My First day

So my parents really wanted me to start a blog and I wasn't going to do it at first but I had some extra time. So here is goes...

I left Friday morning luckily without any complications. As we left for the airport an ISA representative called to tell me that my flight was cancelled from Dallas to Buenos Aires but turns out she was mistaken and all was good. I flew from Seattle to Dallas and then had a 3 hour lay over. However because of the weather we boarded an hour late. Then once on the runway it took another 30 min because three trucks were needed to de-ice the plane...again. Then the 11 hour flight started. I was holding it together pretty well until i started to think about my grandpa and how friday morning was most likely the last time I would say good morning to him, and goodbye. I love you Grandpa.

So I arrived in Buenos Aires at 10:30am. There were six or so other students on my flight, so once we landed we all got together and hung out until the rest of the students arrived. We finally left and met our host families around 2. I'm not going to lie I was pretty disgusting. At this point I had been traveling for about 24hrs straight and i forgot to put deodorant on the morning before. So you can imagine... There are 60+ students in the program and everybody here is from all over the country. There are people from CA, OH, OK, AL, TN, KY, ME, NE, TX, CO, GA, and IL.

So my host mom...her name is Pilar and all I can say is that she's adorable. She's about 5 ft. but full of Argentine flair. She's a single mom with two boys who are 7 and 8 years old. But I haven't meet them yet because they are at their dad's place this weekend. There is also a maid Julia that lives there 4 days of the week, who cleans and makes our bed weekly. I live on the 6 floor of an apartment building with a bus stop right in front. And I was so excited to find out that the place did have an elevator, so I didn't have to carry my two ridiculously heavy bags up six floors. But this elevator is so much cooler. It's one of those really old ones that you have to open the gate on that floor and then the other one to the elevator door. Then shut both, push the button and so on. Pilar gave us our own keys to the place which all of a sudden made it feel so official. I have a room about the size of a dorm room (but don't have to share it), with a twin bed, closet and a desk in it. I also have two big windows that open and bring in the noise, smell, and wind of buenos aires. Me encanta! (I love it). Here are some pictures.

The view from my room. 

Two blocks away there is a large park where people have picnics, play soccer, run, and roller blade. There are some bikers but roller blading is a bigger thing down here. I'm pretty impressed on how much i can actually understand. Pilar speaks spanish and english but for the most part speaks only spanish and I can understand about 85% of what she says. The only problem is I'm lacking conversational skills, but i'm working on it. I learned two new words Ché which means "hey, what's up" and Dale! which means "ok, let's do it!" I also learned that pedestrians do not have the right of way here and I mean "DO NOT!" And buses rule the road. It's not quite as crazy as Rome driving but I would still never want to drive here in the city. So I've been taking the buses everywhere. Each trip only costs 1.20 pesos which equals to about 30 cents U.S. So you know how normally, if you are stopped at a stop light, it's normal to inch your way forward waiting for the light to turn green? Well here they inch a few feet forward. And at one point a lady was crossing right in front of a bus when he "inched" forward and he started yelling at her for getting in is way.

So my first night I was so exhausted. I took a siesta (nap) from 6-8, had dinner at 9 and then was asleep by 10:30. Normal night life doesn't start until 1:00am and the music starts playing in clubs at 3:00am. It's going to take a while to get used to this.