Y empiezan las clases

Hola a Todos:

Apologies for not blogging last night. Today was our first day of class and I wanted to get to bed early. Even though I didn't blog, I still didn't end up going to sleep on time. Smh. But let's back track:

Ayer:

         Yesterday was family day. In the past, students in our program never had the opportunity to have a day to really bond with their families so our program director set up this day specifically so that we could eat a big meal as a family and possibly participate in some kind of Argentine activity and bond with our family. A group of us went out again Saturday night. [Random Side Note (SN): While we were out, one of my friends on my trip told me that his mother had found my blog & really loved it! How she found it is beyond me, but I'm so glad so many people are enjoying it. If you're reading, Hey Peter's Mom!! Thanks for reading :) ] We are still trying to get in tune with Argentine time, so we stayed out until 4:30 and did not get to bed until about 5. When we woke up the next morning our host sister Sofi said 4:30 is early to come home. We are making baby steps. 

Sofi y yo 

              Kassidy and I were worried that if we slept in too late we would mess up Claudia's plans for family day. We set our alarm for 10:45 and dragged ourselves out of bed. Claudia told us to go back to bed. She wouldn't be making lunch until 1 and Argentine teens usually sleep until one on Sunday after they've stayed out all of Saturday night. Needless to say we were relieved. Claudia made us baked chicken with a mix of potatoes, a  type of squash native to Argentina that is similar to the sweet potato, and onions. We also had toast. It was delicious! 
                                                                                                  Claudia decided to take us back to Recoleta to the feria. Kassidy was not feeling well so

she stayed home, but Claudia, Sofi and I hopped onto a bus to head to Recoleta. It was like a giant flee market. They had a lot of clothing, souvenir-like items, and lots of mates all for really good prices. I bought something which will remain anonymous because I know the person who I bought it for is reading. La feria is located in a giant park. There were many families with children spread out on the grass watching a puppet show in one section of the park and a live band was playing music in another section. Think Central Park but smaller. Once again as we walked through the flee market, Claudia pointed out all the things she liked and said, "Ay que linda...que preciosa!" She is so precious! Haha! Sofi said that everything she likes is ugly. lol! 
           After we walked through the feria, Claudia took me into the church next to the Recoleta Cementary que se llama Nuestra Señora del Pilar Basilica. It was so beautiful on the inside. Claudia explained to me that the inside of the church was made of wood and painted with gold paint. All the work was done by Indigenas. Inside I could hear monks singing and people were praying. 

Nuestra Senora del Pilar Basilica
(Bare with me I don't know how to rotate pictures yet)

            After the church, Sophie had to return home to study. Claudia and I stayed and went to eat medialunas and coffee at a cafe. We walked around an area containing the Recoleta mall before we finally found a cafe. I had a cappuchino con tres medialunas that were filled with chocolate. Claudia had some sort of pastry that had a raspberry filling. She gave me half of it. It was delicious. When we were done we waited about a 1/2 an hour for Claudia's friends to come meet us. We had a good conversation about my family, hair (I had shown Claudia and Sophie pictures of my family and they saw the ever changing styles of my hair lol) and life in general. Claudia's friends finally came and talked with Claudia for about 45 minutes before we all headed back to the apartment. It was harder to follow their conversation because they spoke normal Spanish (not the slow Spanish that is spoken to non-native Spanish speakers ), but I caught the main ideas. One friend, who did not tell me her name,was complaining that her daughter was upset because they had to put her dog down. She couldn't understand why her daughter was so traumatized.  lol! The other friend, name Patrizia, told us about a concert that she attended which consisted of local teen musicians. I stopped paying attention because I was just so exhausted from the past couple of days. My schedule is really thrown off.
              When we came back I went with Kassidy to find a hair straightener. After walking up and down Santa Fe several times we finally came across an appliance store. It was strange that we were buying a straightener from a store that also store dishwashers and flat screen tvs. The process of buying the straightener was bizarre as well. First a man took her information down and wrote the product number of the flat iron that she wanted. Then we went to another counter to pay for the flat iron. After we paid we received a receipt which we took to another counter. The man behind the counter than took the receipt and went up an elevator to get the straightener When he came back down he opened the box to show us that all the parts and directions were in the box and put the flat iron in a bag. I guess that this process is to prevent the store from being robbed as it opens up to a congested area. This lengthy process would have been nice if we were buying some fancy appliance that had a lot of parts, but it was so unnecessary for just a flat iron. After buying the flat iron we headed to a pizzeria for dinner. The pizza here is delicious as so many Italians live in Buenos Aires. We shared a fugazza pizza which had olive oil, onions, parmesan cheese and oregano. Restaurants in Buenos Aires are weird in that you always pay for water. They serve the water in wine glasses and all the waiters have a very fancy way of pouring it as if they are serving you expensive wine. Also, it is not uncommon to not tip the waiter. Claudia told me that this is because waiters in Buenos Aires are not paid such a small wage like waiters in the US do. On the way home we stopped to buy bottled water, since we don't drink a lot of it at home. Then it was time for bed as I had to wake up at 5:45 for my internship

