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...