Safe, sound, and settled in Argentina

So today is the three-week mark since I got to Argentina, and I'm finally resurfacing! It's been an incredible three weeks, and so much has happened already that it will be impossible to include everything here. But I'll do my best to hit the highlights.

First of all, I am, at long last, settled in an apartment. I was in a hostel downtown for just over two weeks, but I just moved on Wednesday into a really great place in a district/neighborhood of Buenos Aires called Palermo. Palermo is a bit removed from the center of the city, so in general it's a quieter, calmer section, but it's still a very popular and active place. In other words it's much more residential and "leafy," but there are still countless cafés, bars, and restaurants throughout - Palermo is known for its nightlife - as well as numerous parks (including the biggest in Buenos Aires, 62 acres worth), museums, sports stadiums, and even the Buenos Aires Zoo. In short, it's an amazing place to live, and definitely worth the roughly 30-minute trip from downtown (including a 10-minute walk to the subway station from my house).

I've been incredibly lucky to make a lot of great friends already. Standing in the lobby of my hostel on my third day in Argentina, completely by coincidence, I met Anna, the other English-language TA in my program. She's from England, and in a lot of ways we've seen each other through the trials of the first few weeks of adjusting here. She's also introduced me to countless people, including her own friends and acquaintances from the UK (this city is teeming with Brits) and also an Argentinean guy named Patricio, who's extremely nice and has become a good friend already. We've actually taken two day-trips out of the city with Patricio, first to the suburb of Buenos Aires where he's living (Olivos), where we met his family and hung out with him and his friends, and then to an island called Tigre, which is a popular tourist destination. Patricio is one of those understated, easy-going guys who's up for anything, and I was really lucky to meet him, especially so early on. The day we went up to his apartment in Olivos, we stopped and ate at a riverside café with his friends in San Martín, an absolutely beautiful suburban town on the Río de la Plata. We walked along the river for a while in San Martín, checked out the outrageously nice houses and also a quirky antiques market, and then hopped back on the train and headed to his apartment in Olivos, where we sat around and had coffee, toast, and chocolate, in true Argentine fashion. As if the day hadn't been fun enough, we all headed up to the roof of his apartment building, which had an unbelievable 360-degree view of the river, the city, and, yes, the sunset. It was a picture-perfect day.

I've also really bonded with my new roommates, who are incredible people and really fun to hang out with. There are seven of us living in the house right now - I keep calling it an apartment, but it's actually a three-story house, connected to our landlords' house on the bottom floor. Our landlords are an older couple: Sara drops in to give us homemade pies, and Jorge is constantly giving us advice about the best non-tourist places to go in the city. In terms of roommates, there's me, a Danish guy named Mads (pronounced "Mess"), an English girl (Christina), an Australian girl (Rosy), a German girl (Francesca), and a Spanish couple. I was definitely disappointed at first that I wouldn't be living solely with Argentineans, because I really want to speak as much Spanish as possible; but my roommates are great and I'm speaking enough Spanish otherwise, so I can't complain.

Am I doing any WORK, you ask? (haha) It's actually been a slow start because classes are only just starting at the teacher-training colleges. The work is picking up fast though, which I'm excited about, especially now that I'm settled in an apartment. (I guess I should explain that I'll be working as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for English classes at four different teacher-training colleges in Buenos Aires. I'll explain more in my next post.) I did start work this past week, and my first day of class was awesome. Anna and I are at the same institute for the first few weeks, so we actually got to explain a lot of the differences between British English and American English. (We did our best not to confuse anyone during a 20-minute conversation about being "on vacation" in the U.S. versus being "on holiday" in the UK, but I just got an email from one student saying "Happy Easter - which is much easier than holidays, vacations, etc.!" So we might need to revisit that one next week, haha.) The students and professors seemed to really enjoy asking us questions about U.S. and British culture and current events (health care, anyone?), and we'll get to do our own presentations on those kinds of topics too, which will be great. The professors actually asked me to do a presentation on the U.S. health care system, as well as the debate over reform and the brand new legislation, which most of you know is something I've followed closely over the past year. So that's exciting. So a slow start, but it's picking up. I'm hoping to get the penpal program started soon, too - I'm working on a correspondence program between Argentinean and American students. I definitely miss my Holyoke kids, so it'll be great to get that going.

There's much more to report, but I'd better pace myself. Happy Easter to you all, and to my New Englanders, enjoy the warmer (and drier!) weather. Sometimes I fall behind in responding, but always feel free to email me, and I promise to respond as soon as I can.

In the meantime...Red Sox - Yankees, anyone? Happy baseball season, everyone. Go Sox!!