave the airport, and how I would be able to even get back to Buenos Aires. I would probably still be standing there, spluttering, if it weren’t for my savior: Pablo from Spain. Pablo, the man paying at the window next to me, very nicely paid my fee, saying I could wire him the money later. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. So, big shout-out to Pablo from Spain who saved my butt; who knew that there are people out there who are willing to help and trust people they don’t know. Now I know.
So I get on my plane to Santiago (after, while apologizing profusely and wondering whether I left my self-respect and standards on my desk in Buenos Aires along with my AmEx, jumping the entire security/customs line). Shaken, not exactly knowing how I’m going to get from the airport to Molly’s house if the cab is expensive. Mad at myself. Little did I know.....
....because when I got off the plane at Santiago, I found out that when Americans enter Chile they have to pay a $132 ¨reciprocity¨ fee, because the US, being an incredibly friendly and welcoming superpower, charges Chileans to enter the US. It’s 9:30 pm, I’m already tired and mad at myself because of the Montevideo debacle, the customs area is empty because no one else on the flight had to pay a fee, and now I’m standing in front of a Chilean customs official, explaining that I have no cash, no credit card, and not enough money on my debit card to pay the fee (I did, however, have $100 in Traveler’s Cheques...prior planning or just really good luck, I’m not sure). I end up being sent to this room which is basically the customs people’s office, where I sit in a chair in the corner, staring directly at a poster in Spanish and English which says ¨What to know if you’ve been detained¨ with detailed description of my rights as a detained person. Abigail Bok, Detainee. Perfect. Exactly how I always wanted to end up.
Eventually, after much discussion on the part of the bemused Chilean customs officials (I wonder how often are they confronted with a weepy blonde broke American girl? The impression I got is that they’re used to Americans being able to pay the fee no problem...), they finally bring me to a phone so I can use my calling card (I kept saying that I just had to call my parents, and that I had a calling card, but I don’t think they understood and thought that I just wanted to call the United States and charge Chilean customs for the bill...which would have been satisfying, but...). I call my dad, in tears, he puts more money on my card...and problem solved.
This was obviously an interesting evening. For me, it will definitely stick in my mind as a learning experience. I have never felt so incredibly YOUNG. And so incredibly inexperienced. For someone who has traveled as extensively as I have throughout my entire life, I proved that I can still act like a complete amateur. I can’t believe I didn’t a.) remember my AmEx or b.) research what sort of fees are involved in travelling to and from Chile and Uruguay or c.) talk to my Dad before I left about how it would be good if I had ample amounts of money on my debit card. I was also shaken by how quickly I broke down in tears when confronted with a relatively simple, harmless, almost funny situation. I guess travelling by myself stresses me out more than I would care to admit. I think it also made me think about how other countries perceive Americans, and the accuracy of those perceptions; to me, $132 seems like a pretty big amount to just surprise someone with, but people pay it no problem every day. And, at the end of the day, despite my angst/lack of organization, it wasn’t a problem for me to pay $132...I have $132. In fact, I have a lot more than $132, if I need it, in an emergency or unexpectedly...I have an absolutely ginormous safety net. And thinking about it, even the brokest tourist is going to have $132...because international travel of any sort, even the absolute cheapest, shoe-string sort, requires having a fair amount of money, somewhere...if you can buy a plane ticket, most likely somewhere there is a bank account that will most likely have at least a couple hundred dollars in it. A rainy day fund, at the least.
I had always bristled at the assumption by many people in China and in South America that anyone with white skin, or anyone who looks like a tourist, has tons of money and is a walking dollar sign. But, as much as I hate to say it, it’s a true assumption, relative to an average Chinese or Argentinean person. Basically, this whole episode put another puncture in my inflated image of myself as Abigail Bok, sophisticated and intrepid and uttlerly independent world-travelling, gap-year-taking adult. I think I will recover, haha. And I think learning lessons like this is the most important part of taking a gap year. So, Lesson 1: Always bring your AmEx. Lesson 2: Be humble, and always remember that you are never completely independent, always reliant on a safety net.
That’s all I have time for now. Tomorrow: thoughts about Chile, final adventures in Argentina, and some deep thoughts for the road. Chau chau!
Alright. Enough with the gap year angst. I have so much to say about what I’ve experienced in the last two weeks, and so much to say about Argentina in general. Let’s go.
The most exciting event in the last two weeks was a long-weekend in Santiago, Chile by way of a day in Montevideo, Uruguay. I had an amazing time, as I got to live and spend tons of time with my friend Molly, who is studying abroad and living with a host family in Santiago. Before I jump into all my observations about Santiago, etc, however, I have to talk about the adventure that was getting to Santiago. It was quite the adventure.
