The first week

So I’ve reached the one-week mark in Argentina, but it feels like I’ve been here forever. Not necessarily in a bad or good way, but we’re always doing stuff so it feels like we already have so much “under our belts.”
So I knew it would probably be easy to make friends, since we’re all stranded in a foreign country together, you really don’t have much choice but to get to know each other quickly. However, I could not have imagined the group that I have! Everyone is pretty cool here in general (haha, like I’d admit it if they weren’t), and it is incredible the variety of personalities and characters. However, the group of friends I have found rock my world. Christen, Abby (aka Julia), Alex, and Carolyn (Caro- I’m putting your name last since you decide not to write back on my wall) are some of the coolest, funniest people I have ever met. And our chemistry is amazing. Each individual has such great quirks, like Carolyn’s sense of humor is out of this world. I have never laughed so much in my life, I’m serious. So I’m real glad they let the sheltered girl hang out with them.
My family is also amazing – technically it’s only Susana (mi madre argentina) and me, but the day after I arrived, Susana’s two Swiss nieces arrived with their husbands/boyfriends, and a baby. Additionally, Susana’s brother (El Vacho, the girls’ father) came from Chile with his friend, Rodolfo. So I’ve been learning a lot about Chilean culture as well as Argentine. Chilena, my “tia” (Susana’s sister – I suppose I should mention she is one of 8 siblings, so there are a lot of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc…) lives right down from us, so she and her two sons are always over here as well.
Susana has three grown children, Veronica, German (pronounced Herman) and el Chapu. Veronica comes over often and I am definitely a huge fan. And actually, German was a HUGE help the other day when I had to go get a phone. I haven’t really spent much time with el Chapu, but his wife Ivi and son (Jaoquin, he’s a little baby!) were here the other day and they were a blast. Luckily (I really am blessed, I’m pretty much the only one with this situation) I found wifi right outside of my house, so I can stay pretty connected, but obviously I can’t plug in my computer and the connection isn’t that great.

School is pretty good, we’ve only had two days of classes now. I really like my teacher for the intensive month (or so I have decided for the day). Also, I start horseback riding tomorrow and I am about to pee my pants I’m so excited! I went with the crew of girls and William/Billy, our buddy, to their riding lesson today, and I am SO excited!
I suppose I have to mention the dog-napping story. It has been pretty significant in my experience here. So, I saw this little poodle, obviously recently shaved, roaming the streets. It is important to know that there are stray dogs walking all over town, and it’s a pretty common thing. But this was obviously a purebred, and looked like it just had puppies. So the cerrejero (key maker, but I didn’t know who he was at the time) came up to me and told me someone threw it on the street, and asked me to take it home with me. I said okay (thinking that at best we could try to help it, if not, then it could just go back to where it came from), so I picked it up to show the kids who were at the bus stop. While we were talking, the poodle ran away and I wasn’t going after it so I just decided to let it be. WELL. Somehow, creepily, the keymakerman knows who I am and where I live (?), possibly because I walk by there everyday on my way to school, and when people came looking for the dog, he told them that I had it at my house. So he sent them to my house. Of course, I didn’t have the dog but I told the lady which way it went on Nuñez. However, apparently she didn’t believe me because she and/or her husband returned 5 times that day, thinking that we had the dog inside and had stolen it or something, even though we told them that they could come inside and LOOK for the dog, because I did not have it. I literally told her maybe 27 times which way the dog went. And apparently, while I was at school the next day, she came back to ask which way the dog went. So. I am apparently known as a dog-napper in the neighborhood now. I ran into the keymakerman yesterday on my way home from school and he started yelling at me because I let the dog go (it ran away!) and told me “That dog has an owner!!!”. Well, Mr. Keymakerman, it would be nice if yesterday you had not decided to tell me that someone threw it away and was mistreating it.

Moral of the story – leave the dogs alone.