Estoy aqui!

The flight from Houston to BA and most of yesterday were pretty ugly. Exhausted, extremely nauseous, terribly lonely.

Today: MUCH BETTER. Mostly because I've made friends :)

Orientation was at 10 am this morning. Keep in mind I had drank all of my water and hadn't eaten anything more than a cup of cheerios and a granola bar in the last 24 hours because of my nausea. I was feelin' pretty crummy. Got to the orienation site made friends with 2 guys from Italy. Very nice and I stuck with them, and a few of their friends, throughout most of the orientation. Course they were mostly speaking Italian but I was just glad to have some pals. Met a guy from the Bay Area, heard a few people talking about Virginia I think, and made friends with a girl named Kelsy from Colorado. I thought of you dad because now I've made friends with a girl who speaks English but don't worry, I'll be getting plenty of practice with Spanish no matter what my friends speak!

At the end of the orientation, which consisted of lost of info and a tango performance, we hopped on a tour bus and saw a lot of the city. There are no casinos allowed in Buenos Aires so they are on ships in the ports, which I thought was pretty funny. There's a football stadium we passed that had coke advertisements in black and white because the rival team's colors are red and white, only place in Argentina you'll see that. Again, I thought that was funny.

After the tour Kelsy and I went around taking care of the housing, visas, etc. Well, at least getting those started. LOTS of paperwork. A bit intimidating but nothing that can't be handled! While we were doing this, we ran into the two Italian guys I had met earlier, Mikele and Lores. I'm probably misspelling those horribly but I went for the phonetics.

Kelsy and I then decided to grab some food. I was shaking at this point. As we were stopping at a place to buy some water we ran into Mikele and Lores again. We had already decided to go to China town and they were happy to join us. It was nice to walk with two guys because of safety and all. It was SO awesome walking through the city. I loved it :) it's cold and rainy here but I really don't mind it. Very busy, lots of traffic and people everywhere. We got to a Chinese restaurant (I know, first night out and I don't even eat anything Argentinean) and I had rice and veggies. I could probably maintain being a vegetarian if I only stuck to Chinese food, but I'm just going to let that go for now. Kelsy ordered a "large beer" and it was HUGE. We ended up sharing it, hopefully I can get the pictures up tonight and then you'll see for yourself. Super yummy food and we were laughing non-stop, (which attracted some attention when we got too loud).

We walked to the train, that's how Mikele and Lores were getting home, and then I went with Kelsy to her flat. It's so rad. There's this sweet older woman who lives on the bottom floor and then on the second floor there are two rooms, one's Kelsey's and the other girl hasn't gotten there yet, floor above that has the kitchen. We bought a bottle of wine and had a glass while studying Spanish.

Grabbed a taxi and now I'm in for the night!

There is so much to take in, a little overwhelmed right now, but overall absolutely enjoying myself.