I fly out of JFK in a week from today.

First I'll outline the program I'm doing. I realize this is a bit boring so tune in later once I'm in Argentina for the more interesting posts...but if you want a background of what I'm doing in BaAs and about my preparations then you should read the following.

I'm studying in BaAs through CIEE, a U.S. NGO created post-WWII to make U.S. students more cosmopolitan. There are 150 students on the Argentina program including 5 from Tufts, and we all study at the political science school FLACSO (Facultidad Latinamericana de Ciencias Sociales), and additionally many people take courses at UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires) and UCA (Pontificia Universidad Catolica). For me this is a big adjustment, moving from the 5,500 person Tufts campus to FLACSO and the 13+ facilities (no campus) UBA that serve the more than 300,000 UBA students.



Above is a Google Earth view of a small section of BaAs. The purple route shows the distance between FLACSO (on the left) and the main UBA facility (on the right). The two are about 2 miles apart with the ocean only another mile East. The map also shows proximity to Puerto Madero, currently one of the most trendy districts in BaAs, a picture of which is shown below.



I'll be living somewhere in BaAs with a host family, though I won't know where or with whom I'm living until I arrive. Once I arrive the program has a two-week orientation in which we stay together in a hotel before we move out into our houses.

While I've been thinking about this trip for a long time I'm beginning to realize that I really haven't prepared for the trip. I have done lots of tedious paperwork, from leave of absence forms to renewing my passport to canceling my meal plan and Tufts insurance and such, but I soon depart for a country that speaks only a language I haven't really studied since freshman year. On top of that Argentinean Spanish is much faster, not to mention different, dialect from spoken in Spain that I have studied.

It also doesn't help that I haven't ever studied modern South America. Every Spanish history course has talked solely about South America pre-18th century and Spain. And I haven't done a thing to bulk up on knowledge yet other than bringing up a couple wikipedia pages and watching Evita. But as cultured as Madonna and Antonio Banderas are, I get the feeling I shouldn't consider them my basis of what Argentinean culture is like. While I have read a bit of the Rough Guide To Buenos Aires, I've resigned to the fact that I really won't be able to grasp what the culture is like until I'm there.

That said I'm very excited to get there and begin experiencing everything firsthand.