albahaca es basil

So, today started early. Like 9 am early. Ugh. Jaidam, Stephen, Camille, and I tried to use the bus system, don't know how well that really worked out as I felt like we walked longer than we rode the bus. Anyways, maybe we'll figure out a better way tomorrow. OH AND THEN A BIRD POOPED ON MY HEAD! Ugh so disgusting. However, according to Marcela it's good luck. I honestly don't know what is lucky about yellow poop in your hair... Any who, we had our class orientation today where we learned all about the Universidad de Palermo (UP), which is basically random buildings in the middle of the city. Definitely not a college campus. It's pretty nice and I'm excited to meet my professor tomorrow for the first day of class. We walked around for a while in between orientations and ended up eating lunch at a little cafe. Empanadas were of course the lunch of choice along with a good ole sugary Coca. After lunch we walked around the Alto Palermo, which is a crazy huge shopping center right near the school. We even found this giant kid's arcade where they had DDR and other fun things. Including a racing game with actual cars. Rest assured, we're going back with money to play :) The mall also had this awesome sports store with every jersey that you can think of from the world cup. Except, of course, the US jersey. The mall was crazy great. Even saw a pair of shoes for oh, 100 pesos. Which means $25. Going back, yes? of course! We walked back to UP for the orientation about our pasantias (internships). Sadly, the class is satisfactory/unsatisfactory which is annoying but oh well. It's going to be an amazing experience. Oh, and yeah- my internship is working at Refugios de los Animales, which is a cat shelter. Vets come twice a week to check up on the animals and I get to shadow them. Yay! And I've gotten my rabies vaccine and antibiotic ointment so I'm good to go. After the orientations we all wanted to go see the zoo (which is apparently awesome!) but of course when we got there it was closed. It's only closed on Mondays though so we're just going to go back. We then had an adventure riding on the subte (subway) to home. Camille and I passed out when we got back and woke up to the smells of dinner. We ate some sort of bean soup which I actually liked (I know, I know mushy things!). And to top it off ice cream for dessert! We ate with the two other students that are living here, Gerard and Rich. They're down here with some social work graduate program for three weeks. Neither one of them really knows Spanish all that well so it makes it a little difficult for them to communicate with our host mom. (Our host mom is awesome and so is our host grandma! Greta (the dog) on the other hand...) We hung out with Adriana (our host mom) and some of her friends for a little bit after dinner and now we're headed to bed. Hasta manana, chicos!
-liz