Orientating...

The past few days have been dedicated to Orientation. Besides the normal academic craziness, we also had several issues on security, and my favorite session, dedicated solely to the ¨Guia T.¨ For those who don´t know, La Guía T is a BA tourist´s (or newcomer´s!) best friend! It´s vaguely a bus map, but a lot more than that. The beginning of the book is a list of streets in alphabetical order. You look up the street where you want to go, and then it gives you a map and a square (ie: 7, A3). Then you go to map 7, and somewhere in box A3 is your street. On the page next to that map, there is a list of all the buses (called ¨colectivos¨) that pass through that square. Basically, you compare the square where you are, to the one you want to go to. However... (1) You don´t actually know exactly where the bus stops in teh square. The back has a vague list of all the bus routes, but there are no maps that have the bus routes on them. (2) Because there are lots of 1 way streets, and they aren´t in a grid, just becuase you can take a bus in one direction, doesn´t always mean you can take it in the other. Basically, an adventure!

I have taken the colectivos, and have mastered getting from my apartment to our orientation site. Today I also took the subte (pronounced sube-tay, it´s the subway) for the first time. Taking that, during ¨las horas picas¨ (rush hour) is quite an adventure! All I can say is that the NY subways are not nearly this crowded at rush hour!! Plus, the peopel in next to me were making out the whole time! On a crowded subway! Ah!

We´ve done a bit of touring the past few days. Yesterday we went to see the ¨Paris of South America,¨ the early 1900s nuveau riche who wanted to show off. HUGE houses, in a very french style. Today we went to the Plaza de Mayo, the center of the government (think the balcony scene in Evita). And yes Mom, I bought you a postcard with a picture of it and the Casa Rosada (Pink House) on it! Now all I need to do is find stamps. We also went around San Telmo, the most touristy of all the ¨barrios¨ (neighborhoods). It´s the one where you are supposed to see people dancing the tango in the streets, but I think they all took the morning off. On Sundays they have a huge crafts and antique fair with all the touristy stuff, and I think I´m going to go one weekend! We also walked around the Calle Florida, the major shopping street. Way out of my league, but lots of fun to look at. I have never seen so much leather in my entire life :-) They also have a very big thing for Christian Dior here - we passed at least 6 of his stores.

I think I´m out of stories for today. Everything continues to be excellent, though I miss you all a lot.

Besos,
Rebeca (how it´s spelled here)