Second Days??

Now that I'm wired on coffee. I think I can continue to tell you how the rest of my week was. Right now I'm in a coffee shop. So far it's my fav cafe. They sell coffee and Ice cream here. I haven't tasted the ice cream yet though. I took pictures. Which I still have to put up. This coffee shop has much better internet than the place I'm staying. So while I'm still staying there, I think I'll come here to get internet. So where was I??

My first night at the Milonga Hostel was horrible. The showers are in separate room but at least this have hot water. After searching for other place friday and today (saturday) I found out the Milonga is actually ok for it's price. I probably could have gotten another place with better quality and cheap if I had known where to look when I was looking for apartments earlier. Milonga is one of the cheapest hostel around here for a decent price and the location is pretty good. I think I drank too much coffee. I'm not sure what exactly she gave me but it was good and I feel like I'm spiraling. Weeeee!!

Okies so the last three days I have been looking for other places to stay and I visited my school. The first place I visited was a bit more expensive than Milonga but good enough. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it was farther away from school. So I decided to look for better places. Then the next I decided to visit my school. One of the staff at Milonga, Pablo, he's my favorite,  he told me which bus to take and everything so I got on the bus and got off at the right stop. Yay Then I spent a good 45 minutes searching for the office. To make things worst it was pouring raining outside!!! I only had on my new green rain jacket but I was soaked everywhere else. My school is also part hospital and it was integrated throughout that section of the city. So I would go to one office and they would send me to another office and then they couldnt understand me or I couldnt understand them and they would send me somewhere else. Something I found weird was I ended talking to this guy who thought I was registering for college and I could understand most of what he was saying but he couldnt understand me at all. I found it weird because his accent was different. Anyways I manage to finally explain to him what I wanted and I was sent to this other building which it turns out I passed because I didn't see the entrance. I got there and I'm trying to explain to the security guard what I wanted and he doesn't understand either so he makes from phone calls telling everyone that he calls how I can't speak spanish well, which is true but he didn't have to say it in every phone call. He was like " Hi, I have this girl who can't speak spanish well who is looking for blah blah" He could have just asked for my name... anyways it turns out that was the right building and they gave me the syllabus for my classes and I got to meet Dr. Damien Craimen.

He's basically the guy in charge of me. He's awesome. He speak three languages english, spanish and french. Anyways I feel like he's the only friend I have in this place because he is the only one who actually understands my situation. I guess he could relate because he has been to the USA and UCONN before so he knows where I'm coming from. He showed me around the school and showed me places I should go to and how to get a phone and other useful things like how to find other places to stay.

So at least I know how to get to and from school now. My next trip was to one of the hostels he recommended me. I did that earlier this morning. I was 10 minutes from where I was staying. I had a little problem with spanish here mostly because I wasn't sure what to say. What seems to happen to me is that once I start speaking spanish badly it starts to go down hill. lol And then they try to speak english to me which makes me upset so I continue to answer them in spanish. Anyways she showed me this small but decent room with a bathroom where the shower was weird. The shower wasn't sectioned off it was just between the toliet and the sink. Then she told me it was for  1000 USD per month. And of course I said no and then she told me I could have a smaller room for 545 USD per month. I told her I'll think about it and left. After thinking about it, I thought I should have yelled at her for selling me that room for 1000 USD per/month. Which person in their right mind would do that?? I wonder if she just did that because she knows I'm a foreigner. You really would have to be either desperate or stupid and naive to pay that much for the room when you could get apartments here for cheaper.

Things I notice about Buenos Aires so far are: a lot of people smoke, a lot more small business here, they call buses collectivas, this city is really huge. A lot of people smoke but I heard that's not unusual for Hispanic countries. The cigarettes here smell stronger than the ones in USA. I don't see much billboards so far but I guess I haven't been around much. I'm planning to go to a different place in the city every saturday. Today however, I'm busy looking for places to stay and I have to figure out how to get to church which is in a different part of the city. So the city have different sections. I'm in Recoleta. The church is in San Telmo and my school is in Congreso.

Hmm other interesting things. I need to upload thoses pictures and I saw an accident. Not sure how it happened but this car hit the right front light of  another car. It was one of those accidents that shouldn't happen because it was at a traffic light so somebody wasn't paying attention to the light. I heard then crash then I turned around. Nobody was hurt though. The cars here are generally the same and crossing the road is not as scary as crossing the road in Spain aka no cars have almost hit me. The garages are underground. I saw somewhere that Argentina was the leading country in something about being green. I cant really see how. There aren't any smart cars here and unlike Spain there isn't any push to recycle.

