first day of school! and more pictures of the park

so right now my biggest problem is a.) not having nail polish remover and b.) having homework?!? also c.) not being able to watch my favorite tv shows because the internet is too spotty. life abroad. today in spanish class we learned about mate, the official drink here. it's pretty cool but i need to buy a mate, the cup that you drink out of. unfortunately, i had class right after we learned about mate, but didn't actually get to try it. another problem: not knowing if my classes will transfer back to bowdoin. eh whatever i'm over it. i finally bought a jacket this weekend (MOM) at north face. took me awhile to convert the prices in my head...some of the jackets were almost 2000 pesos (turns out to be about $500) so that was stressful. also it took me forever to find a jacket that i liked, and everyone in the store gave me sympathetic looks like "you poor american who can't read, write, speak spanish". but whatever. i got a jacket.

classes at uncuyo started today. if everything works out with my schedule i will be taking:

spanish class through ifsa-butler
development class through ifsa-butler (concentrating in either human rights or general human developement)
social history of argentina
sociological politics

which means no class on fridays. which would be awesome. not so awesome is the fact that everyone at cuyo speaks so fast i can barely keep up. and by barely, i mean less than 50% of the time. after my social history class today, another kid from the program and i went to the photocopier station (students here don't use books, instead, they use photocopies of texts because it's cheaper) to get our reading for next week. it's not as easy as the profesora made it sound like in class because it took us almost an hour just to figure out the system. thankfully, one kid from our class befriended us (again, sympathy?) and helped us through. regardless of his friendliness, he still talked a mile a minute. at least the people here are friendly...now i know how exchange students must feel in the united states!

i finally uploaded more pictures of el parque san martín!

par course..where i do my situps, dips, pullups, etc. it's pretty classy.

normally this fountain has water coming out but this particular day it didn't. unfortunate, because it looks so cool with water

rose garden!

andes

club de regatta de mendoza. there is a gym, multiple basketball/volleyball courts, a dance studio, and store inside. 

it's only monday and i'm already looking forward to the weekend. my friends and i want to get out of the city more, there is an incredible amount to see in argentina and i want to experience all of it! with classes starting, it will be a bit more exhausting, but also a bit more exhilarating.