This is the end

"This is the end, beautiful friend 
This is the end, my only friend, the end..." 

      It is probably the last post that I will write in this trip and a mixture of feeling come to me. I imagine the next week waking up alone in my department, preparing my breakfast and going to the university for the first class in the year. Welcome again to the routine. 
Well, I will come back to Tucumán, but this time the return won't be like others. I come back to Argentina thinking in a different way and I say this because I understood many things:
   - Don't judge a person for his nationality: Coming to the USA not only meant to fulfill a dream that I always had, this trip made me understand that you shouldn't confuse a country and a person of that country. If a country makes an action doesn't mean that all the population is agree with this action. You don't have to think that everybody think in the same way, they are just persons and they have their opinions, their feeling and their way to see the life, they can disagree with the government and that is why they can choose who will represent them (democracy). 
   - Nothing is perfect: Before this trip I thought that USA was almost perfect,with all the people living a happy life. But even here people have a lot of problems and they have to work hard to reach a good standard of life. Also you can see homeless in Austin like in my city in Argentina. Don't misunderstand me, the USA is a great country, I'm just saying that it isn't perfect. 
   -Texan pride: Texan flags everywhere! even more than flags of the USA, "don't mess with Texas", "keep Austin weird", I think that people here feel more texan than american, that is amazing, and help me understand that I am proud of being Argentinean. I understood that my country is great too, is not the most powerful but it is the most beautiful, and people there are very kind, that's why I love my country.

But this scholarship also tough my a lot of things about life, I understood the importance of study but most important, I understood that study is not the unique thing you have to do while you are at the university, practice a sport, go out with friends, take risks, have mistakes sometimes, and travel a lot, because travel will open your mind and will answer lot of questions that you can't search in a book. Travelling to another country will allow you to adapt to new environments and expands you horizons because it puts you in contact with different lifestyles and social and family values than your own. That's why travel is considered an important investment that young people must take (obviously, together with education).




writing this post I start to wander why it is the last one, I know the answer but I refuse to think that this program is coming to the end. Five month ago I would never thought about spend my vacations in a city as beautiful as Austin, sharing this program with other twenty four crazy Argentinians... but here I am, happier than never before, I feel I am in a dream and I don't want to wake up.

I finish this post saying thank you to Rachelle, Katie and all the group. This was the best trip I have ever done before and I am very happy for having shared with y'all. I am not very expressive, but I need to say something: Los quiero :)

It's time to say good bye, but I am sure that we will meet together again.
See you soon friends, I promise that!!!

NOLA

My trip to Nola, the short way to say New Orleans, Louisiana, was the weirdest and the most incredible weekend trip I have ever done in my life. We organized this trip two weeks before. I just only knew that New Orleans was the city of the jazz and blues and I didn't know what to expect or what to do in this city, but I decided to go because I liked the idea of traveling by car with friends and share a weekend with them.

Our trip started with many problems: we arrived the airport without one of the members, guess who? Yes, David! But he was lucky because we had another problem, the car rental in which we rented the car didn't want to rent us.

But when we rented other car and David came on the dot, the problems ended and the trip began, almost ten hours sharing stories with Marco, Danila, David and Valentin. There was another car following us: Pipo, Rocio, Pancho, Santiago and Carla. Even we were traveling 10 hours, it was great, very fun and let us know to each other. It is the first time that the people in the car don't want to sleep, we were talking during all the trip, discussing different things, telling about our life and playing different games. For this reason the trip wasn't boring.

Now, lets talk about New Orleans:

The hostel: It was my first experience in a place like this. At the beginning everything was weird: the place, to share the room with people that I didn't know, to share the kitchen, the fridge, etc. But after few minutes I started to love this place, people in that hostel were very confident and friendly, and I didn't have any kind of problem there.

The city: Amazing is the best word to describe it, you walk one block and you will hear at least two street artist playing music. Is a city full of music, each artist, bar, and person in New Orleans makes it a magical city. Also, this city is full of history, the french style buildings shows that New Orleans was a French colony, and the witches, voodoos and hunted houses represent some practices of the African slaves that European didn't understand.

The food: shrimps, oysters, alligator and other types of meals that I always wanted to taste, everything was tasteful but expensive, 

Bourbon street.

The party: We went out two nights, the first night we went to a street called Frenchman street. This street is full of jazz and blues bars, many bars are free but the bands ask you for tips. It is a calm place to share with friends and enjoy the most popular music in New Orleans. The second night we went to the famous Bourbon street: It's crazy, almost ten blocks of bars and night clubs of any type full of people drunk and happy. This place is probably the weirdest place I have ever visited, in the street you can see people doing crazy things that I don't want to talk about. You will understand me only if you go to Bourbon street, and I recommend you to go!!

Before finish this post I wanna say thanks you to the people that traveled with me to New Orleans, it was a great trip and I really enjoyed to share it with you!!!

