La Plata: First Impressions

It's been a long time since I last posted, and a lot has happened since I arrived in La Plata two weeks ago. The first week was orientation. All of the new interns (there are five, including myself) stayed at a low-budget hotel and were shuttled around for different activities. We also had many things to discuss like safety, working with an NGO, living with a host family, cultural differences in Argentina, etc.

But despite the structure of orientation, I was able to see a lot of La Plata. It's a college town, much like Ann Arbor (where I spent 6 years of my life.) The city swells up with students in the Fall, bringing along with them a thriving local music scene, political activism, and intellectualism. I arrived at a great time: the beginning of Fall (remember the seasons are the reverse of the Northern Hemisphere) because the weather is perfect (about 70 F and sunny most days) and there are lots of things to do now that all the students have arrived.

While Buenos Aires is a very interesting and fun city, I am very glad to be living somewhere more tranquilo like La Plata. There are so many tourists in Buenos Aires, its hard to know what's the "real" Argentina and what's not. Here in La Plata, I will have a chance to see how Argentines really live. This is a picture of Argentines hanging out, something they love to do. Notice all the grafiti on buildings. I will post about this later.