Buenos Aires is awesome, it's winter right now here, so I've been wearing a fleece or two every day, but the weather has been ridiculously nice the past two days (17C!!). This week and the past week I've mostly been sitting around in an really old and enormous Argentine mansion with the other 144 kids from the fall program and getting lectured to in Castellano. It gets prettty boring and tedious, some kids have no common sense and need this type of orientation, but for the rest of us, it's torture.
In the evenings and on the weekends I have time free, but this Sunday it rained so I didn't do too much. I know the weekends are the most exciting part of the week, so I'll describe this past one. On Friday, we got out of class in the evening, around 7 and then everyone went their separate ways and had dinner with their host families around 9-10PM. Around 11:30PM-12AM is when everyone starts texting each other (we all bought dinky little pay by the minute cell phones down here) and deciding how and where to meet up. I went with three other girls from Madison and 1 Mexican girl from Colorado to a bar around 12:30 and then a dance club/boliche around 2:30AM. It seems ridiculously late, but that's the normal time for things to get going around here. In the US (or in Madison) bar time is 2AM. In contrast, here, ladies get in free to the dance clubs UNTIL 2AM, then they have to pay the ~$5 cover and bar time is extended until ~5AM, its not too strict.
That was fun, and we all danced and talked to Argentines and around 5AM we realized it was 5AM and decided to all hop in a cab to go home. Luckily my host mom sleeps until noon every day, so it's not weird for me to do the same. Saturday consisted of a full day walking around the Rural, which is a farm exhibition similar to the MN State Fair, and eating a HUGE hunk of meat at the restaurant there. I will post a picture of it later, because it was ridiculous! I was with 2 girls from Madison there, and then Julie and I decided to walk about 2 miles along Santa Fe, the road I live on, and shop for leather boots. It's a much harder task than it seems, as you have to look for quality, price and a good fit.
We were pretty exhausted by the time 7PM rolled around so we stopped and got a coffee and then decided to invite the 2 boys from Madison over to eat dinner with us. They came and by the time push came to shove none of us were hungry so we just split a bottle of the most amazing Argentine red wine and then wandered around the quaint bars of the city until around 230AM when I decided I really would rather be sleeping so I took a cab home.
Cabs can be a dicey thing here, so we have the number for 3 safe companies programmed into our phones and we know which logos are safe to take off the street (they need to say Radio Taxi and have that written on the top of the cab). And now it's time for me to go do my homework that is due this afternoon for my Spanish class (I have to orally describe four photos that I took and I have no idea what I want to say).
If any of the Rothe's feel like it, I would love to hear how Door County has been. Hint Hint. Until next time folks.
Door County was good (or at least the three days I spent there) your mom and dad went on several sailing adventures the first of which involved your mom's ankle being smooshed between the boat and the landing dock (she was okay just a little swollen.) Monika and Tom had to leave early because Tom's brother Ed's health got worse.
ReplyDeleteAdam, Sara, and Isaac stayed until Wednesday. Isaac loved playing in the sand at the beach and he has gotten over his fear of tents. I'm sure Sara will post some adorable pictures of Isaac on Facebok.
That's all I can think of, glad to hear your adventure in Argentina is going well so far!
Claire