Don't Cry for Me, Argentina!

So it's taken a few days to get good and settled in. We arrived to Buenos Aires Saturday morning to our apartment, exhausted, after close to 24 hours of traveling. I was a little disappointed at first...it's a lot smaller than most apartments in the U.S., very plain, and seemed like it hadn't been cleaned up to my standards! But we're getting used to it, and we really like the location. It's only about 5 blocks from a subway stop and it's very close to a lot of restaurants, bars and shops. We spent the first couple of days finding our way around our neighborhood and figuring out the grocery and shopping situation. It's different than in the States because there are so many stores that are very specialized, rather than having just one big store. We found a big shopping center on Sunday, but it took us a while to walk there and ended up being an all afternoon event!

This picure to the left is of our street. Our apartment building is to the left.

Sunday, after making it back from our shopping excursion, we attempted to go to a bar to watch the Argentina World Cup game. We were running a little late, and by the time we made it to the bar area, they were all completely full! It was crazy the amount of people out! And even crazier how dead the streets were! We were the only peope walking around...when Argentina scored a goal, you could hear people in their apartments cheering from the streets! We finally found a small restaurant that only had one little TV and only had a few people in it, but we went in to watch the seccond half. We met a nice couple from England that will be in Buenos Aires the next few months and we're going to have dinner with them Saturday.

Yesterday, we had our first Spanish class. Our teacher is very nice, but it has been frustrating how challenging it's been for us both to use our Spanish. The accent here is very different, and it's been so long since we've used our Spanish with native speakers that it's been very disappointing for me...but, that's why I'm here!

This morning we finally ventured out of our neighborhood and took the subte to the centro...downtown. Beautiful! It reminds me exactly of a big European city like Madrid. Every building is so ornate and there were so many people walking around.

Me in front of the Casa Rosada,

where Evita gave her famous speeches!

The Countdown Begins!

Steve and I will be leaving for Argentina in less than 3 weeks!!!! I can't believe it is almost here! I'll be finishing up the school year next week, and then it's off to Argentina for 2 months!

We've rented an apartment in the Palermo Viejo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. The neighborhood is supposed to be very "up-and-coming" with lots of good restaurants, bars and shopping. We'll be using Buenos Aires as our base, and traveling from there.

Steve's going to be working from there, and I am hoping to do some volunteering. We are also planning to get some Spanish tutoring, just to keep up with our Spanish and improve!

We've been doing a lot of research and I am getting so excited to go. Argentina seems like such an amazing country with so much to do! It's a huge country, so I'm sure we won't get to see everything we want to, but we are going to try! '

We leave on the 25th of June and get back the 22nd of August. We'll try to update this blog often so you can all be up do date on everything we've done and seen! Be sure to keep us up to date about the happenings at home as well!

~Alison

Here are some pictures of places in Argentina we are hoping to see!

Patagonia...southern Argentina