Who: Danny Zipse ’10
Majors: International Relations, Spanish
Where: Since February I have been living in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina – whose greater area is home to about 13 million people. I have had the opportunity to see a wide variety of Argentine lifestyles within the federal capital. Between February and July, I lived in a neighborhood called Once (eleven), home of the city’s wholesale and imitation goods, as well as many prostitution and other illicit trades. It is regarded as a middle and lower middle-class neighborhood. Its notable residents include Orthodox Jews and (primarily Bolivian) immigrants. Opting for a more tranquil area, I now live in Núñez, a residential upper middle-class neighborhood near the border with La Provincia de Buenos Aires.
Studies: Through my program with CIEE, I have the opportunity to take classes in four different universities in the city. I have taken advantage of this opportunity and enrolled in three of them. They include FLACSO, a private Pan-Latin American university, in which I take classes with other Americans. In my other two universities I participate in direct enrollment classes with Argentines. They include UBA (La Universidad de Buenos Aires), the free and public university which has about 310,000 students (not a typo) and UCA, a private Catholic university with about 18,000 students. Oddly, UBA – whose buildings are in deplorable condition and covered in extreme leftist graffiti – is actually the more challenging and respected university in the country. La UCA is a more organized and cleaner system, yet less challenging.
