For my Spanish class we went to a café/bookstore that used to be a theatre. It was gorgeous. I wish I had brought my camera with me. Our assignment at the bookstore was to find a book that we would give to someone else and then explain why we would give it to that person. It was a good morning.
In the afternoon my literature class went to the Evita Peron museum. It was creepy to be in the museum. I didn’t know much about Evita before we read the book Santa Evita. Now, I’m really creeped out by her. She was like the Robin Hood of the 40s here in Argentina. You loved her or hated her, nothing in between. She died when she was 33 of uterine cancer and the things that happened to her body while she was dying and after she died is horrendous. I didn’t like being in there.
Thursday was the beginning of my 5-day weekend. ISA had nothing planned for us and most of the group went to the southern part of Argentina. This trip involved an 18-20 hour bus ride each way. That was not something I wanted to do again after Iguazu Falls. The area is very beautiful and is known for it’s great hiking, rafting, and horse back riding. Anyone who knows me knows that none of those things are my cup of tea. I stayed back with Kimberly (Texas), Jessie (Kentucky), and Teryn (Iowa) and we decided to get a hotel room here in the city for a few nights. The idea was to try something different and stay in a different part of the city.
I had my two-week post-op check up with my surgeon Thursday early afternoon. While I was waiting for him to get out of surgery I sat in the waiting room with a lot of pregnant women waiting to see their doctor. Sitting next to me was a 7-month pregnant woman with her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son in a stroller. The daughter was annoying the little brother and they were bickering and I thought, this is probably what my mom went though. I kind of laughed knowing that I was the culprit of all that, but at the same time, I felt a little guilty about it. (Sorry, mom) The girl decided she wanted to take her brother for a stroll. She left without saying a word and her mother didn’t seem too concerned. I leaned over to Coqui and said that the girl was going to come back in without her brother and that it would be really funny for me to see. With that, she comes back without her brother and her mom asked her where he was and she simply responded that she didn’t know. (hahahhahaha) Then, the grandma came in with the stroller. I thought it was funny.
The doctor came down and we went into exam room 3. He had me lay down and looked at my stitches and asked me why I hadn’t taken them out yet. I had no idea I could take them out myself. The last time I had stitches was when I was young and ran into a pole and had 5 stitches in my head; and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t take those out myself. So with that he plucked out all seven stitches.
I also got the biopsy results from the cyst. It was 14 cm (almost 6 inches) wide, 12 cm (almost 5 inches) tall, and 6 cm (a little over 2 inches) thick. Can you imagine that? I think I’ll make a playdoh sculpture of the size of it to show everyone. (gross, right?!) I also got to see the ultrasound pictures.
Oh, and the cyst was benign.
This is my surgeon Dr. Juan Paris.
After the check up I went out for lunch with Jessie because she had to go to the hospital for a breathing problem she was having. It was nice to sit and chat with her. I ate a hamburger. I was really surprised at myself. In recent years I’ve eaten very few hamburgers and craved them even less. It tasted all right. I really liked the cheese and the bread it came with. I only ate half the meat.
I met up with the girls at the hotel at 7:30 and was pleasantly surprised how nice the rooms were. We had two double rooms. (Note about double rooms: they come with a twin bed and a double, almost full, bed. Strange.)
For dinner we went to an Italian-type place. I had a salad that wasn’t very good, but it turned out for the better because I had lots of room for ice cream afterwards!
Friday we ate breakfast at the hotel and made our way to do a park tour. We walked through the botanical gardens where there are a lot of homeless, abandoned cats. After the botanical gardens Jessie went to work out (Kimberly did her own thing all day) leaving Teryn and I to conquer the zoo all by ourselves. We walked to the entrance of the zoo (100 feet from the botanical gardens) and saw it cost 15 pesos ($5 USD) to get in. I asked if there was a discount for students and she said yes, but you had to be a student in Buenos Aires to use it. I showed her my ID from the University of Belgrano and she almost didn’t believe me that it was from Buenos Aires even though it says Buenos Aires on it. Anyway, she said we had to walk around to the back of the zoo to get for free with the student cards. Well, the back of the zoo is a 15-minute walk and we almost didn’t get in there either because we didn’t have documents to prove our identity. They ended up letting us in, which was great for us.
Buenos Aires has a pretty cool zoo. It’s right in the middle of the city and is surrounded by office and apartment buildings. We saw some very interesting things.
1. These spider-money-type things. They reminded me of the monkey in The Wizard of Oz. I couldn’t get a great picture of them.
2. Three elephants roaming around in an area that wasn’t quite big enough for them. There was a giant hole in the middle of it and we wondered if one of them had ever fallen in the hole or if they ever tricked the zookeepers by acting like they were going to fall off. One was an African elephant, another an Asian elephant, and I can’t remember what the third was.
3. We saw a white tiger that’s on the verge of extinction.
4. A puma that looked like he was playing dead or he was standing, got really tired, and decided to fall down and good to sleep.
5. A giraffe that was getting mad at a duck-like animal for taking food that the visitors were feeding it.
6. We saw lots of the UGLIEST, WEIRDEST RODANTS ever. I think Argentina wins for oddest rodant population.
This one was creepy and swam.
This is the ugliest animal I've ever seen. EVER. It looks like a mix of a rabbit, donkey, and dog. It walks like an old dog, but looks as if it could hop around like a rabbit. They were hobbling around everywhere.
7. A statue of a hippo strapped to a trailer being pulled by a car.
8. A grizzly bear strutting its stuff. He gave us the creeps.
9. More ugly rodents.
This is the biggest bull I have ever seen. Plus, I had never seen a bull in a zoo!
I thought this was really cute. This is an advertisement for my hostpital "Hospital Aleman" and it says: "The smallest always need good medical coverage."
(Teryn told the zoo adventure so much better in her blog, I insist that you look at Teryn's Blog
All four of us met up for dinner. We went to this really cute restaurant. I had the best dinner of everyone. I had ravioli and red sauce. Kimberly and Teryn had some sort of meat and it had more fat and bone than meat and four slices of potato. Jessie ordered something and they didn’t have it, so she ordered a salad.
On the walk home we saw the Saudi Arabian embassy, right next to a bathing suit shop. I thought it was ironic and funny.
Saturday morning after we checked out of the hotel we went our separate ways and Teryn and I planned to meet up in the afternoon to go read in a park in a different part of the city. We arrived at the park and it was completely under construction. It was also not a very nice part of the city. (My host mom later told me it was the most ugly and worst part of the city.) We looked for ice cream or a café but didn’t find one, so we ate McFlurries at the shadiest McDonalds I have ever been to.
I wanted to go see a movie Saturday night before dinner, but when I got to the theatre, the movie I wanted to see wasn’t playing anymore. I decided I valued $6 too much to see a movie I didn’t care about.
For dinner my host mom made me Argentine-style Mexican food. I told her how much I was missing Mexico and Mexican food that she made me tacos. They were delicious, but very unconventional. She told me she was ready to go to Mexico and open up her own taco stand. For dessert we had crepes with fruit and some sort of syrup. They were also very delicious!
Sunday Teryn and I met up to go to a Market to buy more stuff (because we needed to!) I bought a skirt and a few pairs of earings. We also stopped at Freddos, an ice cream place, and got a fourth of a kilo of ice cream. Money well spent.
Monday was a strange day because we had off school for the Day of the Virgin, but we didn't have anything to do. I felt so lazy because I didn't do anything. I don't even think I left the house. I had no reason to. I wish I could say I did something productive (like write my 5-page paper) but, no, I didn't.
After my long weekend I had three days of school and two free days left in Buenos Aires!
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