I only have about 3 weeks left before I leave, but it feels like much longer - time is going by so slowly! Probably the fact that I don't have that much to do has something to do with it, which has been the case ever since I've been here, but now my patience is winding down since I'm in the home stretch. The problem is, I'm a daytime person, and during the day I am mostly in the house puttering around with nothing to do. Everyone here is really busy with work or school, so I tend to see people only at night if at all. I also have my salsa class, which I've been going to about 3 nights a week in preparation for the festival we're having next weekend. It's a great class, and I'm going to miss it so much, but it's honestly my only regular activity here, and for that I am grateful to be going home soon. It's a shame because I feel like I should be taking advantage of all that Buenos Aires has to offer in these last days, but there's only so much that I can get excited about doing alone.
I still go sometimes to the immigrant ministry, but as the girl in charge - who is also a theology student - gets busier with school, conflicts come up and the hours and days that we are in the office get fewer and further between. This week I spent a couple of hours in my housemate's 6th grade English classroom, answering her students' questions about life in the US. The kids were super cute, and I asked her to talk to her principal about the possibility of me coming in more days over the next couple of weeks, so I can get out of the house a little bit.
Other than that, I've been looking at apartments online, and getting generally excited about moving back to Chicago and having my own space! I hope someday I'll be able to afford to come back to Buenos Aires to visit, but I don't know when that will be. That's become much clearer to me in the last days as well - as I begin to say goodbye to people, I reallze that the only way I'm going to be able to see most of them again is if I come back to visit. The cost of a trip to the US is just way too high for most Argentines to afford, even if they were able to get a visa (which, knowing how awful US Citizenship and Immigration Services are, is not very likely).

smoke in the city

Maybe it's just because I've been reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, but lately I feel like I'm living in a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. For the past week there has been a cloud of smoke covering the entire city of Buenos Aires, so thick in the early mornings and evenings that there have been multiple traffic accidents due to low visiblity. Apparently the grasslands in the south of Entre Rios and the north of Buenos Aires provinces are on fire, and the wind is blowing the smoke directly into the capital. It's unclear why the fire can't be put out, or why the smoke is coming directly and exclusively into the city. Due to the recent agricultural strike, there are all kinds of rumors floating around that the striking producers have been setting the fires on purpose as a sort of revenge tactic. I've also heard people say that the government is involved, because the fires are making the land useless for soy production, which was the issue at stake in the original agricultural strike. It's all very shady and confusing, and the only thing being reported on the news is the effect the smoke is having on the city, with very little about where it's coming from or how to stop it. And the effects are strong - everything smells like smoke, you can't get the smell out of your clothes or hair, and traffic is terrible, because at peak rush hours you can hardly see the road for the smoke. The hospitals are apparently on yellow alert from the number of cases of asthma and other smoke-related health problems, and the municipal government is recommending that schools temporarily suspend their physical education activities. According to the news, yesterday was the worst day of smoke, with carbon monoxide levels reaching 4 times the normal limit. (According to them, this is still not enough to pose an immediate threat, though the long-term consequences are unknown). Since it tends to clear up a little bit during the day, I haven't had any personal health issues, but I am started to feel a bit like a smoked salmon. I'm just waiting for a cloud of yellow butterflies to descend and blow the smoke away...

Brasil!

As usual, it's been far too long since I've updated my blog. I just got back from two weeks in Brazil, which were wonderful. The language, the food, the music, the beaches, were all amazing, and so different from here! I was able to get by speaking Spanish, and could understand most people if they spoke to me slowly, but I think Portuguese is such a beautiful language that I'm going to start studying it for when I go back. (I have to go back!!)

I ended up taking a bus to Iguacu Falls, at the border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, and spending a couple of days taking pictures of waterfalls and wildlife. From there I went to Florianopolis, in the state of Santa Catarina, and spent about a week on the beach, drinking coconut juice and eating all kinds of tropical fruits I had never even heard of! Last weekend I went to Sao Paulo, a huge city with amazing street art and great restaurants. You can find photos and commentary in my web album here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hillary.richardson/Brasil02

I am now back in Buenos Aires, where I'll be until I go back to Minnesota on June 9th. It's hard to believe I actually have a ticket home and will be leaving, but I am so ready to see my family again, and I'm actually getting excited about going back to school in the fall. I am pretty sure I will be going to DePaul Law School in Chicago, and have to make the decision by next week, eek! Everything is going by so fast, and I'm sure no matter where I end up, by this time next year I will be sighing with nostalgia for Argentina. But I will have to come back someday - I have too many good friends and good experiences here for my relationship with Argentina to just be over two months from now.

