It was really half a year ago that I began my relationship with Bordeaux and its inhabitants.  I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet Clementine and Gaelle last semester. They were exchange students from Bordeaux Ecole de Management in Bordeaux, France. During their time at the University of Louisville, I did my best to share my hometown with them and its culture. I also learned a lot about their country and lifestyle. It was such a rewarding experience because building relationships with people from different cultures was the main reason I got involved in studying abroad. At the time, I did not realize how greatly meeting our Bordeaux guests would impact me.

Now that I am the exchange student in Bordeaux, I really appreciate the guidance that Clementine and Gaelle give me. Every time I have a question, I can call Clementine and ask her for advice. As an international student here, it’s so comforting to know I have someone who understands the local manners and can answer my questions.

This spring Clementine and Gaelle are both interning in Paris. Aurelia and I went to visit last week and had a wonderful time. Clementine was a great host and so nice to show us all around Paris. We were only there for a short time but we saw so many things. My favorite thing to do in Paris is to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night. It may sound cliché but Paris is a gorgeous city and the view is breathtaking. Before leaving, Aurelia and I were able to have dinner with Clementine and Gaelle. It was an excellent Bordeaux-Louisville reunion and I felt so blessed to be able to maintain international friendships. I have so far found my exchange experience greatly rewarding- it’s more than I could ever ask for!

So we have been in Bordeaux for almost two months, and I can tell you now that the experience has been great! We have met so many people here at our school –Bordeaux Ecole de Management (or BEM as they call it)–, we’ve gone on some great trips, and we have enjoyed the business classes in school. Bordeaux as a city is extremely beautiful, and we can’t wait to take many more walks in the city once it gets warm!

The first week we got here and we were a little lost. None of us knew the school, the city, or the other students. The international group here (the Melting Potes) organized many little outtings for us to meet the other international students and some French kids, and we did just that! I can’t even count how many people I’ve met, but I can tell you that I have definitely met some life long friends here.

We started our classes January 12, and luckily, we knew almost half the students in our class because they were international students, but there were also many French students. I was very impressed to know that French students would take an upper level business class in English, but they did great in the class! We had two professors in this class-one Australian and one American. We had some amazing discussions in class, but some particularly stuck to me. One day, we presented something about the economy in our home countries, and I was surprised to know that 15 countries were represented in our class! That seemed like such an enormous amount! The class only consisted of about 50-75 students, but there were 15 different countries and cultures represented within those students.

This week we will start a new class for the next three weeks, so we will let you know how it goes!

We have taken some amazing trips in these past 2 months that I will never forget. Our first weekend trip was to the Pyrenees for a ski trip. Matt, Hassan, my Swedish roommate, and I went skiing with a ski group from our school, and we had a blast! I had only been skiing a few times before, but to say that I skiied down a few mountains in the Pyrenees is a great accomplishment!

Our next trip was to Paris. Ryan and I went for one day and night, and we visited a friend, Clementine, who was actually a French exchange student at the University of Louisville from Bordeaux last fall. In Paris, we got to see Notre Dame, Mont Martre, Sacre Coeur, the Moulin Rouge, and the Eiffel Tower, and we also had dinner with Gaelle (the other exchange student from Bordeaux). We did all of this in one day. Clementine was a great tour guide, and we enjoyed seeing her and Gaelle at least for a little bit. I’m sure we will be visiting them again very soon.

After Paris, I went to visit my grandparents in Provence and then my grandparents in Nice. It was so great to see them even if it was only for a few days. I usually only get to see them once a year in the summer, but I have gotten to see them in January and February this year. I am so grateful that I have this opportunity to study in France, the country I was born in and have loved for all my life, but also to be able to see my grandparents fairly regularly. It has been such a blessing, and I will always cherish this amazing opporutity I have been given.

In Nice, Ryan joined me, and we saw the Carnaval de Nice. My parents have told me about carnaval all my life, and it was great to finally see it! Kids were spraying silly string and throwing confetti everywhere as large carnaval objects made their way through Nice. We brought my twelve year old cousin to see it with us, and we had such a great time!

