Marzo

Gaaaaahhhhhh! It's been forever since I've updated... I guess I just got caught up in the goings on here, then forgot about my blog... Sorry! So hopefully, this'll be the first of a string of entries to get up to date.

Ok, starting with the rest of March. The 24th of March is the anniversary of the last golpe del estado, so there was a huge celebration in Buenos Aires to commemorate the victims and to basically celebrate as a nation. (Also, can't spell anymore... I keep trying to replace -tion with -ción. We're calling that linguistic purgatory - far from fluent Spanish, and losing our grip on English daily.) When I say the celebrations in Bs As were huge, I mean HUGE. There were at least three marches that lasted for miles, all culminating in the Plaza de Mayo. We went as a group with Bettina, one of our coordinators and a member of Herman@s - an organization of people with siblings that disappeared. She took part in one of the marches and Alex, Katherine, and Phil followed her. Meanwhile, Michelle had brought her nice camera and really wanted some pictures of the goings on. We ended up walking along the sides of the road, but short statures and claustrophobia forced to rethink that idea. Then we say it: a few guys were climbing down a lamppost from the top of a newspaper kiosk. Perfect. I climbed up first and Michelle handed me the camera because she was hesitant of the lamppost, and Kathleen was wearing a skirt. 5 minutes later, however, they were back and threw caution to the wind for the experience. We later decided that nothing could've been worth it more. We watched the parade, waved at activists, snapped pictures, and marveled in the spirit of the day for several hours. A few of the best pictures are above: we took HUNDREDS. All of us gushed about the hopeful spirit that day - a holiday meant to remember a tragedy has managed to do so by honoring the dead and missing, while still celebrating the identity of the country. There's hope for a present and a future within the memory of the past.
After we climbed down from the kiosk, we headed to the Plaza de Mayo. Which turned out to be much more difficult that we figured. We were maybe five blocks away, but trying to get through the crowds took at least 45 minutes. Once we got there, Mich snapped a few pictures with the Casa Rosada in the background, then we headed back to the bus - this time taking the sidestreets.

I don't think I can say anything else fantastically important happened in March. I got my eyebrow pierced while Kathleen got her cartilage re-punctured. We spent the weekends dancing and drinking some wonderful wine, we explored various restaurants, we went to class, we improved on our Spanish, and we hung out with kids studying abroad with very few responsibilities. It was wonderful.