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Dengue Fever Outbreak

I'm on the U.S. Embassy's mailing list and I just received the following e-mail about the Dengue Fever Outbreak, a vector born disease. It's good I'm no where near mosquitos because I'd be the first one to be covered in bites. All the exchange student trips to the north have been postponed.


"This Warden Message, a follow-up to our message of March 27, 2009, is to
alert U.S. citizens in and traveling to Argentina that the Argentine
Ministry of Health reported 10,594 confirmed cases of dengue fever in
Argentina as of April 12, 2009. Up until recently, cases had been
restricted to the northern Argentine provinces of Chaco, Salta,
Catamarca, Tucuman, Corrientes and Jujuy, however 107 cases have now
been confirmed in the capital and in Buenos Aires Province. The Health
Ministry reported that all suspected and confirmed cases in Buenos Aires
had been imported from the most affected provinces, but media reports
said that at least five infected people had not traveled outside of the
capital region. Dengue fever is a mosquito-transmitted illness, for
which there is no vaccine, and no specific treatment. Dengue
hemorrhagic fever is a rare, more severe and sometimes fatal form of the
disease. For the latest information, you may visit the ministry's
website at http://www.msal.gov.ar/htm/site/default.asp
or call 0800-222-1002.



The Ministry of Health recommends eliminating sources of standing water,
which form breeding grounds for mosquitoes. To further reduce the risk
of contracting dengue, Argentine officials and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend wearing clothing that exposes as
little skin as possible and applying a repellent containing the
insecticide DEET (concentration 30 to 35 percent) or Picaridin
(concentration 20 percent or greater for tropical travelers). Because
of the increased risk of Dengue fever and the ongoing risk, practicing
preventative measures is recommended by the CDC. For further
information on Dengue fever, please visit the CDC's website at:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/dengue/index.htm
. "

Good editorial detailing the corruption of the past presidencies of Argentina.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/weekinreview/05BARRIONUEVO.html?ref=weekinreview

First Day of Class

I went to my first class today, "Spanish Grammar/Gramatica Española." Being the language dork that I am I absolutely loved it. We talked about verbs today, mainly the indicative tense. When the teacher introduced me to the class the guy next to me started talking to me in English about how he lived in New Jersey for 20 years and became a U.S. Citizen. He came back to Argentina 3 years ago. He considers himself lucky, his friends that live in the U.S. are really struggling with the recession. I thought it was interesting that he said that all he ever did in the U.S. was "work, work, work." That really says something about the difference between Argentina and the U.S. Although Argentines aren't as materially wealthy as Americans, they sure enjoy life a lot more. I should mention that we are on a 3 day holiday in commemoration of the ex-president that just died.

Raul Alfonsin, 82, Former Argentine Leader, Dies

By REUTERS

Published: March 31, 2009

Filed at 8:34 p.m. ET

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Raul Alfonsin, who guided Argentina's return to democracy in the 1980s after seven years of brutal military rule but failed to stave off a deep economic crisis, died Tuesday of lung cancer. He was 82.

Alfonsin died at his home in Buenos Aires, said Dr. Alberto Sadler, who had been treating the former president.

Alfonsin was president from 1983 to 1989 and won international admiration for putting on trial and jailing the former military leaders who tortured and killed thousands of suspected leftists in a vicious "dirty war."

He had been a prominent opponent of the junta that took power in 1976 and his presidency restored respectability to a country regarded as a pariah after decades of coups and often thuggish rule.

"Whether you like it or not, you are a symbol of the return of democracy," President Cristina Fernandez said last year when she unveiled a bust of Alfonsin in the government palace.

Alfonsin won the 1983 presidential election after the military dictatorship collapsed, and six years later he completed Argentina's first transfer of power from one elected president to another in decades.

He survived three military uprisings against his rule, but his term ended ignominiously when his centrist Radical Party, discredited for its handling of an economic crisis, was crushed at the ballot box by Peronist leader Carlos Menem. Alfonsin stepped down six months early with the economy in tatters.

