No class hoy? I'll take it!

Congress building!

So it's Wednesday? Yes, Wednesday I believe. All this week we have class for 6 hours a day, because we have some 4-day weekends coming up and our spring break is soon, and ISA is trying to make up for the school days that we're missing. That being said, you should probably know that the overall level of delusion significantly increases during that last hour of school between 3-4pm... our class gets pretty goofy. Luckily we have a great profesora named Eli, and she's just an oversized kid like us! It's been a lot of fun so far with her to say the least. Instead of class today though, we went with 2 other classes to a historical cafe about 45 minutes away by bus (this city never ends). It's name is Los Angelitos, and it was founded in the late 1800's, apparently it's very well-known around Buenos Aires. It had a great atmosphere, and once you leave the dining room and explore behind velvet curtains and upstairs, there's a theater! I'm glad that I took the time to explore, because I got the chance to close my eyes and just imagine being there 70 years ago. It's chilling actually, to imagine how much history just one single cafe has seen. A theory that my table made was that the cafe was named Los Angelitos because the voices of the performers sounded like angels...original and creative, I know. Regardless, I'm sure it's a great place to see a show! Where the cafe was located was really beautiful too, it's on a historical side of town and is only 2 blocks away from the National Congress building, which absolutely took my breath away. Sometimes the architecture down here is extremely intricate and you can see traces of European influence, but at the same time, an ancient building can be located next to an extremely modernized one! It's funny how they all mesh together though, I've really grown to love and appreciate all the different styles.

After the cafe, the gaggle of ISA students headed over to the movies where we watched an authentic Argentine movie (without subtitles!) called Agua y Sal. It was a great movie! What was even greater, was that I walked out of the theater with a really good sense of what I just watched. It's really encouraging to feel like I'm getting a much better grasp on the language and that I don't necessarily need to rely on the subtitles to know what's going on. Given there is body language and obvious film to help me put two and two together, but I can definitely feel myself beginning to turn off that constant voice in my head that's translating from Spanish to English. It's the best when I just shut that voice up completely and just listen in Spanish.. though it doesn't happen often yet, when it does, it's really exciting!

I came home after the movies, enjoyed a little siesta, and went grocery shopping with the roomie. We got a ton of food and cooked dinner for our mom, and made lunch for the rest of the week! We made an enormous quinoa salad, which I had never had until a few weekends ago in Pinamar when Julia nearly shoved it down my throat. It.. is... incredible. It's pretty much a superfood- inside of this creation there are allll sorts of beans, lentils, peppers, onions, tomatoes, quinoa, etc. etc. that just make it into this amazing, aesthetically-pleasing creation! For dinner we had a bunch of veggies cooked over some rice and a salad.. needless to say I feel pretty good!

Yesterday was fun too, a bunch of us hung out in the park with strawberries and a little wine to celebrate Valentine's Day. It's nice to be able to go to a park and not feel like you're going to get robbed or sketched out by locals- luckily the park I'm talking about is extremely well-lit and we sat close to the road that we'd be in plain sight of other people in case anything shady went down. While I am the type of person who loves to be on the go and constantly doing something, I can't tell you enough how much I enjoy just being able to sit in a park and relish in the beauty of the day, the sunset, and the company of great friends. Not to mention I came home last night to my host sister baking brownies.. complete with frosting and sprinkles! Not a shabby life!