Today we were able to learn a lot about the culture and history of Argentina. We started off doing a bus tour. Our first stop was in La Boca, where we had the opportunity to learn the deep history and culture and explore some shops. It was a beautiful city with colorful buildings and many artists and vendors selling their work. Our guide told us the history behind many important murals. I found it so interesting to see how important the history of Argentina is to its people. We than traveled to San Telmo. We walked around on the town and than went to the San Telmo market. It was a huge building filled with places to eat and all different types of shops. After the market, we were able to go inside a church nearby. The architecture of the church was amazing and we saw the church feeding the homeless in the area for lunch, which was really nice to see. The bus than took us to the pink house, which is where the president works. Here the guide showed us pictures of what the plaza surrounding the building looked like through the years. We than had the opportunity to see another church at the time of mass, which was such an amazing experience. The priest was singing and someone was playing live music along with him. Our last stop was to see the oldest bookstore and pharmacy. We had a short break for lunch and than went on a graffiti tour in Palermo and surrounding areas. This tour was given by a history professor who researches murals and graffiti.

Our prompt for today was to reflect on the historical similarities and differences between the United States and Argentina: The United States and Argentina’s history was built off a wave of immigrants in the late 1800s. This leaves both countries with diverse populations and rich culture. Early on the U.S. developed a stable democratic system while Argentina struggled with authoritarian rule, military rule and political corruption. Now Argentina is in a democratic system as they vote in their president and power is given to providences, which is like states in the U.S.. Economically speaking, the U.S. is dominant global force and even through switches of presidents remain, mostly, economically stable. Argentina suffers from economic instability, usually as a result of politics. This leaves people in extreme lows and without jobs most of the time.