Pumpkin season is here

The biggest in the supermarket. 2.5kg! $3.

End of the world weather

Yesterday a storm hit BA. thunder, hailstones, the full works. Also showed some of the issues with the infrastructure here, with a number of buildings being flooded and around a foot of water on the subway. Today the sunshine has returned though,  and there seems to be no lasting damage...

The photo was taken through the window at the school. It might have been more fun to watch had we not been mopping the floor of water coming in through the door!

Theater converted into a bookshop

Running a Revolution

Sunday was the day of the 10k race I had entered myself for. It was the 26th of May, and what I hadn't know when registering was that the 25th is the national day in Argentina. The race ("Fiestas Mayas") is named after the national holiday preceding the competition.

The Argentine national holiday celebrates the first step on the road to independence from Spain (the 9th July being the actual independence day). After Napoleon invaded Spain, deposed Ferdinand VII and appointed his brother king, a group of revolutionaries in Buenos Aires declared themselves loyal to Ferdinand VII and decided they would rule themselves his behalf. The 25th May 1810 was the date the group formed the first home-rule government in Rio de la Plata (broadly speaking what is now Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay). Despite Ferdinand's return to the throne in Spain a few years later, the leaders in Buenos Aires decided they had had enough of Spanish rule and on July 9th 1816 officially declared themselves independent from Spain, hence the 25th being considered the most important date of the movement towards independence.

The significance of the Fiestas Mayas and the race name didn't mean a lot to me until Saturday, which was the national holiday when there were plenty of blue and white flags out. At the start-line of the race there was a rendition of the national anthem under an enormous Argentinean flag, and the start was marked with an explosion of blue and white confetti.

I was impressed with how well the race was organised. Whilst the inscription had been a bit of a pain beforehand (had to do it in person), everything ran very smoothly for the race (which had nearly 7000 people taking part) - secure storage for belongings and plenty of refreshments during and after the race.
The course was not fantastically exciting (along streets - but then perhaps I've just been a bit spoilt in Switzerland) but was nice enough and did get to run besides some of the city's parks, and the weather was pretty much perfect.

In the white t-shirt...

My time was 43.40 which was okay, but probably also reflects that I haven't been training so much in the last 2 weeks. I placed 33rd woman overall out of 3131 and 3rd for my age group (19-24). Anyway, it was a fun race and nice to take part in a race abroad.

Hockey



River Plate in Black and Ciudad in the blue and white hoops



The weather was great yesterday so I decided to go and find some hockey to watch. I had done a bit of research on-line and near where I had been to register for the race I had seen a hockey pitch so found out who was playing. Saw a couple of matches from "River Plate" (the home team on that pitch), including their first team who play in the top league in Buenos Aires. Yesterday they were playing Ciudad de Buenos Aires. The standard in this match was very high, and Ciudad have at least one player who was in the Argentine national team at the Olympics last year.



River plate ended up losing 4-0



That the standard of hockey was high yesterday shouldn't really be a surprise given how popular the sport is. The River Plate Club have at least six teams and there are numerous clubs throughout the city and the suburbs. The national team is named Las Leonas "the Lionesses" and has consistently been ranked as one of the top teams in the world. They also seem to be well supported by the public - the women's team hockey shirts are available to buy around town like national football shirts are available in Europe.



One of the campuses of the huge University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in the background.



The final score was 4-0 to the visitors but it was a good game to watch. There was a very friendly atmosphere at the match with stands full of supporters. Having spoken to a few locals about Hockey, it would seem to be the more "middle-class" past time in Buenos Aires, played widely in the private schools, and that was noticeable amongst the parents and other supporters yesterday afternoon.



Before the hockey I also had a wander around the sports park next door. It was seeminly a semi-private park with a number of football and tennis pitches along with lakes and swimming pools. I'm no great photographer but at least you can see the great weather yesterday (although you probably can't see the temperature - it was about 17 degrees!)



Parque Norte



The buses

Living on the busy street that I do, one of the first things I noticed about Buenos Aires is the number of busses that fly by at all hours of the day. The chaotic scene of busses lines up behind each other in rush-hour traffic, all packed with people, seems to capture the hectic part of this city quite well.

The busses are certainly not targeted towards naive tourists; there is no real network-map (of the London-underground style) available, rather just a book listing out each of the lines. So far, by best attempts on getting around on the buses have involved either going with someone who knows exactly how to get there, or having a good idea where just one or two of the lines go and sticking to that. Spontaneously trying to take a bus to get home without knowing the line could easily end up somewhere you don't want to be.

You also learn quickly that regardless of the actual road rules, the buses pretty much always have right of way. They generally don't slow-down, but rather go-round any obstacles, making it unwise to wait too close to the edge of the road to cross. On top of that, they aren't that keen to stop and let people on unless they have to, making it necessary to almost stand in the street signalling to the driver that you want to get on.

However, whilst the buses can be a bit of a nightmare, what they do have going for them is being very cheap - less than 2 pesos for a trip in general (less than 30 pence), and i'm also quite a fan of how they look. They come in every colour of the rainbow representing the company that runs that line (there are a number of different companies running different bus lines).

I'm also quite fortunate in that I can walk to school in the morning, and so can admire the organised-chaos of Buenos Aires public transport without having to rely too much on it.

How do you say "on your marks" in Spanish?

10k race on sunday morning out in one of the nice suburbs. Had to go pick up the race number yesterday, although they had run out of t-shirts,  much to my disappointent! Just need to make sure I get there for 8.30 on sunday morning. I'm probably not in great running form, but will hopefully be a nice event.

Hola!

The first post on the new blog! It has been a few days in the making, given that I arrived early on Saturday morning, but my first attempted post on Saturday afternoon spontaneously vanished, and I didn't have the will to re-type out what I had written. Given that it was not much more than a lengthly appraisal of Iberia's long-haul service, little of importance was lost. The short version is that Iberia got me and my bag here according to schedule although not in luxury and with an uninspiring film showing.

The last few days have been very much about exploring the city. Buenos Aires is huge, and looking at the map can be deceptive as to how far things are away. The city is organised on  a grid system, with everything measured in blocks (perhaps not an exciting concept for a North American, but quite different from the sprawling intersecting streets and alleyways Europeans are used to in their cities). Navigation is generally not that difficult, because there are a fairly small number of street names, with each one running right across the centre of the city. Building numbers are also aligned across streets so with a bit of thought you can work out where to head.

My accommodation is with an old lady who rents out 4 rooms in her large flat. The building is located in the centre of the city, in what I would describe as the Argintenean version of the West-End. The street is full of theatres, cinemas and restaurants. It's certainly a very bustling part of town, and whilst the tourists and visitors presumably make it a hot-spot for pick-pockets, the constant flow of people, cars and light, makes it feel relatively safe.

Today was also the first day at the school. Turns out there are no other students registered for my level (the school is very small and runs classes in the mornings and afternoons), so instead of the usual 4 hours of 2-4 students in a class I have 2 hours of individual classes. Hopefully somene else will come along soon (I'm not sure I fancy 6 weeks of only individual classes), but it's certainly good at the beginning to have the concentrated classes.

Photos to follow soon. At the moment I only have my not-so-inconspicuous SLR camera with me, which I'm not too keen to drag around with me for long periods of time. And anyway, I' m no great photographer so I feel the wikipedia shot of the street I live on will do as good a job as I can...