¿Qué suerte soy yo?!

The long-awaited post you've all been dying to read... straight from Buenos Aires!!

Six flight attempts later out of Atlanta and Miami, I finally managed to make it on a flight!  After 8.5 sleepless hours on the plane, I had arrived in the Paris of South America-- Buenos Aires, Argentina!!
The local time after landing was 7:15am, 2 hours before my official IES Program Orientation started. I was exhausted, but after lugging my suitcases to the taxi and gazing out the window at my beautiful new country, I was running on pure adrenaline.  The cab driver was very talkative once he found out I could speak Spanish fairly well, so he helped me break down my nervousness when speaking to locals.  He told endless stories about his family, and taught me a couple of new words (in lunfardo, Argentine slang, a lot of the words are standard Spanish words but switched around. For example:  lleca=calle/street). He dropped me off at my homestay, where I met my Argentine (grand)mother Maritina! She lives in an apartment in the chic neighborhood of Palermo, and teaches music :) She is absolutely adorable, and reminds me of my grandma Sylvia, but with blonde hair. She helped me drop off my bags, then she brought me to a café to get an espresso to help me stay awake. We then took a taxi to the National History Museum, where my orientation was.  I got to meet other students in my program, and we went over important things and finished by taking a walking tour of San Telmo (an artsy part of the city, on the south side).  It was still surreal to me that I was finally in Buenos Aires, but the more I saw of the city, the more it felt like my adventure had really started!

The next day, I learned how to take the bus to the IES Program Center where I will be taking most of my classes for the next 4 months.  We had more orientation classes, which became more interesting when we started to learn about the "vos" form of informal speech (unique to this part of South America) and general Argentine slang words that are commonly used.   After class, I was able to wander around with new friends and explore, which has been by far my favorite way to spend my time. We have two weeks of orientation before classes start, and this has been how most of the days have gone-- exploring cafés, heladerias (ice cream shops) and panaderías (bakeries). Yummy!

This past weekend was Carnaval, so my friends and I planned a trip to Mar del Plata (2nd largest city in the Buenos Aires province, and 7th largest in the country), which is supposed to be a 4-hour bus ride south of the city. Turns out over 100,000 tourists visit Mar del Plata during this weekend, so we got caught in insane traffic both there and back- the bus took around 8 hours!!  We stayed at Hotel Pergamino, which was a hostel within walking distance of one of the beaches.  The atmosphere was  a lot of fun since we had planned the trip with a group of 9 and there were were others staying in the same place who were also in our program. The nightlife was really fun since sone locals showed us around, and despite Monday being rainy we had a lot of fun :)

Now it's back to the last few days of orientation before classes start on the 14th.  Tomorrow is a tour of "La Bonbonera," where the largest Argentine club soccer team, Boca Juniors, plays. Also scheduled is a city tour of Buenos Aires, so hopefully I'll get to see all of the touristy places now, too! More later, amigos... I'll leave you with a few take-your-breath-away landscape/city pictures :) ¿Qué suerte soy yo (how lucky am I)?!

My bedroom :)

City Pics of Buenos Aires:

Catholic Cathedral

El Ateneo, a theater turned bookstore

Mar del Plata