End of Week 3!

As another week goes by I am loving Buenos Aires everyday. There is so much to do and see that I am never bored! This past week has been the first week of classes (which is never fun), but before I go there let me rewind to last weekend! Thursday night, IES sponsored a dinner for all of the students at a nice restaurant in Puerto Medero. It was a "end of orientation, I am sorry you have to start school on Monday" type of get together. Very nice food and a fun dinner with tons of friends. However, earlier on Thursday and group of friends and I decided that we would go to Mar de la Plata--a beach that is about 5 hours outside of the city. We heard that some other people were going to be going too and we wanted to take our first unoccupied weekend to travel! When we got to the bus station we realized that pretty much all of our IES program was also going with us to the beach.

We hopped on our bus, which was surprisingly nice, with about 30 other students and arrived at Mar de la Plata at around 9:30. Daniella, Megan Y, Megan N, Paige, Abigail, Jenn, Punky, Jack, Jim Allen, Ben and myself checked into our hostel, "El Refugio" and then headed to dinner. We made a bad dinner choice and went to Coyote Ugly (the American chain) because we were craving some Mexican food. The food ended up being pretty bad, but we still had fun eating together and being in a new city.
After dinner we went to this bar called "Mr. Jones" because we were told it was pretty fun. As it turned out, there was live music playing, and this really fun band who played American music--Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, ect. We got so excited to be hearing some MJ, that we all stood up on our seats and sang our hearts out, meanwhile all the Argentines were casually sitting in their seats. I guess we were being the obnoxious Americans, but we had a great time dancing and singing. After the music ended we headed back to the hostel at around 3--which is pretty early.

The next day we were up and at the beach by 11:30. It was so fun to lay out and swim in the ocean all afternoon. There were so many of our fellow IES students on the same beach--it was good to see everyone there! We ended up hanging out on the beach until around 4:30 and then we all headed back to our hostel to nap/shower for our next night out. The boys really wanted to go to the casino in town and the girls were not really wanting to do that, so we decided to split up and meet after dinner. It was only 8:30 when we left our hostel and a lot of restaurants weren't even open, but we eventually settled on a nice little Italian place near the casino.
We had so much fun being out with only the girls! Two hours later after a few bottles of wine and some delicious food we caught a cab to the same street we went to the night before which was lined with different clubs and bars. As we were walking down the street some Argentine guys told us to come to Roxy, a bar that they actually worked at. We went over there and we were the first people in the bar! The bartenders were really fun and gave us free drinks all night. Even though we were the first people there, the bar eventually was PACKED with IES students and everybody ended up having a great time.

The next day we woke up, grabbed some lunch and then headed to our bus to go back home to B.A.! It was a great weekend and I am glad we planned the trip at the last minute!

This week started with classes, I am very happy with my schedule even though I have class at 9 AM on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Wednesdays I have class at 1 PM, and Fridays I don't have class at all! This is amazing because it will give me more opportunities to travel on weekends! So far my professors have been really nice and I think I am going to enjoy most of them (as much as anybody can enjoy classes haha).
The rest of my week went as follows:
Wednesday: St. Pattys day-- we went to a place called Casabar and Shamrock which were both extremely crowded but a lot of fun!
Friday: A group of us went to Alemo to watch the Wofford game on TV--what a heart breaker!! It was so funny because all the bartenders and a bunch of students from another program went to Wisconsin and then we had our Wofford faithful on the other side of the bar. It was so sad to lose but I was still very proud of my team for having such an incredible season.
Saturday: A group of students went to San Isidro, which is kind of the high end suburbs outside of Buenos Aires. It was beautiful! There were cobblestone streets and old historic houses all throughout the town. If I ever lived in Argentina I would want to live in San Isidro! We went to a museum and had Tea by Rio de la plata. It was a very relaxing day with friends.

Last night 5 other girls and I decided to have another girls dinner at this little Italian restaurant. My pasta was great, but everyone else was iffy about their food. We saw that their were drink specials at Casabar, so we went over their and hung out for a bit. Three guys in our program have an apartment right on that same street as the bar so we all went up there and hung out there for a while. Everybody left after a while to go to Crobar (which is a big club) but I decided to call it a night around 2:30.

It has been a great week, but the work is just starting to begin! Time to crack down on my studies and stop spending so much money! (Sorry Dad :) )

Hasta Luego!