Amusement park

My life isn't terribly exciting right now. With the impending CFA exam on June 15th, most of my time is spent in Spanish class, doing my homework and trying to learn the language, and studying for the CFA.

Yeah, I moved to this awesome, fun city and I hunker down to start studying immediately. Great planning!

That said, today I went to El Parque de la Costa with some Argentine friends and a German girl. I confess though that my thought when getting on the first roller coaster was, "if I die on this ride, how are my parents going to find out?" I have no idea what safety inspections are like there. It was only $10 to enter after all (and you get to go back once in the next 3 months for free!), so I don't know what their margins are like. On the other hand, labor for inspections can't be that expensive...hmm.

The German girl apparently hasn't had an easy time meeting people here, so she and I are supposed to hang out sometime this week. Grr -- cutting into my study time, although it will probably get me out of Palermo and into MicroCentro (downtown) or Puerto Madero (the super nice, rich, touristy place) which is good.

It was weird how we spoke mostly English during the trip, even though I was the only native English speaker. The advantages of American hegemony, I guess. Quite a few of the younger Argentines can understand some English because they listen to rock music or watch Hollywood films -- in Argentina most films are subtitled, not dubbed -- even if they've never learned English. That makes them the opposite of me, who can speak a little bit, but can't understand a bloody word.

It was also my first time outside Capital Federal (the city limits of Buenos Aires) and into Gran Buenos Aires (the suburbs) since I've been here. It was nice up there in el Tigre.


Oh, one more thing. We went to McDonalds in el Tigre. The burgers were different, and there weren't that many options. I got the Big Tasty and the McNifica. For Argentina, it was pretty expensive -$8 US total. The meat was so much better though than in the States, it was definitely a worthwhile experience.