This past week, we have been traveling as well. On February 20 we began by taking a train to Brussels. We spent a few days in Brussels, then went to Amsterdam for three days, and then to Berlin for three days. Each city was very different from the others, but I loved every one of them. I had never thought of going to either of these places, and I just went along with the trip because Ryan, Hassan, Matt, and my roommate Annika were going, but I am extremely glad to have gone! Brussels was a very charming city. We ate many delicious meals, and very much enjoyed the Belgian waffles. In Amsterdam, I was surprised by how beautiful the city was! The canals, bridges, and apartment buildings went very well together to form a gorgeous city. In Amsteram we also visited the Van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank house. We haved learned so much about Anne Frank, and it was unreal to see the house in person. When I was standing in her room, I was taken aback by the fact that this was her room. This was were she spent hours writing her diary and afraid for her and her family’s life. This part of Amsterdam was probably my favorite, and will definitely leave a great impression on my life.
Berlin was definitely my favorite city out of the three we visited. Our first day in Berlin we went on a six hour walking tour, and I fell in love with the history. I had never realized how much history can come from one city! The history we had already known from World War 2, combined with the stories our tour guide told us, made the city that much more interesting to me. I remembered all I had learned from our history classes in school, and I couldn’t believe I was in the very spot much of this history had taken place.

Tonight I am actually writing from Berlin. Tomorrow morning we will visit a concentration camp just outside the city, and then we will get on a fourteen hour train ride to Paris. Sunday we will be back in Bordeaux to continue with school.

All in all, my study abroad experience has gotten off to a great start! Thank you very much to Betty and David Jones and Dean Goately for making these experiences possible. I have already done much more traveling than I have ever imagined, and I have learned more about myself in these past two months than I had in the first two years of college. I can’t wait to travel more to places I have never been, meet many more people, and learn a great deal both from the classes at BEM and my wonderful experiences.

–Aurelia–

How important is it for banks not to fail?  What would the streets look like if all your bank accounts were frozen, no one could withdraw money, and the economy could no longer operate?  Look no further than Argentina.  Today, is the anniversary of the corralito in Argentina, seven years ago, which is not all that long.  For many Argentines it is a stigma and an embarassment, something they want to forget; others are still bitter about those who took advantage during the crisis.  The corralito was the financial crisis in Argentina when all the banks failed and closed at once and one of the main reasons I wanted to study economics here - little did I know I’d be fielding questions from my classmates about failing banks back home.  

My friend told me that when he lived through the crisis, he and his roommates had to buy kilos and kilos of rice and staples to live off for weeks and supermarkets, the same I shop at every day, built barricades of shopping carts to keep out looters.  It’s hard to imagine these scenes you see in this video; being in Buenos Aires feels like being in Philadelphia or in Europe – or at least what I imagine Europe is like!  Argentina on a daily basis today looks NOTHING like this; protests today occur peacefully…soccer games are another story, though!

In la Facultad, they believe one of the key issues for developing Argentina is to finish paying off the loans and to get off the IMF loans and many people are bitter about the debt and loans (today total debt service eats up almost 5% of GDP); as they see it, they were accumulated by U.S. backed dictators who did not use it efficiently.  (Hence the references in the video.)

Watch this video for scenes from that time —– with vampire tangueros to boot; it has English subtitles.  The last one is much less colorful and short – and more violent – for those who want more, part of an entire documentary on Youtube, though in Spanish.  Che, te digo, studying the economy and having a healthy one is important.

12 Vampiros Tangueros

Memoria del Saqueo

This place is just 3 blocks in my house, and there are at least 2 others in town.  As I said in my previous post, in Buenos Aires, they KNOW what color Kentucky is – and that’s red -  apparently since 1942.

Also from my previous post, my roommate organized some local (as in Buenos Aires) independent filmmakers to show independent films about Bolivia on our roof!!  One was about the violence and crisis in Sucre this past Spring (our Spring, their Fall), the culture of the chola woman, and the best one Yerba Mala Cartonera, a film about independent book makers who print and publish their own books and bind them at regular fairs and comment on literature and access in developing countries.

One down…two to go.  I completed International Economics yesterday with a high enough grade to skip out on the final; it’s called being promoted.  Prof Soltz – he goes by Hernán to his students – told me he had some doubts about me at the start but my level of Spanish saved me and surprised him – and that I helped soften his bias against international students taking his course since no others have ever finished.  Why he didn’t warn me from the start, I don’t understand.  (To be fair, most of his international students have been German, while I had the benefit of being able to obtain some of the original articles in English.)  I still have Economic Growth and Economic Development to go.

