Before I begin, I want to wish everyone in the 410, safety as the riots continue, as the National Guard is called into our city.
Buenos Aires, Argentina- The air is thick with pollution and the constant smell of barbeque. Tall buildings line the streets, buses and cars weave between each other on the over crowded roads. This is no sweaty, sticky, swampy jungle of the Amazon; rather this is the concrete jungle.
For the last four weeks, I have called this place my home. I am staying the neighborhood Recoleta, which on a map is kind of the heart of the safer/tourist parts of the city, but with a city of three million people, and the second largest metropolitan city in South America, nothing is really close. I am living in a fourteen person international house. My housemates consist of eight students from France, two from Italy, one from Germany, and two English teachers from the United States. Talk about hectic. It’s certainly fun at times, but occasionally it would be nice to not have to cook dinner with a kitchen full of fourteen people. But the answer to your question is yes; we have enough bathrooms that no one has had an issue yet. Twice a week the house is cleaned by either one of the two maids, but by the next day everything seems to be dirty again. Everyone gets along great and is extremely inclusive, always telling and asking everyone in the house their plans for the night. For example, the other weekend a bunch of us went to ‘Time Warp’ an international music festival held in USA, Argentina, Germany, and the Netherlands. I had no idea about it but my housemates invited me and it was a great time. I am really getting along well with everyone and they have added to the experience greatly.
After reading everyone else’s blogs, I have certainly had a different experience so far. My first three weeks were filled with sixty hours of Spanish classes, and now I have started my internship with ShipNow Project, a local shipping startup, delivering all sizes of packages to neighborhoods throughout the Buenos Aires province. My job title, assistant to the CEO and COO. For the first week, I was tasked with researching different information for the expanding company. Thus, I spent the days searching the web for information from costs of expanding our shipping, internationally, to warehouse storage costs and insurance plans. In just a week, my knowledge of domestic and international logistics has skyrocketed. Today, day number six, consisted of reading a fifty-page document about warehouse logistics, because I have been asked by my bosses to restructure our warehouse to optimize daily operations. Work has been extremely informative, and I believe that this internship and experience is a very good start to learning about international and domestic business, and will set me up for future success while looking for a career.
Highlights so far: The cost of food: cheap, really cheap; excellent barbecue everywhere you go; always something fun and interesting going on.
