These feet are made for walking (but they'd prefer better shoes)

I walked a lot on my own yesterday while Rose was in Orientation and took loads of pictures. It was fisheye day! So much so that I realized I went a little overboard—in some situations, I would have taken better pictures without it. But that’s ok, lesson learned. I went to Plaza San Martín and saw a HUGE tree that I really wanted to climb.

I had a lunch adventure at a Chilean restaurant. I wanted some of the famous Argentine beef, which we haven’t had yet, so I went straight to the meat section (it said “Parrillada-Steaks”). The cheapest one was $15 (1 American dollar=3.5 Argentine pesos, and they use the same symbol). I asked the waiter what it was, and he said, “queso,” and motioned with his hands to show it was flat. A cheeseburger? I thought. Sure, why not. And I ordered French fries, hoping for the pillow-like fries described lovingly by my mom and grandmother. As I was waiting, it suddenly occurred to me that it might be a grilled cheese sandwich, which I am not a huge fan of, but I quickly banished the thought, remembering that it said “steak.”

Then it arrived. It was grilled cheese. Not a grilled cheese sandwich, just grilled cheese. It was a good 6-7 inches in diameter and had some oregano on top. And the fries were just plain old American-style French fries. I ate as much cheese as I could to be polite, attempting to make it more like pizza by putting it on top of bread, crackers, or fries. But I started to feel sick after half of it. So that was my lunch—fries, cheese, and bread. Ugh.

The restaurant was not very good in general. I asked the waiter for a napkin, and he gave me a very reproachful look that said, “You are an idiot,” and pointed to the cloth napkin that was covering the bread. I thought that was a strange place to put one’s personal napkin. What if there had been two people? The final straw—they charged for the water, and for the bread that was on the table when I came in. One was $2 and one was $5.50, and I’m not sure which one was more of a rip-off. Ok, so I read in my guidebook that it’s becoming common practice to charge for table setting, but it’s still a total rip-off.

I went shopping a little bit and bought some sandals, even though I told myself I was going to browse around longer to decide what constitutes a good deal here. Also I was confused and thought at first that they cost $36, but later realized that they were size 36, which equals American size 6. That explains why the first two pairs were so small, but usually I’m a size 8 so they I’m amazed they fit at all. By the time I noticed that they cost $100, I’d already been sold.

My orientation was very different from Rose’s—the staff introduced themselves and went over the schedule for the next two weeks, and then told us to get to know each other and left. There were about 25 students there. It was a bit difficult to get going, but soon I stopped being so shy. It makes me very grateful for Rice’s O-Week, where they forced us to get to know each other.

There was a lot of confusion about cell phones. I'll get one today or tomorrow

For dinner we had chicken-fried steak! They call it Milanesa here, and it’s pretty popular from what I understand. Felt like home (not really, we never ate that at home).

Today so far we've had more orientation, a combination of boring presentations and middle-school-style activities in Spanish, about as boring as that sounds.