estancias, ropas interiores y walmart

Well hey kids--

Tomorrow will be my seventh day in Buenos Aires. I really can't believe it will have been one week. The amount of changes that have taken place in that amount of time blows my mind a little bit.

Buenos Aires gets a little less gigantic-feeling each day and the more I get to know people in my program, the less I feel like I'm doing all of this solo(dolo). Yesterday I finally got my phone for Argentina-a jacked up Nokia that has T9 texting and no idea of what the internet is. What up, 8th grade?? On that note, I don't think I've ever used Facebook chat so much in my mothafluzzin life, even in my middle-school heyday. With texts and calls being in short supply on our planes prepagos (pay-as-you-go plans) and not everyone having a phone quite yet, Facebook has become the main way people in IES (my program) are posting information, making plans and staying in touch. Notifications overload. Between the T9 texting and Facebook chat blowing up, I really think I might be technologically regressing.

Apart from the technology adjustment, the inevitable has occured; I have officially run out of clean underwear. No one's gonna lose a life here but shit's serious, clean drawers are a basic thing. Solution? Brave the intimates store on calle French and make my virgin voyage into the purchasing of clothes in Argentina. The chances for awkward situations and lost-in-translations to occur are huge. Most likely I will have unintentionally propositioned someone in the shop before all is said and done. Stay tuned.

I never thought I would actively miss Walmart but being pretty much anywhere outside the US forces you to go to five different stores for your list of five different items instead of going to one store that fucking has everything under one blessed roof. There are many things the US fucks up on-going to war with countries they don't need to, eating themselves into diabetes and heart disease... but Walmart and Meijer exist for a reason. For a REASON. Forget freedom or liberty or the Constitution, the United States' gift to the world is one stop shopping. And I miss it.

Oh yeah, today I went to a ranch, with a llama and some ducks. More on that later.

besitos
-j