Hoy

        This morning started off a tad bit rocky. Last night I set two alarms: one for 5:45 and one for 6. We had to meet Luciano at 6:55 at the bus stop. Neither of my alarms went off this morning. Thank God I didn't sleep through the night and I kept waking up to check my phone. I was apprehensive about having to walk the streets of Buenos Aires alone when it was still dark outside. I woke up at 6:30, had a small heart attack and ran through the apartment to get ready. Luckily I had all of my stuff laid out and I was out of the house by 6:45. I even got to the bus stop early. Megan, Luciano and I rode the bus together. It wasn't as long as they had originally made it out to be, maybe a 15 minute ride in total & Luciano was being silly the entire time which made it enjoyable...even at 7 am. 
         When we arrived at Garrahan Hospital, we met up with Marcela, Enrique and two other students. We had a hard time finding Dr. Bes' office, but in our journey to find his office we received an unofficial tour of the hospital. As we walked along a corridor we could look down into a large waiting room. There were about 400 people waiting...mothers and fathers (many of them indigenous) holding their children. Garrahan is a pediatric hospital. It is public and provides free healthcare. Claudia says that it is one of the best in the country. It offers state of the art technology and caters to children with grave illnesses. The inside of the hospital was very different from modern hospitals. This hospital lacked the sterile feel that is characteristic of most hospitals in the United States. 
              Dr. Bes was an older gentleman with a broken arm. He chewed Luciano out for bringing us "late" even though we were there early and he had not given proper directions for coming to his office (Argentines seem to adhere to the stereotype that Latinos are disorganized and late smh.). However, he was nice to us students and was easy to understand. After meeting with Dr. Bes we attended a CPR class that was taught by nurses. There were what appeared to be medical students (The University of Buenos Aires has a medical school located in the hospital) who were also taking the class. The CPR class was annoying to me as all the nurses felt the need to "help" us obviously American students and kept asking us if "entiendes español" (do you understand Spanish?) For what reason would we be in a Spanish speaking hospital in a Spanish internship in a Spanish CPR class if we didn't understand Spanish? *rolls eyes* I guess I was just cranky because it was 8 am.
              After the CPR class we were done with our internship for the day. We headed back to find the bus stop. At first we thought we were a little lost and we had to run to catch the bus, but in the end we ended up on the right bus and got to see a part of the city that we had never seen before. (SN: Gas a gas station near my internship was 8.71 pesos per gallon, a little over $1 a gallon)
              When we came back to Palermo (my barrio) we grabbed lunch at a local cafe. I had a Cesar salad (Which was nasty because unlike the fake Cesar salads in America, it was a classic Cesar salad with anchovies in the dressing) and an empanada. This random lady and her daughter who were walking outside the restaurant came inside to ask how if we were American and how we liked studying here. The mother was Argentine and the daughter was American. They live in Virginia. How they were able to simply look in the restaurant without hearing us speaking in English and know that we were American was beyond me!
             Finally we came to UP for class. I was not looking forward to my class because it' s a lit class and I absolutely hate lit...especially in a language that is not my native language. But my teacher is excellent and did a really good job of explaining the words and concepts that we did not understand. When class was over I came back to my apartment and passed out! I was so exhausted from running on 5 hours of sleep or less. Now we're waiting on dinner. 

Make sure to check back through some of my old posts. I am going to post pictures, relevant to my old posts.