Friday September 11

Today we had to be at school at 9 for a city tour. Grace took the bus with me, we’ll see how that system works out. I made it to the Casa, where we all piled onto those big buses again for our city tour. We went all around town and saw the landmarks and learned a little history. My favorite part was travelling through “La Boca.” There is a huge soccer stadium there where “Boca” plays. Boca is the team that all of the blue collar citizens root for. Boca is the “team of the people” which I though was something cool for the lower-class workers to unite under. We walked around La Boca, which was very brightly colored, and a bit touristy. It was very fun though, and we took some pictures. When we left, we drove through a part of town that was very, very poor. It was interesting to see the living conditions that some people in this world still live in.

In the afternoon we had “Intensive Spanish” for three and a half hours. I met my Spanish professor, and she seems very nice. The class shouldn’t be hard. There are several kids who are way worse at Spanish than I am, so that’s good news for me!

I came home for dinner and met Julia, the other student living with us. She’s nice, but I don’t think we’ll spend a lot of time together. She did tell me about some fun places to go, where she can get us in free or cheap. Score! Grace left a note on the table that said she was out for the night, but there was food on the table we could warm up. Good to see that she won’t be revolving her life around us! After I ate and showered, I headed to meet everyone at the Casa. We walked for a ways, to a different part of the neighborhood. We found a restaurant/club/bar when the mob of about 30 americans could hang out. They took us to the third floor where nobody was, so we had a floor to ourselves. That’s where the club is, but it doesn’t start going until 2AM and we showed up at about 11. This schedule is going to take some adjusting to! Jack, Niles, and I left around 1:45 to walk around a little bit, and when we came back they told us we have to pay a 30 peso cover charge, so we went home! The next day I learned that a bird pooped on Niles’ head on his way home. And he was walking shirtless. It’s going to be a great year.