Last week was probably one of the most awesome ones in my student’s life: the annual event “las olimpiadas interfacultades”, where all the different faculties of the UNICEN meet in Tandil to determine who is THE BEST – by competing against each other in many different sports: among others football, volleyball, basketball, rugby, chess and a cross country. My faculty “Facultad de Ciencias Exactas” had won the 4 past events in a row, so there was no other possible goal than going for the fifth victory and show the world that the “teclas” (Spanish word for your keys on a keyboard or mobile, but rather used like “nerd”) are in fact really good athletes

During 4 days (when we obviously again didn’t have classes) both the women’s (las turulecas) and the men’s teams (los gallitos) fought to the death, supported by an incredibly loud crowd making a way better atmosphere than the “Eintracht Frankfurt Ultras” And finally, after some dramatic matches where we almost always had the better end on our side, we can call ourselves again the Champions of the Games, sending the “Facultad de Económica” (los leones eternos subcampeones) again to the second place!

For myself, I had the honor to be part of the running team. Despite my currently suboptimal shape, I terminated the REALLY hilly and windy track (approximately 3.5 km) in 14 minutes, “just” one minute slower than the winner. Since he is participating in competitions at a national level, I’m really surprised and satisfied to have finished such respectably In the overall ranking I am 10th out of 80 participants, but “only” 5th of my faculty (4 smart duathletes before me), means we had 5 persons in the first places so we also have won this discipline ….

Apart from the sports events, the Olimpiadas are four days of endless parties, where I met lots of great people in such a good mood, maintaining a healthy rivalry but without any envy or violence (such a pity there is nothing equivalent in Germany’s universities). It also helped me to slowly adapt more and more to the Argentine night-life: the “previa” starts between 12 and 1 and you won’t go to a “boliche” before 3am …. no need to tell you when I finally went to sleep!

Well, I think this is more or less what’s worth to tell, and since the university starts again this week, I’ll need to go to bed soon (oh, 1:30 – VERY early today). I still do enjoy my life here a lot and everything keeps going on very fine. The guys from my pension try to teach me the art of the card game “Truco” (really funny but difficult when you don’t understand everything from the jargon – they talk a lot during the game and it’s sometimes hard to follow the hidden messages) and I’ll have my first mid-term exam by the end of this week, so I also have to study at least a little bit.

By the way, I wish every student in Europe a good start for the new semester and hope everything is going on fine over there. I must admit it is a bit complicated to stay up-to-date regarding the topics from outside Argentina – they are literally non-existent in the daily news (for instance, I haven’t heard a single world about Syria or the Euro-crisis since I arrived here). This is probably partially due to the naive nationalism of the people here: Argentina is the only thing that matters or bothers and, besides, EVERYTHING comes from or is produced in Argentina – even the famous brands like Kinder, Nesquick or Toblerone (where you can obviously hear it sounds like Castellano, don’t you?), as I was told during the “semana internacional” (another nice event at the UNICEN)

vamos, vamos gallito,
yo soy de exactas, vos sos mi vida!
del ingreso hasta el cajón,
te llevo en el corazón,
ponga huevo para ser pentacampeón!