Dia Uno

Yesterday, around 8:30 in the morning, Buenos Aires time, I found myself in a different country for the first time in my life. Well, technically I went with my family to Baja when I was 10 but that doesn't really count. Anyway, the flight from Dallas/Ft. Worth was painless. I managed to sleep a good portion of the 10 hour flight and listen to some music along the way. Also in the last hour of the flight, they played an episode of Cheers and that was exciting. When we got off the plane, all the non residencias (citizens of Argentina) got to stand in a long time to get our passports checked, but after that we easily got our bags, painlessly went through customs, and found our way out of the airport. Oops, I neglected to mention Andrew. Andrew is one of the young men in the CIEE Buenos Aires program with me and we happened to be on the same flight down. I met him in Denver and we hung out in the airport in Dallas. Anyway, he's done a little more conversing in Spanish than I and doesn't have to deal with my particular shyness so he got us a cab from the airport to the hotel and we were on our way. We were staying in the same hotel so the shared traveling was particularly convenient. Our cab driver was very nice and interested in us. At this point everyone speaks Spanish so my conversation is not the highest quality but I am ever so slowly getting better. The man at the front desk of the hotel was a little hard to understand because he was speaking so quickly but we got to our rooms fine. All the people at the hotel have been very nice and accommodating. By this time it is about 10 am and I am getting hungry. Andrew and I go out to walk around the city and find a Cafe to eat breakfast at. Turns out the average Argentine breakfast consists of a croissant or two, a small but high quality café con leche (coffee and milk), and a small glass of room temperature sparkling water. I was starving so we made ourselves obvious Americans and ordered an omelet and a calzone. But, they wouldn't serve them to us because there were only two of us and each of those is only made for two. So we just got the calzone. It was HUGE! We couldn't finish it, but fortunately we didn't make big jerks out of ourselves and ask for a carry out box. We were pleased though, that we had accomplished the food thing and were ready to take on the city. We spent the rest of the day wondering and looking for electricity transformers so we could plug in our electronics. We wandered into about 4 different random electronics stores and tried to explain what we were looking for... slowly we figured out what it was called and finally one of the ladies wrote down directions to a place she knew had them and told us to ask for Juan Carlos, because "he speak English". We found him and he spoke a little English and we spoke a little Spanish and ended us with exactly what we needed. I had accomplished my one goal for the day in less than 3 hours. It was very exciting. We returned to the hotel... after getting only a little lost, and I plugged in my computer and proceeded to call my mother as well as Royce, both of whom where surprised to hear from me so soon. I was pleased with myself.

For the rest of the day we walked down to the river and back before looking for something to eat... it's about 7 pm now... but no place is open for dinner yet because no one eat before 8:30 and the normal time is 10:30. I'm really hungry. 10:30 is my bed time. So we went into another cafe and had some croissants and an amazing 1/2 bottle of wine. I can't remember what it was called. I'll have to look it up. Then I went to take a shower so I wouldn't look in such a sad state walking around stylish Buenos Aries at night. During this time Andrew found another guy in the program staying at the hotel: Cotton. He of course changed the dynamic of the group and the guys spent the rest of the night making fun of me. yay. But what can you do. Men... anyway we finally got dinner at a restaurant. I ordered a salad that actually turned out to be 5 slices of tomato with mozzarella slices on top drenched in olive oil and garnished with fresh basil. It was not the most sustenance I'd had in my life but hey. Then we walked around looking for bars/clubs to hang out at and ended up at this great place with lots of local and 1 free beer upon entry. Unfortunately, I don't like beer. Oh well. But the music was loud and it was really crowded. They played a lot of older American songs like Madonna and REM as well as some modern stuff like Gwen Steffani and The Black Eyed Peas. It was hilarious. They were mixed in with some songs in Spanish... but most were these kinds of songs. And everyone sang along. They probably didn't know what they were saying... but they loved it. We met a group of girls who were very nice and talked to us and danced with us. It was great! It was very fun! We finally stumbled back to our hotel rooms sometime after 4 am. An early bedtime around here, but I was so tired. It was a great first day. I'm very encouraged!