Finally HERE

My journey has officially begun and I'm ready to take on Argentina one barrio at a time! (Mom - barrio means neighborhood :) ). All three of my flights were pretty good and there were only 20 people on the flight from San Francisco to DC, so I decided to start chattin up with the girl infront of me who also is going to be here for a while. She was also on my next flight and while we were waiting at the gate we met five more kids that are going to be down here. Unfortunately I didn't sit with them on the plane and was instead awarded with the ultimate flight companion. He was hefty, 75, talked in the most monotonous voice ever at .015 words per second, and.. oh yeah... he was drunk!!! hahaha on top of that, I could only hear about every fifth word he said because his voice was the exact pitch of the humming noise that airplanes make. We had  a nice conversation about his travels, which frequently ended in "I'd tell you more, but I'm just too drunk!' and then I slept for a good chunk of the flight.

I got to the house around one-ish and met Maria Antonieta - I have to say I am more than pleased with the family. She's super nice and doesn't speak a lick of english so my spanish is probably going to improve a TON. Tonight at dinner I taught her how to say "spoon" and she got a kick out of it and kept saying it to her husband, Martin. He speaks pretty good english so he just thought it was funny that she was trying. haha I haven't met their three kids yet though. They're all away on vacation for the next few weeks so it will just be us three for a while. To sum of the rest of my first day here in Argentina: I moved into my room, took a nap, walked around the parks, helped make dinner and then went to bed. Here are a few of my pictures:

This is the Recoleta Cemetary and it is five blocks away from the apartment. It's where anyone who is anyone is buried. Each tomb/burial chamber was at least ten feet tall and many of them had entire families in them. It's really incredible that all of the tombs are still intact and no one has broken into them - especially since there were a few with a billions of pesos of gold in them. Ok. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there was enough for me to pay my entire college tuition in one lump payment......... aaaaaannnd right about here is where I give an ol shout out the parentals for the financial assistance for college. love you guys :) 

Nice Argentinian men playing music. Five seconds before I took this picture the guy that's second from the right was sleeping with his mouth wide open. The man in red nudged him so hard that he almost fell out of his chair. Gotta love it.

Downside to traveling alone: I had no one to tell me that I had the "100% UV Protected" sticker still on the outside of my sunglasses ALL DAY.

The center of the public market was this church. Just to the right is where I sat down and read for a little bit in the sun. So far I'm not really missing the rain!

Last but not least.. my room! I can stand in the middle and be five inches short of both fingertips touching the walls haha it's a cozy one alright!

At dinner Martin offered to take me to their friend's ranch next weekend to go horseback riding and have a true Argentine barbeque. Woohoo! I'm definately looking forward to that, but this whole horseback riding thing may turn out to be more interesting to watch than Martin thinks.

You all better enjoy reading this because I've been bit six times from mosquitoes since I started writing this. Time to start ampin up on the Vitamin B1!

Hasta Luego!