Córdoba, che

From the time I arrived, it's been surreal. I can't believe that I'm staying here for four months. I feel like my Spanish has improved in just the one week I've been here, and I can't even imagine how much better I'll be once I have to leave.  My family is amazing: I live with a father, mother, and two younger brothers. And every meal is like eating at a restaurant. This will be a Lean Cuisine-free semester for sure. One of my brothers, Sebastian, and I play games whenever I'm at home. We've played soccer in the backyard, almost broke the TV when had the great idea to throw the tennis ball in the living room, played video games, took turns on a bike machine...we've just got too much energy for our own good...

School has been an experience in and of itself. I've met people from the U.S., Germany, Brazil, and France. And being a foreign exchange student is the bee's knees. You're kind of like that one Japanese Pokemon card that you had in your stack when you were a kid. You made sure you took care of it because it was "rare," and you had no idea what that card even said, but it was cool anyways. Yup, so I'm that card in a stack of regular ones that are from Argentina. What can I say? I feel loved in the Dirty South.

We had a city tour the other day, and we saw so many historical monuments. Honestly, I couldn't name you a single one without looking it up, so I won't even try, but it was kind of a bonding moment for the exchange students. By the time the tour was over, we were all tired, so of course we did the Argentinian thing, we headed straight to a little restaurant to have that 5 'o'clock cerveza. 

But during the tour, our guide was talking about manzanas and how they were everywhere downtown, but the only definition that I ever learned for manzana was apple. So, I was looking everywhere for some apples. Seriously, where were the apples? Were they hiding them? What's the significance of the apples? Honestly, somebody tell me! I asked another student, and he was thinking the same thing. I was in the back of our little group, so I decided to shout "¿Dónde están los árboles de manzana?" (Where are the apple trees?), and our coordinator gave me this weird look. I found out later that manzana can mean "block" as well. And it hit me, the tour guide was talking about the blocks downtown. No wonder our coordinator gave me this weird look...but I had a fun time talking about those manzanas, I can assure you. It became obvious later that the tour guide wasn't talking about apples, but we just ran with it. "¿Dónde están los árboles de manzanas?"