LA EVITA

Yesterday was the 58th anniversary of Eva Duarte de Perón (the famous First Lady to Juan Perón who is much loved by the masses for her support of the working classes). Following orientation a group of friends and I decided that we wanted to go to the parade in her honor. We walked and walked trying to figure out where the parade was, but no one in the city seemed to know. We went to a tourist information center and the attendant didn't know it was the anniversary of her death in spite of the fact that the anniversary was covered on the front page of each major argentine newspaper.

Because know one seemed to know where the parade was we figured we should go to the famous Recoleta Cemetery where Evita is buried. The parade had to pass by her tomb, right? Wrong. The closed the cemetery before the parade had even begun. The whole situation makes no sense to me, but things don't always make sense down here. After 3 hours of searching we gave up on our quest to find the parade and headed home.

The past few days have been busy learning about all of the different course options. We have the ability to take classes at as few or as many argentine universities as we want. Our choices are Di Tella (a very small and extremely prestigious university modeled on the American university system), la Universidad Católica de Argentina, la Universidad de San Salvador (another Catholic University, but one that is a little more secular), and, finally, la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Most consider UBA, a university of 300,000 students, the most prestigious university in Argentina in part because it is such an unorganized school and takes so much motivation and organization on the part of the student to graduate. Canceled classes as a result of teacher union strikes are not uncommon at UBA. I'll be shopping a number of classes for the next two weeks, but I'm thinking I'll probably end up taking two classes at UBA just because of how the exam schedule works (I originally wanted to take classes at Di Tella, but their exams are after our program ends and after I return to the United States). As someone whose gone to private school her whole life, I think UBA is going to be quite a shock for me. It should be an adventure, that's for sure!