Buenos Aires first week

20 julio
first off- forget capital letters until i learn how to navigate this south american key board, sorry.

ok, so, i´m here and safe and extremely tired because of all the orientation activities and walking tours and stuff i have to do. buenos aires is huge!!! but i´m already learning how to navigate this crazy city with its 8 million buses (which cost around .25 us and run all the time).


tonight, my host mom made empanadas (yum yum)!!! she´s so adorable and afraid of killing me because of my allergies. she´s really nice and so far i´m really happy with my living situation.

the other kids in copa (the program i´m doing) are really nice. not much else to say...right now we´re constantly tired because we start each day at 10.30 and end at 10.30 ( a little earlier today). like today, we had a written exam in the morning. then tried to buy a cell phone a lunch (major disaster, imagen 90 americans trying to buy phones during the same 1 hour break). i´m going to get the sim card tomr., then we had a general academic orientation, then a 1.5 hour walking tour of la boca (the barrio near the river, where the boca juniors futbol team plays), then security orientation, then figuring out how to get home on the bus. all i can say is thank god i have a fantastic sense of direction and can get around on subways and buses. there are participants who have never taken city buses before. its a problem.

26 Julio
so, i´m sitting around the program office waiting to go to dinner, which won´t be for quite a while...we have to be there at 8.30. orientation is tiring. all we do is go to Spanish classes, meetings, and more meetings. its pretty much over though. the tutors are really nice, except they told us that next week, when we start/register for classes. its going to be all kinds of chaos because we can take classes at 4 different universities. i think i´m going to take a Argentine lit course, a history class, an art history class and the mandatory grammar class. i´m hoping to get tufts credit for all of them.

so, i tried to go shopping today and it was interesting. they have cute spandex capri pants to wear under skirts but i don´t think they would fit anyone from the us. the clothing here is really crazy. they don´t care that Argentines are on the short side, everything is cut for really tall, skinny people. its kind of amusing. although, i did try on some coats today (its winter here, about 16 Celsius, no idea what it is in Fahrenheit). they we´re cut pretty well, except the shape was horrible. i was like hello, i´m not a box.

other than that, my living situation is really great, my host mom is a grandma, her grandchildren are 7 and 17. the 7 year old is so adorable, he is just like every little boy here, loves futbol!!! i have my own room and she makes really good food. she´s somewhat afraid of killing me. its kind of amusing, i keep explaining that milk products will not kill me, just make me kind of sick. we live in the park district, which means that i am lucky to have the botanic gardens right across the street- there are very few parks here.

tonight, i am having dinner with the program director and a bunch of other participants.