The bus that never passed

It was Sunday, but not a common Sunday. It was a sunny Sunday, so we decided to go to the minigolf with most of the fulbrighters, but it wasn't the reason why I am saying that It was a special Sunday, It was the day of the Super Bowl. Greg, a cool man that we knew in the Broken Spoke, invited some of us to his house to see the match in his house. At the beginning I thought about going because I wanted to write a post about the American's style of life, but now I have another thing to talk about. My relationship with Public transportation in Austin.
This is our story, after a great afternoon watching the match with Greg, his friends and his family, when the match ended Greg asked us if we had transport to come back to the tower we said yes because the bus stop was in front of Greg's house and we had our student ID, that allow us to travel for free in any bus. So, what was the problem? the problem is that the bus didn't pass at that time. Ok, I understand that it was Sunday, that here most people has their own car,  but it was before 10 pm, after the most important sport event in the US, day that a lot of people meet with friends in a house or a bar to share the match... I guess that many people would be more comfortable if the could travel by bus, but they don't work on Sunday evening. Whatever, we were waiting the bus more than half an hour, so we decided to run to the 803's stop bus like twenty blocks. It was funny, but we had the same problem, the last 803 had already passed the stop bus. We decided to walk to the first shell that we found, we connected to the wi-fi and asked for a Uber. In that moment I felt that Frank, the Uber driver, saved our lives.     
I think that a government should encourage the use of public transport, in Austin, for example, students can take a bus for free, and the buses are well maintained, that is great, but if they don't work on Sunday evenings, people is forced to use cars because the Uber is expensive. In our case, it was a funny experience, but when there are people that need this transport on Sundays evenings, it become a problem. 

Hundreds of reasons to love the UT

Are you an university student? If you are, I am sure that you would love to study at the UT in Austin. As I said in my first post, Austin is a city with a lot of university students, and therefore the campus has to be big enough to contain so many students. But there is not its size the only thing that surprised me.
I don't know each building in the campus, but the few building that I've visited are really great. The classroom where I take the class of "Economics of education" in the college of education has a wall made of glass, so you can see the campus from there. The school of Business is another building that I like. When you walk in the building, you can see the market quote at realtime!!! (If you are into economics or business administration you will understand my emotion).
But I am just talking about the things that excited me, the question is: Do you want to know why I am telling you that you would love to study here? Let see... do you like soccer? Every day you will see lot of people playing soccer and others sports at clark field, and there are pages on Facebook where people make posts inviting you to play with them. The last week I went to play soccer with some fulbrighters and we spend a great time with people from all around the world. Also, if are interested in playing other sport, you should try to join a team, the UT has a lots of teams in different sports. Even, if you are a Harry Potter fan, you may be interested about the quidditch team!! Obviously they can't fly, but they do the best trying to imitate this magical game.
Aren't you interested in sports? Ok, I am sure that there is some activity that you will love. What about dance Salsa?! Some friends of fulbright went to learn dancing salsa and they came back looking forward to returning. Also you could join the Magic club, or o politic group, and like those ones, there are lots of clubs of different topics. And I am sure there is at least one club that you will want to join.
Moreover, if you don't have enough time to be part of a group you are interested in, you shall go to the meetings, seminars and others activities that they organize. For example, this week a group invited us to a Disney's trivia.
But there is a problem, unlike many universities of Argentina, here you have to pay to study at the UT (unless you have a scholarship) and it is no cheap at all. I think that this is the reason why they have so much activities to do and why it's campus is so well kept.
But, beyond this, I hope dear reader, that you have understood what I'm feeling studying at the UT and living in the beautiful Austin, and  I hope you have the opportunity to live what I am living here.
I will be waiting for you to read my next post the next week.
Bye bye!!!!

Early days, First impressions

 Two months ago, I would have never thought that I would spend my summer vacations studying in the University of Texas at Austin, and now I am here, writing the fist post of my blog. I just arrived to Austin a week ago. I arrived with other twenty four friends of Fulbright full of expectations about our next six weeks in this city. The previous months were so busy, full of things to do for my university and for the scholarship, so I didn't have enough time to investigate neither about Austin, nor about the program, but I had some thoughts about the United States and I wanted to know if those thoughts were true or not.
This post is not about any particular topic, I want to write about the things that surprised me in the first week here.
I will start talking about the city: Austin is a city as big as mine city, Salta, but it is quieter and cleaner. Also I noticed that there are a lot of young people here, and I think that this is the reason why there are a lot of pubs and activities for young people, so you will always have something to do, like for example going to the 6th street (only if you are more than twenty one -.-). But not everything is perfect in this city, I was surprised when I saw a homeless camp in the street next to the campus, and I didn't see anybody trying to help them, I didn't expect to see a situation like this in a country as developed. But in general, the city is well maintained and the squirrels make it more beautiful .

Other fact that surprised me in a good way was the feeling that all the citizens have with the university: backpacks, t-shirts, caps and lot of other products, which are orange and have a longhorn stamp on them. I was also surprised when we went to the match of the university women basketball team and the stadium was full of people!!! In general, in Argentina, the university's team of any sport are not important, but here they are really important for all the city. And speaking of a sense of belonging, the fraternities and sororities are relevant. I thought that fraternities only existed in movies, it was incredible to see lot of them near the campus with strange names that were a mixture of Greek letters. I don't understand at all how does it work, but I have five weeks more to understand them.

I want to finish my post telling about my experience spending a night with a Texan family, Mimi and Clark. They picked me up from the place where we are staying, the university towers, on Friday and we went to a traditional barbecue near their house, and there was a girl singing country. In this moment I realized that I was in the amazing state of Texas!!! After the diner, we went to their house, we sat in the backyard and started talking about my country and about Texas while we saw the city and the sky. It was weird when they invited me to go to sleep before 10 pm, in Argentina nobody sleeps before eleven! But I have to say that I spent a great night with them, and I am happy that I experienced how families live in the United states.

It was a really intensive week, and the trip is just starting, so... see you next week!!