Somos de los Estados Unidos

My trip to Buenos Aires so far has been quite an adventure.  The plane rides were long and boring but gave way to a beautiful Argentine winter day.  My friend Jessica and I accomplished a lot on our first day abroad including registering at our school, getting lists of apartments and getting new outdated Nokia phones to call about the apartments.  My favorite part of the day was the ice cream at Volta where the flavors are abundant and just as creamy as gelato.  We explored our new neighborhood, Recoleta, and checked into our hostel.  Although the rooms there were cold we met a lot of interesting people from many places such as France, Brazil, Germany, Canada, and even someone from the U.S.! 

After an eternity of calling about apartments(it was really only a few days, but when you're stuck in a cold hostel sharing bathrooms with 20 other girls it seems like forever) we finally found a cute two bedroom apartment fairly close to our school in Recoleta.  Our apartment is also right next to the famous Recoleta Cemetary which we still haven't managed to visit but intend to do soon. 

We had our first week of school which was difficult but most of the teachers understand that we aren't from here and don't speak the language that well.  For some reason people can always tell we're extranjeros(foreigners) and ask us where we're from to which we reply, "Somos de los Estados Unidos".  Hopefully once we've been here for a while they won't be able to pick us out of a crowd anymore and our accents won't be as recognizable. 

We recently met some people in the exchange program at our school who were nice and from different countries, although there were a lof of people from Germany!  Although we're in Buenos Aires, it seems like many of the exchange students speak English and they want to speak English to us which is easier but we didn't get to practice much of our Spanish that night. 

We're pretty much settled in here now and although we're in a different country we wake up feeling like this is just our normal life, as crazy as that may seem.  We've gotten used to walking to school on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays and greeting the doorman when we enter or leave the building.  The city is beatiful and full of exciting things to do and see.  There are dogs everywhere and because of the fact that no one cleans up after them there is poop all over the sidewalks so you have to watch your feet!  We have yet to get our laundry done, but we have to take it to a place and they wash your clothes for you and when they're done you pick them up. 

We've gone grocery shopping and although they don't offer peanut butter here, we keep a jar of ducle de leche handy just in case we want to sweeten up our fruit or toast.  The milk we drink here comes in bags which you pour into a container in the fridge but they have many similar foods here.  One thing we've had to get used to is eating dinner and going out so late.  Restaurants are packed around 10pm and Portenos never get to a club before 1:30am. 

Well, that's all for my first post, I'll be putting more on later, especially when I've gone to some of the more touristy areas.  As they say here, Ciao!