"No president has the right to endlessly demand sacrifices from his people," a devastated Alfonsin told Argentines by television as he stepped down.

In the last part of his presidency, inflation hit a record 200 percent per month, sparking supermarket lootings and angry strikes by Peronist-controlled labor unions.

The poverty rate more than doubled under his rule to above 25 percent, and the currency lost 95 percent of its value in four months.

Alfonsin's government struggled to pay a huge foreign debt partly accumulated by the military juntas and debt-ridden state enterprises. Economists blamed the chaos on his reluctance to impose harsh measures to close a huge public deficit.

Born on March 12, 1927, in Chascomus, a town 75 miles south of Buenos Aires, Alfonsin was the son of an affluent Spanish immigrant shopkeeper and his British wife. He went to military academy but then chose to study law.

An eloquent orator, he rose through the ranks of the Radical Party -- the traditional opposition to the powerful Peronists -- and was elected to the lower house of Congress in 1963.

A political activist from his teens, he was jailed three times, first by the government of President Juan Peron and later twice for protesting against the military government that ruled Argentina in the late 1960s.

Married and with six children, he was an influential human rights leader during the 1970s and under military rule he risked his life offering free legal services to present writs of habeas corpus for leftists abducted by security forces.

After taking office he made a bold step unprecedented in Latin America, ordering the trial of former military leaders.

Five were convicted and imprisoned for human rights crimes, and an official report estimated 11,000 people disappeared and died under the regime.

However, Alfonsin later signed a controversial decree to halt trials, under constant pressure from the military.

"I was convinced that we couldn't build democracy based on total immunity, but it was impossible to put 2,000 members of the military on trial. We didn't have any weapons," Alfonsin told Reuters in a 2006 interview.

Alfonsin remained influential during the 1990s, helping to forge an alliance between the Radicals and dissenting Peronists that led to a Radical winning the presidency in 1999.

But when the Radicals were disgraced during the 2000-2001 economic meltdown, Alfonsin distanced himself from the party he had belonged to for decades.

Santiago Debrief

I’m on my way back from Santiago after a 3-hour flight, a night in Punta Arenas and a 4-hour car ride. I’m showing symptoms of PTSD (Post Trip Stress Disorder). I am always a little disappointed when a trip comes to end and I have to return to my routine. I always have to have another trip to look forward to. I guess the next one will be my trip back to the United States.
To be honest it was particularly hard to leave Santiago. I love being in a city with all of the excitement and places to explore. I also love being able to get on a bus or the metro to go do things. I am a very independent person and I think cities afford me that independence. After three weeks of hanging out with other exchange students and Chileans I developed a picture of what my life would have been like in Santiago had I been placed there. Of course I have no regrets and am grateful for all the opportunities and amazing things I have experienced this year. I have learned a lot about myself.
Now on to the Radiohead concert. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun in a four-hour period. Kraftwerk , an electronic music band from the 70s, opened for Radiohead. I think it was a really good pairing of bands though it seems a little weird that a band that has been around so long and that achieved fame earlier would open for Radiohead. Kraftwerk played their hits (Autobahn, Computer World, Radioaktivität, Trans Europe Express, Musik Nonstop, Boing Boom Tschak). Radiohead then opened with 15 Step from In Rainbows. I can’t describe how excited I was to see Radiohead in concert, it’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a freshman in high school. I sang along with almost all of the songs. I went crazy when they played Paranoid Android, Idioteque, and 2+2=5. I started to lose my voice towards the end. I thnk it was me trying to do the Thom Yorke falsetto. I think I’m going to be one of the parents that shows their kids the records of their favorite band (in my case I’ll be showing my ipod) and tells stories about going to the concerts.
I should note that the concert was held at Estadio Nacional (National Stadium) where dissidents were killed during the military coup d’état of President Allende in 1973. I just watched The Black Pimpernel, a movie about the Swedish ambassador to Chile and they filmed a number of scenes at the gate where I entered the concert. The people running to get into the concert before everyone else looked eerily like the footage of the Chileans running to avoid the police brutality.

