Apartment

I'm very upset about the fact I had to wake up at 7:00 am this morning, and I am even more upset that I have to wake up at 5:30 tomorrow. Let's now get ahead of ourselves and rewind back to this morning though. A mere walk, subte, train, walk, and I was at La Universidad de San Andres at the cheery hour of 9:00 am. There are 52 international students from England, Scotland, Germany, France, Colombia, Chile, USA, Mexico, Canada, Belgium, and possibly others. The whole group, on the whole, seems wholesome. We had a brief introduction from the International Programs Coordinator who happens to be blind. She is tremendously sucessful and mutlilingual and somehow would respond to my e-mails within minutes but I don't have a fucking clue how she read them. We then heard from two professors, had a campus tour, and had a good ol' fashioned Spanish assessment test to wrap things up. More importantly, however, I've finally met my roommates and they are really cool. They are both from France and very friendly, but not over-friendly in that weird evangelical Christian way. Axel speaks very well and fortunately doesn't speak English very well, which will allow me to converse entirely in Spanish with him. Alix has a French accent when she speaks Spanish which is kind of charming, and she speaks English fairly well so whenever complicated things come up I can ask her for translation help. They both seem very down to earth and kind hearted. Anyway, so the apartment. We were quite suprised by the location of the apartment because it seemed very 2nd world. The neighborhood looks like it can get sketchy at night and it is more of a walk that we had intially been informed to the train station. We very seriously contemplated flat out refusing it, but after talking to the leasor and amonst ourselves we decided to accept it for 1 month to see if it suits us, while simulteously shopping around for something better. So it's adequate but we're hoping to find something better. It was pretty stressful talking to the lessor in Spanish about our hesitations about the apartment before finally convincing her to change the contract to 1 month. Additionally, but not changing we didn't lose the 1,000 peso deposit I had made on the apartment. Inside the apartment is muy muy lindo. It's nice. It has good views and if it was in a better area would be perfecto. But it's not so it's average. So tomorrow we have the priveledge of walking up at around 5:30 in order to be downtown to begin the funfilled process of getting an Argentine visa. Based on what I've seen in Argentina this could take a while. When my colombian friend went to the bank to change his USD to pesos, it took 70 minutes. Well, I should go off to bed, I'm glad I finally have a place to call home and some very friendly room mates. No matter where we end up I think that they are really a good fit. Also, we've been talking about picking one day of the week when we take turns cooking. For example, I could cook every Sunday, Axel every Tuesday, and Alix every Thursday. We'll see. Tomorrow is going to be long. After the visas, we need to get some basic supplies for the apartment, and then all of the intercambios are going to go out. So everythings good, I have a home for at least a month and classes start on Monday. chao. p.s. I've resolved to learn some basic French phrases. For example already I have learned: "Où est la piscine", "Jacque Cousteau", and "les ananas."