Hi! I hope you're all doing well. Lots of studying this week (just finished my last final today!), but also some fun too. Here's a little summary...
On Thursday, we had a Thanksgiving dinner here in my host mom Eli's apartment. Five of my American friends came over, as well as my Argentine "cousin" (Eli's nephew) Jonny, and Eli and her boyfriend Guillermo ate with us too. We cooked chickens (couldn't find turkey), stuffing, roasted vegetable, corn bread, mashed potatoes, and apple pie. Delicious! Although I was sad not to be at home with family, we had a really great time!
Although I spent most of my time studying in preparation for my last week of school (2 oral final exams, both in Spanish!), the culinary fun continued for the whole weekend. As one of my American friends had a brother visiting, we went to La Cabrera, one of the best steak restaurants in town. We waiting for about 3 hours to get in, while drinking free champagne, and then ate a dinner of enormous, delicious steaks with lots of different little sides to put on the steaks. On Friday night, another friend had parents visiting, so we went to an Argentine-American fusion restaurant, which was also delicious. The transition back to eating the food I cook for for myself at Georgetown is not going to be easy!
My friend Sondi and I, who is also volunteering at the organization Help Argentina, decided to organize an end of the year fundraising event. We chose to give the money we raise to the organization Quilmena Deporte y Salud (Quilmena Sport and Health). Quilmena is an organization founded by Pedro Franco, an ex-nacional champion boxer from Argentina. After his boxing career was over, Pedro started a boxing gym in the back of his father's house in Quilmes, a very poor area on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. His goal was to provide the boys and young men of the area with an alternative to the drugs and violence that are all to common on the streets of Quilmes. In the past 15 years, Pedro has expanded the boxing gym and started a food kitchen out of the same house. He's a really incredible man, and we spent the day on Friday in Quilmes helping in the food kitchen and watching the boxers training. Tonight, we have a happy hour at a local bar, and we hope to re-build the floor of the boxing ring with the money we raise.
This past Wednesday was my last day at Help Argentina. I had a really great time working there- learned a lot and really liked the people. I'll miss them all a lot!
This week was also my last week of classes. It was pretty stressful, because both of my exams this week were oral. My last test was today, and in true UBA fashion, they only let my partner and I give 2 minutes of a 20 minute presentation before telling us to stop and giving us a passing grade. Apparently a lot of groups had already given presentations on the same theme, and they were bored of listening to the same presentation over and over again. Overall, although UBA made my study abroad experience much more academically demanding then I expected it to be, I'm really glad I decided to take my two classes there. I learned a lot, met some really cool people and got a completely new perspective on university education.
I did, however, have one little problem this week. After stepping on the needle a couple of weeks ago, my foot never stopped hurting. I went to the ER the day after and they told me to wait a week and it would heal, but it never did. By the time I finally got an appointment with the podologist, it was two weeks after the initial incident. At the doctor, I was extremely surprised when they pulled about an inch of needle out of my foot. My foot feels way better now, and hopefully everything will be ok after they get the last little piece out tomorrow. This experience has taught me 2 things...1.) not to trust the Argentine ERs and 2.) i should probably live in a bubble for protection.
All in all, I'm extremely excited to be done with classes. I have a little less than three weeks left here in Argentina, and I'm very sad to be leaving but very excited to come home. If all goes well with the foot, I head down to Patagonia on Saturday to see penguins and glaciers, then Ill have about a week left in Buenos Aires to see everything I haven't seen yet.
Hope you're all well!
Love, Melanie
PHOTOS FROM THE WEEK
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