I'll leave you with the opening to the Radiohead Concert:

Chile 101: Intro to Democracy

Argentina became a democracy in the early 80s but Chile remained under the control of Augusto Pinochet until the 1980s. Although he died in 2006, Pinochet is still adored by a sizable number of Chileans. My host uncle has a photo of his daughter receiving a kiss from Pinochet hanging in the living room.



My friend's host parents had this book in their house. "Chile: Yesterday and Today" is a coffee table book/anti-communist pro military government propaganda. On each spread there is a photo with a caption describing life "yesterday" under communism (usually death and destruction) and life "today" under the military (usually happy people strolling down the street).

Best of Santiago (So Far)

Some highlights from my trip to Santiago, Chile:

• Taking the metro. Santiago has really good public transportation and a very clean/safe metro system that's very extensive. Unfortunately it takes me 2 hours to get from where I'm staying in Buin (a suburb of Santiago) to Barrio La Reina in Santiago.
  
• Cheap food and drinks. Sometimes 1/5 the price of Buenos Aires
• Cajon de Maipo. About an hour outside of Santiago in the mountains. Places to hike, hot springs, solitude.

See My Photos Here

El Calafate Bike Trip

Here's a summary and some photos of my bike trip this weekend with my advisor and his friend.

Day 1

We left Gallegos around 12 and arrived in Calafte in the late afternoon. From Calafate we drove Lago Roca, about an hour away by dirt road. Lago Roca is pretty rural. There's a small lodge for tourists at the end of the road, a campground, and a camp owned by the Province of Santa Cruz. We stayed at the camp which is owned by the government and is free for residents. It has over 100 bunk beds in around 15 rooms. Visitors also have access to a communal kitchen and dining hall. Very nice. After we unpacked we went for a short 15 km roundtrip ride to the end of the dirt road. There we met two french tourists and I even was able to practice a little of my rusty french. On the way back we got stuck behind a skunk going down the road in the same direction. We kept a safe distance for about 5 minutes until it wondered off into the woods. When we got back Hugo made us homemade pizza.

Day 2

The next morning we drove to the entrance of Parque Nacional de Los Glaciers. From the entrace we rode about 20 Km uphill into the wind to the Perito Merino Glacier. After eating lunch infront of the glacier we rode back (downhill with a tailwind). When we got back to the entrance Hugo prepared an asado (grilled steak).

Day 3

On day 3 Hugo's Calafate friends met up with us at the camp and we rode the 60 Km from Lago Roca to Calafate. There were hardly any cars on the dirt road plus we had a tailwind and were going mostly downhill.

See All My Photos

7 Months

I started to think of all the things I haven’t done since I left for Argentina. Some good, some bad.
-Eaten shrimp
-Eaten tofu
-Consumed high fructose corn syrup
-Driven a car
-Worked
-Vacuumed
-Used a drier
-Taken a test
-Done a math equation

Counting Sheep

Traffic was at a stand still en route to Punta Arenas...

Stay Tuned

I have made a resolution to write at least two entries per week in my blog. This is a huge increase over what I have been doing. I also would like to do some more interactive blogging where people leave responses to questions, etc so if you have any questions for me about my experiences, Argentina or anything else leave a comment on one of my posts and I’ll try to answer them in future blog posts. I’ve also given my blog a slightly new look. Keep checking in!

Books

I watch movies and television in Spanish and I speak Spanish all day long but I have one guilty “English-speaking” pleasure and that’s reading in English. Since my parents brought me books from the United States I have read:
-Stubborn Twig the Oregon Reads book about a Japanese American family in Hood River.
-The Road by Cormac McCarthy
-The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Right now I’m reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac and then I’ll read either Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey or Lion in the White House: The Life of Theodore Roosevelt by Aidan Donald. After that I’ll be out of books in English.

Wishing and Waiting...

