Hola!

Hola a todos de Buenos Aires!! I've been here for five days and already love it. Since we're leaving for a boat trip on Rio de la Plata soon, I have to make this short, so I'll just list my favorite things about Argentina so far:

1) My family! My host family is awesome. It consists of my mom Alicia, 23-year-old Agustin, 21-year-old Luli, and 11-year-old Clara. Everybody's really nice and the food is awesome. They all speak English really well, which is good and bad. It's nice when I have to explain something complicated, but I told them that I want to speak Spanish as much as possible. I can already tell that my Spanish is improving, which is awesome!

2) Dulce de leche...mmm. Dulce de leche is an Argentinean version of caramel, but more creamy and absolutely delicious. They put it on everything here - toast, waffles, croissants, and alfajores, which are two cookies with a thick layer of dulce de leche in the middle. I'm addicted.

3) Cafes! There are cafes on every corner here, where portenos (the name for residents of Buenos Aires) meet up and sit for hours conversing over a cup of coffee and a couple of medialunas (croissants). Most of the cafes are fairly old and have a great atmosphere. On Sunday I went to Cafe Tortoni in downtown Buenos Aires with my host family. It's the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires, and was supposedly a favorite hangout of Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina's most famous author. I had chocolate (an incredibly rich, amazing Argentinean version of hot chocolate) and three churros - with dulce de leche of course! Here are some pictures:

Chau for now, I'll write more later!!