Buenos Aires, Week Two: Having Fun, but Still Awaiting Word on a Job

My second week in Buenos Aires was just as busy as the first. On the weekdays, I had my last few Spanish classes, and they went fairly well. While I think they served mainly to refresh my memory, I feel like the classes created a favorable environment for testing my Spanish speaking skills. To be honest, it has been rather difficult to practice speaking Spanish around the city. For the most part, the people I have interacted with--waiters, store owners, tour guides, etc.--have reverted to speaking English after hearing my accent. I do hope to be able to speak a lot of Spanish once I start working, however. In any case, I'm going to have to work on sounding more like an Argentine (their dialect is really unique: sometimes they speak so fast that it's hard to follow what they're saying, and at others it almost sounds like they're speaking Italian).

Outside of the classroom, I have tried to find a variety of cultural activities to participate in. This week, I've done everything from jumping around with soccer hooligans at an Argentine World Cup Qualifier to taking tango lessons at a local milonga. I've also attended a wide variety of musical shows, including an all drum concert called "La Bomba de Tiempo" and a tango orchestra concert. Among other things, I've seen more art museums, attended an artisan fair, spent an afternoon at an ecological reserve on the banks of the Rio de la Plata, and explored the city (getting lost most of the time) alone on foot. In these first couple of weeks, I have really seen the cultural richness of Buenos Aires and Argentina as a whole. Not only have I found it extremely interesting to explore everything that this city has to offer (there's a reason it's called the Paris of Latin America), but I have also found it easy to adjust to the lifestyle here given the cultural norms of the Argentine people. I am certainly happy to be able to say that; I'm not sure how I would be handling life in a huge foreign city if I hadn't been able to adjust accordingly.

I wish I could be writing more about my expectations for an exciting summer of work, but I am currently in limbo in that department. While my ten week internship is scheduled to start tomorrow, CDS still has not notified me of where I will be working. After badgering my contact person in the States, I was only told to rest assured that they were doing all they could to find me an internship with an NGO or a similar organization that has some focus on public policy. Naturally, I am getting pretty anxious about this situation. I haven't been able to get a hold of the representative for the program who is here in Buenos Aires, but I am scheduled to have a meeting with her tomorrow morning. Hopefully we can get the entire situation sorted out and I will be writing all about my job placement in my next entry. It's been my only worry the entire trip, but I'd say there's cause for concern at this point. Until I find out though, I'll continue to enjoy my stay here.