So it looks like I'm spending 3 weeks of March in Santiago, Chile. Roundtrip airfare from Punta Arenas (3 hours from Rio Gallegos) to Santiago, Chile? 160$ USD. The only tricky part is we have to buy the tickets in Chile, which means a 3 hour drive to Punta Arenas.

I'm also trying to snag a Radiohead ticket for the 26th in Santiago.

0 tickets down, 2 to go.

Communication (or the lack thereof)

I have had the worst luck making phone calls within this country. First of all I don't understand why you're phone number is different when someone is calling you long distance (you have to take away 15 and ad it somewhere else and then plug in a zero and some other code). Second of all it drives me crazy that most people do not have calling plans that allow them to call from their home phone to a cell phone. I can also send text messages on skype to cell phones in France and the United States but for some reason not in Argentina. It costs about an arm and a leg to make a call from a cell phone so about the only thing you can do is send text messages.

After having my first cell phone stolen I went in to buy another one in Buenos Aires. They told me that they were out of Rio Gallegos numbers but that I could switch from a Buenos Aires to a Rio Gallegos number within two months. But I can't go into one of the company's stores. I have to do it over the phone. In Spanish.

I'm now at Günes house (the Turkish exhange student) where, after running out of credit and trying to use her chip in my cell phone to send a message to a friend who sent me a message on my phone (we would use her phone but it's not allowing her to send messages right now), I have locked myself out of my phone without my friend's cell phone number. So I called my home phone (using Günes' home phone) to get my friend's cell phone number. I went online to my cell provider's website where you can send free text messages. I was told his number doesn't exist, although I'm not sure I used the correct combination of 15s. So we gave in and called his cell phone (using Günes' phone which you must remember can make calls which are expensive but cannot send messages (although it can receive messages (that's another story))). So his phone rang and rang and eventually went to voice mail. I left a voice message telling him that I was coming over later and to send me a text message to my cell (my phone chip is currently in another phone without any of my contacts). Meanwhile he sends a message to Günes' cell saying he can't answer the incoming call and wants to know who is calling him. Shortly after I received a message on my phone (not really mine, just unil I can unlock my real one) from him telling us to come over at 10. Did you follow all that?

So now I've got to go back to my house, write down my host parents' cell numbers and buy a phone card. Tomorrow I'll try to unlock my phone and change the number to a Rio Gallegos number. If you need to get ahold of me I recommend e-mail.

Buenos Aires

I can’t think of many cities that I don’t like (Los Angeles) so when I say that I absolutely love Buenos Aires I know my words don’t carry much weight. However, having seen most of Argentina as well as parts of Chile and Uruguay, I can say that it is my favorite part of Argentina.
Best of Buenos Aires:
• Recoleta Cemetery- Burial sight of Argentina’s wealthy and powerful, Recoleta, with its stone mausoleums of designs varying from modest to outrageous, has a certain charm: abandoned graves—I’ve literally seen a basket with a skull and bones inside—to polished marble buildings lit on the inside by crystal chandeliers, the eclectic mix of new and old, rich and famous, remembered and forgotten.
• Palermo SoHo- My favorite neighborhood. Not quite as ritzy as Barrio Recoleta and with a hell of a lot younger residents, Palermo is dominated by boutique shopping, trendy restaurants, and café culture.
• Café culture- When you go to a café in Buenos Aires you see your waiter three times: when they give you the menu, when they take your order, and when they give you the check. Having been accosted one too many a time by the over zealous Red Robin waiter, the hands off-take your time to enjoy your meal and company attitude is especially appealing. You can leave the tip calculator behind as well; gratuity is included in the bill.
• Taxis- Unlike in the United States the taxis in Buenos Aires are pleasantly cheap (a 20 minute cab ride costs about $6 USD) plus the ride is always an adventure. Lanes are a suggestion on 9 de Julio, the worlds widest avenue. I’ve met some really interesting taxi drivers in Buenos Aires. My favorite would have to be the driver singing along with “I Want to Know What Love Is” on the way to the airport.
• Culture Clash- 1/3 of Argentines are of Italian ancestry. Great gnocchi. Angry drivers.