my birthday

I'm really bad at this blogging thing but I promise to try and get better! This last month and a half has been the craziest of my life I think. I have been learning so much at work that my head is about to explode. I was feeling a little useless for the first month but I am understanding much more as time goes on and I am dedicating myself to studying the environment and the effects it has on Argentina so that should keep me busy for a while. I'll talk more about those things later because today is dedicated to my birthday. P.S. I FINALLY GOT PAID on Friday so that has taken a huge weight off my shoulders :)

I was able to talk to my family on Tuesday/Wednesday nights and that was really nice. It was the first time I REALLY missed them. I missed them before, but more just the daily interaction we had but without having a family bday celebration, I realized that I missed them on a deeper level. I dont know if that makes any sense in English! My head is one half Spanish and one half English these days (and it feels like lots of mistakes in both!) So at work we celebrated my birthday with sandwiches, soda and cake. The cake was awesome (strawberry and chocolate) and it had a huge torch-like candle on the top. My coworkers gave me a really nice sweater and a pair of pants. The most touching thing was having Mama Mirta (a 55 yr old lady who is like everyones Aunt in the office) tell me that they really enjoy having me in the office and that I have been a bendiccion (blessing) :) I still cant believe the acceptance and warm embrace that I have encountered in this office and I am so appreciative to have another family away from home. Later on Wednesday I went out for dinner with a girlfriend who is also American. We went to D'Oro, my favorite restaurant in Buenos Aires. We shared a bottle of wine and some pizza and Kate gave me the coolest Birthday Girl sash that I was forced to wear the whole night! Of course, I loved the attention! Anyway, the waiters found out it was my birthday and all of a sudden the lights were turned down, the birthday song was being played and the whole restaurant was clapping and singing happy birthday! I almost died! They gave us free tiramisu with another crazy candle with a foot high flame and 2 glasses of champagne! We made our way to our favorite "after office"/boliche (dance club) and spent the rest of the night dancing with friends. 

It was an amazing birthday and I truly felt at home for the first time in Buenos Aires and best of all loved by all of my wonderful friends and family :) 

living a dream

So first things first, I actually ended up finding an apartment on Craigslist instead of living with Diego's friend for a month. I really like the house, my roommates and the location. I live in a neighborhood called Belgrano, technically we're on the border of the barrio Nunez, but either way it's pretty residential, including the standard dog poop on the sidewalks. I'm only a 5 blocks from the subte (subway), 3 blocks from every busline in the city, and I have a grocery, a butcher, and a veggie stand all within 3 blocks so that is really nice! I kind of enjoy figuring out what to eat on a daily basis instead for shopping once a week. I'm going to be living here through the end of June and then I'm not sure what I will do. Maybe I will get my own apartment and start furnishing it or maybe I will just try and find a cheaper room. There are 6 of us in the house, 2 from the US, one Irish, one English, one Swedish and one Argentine.

On Wednesday, I started my new job! It was amazing and everyone in the office is so nice and very helpful. I thought maybe there would be a weird vibe like "what is this yankee doing here, taking a job away from an Argentine?" but it wasn't like that, thank God! And I do feel a little guilty about it but I know that I am capable of doing the job and I am very grateful for it so I just have to put that thought in the back of my head. I do realize though that the job I have is wanted by a lot of people who work very hard to get it so I have to work extra hard so that it was worth it for them to hire me. 

Anyway, on the first day there was a press conference held by the opposition (that includes us, Union Civica Radical) in order to call for an emergency session of Congress. Right now Argentina is experiencing a really bad drought, in addition to the effects of the global financial crisis. 20% of the economy here is agricultural and including all the services tied into that it makes up 60% of the economy. In July, Congress voted against increasing export taxes on agricultural goods and since then relations have been strained between the President (she proposed the increase in taxes) and the farmers/legislators that opposed it. It seems as though her denial/failure to help the current situation is some sort of retaliation for what happened in July. So the opposition was asking her to open Congress early this year since it doesn't begin til March. We shall see what comes of it...

my first few days

First of all sorry about the punctuation but Im on Argentine keyboard for the time being. So I arrived on Thursday morning on LAN airlines (which I highly recommend for anyone traveling to South America) on probably the hottest day of the summer so far Diego said. I think it was about 85-90 degrees but there was 60% humidity which Im not used too. I have been just basically hanging out at the pool in Diegos backyard and looking for an apartment. I just found out this morning that Im going to live with some Brazilian med students for the month of February until the international students arrive and then I will live with a group of them. One interesting thing I had forgotten about is that most pharmacies have a lock on their doors and you have to ring a bell in order to get in...in order to prevent robberies.

On Friday night we went out to eat asado, which is delicious Argentine barbeque except there is no need for bbq sauce because the meat here is soooo GOOD! And yesterday we went to a quinta, which is basically just a vacation house in the countryside. The one we went to is located in Escobar and it had a padel court (which is a game similar to tennis & raquetball), futbol fields, a pool (pileta in Argentine Spanish) and of course a parilla (grill for bbqing). We arrived at 10am and stayed til 10pm playing all day and I made a couple friends that are girls! Here are some pictures:


To the left is the asado we ate...yummy!
And just below that is my new friend Euge, who is going to take me shopping for work clothes and more appropriate summer stuff! The third picture is the girls playing Chinchon and the next one is of the boys playing futbol, and the last one is Diego playing padel!

OK now Im off to the pool to catch up with the other girls tans!