I don´t like ´gaseosa´´

I am having a fabulous time here! Last night after recuperating from the trip me emily and alex left the hostel around 10 to look for a place to eat dinner at a fashionably late Argentine time. It turns out we were still too early...but after wandering for a while we found a little restaraunt that looked good called ristorante milas. The menu was a little bit overwhelming but I decided to try the carne (red meat). I´m not exactly what cut of meat it would be equivalent to but it was excellent and paired with a few potatoes and veggies. We also got a bottle of the house red wine "trancal" for 13 pesos which is less than $4...and much better than three buck chuck. What I loved most about dinner was the relaxed atmosphere. We spent several hours there without feeling rushed and enjoyed the beautiful weather here and people watching.
We didn´t get back to our hostel till about 1240 our time but there were a bunch of people in the lounge playing guitar, hanging out and smoking so we joined them for a while. I really enjoyed practicing my spanish and getting to know them a bit. People here have been absolutely accepting of my efforts to speak spanish even though my grammar is far from perfect. Everyone else was from south america and had a variety of different accents so it was fun to compare. I find that people can understand me well if I am having a one on one conversation with them because they can contextualize alot of what I´m saying, but I get confused looks sometimes when I try to contribute to group conversations. I had a very interesting conversation with a chileno boy who just started teaching english there (his english was probably on par with my spanish). He wanted to know if I had voted for Barak Obama and we got into a very interesting conversation about US (estadounidense) stereotypes. He was glad that my perspective on politics is not ethnocentric and liked that I was curious about south american slants on the 2 party system. I ended up staying up till around 430 (apparently some of the group lasted several more hours). Oh yeah, I accidentally kicked the woman changing sheets in the face this morning, that was awkward.
Today me phillip alex and emily ventured to La Comision Por la memoria in order to meet with people there and find out more about our plan of studies there. We walked through la plaza morena which is a beautiful part of the city with rich archetecture and saw the huuuuge cathedral. I´ll put up a few pictures when I´m not on a comp in the hostel. We met with the 2 program coordinators there. Greeting people with a kiss on the cheek is very awkward to me...I´don´t know what to do with my hands or body. Tomorrow they´re sending cars to the hostel to pick us up around 1130 and take us to our host families! We start the intensive language program on Monday at 2.
We went to a place nearby for lunch and I got vegetarian ravioli and a pepsi ´lite´(they´re not called diet) which was served to me in a wine glass...The pasta was delicious, you can definitely tell how fresh and non processed the food is. It´s great to have a tomatoe sauce that actually tastes like tomatoes without the sugar. Emily and I split up with the boys and did some shopping after lunch. I bought a white dress, zebra sandals, and a wooden necklace all for 30 bucks! La plata really makes sense as a city because all of the streets have numbers with diagonal streets cutting through them that also have numbers. I think once I get my bearings down a little more it wont be hard to find my way around. We´re resting a while in the hostel and are planning on going out for pizza and walking around later, but it probably wont be quite as late of a night since we have to leave the hostel at 1130 tomorrow.
Because I like lists--
Things I´ve seen ALOT OF en La Plata- stray dogs, grafitti, ice cream stores, gladiator sandals, men wearing capri pants, thin tall people, dreadlocks and piercings, agua gaseosa! (carbonated water here is the default, if you just want regular water you have to ask for agua sin gas..found that out the hard way), fruit and produce stands, beer (Quilemes, stella artois, and heineken mostly), beef (asado), Old music from the united states (they apparently love old rock music like rolling stones as well as pop), soccer jerseys, men without shirts

Things I haven´t seen alot of- STOP SIGNS AND LANES (Argentine drivers are crazy crazy, getting anywhere is playing a live version of frogger with your life), unpainted surfaces (alot is brightly painted, alot of designs and grafitti), political apathy (people seem to have passionate opinions), other Americans (la plata isn´t very tourist-y, we definitely stick out), gyms or yoga studios, out of shape people (interesting contradiction?), people who are obviously in homosexual relationships (I think it´s a hidden part in la plata at least)