Tuesday was the first day back in the real world. Class, attempt number two to register officially with UCA (successful this time, thank god), homework in the park, class, homework, class. After my 6-9 class got out, I met up with Lauren, Joe, and Joe's family, and they took us out to dinner at the same restaurant we went to on our first night in Buenos Aires, which was delicious and a lot of fun. Lauren and I headed back afterwards to do homework and went to bed.

Wednesday, our designated productive day, we went grocery shopping and had breakfast/did homework until I left for class. Our BC class that afternoon was a field trip around Retiro and Recoleta, which was right around where I used to live but still really interesting. Afterwards I came home, made dinner by myself since Lauren was at our friend Danni's and Joe took off for a week to travel with his grandparents, had a skype date with Josh and did some homework before going to bed.

Thursday was slightly more interesting. Started off with class/homework/class/homework/class (the two hour blocks in the middle are killer- I start at 10am and I'm not done til 9pm) as always, and then headed back home for dinner. After that, we went over to the girls' apartment to celebrate Ali's birthday. We hung out at the apartment for a while, had wine and birthday cake and other birthdayish things, and then we went out to a really cool bar called Post for a few hours. At that point most of us were exhausted and went home, but the boys headed out to a boliche without us (after much convincing that yes, they could actually handle going to a boliche without our presence. I swear, the boys here are such wimps.)

On Friday we slept late, had breakfast/homework/lunch/class/homework/dinner, then our friend Kela came over and we all got ready to go out. We met up with everyone at a bar nearby called Sugar, and hung out there for the rest of the night, which was pretty low-key but a lot of fun.

On Saturday, we went grocery shopping (AGAIN) and did homework all day. That night we went to the DiTella boys' apartment for their friend's birthday party. Their apartment is crazy- literally two steps from the door is an in-ground indoor pool, and their entire apartment has no walls. They have curtains hung up to divide the rooms, and in addition to a staircase to get to the second story, they have a ladder and a fire pole off the second floor landing. Basically the craziest apartment I've ever seen in my life- I have no idea how it passed building codes. (Does Argentina even have building codes?) The party was a lot of fun, and it was a good mix of meeting new people versus hanging out with my friends. Overall a really good night. We left kind of early, maybe around three, and headed home because we had to get up early the next day.

Sunday was the day of the Boca-River Superclascio game, which is arguably one of the biggest sporting events of one of the biggest rivalries in the world. We somehow managed to get tickets through a guy that works with one of the study abroad programs, so Lauren and I got up early and went to meet Ben and Kela to go to the game. We met up with the guy and the 15 other kids going to the game, and they drove us to the drop off point. Once we got there things got really sketchy. Basically at these games, each side brings a massive flag that stretches from the top of the stadium, over the heads of all the fans on all three tiers of the stadium, down to the ground. They let it down before the game starts to show their colors and then the fans pass it back up for the start of the game. When we got to the outside of the stadium, all of the members of the Boca Juniors Club were lined up on the sidewalk with the flag rolled up on their shoulders. The line literally stretched as far as we could see in either direction. At that point, our guy told us to jump in the line without getting caught and pretend we were members. Our $350 pesos per person had apparently gone to bribing the guy regulating the line to sneak us in instead of towards actual tickets. The first half of our group, (me, Lauren, Ben, Kela, and maybe five others) jumped in line, got literally thrown onto the street when we got caught, and snuck back into line in between some very angry looking Boca Juniors club members. We were instructed to not let go of the flag FOR ANY REASON or we would either a) not be able to get into the game, or b) be trampled to death. We started walking when the line started moving, and the hundreds of people towards the back of the line got impatient. They proceeded to start a stampede and brought the back end of the flag up to the front. Unfortunately, this meant that everyone was trapped in the loop of the flag when it doubled up in the middle. At one point, I was pinned between four or five people and was being carried along without my feet touching the ground, and at another point I was pinned to the wall with the flag wrapped around my neck completely unable to breathe. It was complete madness. Kela and Lauren lost their hold on the flag, were knocked down to the ground, and were trampled by a good portion of the crowd before they were able to get back up. We all actually thought for a few minutes that we were going to die, but fortunately we all made it into the stadium in one piece. Of course, at that point we realized that we didn't have actual seats (the game sold out the second day that tickets were available. That was several months ago.)

Once inside and not in fear of our lives, we grabbed something to eat and then enjoyed the opening ceremonies. They were insane- confetti and balloons everywhere, fireworks, firecrackers, blue and yellow smoke, yelling and screaming, everything. Once the actual game started, the fans calmed down, which was a bit of a disappointment since they're supposed to be the craziest fans in the world. Honestly I thought BC fans were crazier than they were, but the game was still a lot of fun.

After the game (which was also freezing, by the way- we were all wearing t-shirts and froze because the temperature unexpectedly dropped like 20 degrees) we went home and spent the rest of the night making dinner/doing homework/trying to be warm. Overall a terrifying/fun/cold/good day.