June 15,
2004
Hey,
I was awake for almost 48 hours during the
past two days. My plane, on which I was
only able to sleep a couple of hours, arrived at about 9am yesterday in two
hours I was in my new apartment. The
place is very nice, it has its own bathroom and lots of closet space. In the afternoon, I met up with the other
Sean, an American student in my program, yesterday afternoon. We walked from his apartment to the school,
about a 35 minute walk. He gave me all
sorts of pointers along the way. Iīll
be lucky if I can retain about 10% of it.
Thereīs so much to learn. Once
we got to the school, I was able to meet with the program director, who
registered me for my classes. The first
one will be June 28. After that, I came
home and took a little power nap.
At about 8:30, I headed back to Seanīs
apartment, and we picked up Fran (whoīs from the US), Constantine (whoīs from
Germany), a and Mariana (whoīs from Argentina), all of whom are in the
program. We then went to a little
dinner hosted by Peque (also from here) and her fiancee Klaus, who is German
but whose family lives in the US. We
had a great dinner of empanadas and this great dessert, which is sort of like a
strawberry paste pie, which was fantastic. We had some heated political
discussions and left at about 1:30.
At that point, only Sean, Constantine and I
were left. We headed to an Irish pub,
which is sort of a haven for expats.
There were many Americans there, a surprising number, but it was still
mostly locals. We stayed there about an
hour and a half, then went to this little dance bar, which is near Seanīs
place. We didnīt stay there too long
though, and were headed home by 4. I
awoke at about 2pm today, but I donīt have any appointments today, just
errands. I was going to try to catch
the Germany/Netherlands game, but that may not happen. I do, however, plan to watch the
Pistons/Lakers game tonight. Hopefully it will close out the series.
Anywho, all is well here. Iīll be trying to find a new apartment and
Iīll be getting a cell phone and all that, but today Iīm still getting oriented. Iīm at the internet cafe right now which is
right around the corner from my house.
Itīs very cheap, about .35 USD per hour. Everything here is cheap though.
Iīm trying to get into the frame of mind of thinking of pesos as
dollars. It actually works pretty well,
becuase although the dollar is worth three pesos, everything here seems to cost
about 1/3 of what it would be in the US.
The language is very odd sounding. I can understand almost everything, although
sometimes itīs difficult. For you
Spanish speakers, they donīt use the Tu form here, they use this bizarre
variation of the vosotros in its place, which is a bit confusing. Iīm managing though. Anyway, itīs going very well. Iīll try to keep you posted on how itīs
going here. Ciao.
Sean