Why I'm Here (pictures to come)

So yeah, Argentina's been a load of fun. Crazy showers, sangria (Oh the sangria), and just lots of crazy awesome stuff you can never find in the United States. Other than sitting through hours of Spanish review in orientation, I haven't been bored. There is ALWAYS something exciting to see or do in Buenos Aires, the city that really never sleeps (suck it, New York).

All the coolness almost derailed me from my original goal; to study human rights.

The other day during orientation I was lucky enough to meet professor Patrick Rice, a former Catholic priest who now teaches the human rights seminar at IES. He arrived in Argentina in the 1970s, has been "disappeared," held in prison, and exiled from the nation but is so passionate about what he does that he fought to come back in the 1980s and has testified in multiple courts about the horrors of the Dirty War.

I love Patrick Rice. I'll probably propose to him by the end of the semester.

But anyway, soulmates aside...

As cool are Buenos Aires can be, I must remember it's past and current human rights issues.

Today with a tour I went to the Plaza de Mayo, where the Mothers of the Disappeared march every Thursday afternoon. Pictures of their iconic kerchiefs are painted into the concrete of the ground, to remind people of the missing even when the mothers are not marching. It's really sobering.

Hopefully this week I will get to see the Mothers march. They remembered what happened here in the 1970s and 1980s, and I must remember as well.