June 28th

This blog is going to be short and sweet due to the time restrictions I have. On Thursday I have two six page papers due; one in Castellano and one in history. I have started both of them and am certain I will spend the majority of my weekend working on them. Writing a well written paper in a second language is much harder than one might expect.
Yesterday was a bizarre experience that is worth noting. As I have previously mentioned, my host mother is an English teacher for a wide variety of students, some of whom are relatively the same age as me. I have been in email correspondence with a few students and last night one of them invited me to a birthday dinner. I was under the impression that this dinner would be a bunch of Argentine kids having dinner, drinking some wine and having conversations, so of course I was thrilled about being invited. Just to be safe I dragged along some of my friends from the program so that I wouldn’t have to be the only American there, and it’s a good thing I did. When we got there, we found the party, but we were really confused. The majority of the people were older (50s) and there were almost no 20-25 year olds there at all. To make things more awkward, we (the Americans) were put in a table on the back wall away from everyone else. People were staring at us the whole time, but nobody felt the urge to come over and chat. So basically, it was the American table being stared at by the Argentine table. Eventually, after the Argentine’s had a few glasses of wine, they tested the waters and spoke to us. They were very friendly once conversations were prompted, but prior to that I was unsure whether or not they wanted us there. It ended up being a very entertaining evening, but boy am I glad I didn’t go on that mission solo.
Tonight, after I worked on my papers I went with some friends to a bar to watch the American Cup soccer game. It just so happened to be Argentina versus USA. I am not a soccer fan, nor have I ever been, which turned out to be a good thing. I would have been pretty scared cheering for team USA in a bar packed with die hard Argentina fans. I was with some big guys but I don’t think that would have mattered. The people are little here, but sometimes quantity can dominate quality. Of course, team USA was dominated 4-1 and the place went wild every time Argentina scored a goal. Their chants and enthusiasm is quite entertaining to watch.
Tonight I am off to the opera. I´m not exactly sure what it´s about, but it should be interesting regardless.