Monster entry- obviously I need to update more often

I promised myself before I left that I was not only going to keep a blog to keep everyone informed about my life down here, but I was going to write in my journal religiously every night so I wouldn't forget a single thing. However, seeing as my journal currently has one-half of an entry (and I've been here for two weeks) clearly I'm not very good at keeping my resolutions. In my defense, we have been incredibly busy since the moment we stepped off the plane, but oh well.

I've already started to forget everything we've done so far, but I'll document as much as I can remember and hopefully (someday) fill in that journal of mine. I left off with Wednesday the 4th, which unfortunately is one of the days that I remember nothing about, besides that I ate and went to school and showered and such.
Thursday, we all had to get up early to be at school for 9:30. Joe and Lauren both got really sick and ended up staying home for the day, but the rest of us went to UCA, where there were buses waiting to take us on a tour of the city. We went to a bunch of places (I'll find some pictures and post them for you) including the Plaza de Mayo, the main plaza of the city to see the Casa Rosada, which is like the White House, but pink. When the building was first painted, they mixed the paint with ox blood to make it more resistant to weathering. Although they obviously don't do that anymore, they've kept the original color the same. In the same plaza, there's an obelisk that was constructed as a monument to the 25th of May, the Argentinian independence day. There's a brick walkway surrounding it, and during the period of oppression in Argentinian government when tons of people disappeared (aka were killed secretly by the government), their wives and mothers would march around the plaza every day in protest. Apparently, the city of Buenos Aires puts a giant condom on the monument (or possibly another one similar to it- I'm not sure) for AIDS awareness day. I was skeptical at first but I've heard it from a few different sources. Unfortunately, it's in December, so I won't get the chance to see for myself.

We went to a few other monuments and then went back to school for lunch and class. We wandered back home through Calle Florida, which is one of the biggest tourist areas in the city. Had dinner, hung out for a while, and then I went out to an Irish bar (Kilkenney's, I believe) with Lis, Robin, Emily and Steve. We all accidentally contributed to dumping an entire beer all over Steve, because he made the mistake of dumping his monedas on the table and we all jumped for them. (Back story on the monedas: In Argentinian currency, the moneda is worth one peso. However, the metal that it's made of is worth more than one peso. Since the bus systems require exact change, the bus companies hoard them and sell the monedas to be melted down. As a result, they're almost impossible to find, and stores all over the city have signs saying "No hay monedas"- Literally, "There are no monedas".) We hung out at the bar for a few hours and listened to the live band.

On the walk home, a dog started following us. Unlike most of the strays here, she was really clean and very friendly, so we scratched her ears a bit, named her Pumpkin (my choice) and figured she would wander away at some point. She ended up following us all the way to our apartment, where Bandito freaked out and got really defensive of us, and tried to bite Pumpkin. Reprimanded him and he actually listened, while Pumpkin was huddling behind us. She gave us such a mournful look when we closed the door behind us that we were afraid she would still be there in the morning waiting for us, but fortunately she had other places to go.

On Friday, woke up at 6am and was so sick that going to the hospital was under consideration for the next 9 hours or so. After battling for a bathroom several times, I discovered that the reason they were all occupied was because Ben, Steve, and Mariana all had the same thing. We all stayed home from school and tried unsuccessfully to sleep or do anything besides be sick. That night, everyone but me, Ben, and Mariana went out to a boliche, the Argentinian equivalent of a nightclub, and apparently had a phenomenal time. I stayed in, caught up on my TV shows, and talked to my parents for about ten minutes on skype until they decided that the connection was too bad to bother.

Saturday was much better, thankfully. The boys and I met up with Lauren and her new roommate Lindsay and had lunch at a restaurant on Calle Florida. Afterwards, the boys and I went in search of a boutique that Ben had read about in one of his guidebooks, found it, and did some shopping. We ran into Pumpkin again even though it was a completely different part of the city, and she followed us for most of the day. We've concluded that Pumpkin is actually our awesome program coordinator Silvana in disguise, keeping an eye on us. We stopped at a supermarket and picked up drinks for the group for that night, then went to a cafe across the street for dinner at 10:30. Everyone from our group and two new kids from the other BC program at a different university (Dani and John- both very nice) came over for drinks and we headed out to meet Mariana at a club in Palermo.

When we got to the club and found Mariana, the line to get in was more than three blocks long, and the minimum wait time to get in was about an hour an a half. Since it was by this point 3:30 in the morning, we decided that the wait wasn't worth the amount of time we'd get to spend in the club, and so we headed back to our house to hang out for a while. Disappointing considering that I was really excited to go dancing, but it ended up being a good night anyway. Everyone left around 6am and we went to bed.

Although I still have about a week's worth of updates to do, this length of this entry is getting kind of ridiculous. Some observations, and I'll post the events of week two some other time.
1. All of the drivers here either deserve a medal or deserve to locked up. There are no posted speed limits as far as we can tell, and the lines on the roads are more like suggestions than rules. There is literally a fraction of an inch between cars stopped at stop signs, and the cabs will come within an inch or two of you if you happen to be in a crosswalk when they drive by. That being said, I haven't seen a single accident since I've been here.
2. The entire country is anorexic. Not kidding. The section of the grocery store for "lite" and "calorie-free" products is bigger than the section for regular food, and if a girl (me, for instance) orders a soda that is NOT diet soda, the waiters look at you skeptically and have to clarify. When you tell them that yes, you really do want a non-diet soda, they look you up and down and kinda shrug as if to say "okay, but you'll regret it later". Buenos Aires also has the highest percentage of eating disorders and plastic surgery in the world.
3. You have to pay for water here. I really, really miss free ice water in restaurants, because the bottles get expensive really quickly. Also, putting ice in your drinks is almost unheard of.
4. I also really miss bagels, sandwiches that have something other than flat bread & cheese & meat, cereal that is NOT year-old cornflakes, and normal milk.
5. Argentines think that Americans put ketchup on everything. As in, they bring it to your table when you order a fruit salad.
6. We've been doing remarkably well not standing out as Americans. While everyone can obviously tell that we're foreign, most people guess English or German before they guess American. All of the waiters and waitresses look pleasantly surprised when we say we don't need the menus to be in English, and one waitress actually thanked us for taking the time to learn the language before we came to the country. I guess she's had to deal with too many rude Americans who think the entire world should speak English to accommodate their needs. We've actually run into a few ourselves, and I think we were as disgusted as the Argentines. When the guy in McDonalds yells at the girl behind the counter (in English) that she's stupid for not speaking his language, it kind of makes you cringe and hope nobody notices that you're from the same place.
7. "Dulce de leche" is one of the most popular flavors for EVERYTHING down here, and it basically tastes like the most delicious caramel you've ever had in your life. I'm going to miss it when I go back to the States.

End of monster entry number one. The next one will be even better (more crazy stories than this one), but in the meantime, enjoy!