Basically, I proved to myself last weekend that, as much as I would like to think of myself as this grown up, adult, ultra-competent person, this is not the case in some respects. I am still a 19-year old girl, who, when faced with the consequences of her own inexperience, more often than not ends up crying on the phone with her parents. My big mistake was that I left Argentina last Wednesday night without my American Express card—I just had my debit card. This was not a very smart move on my part, even if it was a complete accident. I meant to bring the card, I just didn’t double-triple check that I had it. So I get to Montevideo and my hostel and spend a nice day wandering around Montevideo (cute town, pretty buildings, some cool museums, but definitely not a place I would want to spend an extended period of time...Montevideo really is a boring, smaller, less important cousin of Buenos Aires. But I’m glad I’ve seen it.). When I’m preparing to return to the airport to catch my flight to Santiago, however, I go to an ATM and realize that I have about $30 on my debit card, and I don’t have my American Express card—and I realize that I left my AmEx on my desk back in Buenos Aires. Shoot. I spend about a half hour trying to find a phone to call my parents, can’t contact them (turns out they were both in an astronomy lecture.....???), contact my sister, explain the sitch, hang up, and desperately board a public bus (super cheap..yes) to the airport. The bus takes longer than I expect it to so I’m now really late getting to the airpot, and I almost don’t get off the bus at all because it’s SO crowded that I had to climb over people; once I’m in the terminal, I go into auto-pilot because I’m freaking out that I’m going to miss my flight. I run to the check-in counter, wave my E-Ticket at the lady at the check-in desk and practically yell that I’m not checking any luggage, and turn to go to rush to my gate. The lady has to practically yell at me, twice, in order to get my attention, that I can’t go directly to the gate. Why? Because Montevideo charges a $36 ¨airport fee¨ to all people flying out of the airport. Uh-oh.
I run to the desk where I have to pay my fee and hand the lady my debit card, the whole time saying that I don’t think there’s enough money on it to pay the fee and I don’t have any other credit card. Obviously, the debit card doesn’t work...for about 30 seconds I’m standing at this counter just staring at the lady and spluttering, wondering not only how I’m going to get on my plane to Santiago, but how I’m even going to be able to leave the airport, and how I would be able to even get back to Buenos Aires. I would probably still be standing there, spluttering, if it weren’t for my savior: Pablo from Spain. Pablo, the man paying at the window next to me, very nicely paid my fee, saying I could wire him the money later. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. So, big shout-out to Pablo from Spain who saved my butt; who knew that there are people out there who are willing to help and trust people they don’t know. Now I know.
So I get on my plane to Santiago (after, while apologizing profusely and wondering whether I left my self-respect and standards on my desk in Buenos Aires along with my AmEx, jumping the entire security/customs line). Shaken, not exactly knowing how I’m going to get from the airport to Molly’s house if the cab is expensive. Mad at myself. Little did I know.....
....because when I got off the plane at Santiago, I found out that when Americans enter Chile they have to pay a $132 ¨reciprocity¨ fee, because the US, being an incredibly friendly and welcoming superpower, charges Chileans to enter the US. It’s 9:30 pm, I’m already tired and mad at myself because of the Montevideo debacle, the customs area is empty because no one else on the flight had to pay a fee, and now I’m standing in front of a Chilean customs official, explaining that I have no cash, no credit card, and not enough money on my debit card to pay the fee (I did, however, have $100 in Traveler’s Cheques...prior planning or just really good luck, I’m not sure). I end up being sent to this room which is basically the customs people’s office, where I sit in a chair in the corner, staring directly at a poster in Spanish and English which says ¨What to know if you’ve been detained¨ with detailed description of my rights as a detained person. Abigail Bok, Detainee. Perfect. Exactly how I always wanted to end up.
Eventually, after much discussion on the part of the bemused Chilean customs officials (I wonder how often are they confronted with a weepy blonde broke American girl? The impression I got is that they’re used to Americans being able to pay the fee no problem...), they finally bring me to a phone so I can use my calling card (I kept saying that I just had to call my parents, and that I had a calling card, but I don’t think they understood and thought that I just wanted to call the United States and charge Chilean customs for the bill...which would have been satisfying, but...). I call my dad, in tears, he puts more money on my card...and problem solved.
This was obviously an interesting evening. For me, it will definitely stick in my mind as a learning experience. I have never felt so incredibly YOUNG. And so incredibly inexperienced. For someone who has traveled as extensively as I have throughout my entire life, I proved that I can still act like a complete amateur. I can’t believe I didn’t a.) remember my AmEx or b.) research what sort of fees are involved in travelling to and from Chile and Uruguay or c.) talk to my Dad before I left about how it would be good if I had ample amounts of money on my debit card. I was also shaken by how quickly I broke down in tears when confronted with a relatively simple, harmless, almost funny situation. I guess travelling by myself stresses me out more than I would care to admit. I think it also made me think about how other countries perceive Americans, and the accuracy of those perceptions; to me, $132 seems like a pretty big amount to just surprise someone with, but people pay it no problem every day. And, at the end of the day, despite my angst/lack of organization, it wasn’t a problem for me to pay $132...I have $132. In fact, I have a lot more than $132, if I need it, in an emergency or unexpectedly...I have an absolutely ginormous safety net. And thinking about it, even the brokest tourist is going to have $132...because international travel of any sort, even the absolute cheapest, shoe-string sort, requires having a fair amount of money, somewhere...if you can buy a plane ticket, most likely somewhere there is a bank account that will most likely have at least a couple hundred dollars in it. A rainy day fund, at the least.
I had always bristled at the assumption by many people in China and in South America that anyone with white skin, or anyone who looks like a tourist, has tons of money and is a walking dollar sign. But, as much as I hate to say it, it’s a true assumption, relative to an average Chinese or Argentinean person. Basically, this whole episode put another puncture in my inflated image of myself as Abigail Bok, sophisticated and intrepid and uttlerly independent world-travelling, gap-year-taking adult. I think I will recover, haha. And I think learning lessons like this is the most important part of taking a gap year. So, Lesson 1: Always bring your AmEx. Lesson 2: Be humble, and always remember that you are never completely independent, always reliant on a safety net.
That’s all I have time for now. Tomorrow: thoughts about Chile, final adventures in Argentina, and some deep thoughts for the road. Chau chau!
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