Greetings from Buenos Aires, Argentina!
It's only been a little over a week, but I feel like I've been living in this city for months. It's been such an eventful week I haven't had enough time to do anything personal (like writing in my journal, creating this blog, laundry, etc), and I think the only reason I have enough dedication to sit here and do this right now is because the week has taken a toll on my body and I'm starting to feel a little sickly. At least it's forcing me to get stuff done!
Where in the world do I start!? Let's see...
So the saga began last Friday, July 22nd. I had a layover in New York, where I guess the most interesting parts of my week began. I had the chance to meet Elaina, another girl who's studying with ISA and had friended me on facebook beforehand, so it was nice to see a familiar face at the airport. We were able to get our seats switched and ended up sitting together on the plane, where we learned we have almost everything in common-aka long lost sisters. The ride down wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be, I ended up sitting in the aisle so I had a chance to walk around when my knees were bothering me and actually slept for a couple hours here and there. We even made friends with the flight attendence, making the trip even more fun.
Arriving was completely exhuasting, however. Lucky for me, Elaina's fluent in Spanish so between my navigation skills (seriously, don't everyone go laughing at once...I've been able to navigate my way around Buenos Aires pretty well! Never would have guessed in a million years...) and her Spanish we were able to figure out how to get out of the airport and meet our group. Julia, one of the directors from ISA, picked us up and a large group of us boarded a bus and drove us into Buenos Aires. From what I understand, the airport is an hour give or take away from the city but I passed out as soon as I sat down so I can't really tell you...Anyways, the students were dropped off with their homestay families and the rest of us were taken to the residencia, our home for the next four months!
So there are seven of our ISA students staying in the residencia, three of us girls (although I just met a new member today! She's doing another program so she came in a week late) and four other guys. Lindsay and Elaina are the two girls I'm usually with and Blaine, James, Jake and Tim being the guys in the group. Talk about a small world, James went to high school with me and now goes to college near where I was born in Colorado, and Tim goes to NC State with me..the world keeps getting smaller and smaller! The residencia is a huge melting pot in itself...we live with students from Spain (like my incredibly amazing roommate, Lula-seriously, how gorgeous is her name?), Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Switzerland, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Ireland, Scotland, and I'm sure there are a couple I forgot to name. Not to mention all the ISA and CEA (another program like ours, we're all studying at the Universidad del Belgrano together) students are from all different parts of the nation...pretty cool cultural experience all around! (Oh ps, most everyone from these programs are from the North or West, so I've been repeatedly told I have a Southern accent...hahaha).
The time between the minute I got into my room at the residencia until a couple days later are honestly a complete blur to me. The first three days were filled with orientations, figuring our way around the city, and trying to figure out the best way to stay in touch with both one another and those back home. The orientations were really good on the one hand because it forced us to figure out the public transportation system, how long it takes to get to point A to point B (needless to say my group at the residencia never quite learned that lesson...we were usually 30 min late to every meeting), security measures we should take in certain situations, cultural norms around here, etc. However, it was also in incredibly exhausting three days-we barely any time to eat, find water, take a few minutes to recooperate, or even pack until a couple days later...I think I finally got around to unpacking Monday or so. I guess on the bright side these kids have now seen me at my worst-hungry, thirsty and on my feet all day? Yea, I was fun to deal with for those first three days =)
After the orientations we had the chance to settle down a little bit...but not physcially. Less during the day only meant more during the night! We finally finished our errands and ended up running out of things we needed to get done upon arriving, so Wednesday through Saturday we opted to go out. Nightlife here is nothing, I repeat NOTHING like it is in the States. Here's a general look at what the weekend looked like (aka, what the rest of my weekends will look like): Get up anywhere between 1-4pm, grab a shower, sneak some lunch from the comedor (like our little dining room area) if it's before 2pm, hang out or run errands until dinner time, eat dinner around 9ish, quick nap/hang out/skype/get ready until 1am, find a boliche (local word for dance club), dance until 5/6am, finally go to bed. Wake up between 1-4pm the next day, repeat. The boliches here are flat out incredible-they're massive, vibrant places where people go in groups and dance together..it's definitely not like the sketchy clubs in the States where guys spot you from the corner of the room and well...you know what they do. People here actually dance face to face (what a concept, seeing the person you're dancing with!?) or in their circle of friends-at least that's what I've seen so far!
And so concludes the first week of Buenos Aires, for the most part. Chao! (Ps, the picture above is my room number...I haven't taken too many pictures so far, Elaina's been our main photographer ;) But I am trying to figure a way to connect an album to this blog like I did with my Nevis blog, we'll see!)
