Day one: Making up for a rough start

    It's been about 24 hours since I left Colorado and so much has happened already. It was a hassle getting here, with airplane delays, sprinting through the airport to make an earlier flight, and a lost luggage, but I made it. I had to test my Spanish right away at customs and to reclaim my bag, and I struggled, but I know I'll get there eventually. I have five months to practice. Time to meet the rest of the people in my group, even though the DU kids make up about a fourth of the group. We're slowly being eased into Spanish mode. The accent is different, and people speak fast, so it's hard not to use English in the first few days. At orientation we learn the basics about our program and the next five months. Leading up to this trip, whenever people asked me questions about it, I would usually have to say I don't know, because most of it we are figuring out once we're here instead of beforehand. Jose, our program director, explained to us the proper way to use a bidet, to only drink our Fernet Branca with Coco-Cola, never with Pepsi or Diet Coke, and our tour guide, Alejandro pointed us in the right direction of the bars. But we learned some safety and school related facts too, like how classes are going to work.
    Our first lunch consisted of exactly what I was expecting: steak, and well done, the way Argentinians like it. Meals come with three courses here, salad, and entree and dessert, so I'm gonna need to find a gym soon. We have free time during orientation, so a group of us went to a place to get our first Argentinian vino, and of course it was Malbec (another reason to find a gym).
    I think that the most dangerous aspect of Buenos Aires is the traffic. The cars don't always stop, and they honk at the one in front of them the second the light turns green. Men are shouting piropos at our group of girls, que linda! and we are told to ignore these and do so for obvious reasons.
    Dinner is served at a famous pizzeria in Buenos Aires where they brought us pizzas with heaps of cheese and onions and green olives. It's thick crust from the Italian influence. For dessert we have three options. Option three is described as "cheese with sweet things" so clearly I choose that. Turns out to be a hunk of cheese that could feed 5 people with a hunk of jam and they are eaten together. The waiter said the jam was made of sweet potato, but he also said it was made of quince, and I think quince was the actual ingredient. It turned out okay, but I got my fair share of cheese for the day.
    We took Alejandro's advice and went to the bar he recommended. We didn't do a very good job at blending in with the Argentinian crowd though, with 14 of us wandering into a bar, newly legal to drink and still in our euphoric state of mind from arriving in a new country. We've learned the hard way that people here do not like to split up checks, so we struggled through our first Buenos Aires purchases. Quilmes is the most popular beer in Buenos Aires, so I tried that. It's similar to Bud or Coors, and not bad. At the end of the day, all of us were exhausted and ready for bed.