A very tired Monday

Sunday night was extremely hot, and my room had no air circulation. I slept with the windows wide open, but still had to wake up in the middle of the night to get something to drink I was sweating so badly. To make matters even worse, I had to wake up extremely early to go and apply for a student visa at the migrations office in downtown Buenos Aires. Everyone on my program entered the country on a traveler visa (which only last for 90 days). Since I will be staying longer, I had to officially change my legal status. This was a very stressful procedure. First of all, I needed to make copies of every page of my passport and get headshots before I got there. Since I had forgotten to do this ahead of time, I woke up even earlier than I needed to in order to make sure I could get those two things done before I had to be there at 7:30am. I left my house at 6am and found a photocopy place open near my house. It was still dark outside and the streets were deserted. I asked the man at the photocopiers if he knew of a store to get my headshots taken, and he said that they were generally everywhere on major streets, but that none opened until 8am. This caused a big problem, since I had an appointment for 7:30am. I ended up walking across the city towards the office of migrations, hoping for a store to be open on the way. I walked about an hour down a big street before I stopped and thought about strategy to find an open picture shop. The only place I figured would have human traffic this early in the morning would be the train and bus station, so I headed in that direction. I was right, and the area was packed. After going into a few stores and asking for help finding a picture place, I was finally pointed in the right direction to a Kodak store inside the subway station under the train station. I got there, and was delighted to find him open. I got the pictures taken, and although I was extremely happy to have found the place, the photos look like I am very close to death. I took the pictures and all the other forms I had already filled out and walked from the train station to the Migrations Office. The path was very sketchy, and at one point had to run across the train tracks. I finally arrived to the office of migrations at 7.28am. Our group had gathered outside the office until it started to rain. Perfect. We all moved to stand in line under an overhang, and then the police instructed us we had to move. We finally were able to enter the office, which was set up very similar to a DMV, meaning very disorganized and a very long wait. We had been warned that the workers in this office were very hard to motivate and that the wait could take all morning. We sat in a section of chairs and had to wait until our names were called. I waited until 10:45am when my name was called. I was also a lucky one, since they were going in alphabetical order. After giving all the forms to an officer and paying the processing fee of 200 pesos (about 60 dollars) I only needed to wait another ten minutes for everything to process. I received my temporary visa around 11:15am and was free to leave. Needless to say I felt like crap, and knew that I needed to go back to bed.

I got home, had a quick conversation with my host mom, and I am sure I must have looked like crap, since she seemed worried that I wasn’t feeling good. I told her I just needed to sleep, which is exactly what I did. After waking up from my nap later in the afternoon, I felt like a human being again. I treated myself to a late lunch of cheese and crackers while watching re-runs of The Office on TV. I am looking forward to eating dinner later, and getting a good night sleep so I can start the rest of my normal week without problems. Oh vey.

Saturday and Sunday - Are you ready for some football?

I woke on the earlier side hoping to have another relaxing day. I watched some TV, got a lot of homework done, but my internet was not working for some reason. It was very frustrating since I have been used to internet access in my room. We made dinner reservations for a Thai restaurant at night, and it ended up being a group of 9 girls and me. We walked in, and the host/owner was an ex-pat, and was delighted to talk to us in English and ask where we were from. I had been craving some thai food, and although the food was good, it wasn’t very authentic thai. Still, my craving for Pad Thai and Chicken Sate was fulfilled so I was happy. From there, we all made our way over to the convention center for a wine tasting. For 25 pesos to get in, you got a glass and traveled around the giant hall to different wine stations representing around 100 different wine brands and bodegas. It was my first time really trying to distinguish wine from another, and I don’t think I really knew what I was looking for. After two hours, we were feeling great and had a new-found appreciation for wine tasters. We left around midnight and a bunch of us walked to a hot-dog vendor from some great superpanchos (the argentine word for hotdog). I ended up going home a little later, and was home relatively early, 3am.

I woke up around noon and by 1.30pm was off to The Alamo to watch some FOOTBALL. I knew that this bar would have all of the NFL games, so I put on my Jets jersey and was ready to get rowdy. I ended up meeting a friend at the bar, but there were a ton of Americans all looking to watch the games. In very similar fashion to my high school tradition with Adam Miller and Jason Andrea at Bazookas in Bridgewater, I stayed from the first game till the last game, over six hours. There is nothing as satisfying as football, chicken wings, and burgers…..no madder how far away from home you are. After the games I went home briefly, and then left to go met Elise, Alex, and her friend Emily for dinner. I took the subway to save some money, and ended up walking a lot more than I thought it would take to get to the restaurant. Dinner was good, and by the time I got home, it was already eleven, and I was exhausted.

Friday

After getting another good night sleep, I decided to spend the majority of the day reading, studying, and getting some other random stuff done that I had been pushing off. After dinner with my family I met up with Kate and we went out to Plaza Serrano. We got a table, and sat and talked over drinks when a group of girls came into the bar. One of them looked really familiar. It ended up being a friend of mine from GW in Buenos Aires studying abroad on another program, and she was with two girls that Kate knew from college as well. Small World. Later in the night, some more of our friends from IES met up with us and we all hung around the table we had gotten earlier in the night. By 2am, we decided to move to another place, so the four of us still up to go out took a cab to Crobar, a big club here in Buenos Aires. It was pretty empty at that point, since it only opens at 1.30am, but by 3am, the place was packed and grooving. The music was crazy techno, and the centerpiece over the dancefloor was not a disco crystal ball, but a giant crystal camel. The night was a lot of fun and we left around 4.45pm. We got in a cab on the way out of the club, and after driving past a very strange looking area with women on the street that I was convinced were hookers, we looked next to our cab in traffic and saw two of our friends waving at us. These two guys yelled a name of a club for us to meet at, so we told our cab driver to follow that cab. We ended up losing them, and our driver brought us to the wrong club. We didn’t even go into this new club, and instead just walked around the corner and picked up another taxi to take us home. I got home around 5.45am. It was a good night.

Monday to Thursday

Sorry I have been late to update all this.....my internet has been very shaky.....

Monday and Tuesday nothing really happened that I can remember.....

I had a very busy day Wednesday between all of my classes. After a busy morning and one afternoon class, I have ceramics at night. Ceramics class was fun, since we started clay hand molding and tried to come up with some creative bowl ideas. I was trying pretty hard, but compared to the real art students that take the class, mine looked like a 4^th graders. I was more experimenting then producing, and I inspired some ideas in myself. After class Elise and I took the bus back to our neighborhood and went out for a late dinner. Pizza and Beer was just what the doctor ordered.

Thursday was my day off from school and I used it to relax and chill out. I slept in, read during the afternoon, and then decided to take a nice run later in the day. It ended up being a two hour adventure, and I felt great afterwards. I definitely was not sprinting, but jogging for a long time was a nice opportunity to explore some of the parks in the city and be outside. The weather is starting to get warmer, and jogging in shorts and a t-shirt felt wonderful. After dinner with my family I headed out to The Alamo, an American/Texas inspired bar to catch the NFL kickoff game. I ended up seeing a bunch of people I knew there, and it was packed with Americans. I had a great time and went home shortly after the Colts kicked some Saints butt.