I am so happy and proud to have passed one “materia” so far!  I really am proud; this has been such a challenging experience personally and academically.  I worked so freaking hard.  This sounds ridiculous to my friends who know me as a very good student….but for me it has just-been-a-victory-to-survive in this university!  I am the only visiting American student here at UBA’s College of Economics, and there are 50 international students – mostly Colombian, German, French, and Austrian – out of 40,000 students in just the public College of Economic Sciences.  I feel proud to represent and contradict over and over some biases my fellow students have about Americans.  Only a couple or three weeks ago, I received the results of our midterms.  I survived my 3 midterms without needing a recuperatorio.  You can retake and makeup one exam here, which sounds great, until you realize that because of that, it is not too difficult to fail with 3 questions, open response, 2 hours.  In all of my classes, I was the only, that is ONLY international student, non-native speaker to not FAIL my exams (Um, culture alert: they read your test grades OUT LOUD.), except for one other in Desarrollo who barely passed with the lowest possible score.  What I mean is we get no hand-holding for not speaking Spanish as a first language.  Actually, at such a huge public university, Argentine students get no hand-holding either. This is the big difference between the public and private universities here.  While the atmosphere breeds responsibility; still, the serious lack of student development programs and academic support also has its definite negatives.  All the students who come here have to be independent and mature, do their work, or face failing; I would say at least 1/3 of the native Argentine students in my course, or more, failed their midterms. 

I am skipping family Christmas, and so I look forward to finally getting to travel after exams until next semester begins because I haven’t gotten to do that yet much.  I have gotten to know – a little too well – Harrod and Domar and Ramsey and Romer and Stiglitz and Krugman and Shell and Dosi and Solow because I directly enrolled at an Argentina university, instead of opting for a regular program which do factor in the importance of outside excursions.  But that’s the exciting thing about study abroad – is that you can opt to study in places you have only dreamed of visiting and in a program that meets YOU where you are as a student and as a person.  Because I live on my own with a group of gals from Chile and Argentina and Mexico and France and not with Argentina “parents,” last weekend, I connected into the local cultural scene (which is amazing) when some guys estrenaron in Buenos Aires independent Bolivian documentaries on our rooftop terrace to an audience of 50, while earlier in the evening I made homemade ceviche from scratch with my Peruvian friend and her daughter last weekend.  I don’t have much free time, but I take time for culture, just mostly I’m studying economics. 

I leave you with some photos of the documentary event 3 blocks from my house…note that Pizza Kentucky knows what color Kentucky is about – that’s RED!  ¡Besitos argentinos!

Studying abroad leads you to many conversations that start out like this, “Well, in my culture in the United States…”  It is an interesting experience to be on the other end of questions from Argentines and French folks and to trade back and forth our impressions of each other’s cultures, habits, and why we think we live the way we do.  Studying abroad, I can’t help but find myself in these strange, awkward conversations trying to explain and at the same time tease out what is my own culture, making grandiose generalizations about the United States, something I never do at home.  Still, in this election time with all the polarizing dialogues, which the Bachmann controversy is presently putting in the spotlight, it’s a positive exercise to reflect on what we all DO have in common in our culture.
Last night, over a pizza at Café las Ciencias and a group project measuring and calculating equivalent ad valorem tariff rates in the U.S. and European Economic Community, one of my group members from France started telling me about the two gals from the United States in her building that were on vacation.  These gals went out every night until 5 or 6 am to “boliches,” or dances, and slept until two or three in the afternoon; they got up only to go to the gym and eat and begin the cycle all over again.  She said she didn’t understand why they find doing the same thing over and over again interesting.  Of course, I pointed out to her that people within the United States or any country are very heterogeneous, which for me is a positive, and that this kind of lifestyle or relaxation past, say, 22 years of age for me and many others holds no appeal.  We also started talking about why it is that many more Europeans vacation to destinations all over the world than Americans, who tend to be more highly represented on cruise ships and at beach front resorts.
This led me to an interesting observation, which I believe to be true.  We, the United States people, live in a culture of extremes; we like to live or believe we live intensely.  In part, our advertising culture trains us into this thinking.  These gals who go out to the boliches probably work very hard at their regular jobs to afford a week blowing off steam in South America.  Most Americans I know work very hard because they don’t have another choice, the standards for even basic jobs like store clerk in our country seem to demand much higher levels of productivity.  We work hard until our eyeballs hurt, then all we want to do when we are finished with our jobs is plop down in front of the television.  When we vacation, often we elect to go to a tropical beach with piña coladas and back massages before we go to a crowded city like Jakarta, for example. 
Before you accuse me of lacking patriotism, this is not at all saying Americans our lazy, simply that we vegetate intensely because we work at a more frantic pace.  The distance between our utility from relaxing and our disutility from work grows ever higher as we cling to our extremes.  Just as the basic assumptions behind utility tell us that higher utility comes from a consumption basket with more variety than a basket full of two of the same good, I think we could be happier if we all leveled out a little, myself included. 
Moreover, over a medium run, extreme work habits shunt our creativity and our productivity, and certainly the stress can shorten our lives.  A couple years ago, I read in a book on Simplicity (the popularity of these books in the U.S. and even the fact I was reading this is evidence that we work and do too much) that one will be much happier if one learns to love – not dread – all the things that one has to do.  One always has to make sure he or she gets a meal, cleans, makes the bed, sees that the laundry is done, lives below one’s means, and goes to a job or is in some way productive.  The secret to happiness is to love what you are going to have to do anyway. 
So whenever it takes me 20 minutes to get through the checkout lane because the clerk is taking her time here in Argentina, I am not stressed or flustered – because no one else is.  I have something to read or my iPod, and I know it takes me just as long at Wal-mart, only I wouldn’t notice because I’d be busy being rushed or complaining.

