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Hello to all! Here I am two weeks later again, sorry it has been awhile! These past two weeks have been great, I am pretty settled in and have a decent routine! Last week was midterm week, so that was stressful. Many of the classes I am in don't have many grades besides the midterm and final- so it was stressful. Three out of the four midterms were in class essays... so much writing my wrist was aching when I was done! As far as I know they went well, still waiting to receive the grades back. So fingers crossed! My last post was all about the week my family came to visit and so I have had to adjust back into my day to day life without them here with me. Things have seemed more relaxed since that week. It is bittersweet! Humm.. what happened these past two weeks?Well we had our second step in our student visa process, and that sure was an experience! We had to meet at the immigration's office at 8:00 am so we had to wake up at 5:45 am to make it there on time. At 5:45 am, the city is a ghost town! Most of the people you see on the streets are probably returning from their nights out! So we hopped on the train to take it across the city. The train didn't talk too long, a lot shorter than we planned. After getting off the train we had to find our way to the immigration's office. Here is where it got interesting, we thought to ourselves, okay we have 45 minutes to find the place, plenty of time! Nope, we got so lost and ended up being late. The address that we were given was the opposite way on the road we were walking on. Let's just say we asked many people for directions and kept hearing "four blocks that way and it's a huge yellow building." You would think it wouldn't be hard to find. We went everywhere, we went to a yellow skyscraper about 10 blocks one way, got a nice tour of the whole area. Eventually, one of our CEA directors had to come meet us somewhere and take us to the building. We were too sleep deprived to be lost anymore! Once inside we were told we had to stand in a line and that took about 30 minutes then after that had to go to a waiting area until our number was called. There was about 10 numbers in between me and the current number so I thought, "oh this shouldn't take too long!" wrong... A total of about two hours later we were out the door. It wasn't too terrible- mostly due to the fact we were there at 8:00 (very early in Argentinean time!) So now in about three more weeks we have to venture back to pick up our student visas- almost done! The process has not been a fun one, that's for sure! Hum... what else is new? Well last week we had another holiday! So far I believe we have had three full/ regular weeks of classes since starting- its fantastic! Sadly, that has come to an end, I don't believe we have any more days off school. Well in these past two weeks I have done some shopping and a LOT of great eating. When I come home, I will need to hit the gym three times a day... This Argentinean food I just cannot resist! So other than eating my way through this city I have also been shopping my way through. All the girls reading this: I got a pair of boots for about $35... score! such a happy day. Humm... what else?  Oh I have also been dancing my way through the weekends. Have visited many bars and boliches (Buenos Aires word for club). Been meeting so many people from all over the world and getting to break out my fantastic white girl dance moves :P Oh! I did do something this past weekend besides, eat, shop, and dance-

 
 I visited La Casa Rosada (The Pink House) pretty much their version of the White House- yes it is pink! On the weekends tours are completely free. You can literally just walk right up to the building and walk in. The president does not live there, but she does work there during the week. The tour was about an hour and a half long. We toured the basics of the house... including the presidential office AND I got to go on the very famous balcony where "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" was sung... I was going to burst out in song but decided maybe it wasn't for the best. After the tour my friend Ari and I went to the open air market in San Telmo and did, as you may have guessed, more shopping! Something else did happen during these past two weeks that was quite the experience! On Friday, my friend Ari and I went to go pick up some money and we were on the bus and when we got to an area called Plaza Italia and all of a sudden there was crazy traffic and thousands and thousands of people EVERYWHERE! Our bus stopped at a bus stop to let people on the bus and well the line, no joke was longer than a block. The bus sat for about 15 and did not move and didn't look like it would any time soon. We both decided to just get off, the place to pick up money was closing soon so we wouldn't even make it there in time. We got off and decided that maybe the subway would be better. Nope. We went down the stairs- I have never seen the subway that packed- not even close to that packed! You couldn't even get all the way down the stairs. It was ridiculous! We then decided the best way for us to get home was to walk. We were lucky it is only about a 40 minute walk to my house. As we were walking we saw soo many young kids all with Violetta t-shirts on (the Disney pop-star of Argentina) and well.. it hit us. There was a concert and we were lucky enough to be there when the concert got over. Quite the experience! We found out that about 250,000 people were at this concert and it was FREE. So yea.. saying there was a lot of people is an understatement. I have never seen so many people in my life! It was a struggle to walk. Which reminds me of just walking in general through the town of Buenos Aires. Every day is a small challenge! You have to watch where you walk for two reasons: 1. you will fall if you don't- all the sidewalks are broken and uneven so if you don't look where you are going you will trip (trust me on that one! I know from experience!) and reason number 2. There is dog poop EVERYWHERE! They don't pick it up.. haha. Another challenge of walking through the city is that no one has sidewalk etiquette. For example: there will be group of three to four people walking straight at you, do they move? No. Another example: if you are heading straight on to another person you pass each other on the left side.. yet when driving (which is a whole different experience!) they drive on the right side of the road just like the US. Baffles me. So yeah, when walking and you shove shoulders with someone they don't think anything of it! They may not have sidewalk etiquette but they don't care if you run right into them! It is a different world with that. It may be something small but I am looking forward to walking on the streets in the United States :P haha (sorry.. small rant) On a side note...I currently have about 15 mosquito bites on my body... so some mosquitos have been having a nightly fiesta! So that is something new since my last post haha  These past two weeks have been so much fun, so many great memories mostly during the weekends. Like getting a cab driver to let five girls cram into a taxi (they only allow 4 per car) and have him pick us up in two hours to take us to a boliche- such a great guy haha! Seriously everyone here is typically very friendly. Like I said these past two weeks have been great and I am looking forward to what the next two will bring. There is never a dull moment in this city.. always something going on! Thanks for reading, I will post here soon (next update should include my trip to Patagonia- just purchased my ticket! so excited!)  Chau for now! <3 
Joan
5/7/2014 09:18:10 am

White girl moves!!! Love it :)

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    Just a college student following her dream to travel the world. 

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