Surviving in BA with no money

So I STILL haven't gotten my debit card back, but this experience has been teaching me a lesson in money management. So what do you do when you are broke in a big city?

#1 - do not eat out. This is definitely the biggest point. An empanada here, a coffe there...those things add up. Luckily I can just eat at home off of what my host mom buys, which is literally just eggs and bread. Which brings me to..
# 2 - learn to cook a lot of different things using only eggs and bread. So far I've made scrambled eggs, fried eggs, omelettes, egg sandwhiches, and french toast. This is a really great way to save money, the only downside is that I'm starting to seriously hate eggs.
#3 - Walk, walk, walk. Taxis are not even a word in my vocabulary right now. Things are actually a lot closer than you expect them to be, and usually a brisk walk isn't too bad. When you absolutely cannot walk, public transportation is pretty cheap too, though not as cheap as free.
#4 - Occupy your time with free activities. Basically so far for me this means going to the gym and watching tv, but theoretically there are a lot of museums and parks and stuff to go to.
#5 - Borrow money. yeah it's a cop out, but there are some things i just can't miss out on...world cup qualifyer game? delicious chinese lunch? going into debt was definitely worth it, and anyway, it's the american way right?

Trip to Chile

I just got back this morning from a series of bus rides from Chile, where I was viting my friend Liz in Valparaiso. Valpo is a town on the coast of Chile, and though I thought it would be small and have a beachy feel to it, it is a lot more like a city than I expected. My friends on the program Steffi and Danny came with me, which made the long trip over more bearable and a lot more fun. And although we spent basically a whole day getting in and out of busses (25 hours each way), the 5 hours through the Andes is so beautiful it felt like that was the reason we came over ...and if natural beauty isn't your thing, they also give you lots of food, play bingo for prizes, and show movies. Here's an idea of what we were drivng through:





We spent a night in Santiago before finally heading to Valpo on Thursday; Liz was a really great tour guide and had a bunch of stuff for us planned out already. We met her host family, who is really cute and funny and super friendly, and then got to know her city for this semester.
The first thing I noticed was the amount of graffiti, and not just words or random tags, but beautiful murals and artistic designs. Here are a few:



We also took a boat ride and saw all the Navy ships and the view from the water, which was really cool. The day was a little cloudy though, so I'm told I missed out on the truly breathtaking sights. We explored nearby Viña del Mar, which had a more upper class feel than Valpo, went to a couple museums, and saw one of Pablo Neruda's houses.

I also got to see Maggie and Alex again, which was exciting considering I hadn't seen them since our South American travels took us in different directions at the end of February.

All in all the trip was a great success, except for the one little hiccup where my wallet got stolen out of my friend's bag. While I was in Valpo with Liz, Steffi was still in Santiago and had a thief slit her purse open and steal my wallet out of it. Even though it completely wasn't her fault at all she felt really awful about it and paid me the money that was in my wallet, so I didn't end up losing anything really besides the old wallet, my debit card, and driver's license. Now I just have to wait for my new debit card to get mailed to Buenos Aires, so my next blog post might be about how I survived in BA for a week on $15...