This is going to be a purely English blog entry for the sake of time and sake of every detail being expressed correctly.  I want to explain why it has been so long since I last updated.

In short, my mom tragically died on Sunday, September 21, when she fell from our attic.  She was only 50 years old and was in perfect health.  It was a pure accident.  It’s been a very difficult time in my life as you might imagine.  It’s truly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure.  But my mom was a very positive person and always smiled…she taught me to do this well.  And so I am focusing on the happy memories and all the wonderful things she taught me.  I’m taking her with me everywhere I go.

I returned home to the US for a week and a half to be with my family and friends.  Eventually, my dad and my brothers encouraged me to return to Madrid to finish out my semester.  We decided as a family that it would be the best decision for me and that my mom would want me to finish out this experience, which took a lot of hard work to set up.  So I built up some courage to make the difficult move; and with the support of family, friends, and community on both sides of the Atlantic, I find myself now back in Madrid.

Having missed two weeks of classes, you can imagine how far behind I am.  But I am doing what I can to get caught up, while taking care of my other needs like hanging out with friends and having fun.  Balance is definitely KEY right now for me!  Next week is going to be crazy as I have a quiz, 3 midterms, and a 7-page paper…Yikes!  But I am confident that I can do ok and salvage my semester…I’m dedicating my academic experience to my mom!  So naturally I want to make her proud with my academic effort.

I’ve been in Madrid since Thursday, October 2, and mainly I’ve been doing homework, hanging out with friends, and chilling around the city.  It has been relatively relaxed, which I need since the stress of being behind is sometimes present.  After this crazy week, I am planning on traveling to Leon to see the city as well as visit a good friend of mine from the States who is studying at la Universidad de Leon.  It should be fun.

Got to go study now for International Finance…tough tough class!  I’ll update soon!

-Alejo

PS I’m attaching a picture of me when I was at hanging out with my friend Teresa in the park in front of the presidential palace last weekend.  It’s a good, happy picture…also proves am I doing more than just studying 🙂 + there was ice cream involved!!! Enjoy: Sunday at the Palace

Hey everyone, I hope all of you at home are doing well. Things have been great here in Den Haag. School seems to be making more sense now, they have a very different program; however, I do like it. I am also learning more Dutch, which I really enjoy.

This past weekend four of us took a trip to London, and it was amazing. Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London, The British Museum, and The Eye of London were all unbelievable. Certainly an experience I will remember forever. The British Museum was my favorite, Matt Strehl and I spent about five hours there, and believe me we could have spent about five days in there and still missed something… No words can do justice to what that place has to offer.

Lastly, I would just like to thank all of those at the University of Louisville who are responsible for making this trip possible for all of us. It is nowhere close to over, but I can tell you I am having the time of my life. I would also like to thank David and Betty Jones for your support of our Study Abroad Program. We would not be here if it wasn’t for all of you.

Jimmie Guilfoyle

I have made another video for everyone to see. It can be seen by clicking on the link below.

London Video