first days in buenos aires!

So now I have traveled pretty much all the way across the world to experience another summer! It is so hot and beautiful here... barely a cloud in the sky during the day! It is so nice to be wearing summer dresses while I know everyone back home is walking through snow! I had a little bit of a rough start for the first couple hours after I got here. It was more of a shock than I was expecting to move into someone else's home for 4 months. I knew it was going to be different than the US and my house, but I did not realize how different it was going to be until I walked into my TINY room. My bed takes up about half of the room and I had to leave about a third of what I brought in my suitcases that were taken to be stored in my host mom's mother's apartment upstairs. Needless to say, I am now more appreciative of the space that I have at home and even in my dorm room at school!! My host family is nice but obviously very different from life with mom, dad, dorothy, and sallie! My host mom's name is Sandy and she is probably mid-50s and then there is a daughter named Martina who is 22 and a son who is 18 named Felipe. They keep to themselves and I keep to myself but it works. We always eat dinner together and between their english and my spanish we manage to communicate! I know I need to start speaking more spanish so I am going to try and start pushing myself more. We all share one bathroom which is a struggle, but one plus is that they have a cat named ramon! He is nothing compared to Sunshine and Shadow but I'm glad to have him around! So in general I am starting to get settled in and I will post a picture of my room when it is looking a little neater... it is just hard to organize a room that is this small!

Yesterday was our first day at IES. We just had some get to know you time with all of us being put in a room and expected to socialize. I am in the advanced program due to how many semesters of spanish I have taken and I would guess there are 80 people in this program. There is also a beginner/intermediate program but due to orientation schedules I haven't actually met any of them yet. I wasn't sure before we arrived how it would be with 9 Wofford students, but I know for a fact that I would be having a much harder time if there were not some familiar faces nearby. In time I am sure I will get to know everyone else better but I am really benefiting initially from already having some friends!! Pretty much everyone except for the nine of us go to school and are generally from up north. We would definitely be considered the southerners around here! There are bunches of students from George Washington University and Penn State but it is interesting that because those schools are much bigger than Wofford they do not even know each other! We then went on a tour around the area near IES which is right on the biggest road I have ever seen! It is pretty much 4 roads all together and I have to cross it everyday to get to school! Today we had some more orientation presentations and ice breaker games so things are coming along!

I am off to go celebrate my birthday a little early! I can't believe I will be 21 in just 2 hours (at least on Argentina time)

I will post more after I have more adventures and I will try and take some cool pictures!