Early days, First impressions

 Two months ago, I would have never thought that I would spend my summer vacations studying in the University of Texas at Austin, and now I am here, writing the fist post of my blog. I just arrived to Austin a week ago. I arrived with other twenty four friends of Fulbright full of expectations about our next six weeks in this city. The previous months were so busy, full of things to do for my university and for the scholarship, so I didn't have enough time to investigate neither about Austin, nor about the program, but I had some thoughts about the United States and I wanted to know if those thoughts were true or not.
This post is not about any particular topic, I want to write about the things that surprised me in the first week here.
I will start talking about the city: Austin is a city as big as mine city, Salta, but it is quieter and cleaner. Also I noticed that there are a lot of young people here, and I think that this is the reason why there are a lot of pubs and activities for young people, so you will always have something to do, like for example going to the 6th street (only if you are more than twenty one -.-). But not everything is perfect in this city, I was surprised when I saw a homeless camp in the street next to the campus, and I didn't see anybody trying to help them, I didn't expect to see a situation like this in a country as developed. But in general, the city is well maintained and the squirrels make it more beautiful .

Other fact that surprised me in a good way was the feeling that all the citizens have with the university: backpacks, t-shirts, caps and lot of other products, which are orange and have a longhorn stamp on them. I was also surprised when we went to the match of the university women basketball team and the stadium was full of people!!! In general, in Argentina, the university's team of any sport are not important, but here they are really important for all the city. And speaking of a sense of belonging, the fraternities and sororities are relevant. I thought that fraternities only existed in movies, it was incredible to see lot of them near the campus with strange names that were a mixture of Greek letters. I don't understand at all how does it work, but I have five weeks more to understand them.

I want to finish my post telling about my experience spending a night with a Texan family, Mimi and Clark. They picked me up from the place where we are staying, the university towers, on Friday and we went to a traditional barbecue near their house, and there was a girl singing country. In this moment I realized that I was in the amazing state of Texas!!! After the diner, we went to their house, we sat in the backyard and started talking about my country and about Texas while we saw the city and the sky. It was weird when they invited me to go to sleep before 10 pm, in Argentina nobody sleeps before eleven! But I have to say that I spent a great night with them, and I am happy that I experienced how families live in the United states.

It was a really intensive week, and the trip is just starting, so... see you next week!!