It has been strange coming back though. During the two weeks I was gone, there was an agricultural strike that has had visible effects on the city. From what I understand, the strike began a few weeks ago when Cristina Kirchner, the new president, announced that there would be a tax on agricultural products for exportation. The producers went on strike, blocking the roads to the city and not allowing products to get through. I've heard stories of farmers killing their animals and dumping out their produce because they're not able to sell it. During the time I was gone people held cacerolazos, the same sort of public demonstrations banging on pots and pans that occurred during the financial crisis in 2001. Although the strike has been lifted, people are still afraid that with rising prices of food, especially meat, there could be another crisis. It made an impact on me when I came back to see the entire meat sections of the grocery stores closed and covered over, and signs on other types of products limiting their purchase to one or two items per customer. Although meat is available now, it is still prohibitively expensive, which is tough in a place where beef is consumed almost every day!

In other news, I got violently ill right after coming back from Brazil, even though I was very careful not to drink the water! :( I am feeling better, but when I went to the doctor this week she put me on a diet, which means I am basically only allowed to eat boiled chicken and rice, and no condiments, which makes life kinda boring. Hopefully after a couple of weeks of this I'll be able to handle real food with flavors again..

back in BA

I just got back from 2 weeks in Patagonia, and it was spectacular! I took so many photos that I put them in a web album instead of trying to upload them all here. You can access them at http://picasaweb.google.com/hillary.richardson/Patagonia, including commentary. ;)

So now I am back in Buenos Aires, at least for a while. I am hoping to go to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to visit a friend in March, and take advantage to see the beaches in Santa Catarina and the falls at Puerto Iguazu on the way back!

Originally the plan was to take these two trips and then come back to the US shortly thereafter, as I don't really have any fixed project or internship (and because traveling is expensive!) However, now that I've had a bit of a break from Buenos Aires and come back, I feel much more attached to the city! So at this point I'm going to make another attempt to find either a volunteer position or a real job, to be able to stay here a bit longer.

In other news, our water tank clogged and we've been washing our dishes in lizard-and-dead-leaf soup again... :p

further updates to come!

Starting to travel

January has been somewhat of a busy month for me between visitors and traveling, and I am about to head off again to get to know the south of Argentina. I had a great couple of weeks with Lindsay and Josh and Jess and Carol, and got to do all the tourist-y things that you don't end up doing when you are living in a place instead of visiting it. We went to the Cemetery of Recoleta, which has the tomb of Evita Peron and other famous people (along with a lot of cats and angel statues), the Museo de Bellas Artes, the Bosques de Palermo, which have paddleboats and a huge rose garden, and of course, to a tango show!

After everyone left, I went to visit a friend in San Pedro, about 3 hours from Buenos Aires, for 5 days, and then came back home and immediately got sick. So I've spent the last week and a half at home drinking tea with honey and taking antibiotics, and now that I've sufficiently recovered, I'm off to see the south of Argentina! I'm leaving tomorrow to visit a friend in Bariloche, a tourist-y ski resort town in the Lake District of Patagonia famous for its gorgeous scenery and chocolate en rama. I will be there for about a week and then I hope to be able to get a bus ticket down to El Calafate, a city in the province of Santa Cruz which serves as the gateway to the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. If I make it all the way down to the glaciers, I'll be sure to post pictures!!

In the meantime, here are some from the end of Jess and Lindsay's visit:

Summer vacation (almost..)

I am almost done with my internship at CEJIL, and I can´t wait! In the end I am not going try to stay here - there just isn´t enough to do, and the lawyers have honestly been treating the interns like a waste of their time. So I unfortunately still don´t have a stable NGO placement, and since January and February are summer vacation months here, it´s even more difficult to find a new position right now.

The good thing is that I have a couple of friends visiting from the US, so I am going to play tour guide in Buenos Aires! Jess and Carol have been here for almost a week, and we spent last weekend in Colonia, Uruguay, so that they could spend time being beach bebes and I could renew my tourist visa.


I took Carol to see the new murals on the "El Olimpo" detention center in my neighboorhood. In the first photo, the rainbow colored flag in the background is the huipal, a symbol of the unity of indigenous peoples. The woman in the white headscarf represents one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The man on the poster is Jorge Julio Lopez, a witness in one of the trials of one of the military leaders, who was disappeared in September of 2006.


In the next photo, the priest holding the money represents the priests who were involved in disappearing people - some of the priests took confession from the people who were about to be killed, or convinced families that they were going to help them escape the country and then turned them over to the military. The people falling from the airplane show the common practice by the military of taking the "desaparecidos" and dropping them over the ocean.

While we were in Uruguay, we happened to hear about a show taking place for el Dia de los Reyes Magos, or Epiphany. The event was called "The Fiesta of San Baltazar, the blackest of the Three Kings," and included a murga, or drum group, from Montevideo, as well as Colonia´s School of Candombe, which is an African-influenced style of song, dance and drum. These are a couple of the photos:
















And more Uruguay photos:

Beach time!













And back in Buenos Aires, being dramatic with the city lights:






Today Lindsay and Josh get here, so I will have four visitors in town at once! They´ll all be here until the 16th, and after that I´m going to try to do some travelling to see the rest of Argentina, and maybe visit a friend in Brazil. I would welcome any travel tips or words of wisdom, and I´ll be sure to keep the pictures coming!