El primer día...

Oh boy, oh boy, where to begin. This whole situation is surreal, but I'll do my best to recap my first experiences in Argentina. Yesterday I woke up around 7:30 or so, unable to get anymore sleep. So for the entire day I had about 4 hours of sleep to work on. In the morning I made sure all of my things were packed up (even though I just realized I forgot my map of Buenos Aires) and got in a last bit of Guitar Hero. Hit 89% on "Scream, Aim, Fire" by Bullet For My Valentine and rocked out as hard as possible. But moving on....

The ride to Newark was pretty relaxing cause mom let me take half a xanax. I had started freaking out about not having a network cable to connect my laptop to the network at school and half a cup of coffee, so I needed to relax a bit. When we got to check-in, the line actually wasnt that bad. Dad and Chels sat off to the side while mom and I went through the whole process of checking in. When we got to the security checkpoint it really hit me. I hugged everyone goodbye and told them I loved them. Then when I got on the actual line I fumbled through hte process and held the line up a bit, but it was my first flight in about 15 years, give me a break. We were there real early so I had plenty of time to just chil land wait for the flight. When I got on the plane I sat next to this real nice guy from Lyndhurst who bought me a headset so I could watch "The Rocker" and a bad episode of "Cheers." We landed in Houston and I met up with Brittany. When we got on the actual flight for Argentina, I sat next to this grad student who couldn't speak a word of spanish. I asked her what she knew and she said "gato." I proceeded to wish her luck on entering a new country with nothing to say but "cat" to those she met. It made me feel a little bit better about my speaking abilities. However, once we were in Argentina, things were different. Me, Brittany and Jessie took a taxi into the city, which cost us 200 something pesos, more than I think we should have paid. This was our first Americans abroad moment.

When we finally got to La Casa de Vainilla, Zulma greeted us with all the friendliness a pperson could give. Her thick Argentine accent escaped through broad smiles that made the place feel like a real home. I could understand everything she said, but we were all so overwhelmed by being in a spanish speaking country that all we could really say was "si" and "bueno". My room is small and private, but pretty comfortable. After unpacking and watching the Argetine version of MTV and a sitcom called "Aida", I went down to see Jessie and Brittany again. We stumbled over our words and plans for at least 40 minutes before actually deciding on something to do. We read through the house's list of rules and had questions for Zulma. After going back and forth about what we were going to do, I finally worked up the courage to go over to her ahlf of the house and ask her some questions. We told her where we wanted to go for the evening and she gave us soooo much information we barely took it all in. Rolando and Zulma are a wealth of knowledge and I couldn't be happier to be living with them (except for stipulation #17 in our "normas de Conviviencia"). They gave us 4 peso coins and a spare cell phone and directions on how to get to where we wanted to go: Microcentro. We got on the small bus without a problem and drove through town, passing the Obelisk (which is basically a smaller version of the Washington monument) and eventually got to Microcentro. We walked around the bustling shopping center, searching for the perfect cafe or store to visit. There were street vendors selling scarves, mate gourds, Quilmes steins and these really cool hookahs made out of glass, wood and other materials that gave them a truly native, South American feel. we ended up eating at a cafe and I ate my first Argentine steak, which I forgot to ask for "buen cocido," but was absolutely delicious all the same. After that we headed over to an electronics store because Brittany needed a blowdryer and ended up staying there past closing cauze they couldnt find the one we wanted. We had some trouble understanding one of the guys that worked there and the salespeople were noticeably annoyed that her purchase took so long to finish because they wanted to get out of there. This was another American moment. Then once we got out, we found ourselves in a bit of trouble: we had no monedas. The buses only take coins and ever since the 2001 economic crisis in Argentina, every store and vendor is hesitant to give out change. We couldnt get any anywhere and started getting really worried and pissed. Over and over we said how this better not be the way the rest of the semester goes, after a useless discussion, and sick of standing around looking like a bunch of extranjeros, we decided to take a cab and once we got back just chilled, although we were very much in need of having some drinks and forgetting the horrible tourist debachle that was our first day in Buenos Aires. And now I'm sitting here writing this.

So far my impression of Buenos Aires:busy, aggressive drivers, completely out of my element, but the people are great. And from here on out things can only go up. Our neighborhood isnt the prettiest, but soon we'll be traveling around the city and visiting all the places you read about in the traveler's books. Also, Jorge and David, the students from Costa Rica, are extremely friendly and for the first time in a long while I actually had a comfortable spanish conversation with them. As the semester begins, we'll be getting three more Argetinos in the house and one student from Mexico. I can't wait to meet them all and speak in Spanish all day. Our 3 week Spanish course will also help us get through all our problems. Anyway, I'm gonna go see if anyone wants to go out tonight. Hopefully we can end the night with some nice clubbin/bar hoppin and as many bottle of Quilmes as we want. Check in with y'all soon, ciao!