Have I met any friends yet? I'm alone at a cafe.... There seems to be a lot of people at Milonga about my age. There is one girl who says hi to me when she sees me but I haven't spoken to any of them. They probably think I'm anti-social lol. Actually, I'm not alone because there is a lot of old people here. lol  I guess I should be friendly. Initially I was afraid because my spanish wasn't that good but now I don't really care lol. I guess I'm more focused on getting use to things at the moment.

The best thing about living by yourself in a city is having the freedom to eat whatever you want when you want. lol I had a cappiccino frappe for dinner =D (Don't tell my mom) I've also been eating empanados for lunch.

Other part of my room

I guess that's all I have for now. This coffee was really good.

On side of the room I'm staying in.

Another wall in my room.

 

The coffee I drank before I typed this.

The coffee place I'm at right now

The capuccio frappe I had for dinner one day.

The first days

It's about time I started to write something in this. I waited a long time because I wanted to get adjusted but here goes.

So plane ride from New York. There was a flight to Korea at the same time and there was a lot of Koreans there. I wanted to talk to them sooo badly. After I learn spanish, Korean will be the second language I learn.

Anyways, I slept most of the flight so the six hours seemed short. I flew over Cuba and Jamaica. That made me happy. I know how my country looks from above. It reminded me that I moving on to bigger places. Once I reached Colombia, my first goal was to get my luggage off the first plane (Avianca, I recommend this airline. They had a lot of movies and games on the plane for entertainment) to Aerolinas
Argentinas. I got my two heavy bags then I was told I had to wait three hours to check in because Aerolinas Argentinas didn't open this early ( I got to Colombia at 5 am Colombian time). I found it funny that I could actually go out in Colombia and come back for my flight which was 6 hours away. I didn't though. I sat down in the airport for 3 hours. After a little problem with overweight bags and exchanging USD to Colombian pesos I got to the gate and waited for another 2 hrs.

The flight to Argentina seemed soooo long. It also took 6 hrs. I was impatient by that time. I slept for the first three hours. They gave us a good amount of food which was good. They played two movies. I don't know the name of the first one but the second one was Date Night with the guy from the Office in it. I miss watching the Office. The cool thing about this flight was that I flew over south america so when I looked I could see many mountains and rivers. It was really cool. Too bad my camera was dead. =( Flying over Argentina at night was the most beautiful. It was surrounded by golden lights. Soo prettty!!! The landing was kinda bumpy but I was glad to finally arrive after a whole day of traveling.
I got into Argentina ok. Yay being a Jamaican citizen. Americans have to pay money to get in. The lines were long to get out of the airport though. My first disapointment was the the place where I was staying didn't pick me up. These taxi guys saw me and helped me get money at an atm and took me to the place. Sounds sketch right?? I was a little scared but they kept assuring me they were from this taxi company and they were safe. So I had a nice conversation with the driver while seeing Buenos Aires for the first time. This city is HUGE and they have highways and tolls like we do. I passed the Obeslica, which is a monument to their independence. The driver also showed me famous shopping and theater places.
At the hostel I was staying I checked in, because I reserved my spot and now for my second disappointment. I'm going to put pictures of my room up. It's pretty bad. It made me really upset but I was too tired to do anything or to think logically about it. It made me want to go back home after being it for 2 minutes. The bed is really hard, there is barely a mattress on it. So it was hard to fall asleep that night and there were a lot of people up talking until like 3 in the morning. So my first night sucked and loneliness was seeping in. I was beginning to understand how crazy I was and how alone I was. I've never stayed in a country with no one to go when I needed support or help. I have family in a lot of countries Jamaica, USA, Canada, England. Ok maybe that's not a lot but I have support there. Anyways, you are also probably wondering how I handled the spanish. I've taken five years of spanish and I've been to Spain. So it was a little hard because my spanish was rusty and I forgot a lot of things. I also didn't practice much before here. So before school starts I'm going to review some grammar. Colombian accents were also easier to understand than Argentinan. That's probably because I'm use to Colombian though. Anyways in my next blog I'll give details on they days before school started.