Ah, life...

And so I fall into the routine of life in Buenos Aires. I wake up every afternoon, make myself the seriously unfilling Argentine breakfast of toast and fruit, walk to my regular bus stop, take the same green #15 to my university, walk to the same classes, go to coffee or dinner with the same friends, call the same phone numbers to go out later that night with the same group... (repeat).

The only things I have not gotten around to doing is signing up for that art class I want to take at the city's main cultural center. My original goal was to join a play production, but I guess the difficulty there is no one is in a play production without being paid for it, which means I would need to find an agent or know someone who knows someone in order to get me into the production. There is no such thing as "auditions" here. That was the greatest dissapointment thus far. I think that is something I will have to do when I get home. I need an outlet for all the pent-up drama that naturally collects itself in my middle parts. Here I have to force myself to remain subdued in order not to stand out like the big sore gringa toe that I am.

That's something else that is hard to get used to. Someone once said that Argentine people are all about individuality here... I believed it for the first few days when I saw the young people wearing funky t-shirts and modernized 80s outfits with those hightop Converse shoes... I realized after a week or so - soon after I had purchased my own pair of red Converses - that no one is individual, but everyone is the same kind of original. It is cool to be original, but they all do the same "individual-like" things in order to "stand-out"... I found that as soon as I bought my converse shoes and my off-the-shoulder t-shirt that I fit in more than I do in my own country! Is that all it takes? Of course not, because fitting in and being accepted are two very different ball games. The most difficult people here are the girls. The chicas are very closed-off, distant, and cool towards strangers (girl strangers). Honestly I see it as a fun challenge. Once I get around to joining that art class I have a feeling that I will start chipping away at one of these iceblocks they call las argentinas.