Estoy enamorada

Welcome to my first blog post from a coffee shop. < Insert jokes and namecalling here. > But it's perfect. I have an hour to kill before class, I'm situated in the corner with my medialunas, pasta frola bites, shot of water (no, really, they serve shots of water w/ coffee)and a bowl of coffee. Yes, a bowl of coffee.

This past weekend was the first time I really felt like I was HERE. Totally, all the way here. Cabeza, cuerpo, corazon. Friday morning the group went to the immigration office. And, of course, immigration offices are hell no matter where you are. I ended up at the window of the guy who was feeling particularly- to put it vaguely- snarky. With such a large group (15 or so) it was obvious that the Americans had entered the building. So, this guy decides to speak Spanglish to me. But, I head into every social situation with the mindset that I don't know a damn word of English so his Spanglish threw me for a loop and from there he branded me as an idiot and finished the process like we were playing Pictionary. For you Spanish speakers out there, he told me 'toma un seat.' But I was not expecting 'seat' so I just looked at him confused trying to figure out what I was supposed to be taking. So he stood up, rolled his eyes, sat down in his chair and said 'A seat! Me entiendes now?' Jesus. Pick a language. But whatever, he's still working his miserable job in public administration and I am now an official resident de la Republica de Argentina!

Friday night, I went to a cookout with some new Argentine friends. It was a lot of fun to be in that setting with those people. Just me, just them, just having fun and me beaming in my newfound niche.

Saturday I slept in then met my girlfriends for a coffee date. Friday tends to be our big night out so we're beginning to find ourselves at the same cafe, at the same table every Saturday afternoon catching up. Even though I see Kelsie and Katherine nearly every day, so many new and funny things happen every day that 6 hours apart makes for an hour of entertainment over coffee and medialunas. I look forward to Saturday coffee dates with these girls as much as I look forward to getting dressed up and dancing on the weekends.

Saturday night we went to our friend's apartment near Palermo to have a few beers and see where we the night took us. What was going to be beers, some cereal and a cab ride to our favorite little bar turned into a three course meal and us all falling asleep watching 'Life: Jungles'.

Sunday I met with Kelsie for coffee, worked on our project for a bit, hit up the park for a nice run, enjoyed pizza with my family and met Katherine to finish our project. My family and I eat pizza from del Pilar every Sunday night. I don't want to think about life without del Pilar pizza. So good. So, so, so good. And Francisco (the 5 month old- and only- grandbaby) was there too. I think Luz, her husband, Fran and Diego spent all day with Lili celebrating 'dia del nino' (day of the baby)- one of many Argentine holidays.

I love going for runs here. The air pollution here is horrific despite the city's name. But I get to run in El Parque de las Naciones Unidades (United Nations Park). There's a large track around the perimeter and it's always filled with people kicking soccer balls, making out- very, very passionately, drinking yerba mate and making funny pictures with the Floralis Generica.

This is the park...

http://www.intertechargentina.com.ar/html/images/floralis2.jpg

Esta semana pasada, enamoraba con vida otra vez. Entonces, la sola cosa que quiero decir es que mi vida aca es increible. Despertaba cada dia con los sentimientos que no quiero salir nunca. Esto ciudad es mi sueno, mi corazon y no hay bastante horas en el dia para disfrutarla.