Before Opening Your Mouth, You Must Open Your Mind

...that was Roxana's message at our first orientation meeting last night, and I feel like it was wonderful advice. In other words, we must be willing to submerge ourselves in the local culture before we are able to reach the ultimate goal: becoming fluent in Spanish. To kick off our cultural experience they took us to a restaurant called Mariachis that is only about a block down the street from our hotel to have Lomitos, or Argentine hamburgers. They were extremely different from American hamburgers but also extremely good! First, they were huge...about half of one equaled the size of a normal American hamburger. Also, in addition to lettuce and tomatoes they had a fried egg and a slice of ham, and the meat was more like a very thin slice of steak rather than ground hamburger. After dinner, a group of us decided to go out and do a little exploring of our new home. We stopped at a very nice bar down the street and, to celebrate our first night, we ordered a bottle of wine from Mendoza and had fun visiting and getting to know one another. Before heading back to the hotel we took a little walk in the direction of Plaza San Martín, the main plaza in the center of the city. Although it was about midnight, it was interesting to see the local vendors set up on the main pedestrian streets. They offered items from DVDs to scarves to bras and it was interesting to peruse the merchandise. Once we made it to the plaza we were immediately struck by the cathedral lit up at night. We had fun taking pictures and just being together in this amazing city. They also have a stage set up in the plaza, and Roxana told us today that, along with a fireworks show, there is going to be a concert tonight for the bicentennial celebration and we are most likely going to get to go. We walked back and arrived at the hotel around 12:45, which would be considered extremely early to locals, but we were all tired after traveling. This morning we started our next orientation session at 9:30 and finished at 1:00 to have lunch. We will be leaving soon for our city and campus tour and can't wait to see more of the city. 24 hours left in the hotel until we meet our familias anfitrionas (host families)!