Hola amigos! I’m writing to you this evening from Argentina where the time is +2 hours ahead of EST and I’m EXHAUSTED!  After several hours of travel Friday and throughout the night, I made it to Argentina yesterday morning.  After landing, going through customs and hopping a taxi to Recoleta (the area in Buenos Aires in which I’m staying), I arrived at my adorable apartment which I am living at with three of my (Duke) classmates for the next 2 months. Today, we spent the whole day walking around the different areas of Recoleta and neighboring town Palermo, and over the course of several hours, lots of shopping, two sit down dinners and a trip to the grocery store, we walked about 6.5 miles.  Since we don’t have cars, I believe we’ll be doing a lot of the leisurely walking which is always good for the body.  School starts tomorrow, so we’re getting settled in for the evening and I hope to get to bed soon so I’ll be well rested for my new set of classes.

Here’s  the good:

1. The apartment is awesome; clean spacious and has TVs in both rooms. The room I’m sharing has amazing closet space and a very comfy bed. And we have a washer/dryer.
2. Furthermore, the area in which we live (while more quiet than we anticipated) is safe and pretty clean for the most part.
3. We’ve located a gym that we want to join tomorrow morning that looks like the Equinox of gyms at the YMCA price (well, once we do the conversion from pesos to dolares that is).
4. Speaking of, the dollar is REALLY strong here. Every dollar averages about 4.30 – 4.50 pesos.
5. We’ve found two websites called Sidereel and Projectfreetv that will allow us to download and watch all out shows (hulu doesn’t work outside of the US).
6. We took the Subte (subway)!

Here’s the not bad but could be better:

1. I wish I had more time to explore before school starts tomorrow.
2. We couldn’t find oatmeal in the grocery store (que triste). 🙁
3. The Subte stank like butt crack. Ew.
4. They have a lot of cafe con leche here but no cafe regular — and the cafe con leche is more like a shot than it is a cup.
5. The seriously bug invested joint we went to for dinner last night. I mean, really people. AND not only was it bug invested with bugs falling into our ‘agua con gas’ (seltzer water) but they had live entertainment which was so dramatic, we could barely hear ourselves over the ruckus.

Anyway, I’m going to jump in the shower and get ready for bed but hope all is well over in the States!

PS – for any of you that have whatsapp, I can chat on that for free through my phone.