BsAs, Capital Federal

It's been three weeks since I first arrived in Buenos Aires and it's only now that I feel like I'm getting into the rhythm of things.  I've had the longest orientation of my life and have been adjusting with as much ease as I possibly can/could after having had one of the most incredible and inspiring experiences of my life in Costa Rica.  I'll get to that.

After Costa Rica, I was in Miami about 5 days hanging out with my parents and eating my weight in kimchi and ramyun.  Nothing makes me hungrier than hanging out with my Mom and when she brings out second lunch and second dinner, you don't say no.  Well, at least I don't say no..ever.

And then I arrived here, in the "Paris of South America" on the other side of the equator.  I left behind sunny Miami and my parents but what I missed most of all upon my arrival wasn't home but Costa Rica.  I missed the sun, the stars, the moon, the sand, the hammocks, and most of all, the people I met.  It was my first time traveling alone and instead of feeling lonely, I could not have felt more perfectly in balance.  I'm still in touch with the friends I made out there and I fully intend to reunite with them, but now I find myself in an entirely different universe where I'm no longer listening to this but rather, this.  Ok, to be honest the latter was something I listened to today while running the fastest mile I've ever run (I was on a caffeine high) but it's within the same vein of music I have been listening to.  In short, I've gone from feeling mellow to feeling like I have paintballs exploding in, on, and around my face all the time.  I mean, David Bowie is re-entering my life.

I guess I always saw myself as a city person anyway so this is kind of the test.  At first, I thought maybe I got it all wrong and that I'd prefer a quiet life reading books on my porch facing the ocean in the middle of nowhere to looking for rats in the subway as my favorite daily activity.  The reality is that I needed my time away from real life and I got it but now I'm ready test my capacity to live and love life in a big city.

Host dog: Mollo

My first two days of orientation went by in a blur.  Things began to fall into place as soon as I moved into my host family's apartment in Villa Crespo, a 7th floor flat with a wrap-around balcony around two sides.  I live with my host-mom who films and video-edits for a local TV station, my two host-brothers (ages 16 and 17), and my host-cousin (girl of 16).  More on them later when I write my next post: A Day in the Life.


Anyway, the day after I settled into my new home for the next half a year, I decided to meet my dear high school/current pal, Sara, in Mar del Plata.  After a ton of different problems trying to get my bus ticket, the details with which I will not bore you, I finally got settled into my seat on the top floor of the double-decker bus.  The "ejecutivo" seat reclined about 120 degrees and they even gave me a snack.  The 5.5 hour ride would go by relatively quickly with my music plugged in and my feet propped up.

Prepared with a snack, an alfajor, and my neck pillow

mini palmita, my favorite, however stale it might be

Cabbing it to the hostel

5.5 hours quickly became 6.5 hours but once I was off the bus, I was just grateful to have arrived.  Another 20 min cab ride later, Sara and I were reunited.  I went to my first parrilla, which is traditional Argentinian grill, and spent the rest of the night hanging out and bonding with two new friends and catching up with Sara.

Sleepy new friends

Make-shift omurice breakfast

Rough surf

Emerging surfer

Triumph!

Windy rooftop hangout session

Mar del Plata

Mar del Plata is known for its surf.  It's a destination city for porteños, natives of BsAs, who travel the 5.5 hours down the coast to vacation.  Unfortunately, we went during the only cold weekend of this summer and didn't get any surf lessons nor did we swim in the ocean.  I guess it was the universe's way of telling me that I had my fill of beach in Costa Rica.

If only we had a horse...

Vaguely reminiscent of "The Seventh Seal"
...agree?

Bowling/Arcade

In spite of the crappy weather, we managed to have a good time.  We found a bowling place where the bowling balls were only slightly larger than coconuts.  I did bowl the best game of my whole life though so it was ultimately a success.  It was a short weekend but worth it.  I guess I wasn't ready to settle down just yet.

Back to BsAs

Upper level front window seat

When I spoke to the Latin American Studies chair before leaving Wesleyan last December, I received one bit of advice that was given to me with extreme eye contact and repetition.  The current chair is a porteño so he knew what he was talking about when he warned me adamantly to "Never ever ever take your coffee to go.  Porteños enjoy their coffee.  Don't take your coffee anywhere with you or they will know what you are.  Sit down and savor it."  So I took a crack at it, sat for an hour and enjoyed my baby biscotti nibble by nibble.

Café con leche

Yaniv, my other high school buddy here, told me that I would have to learn patience here, and that patience would then become tranquilidad and I would just learn to enjoy it.  Yaniv was born Israeli to Argentinian parents, went to high school with me in Tenafly where we became friends, and then moved back to Argentina to follow an impulsive dream to become a doctor.  He is well on the way on the most rigorous of rigorous career paths but while I am very proud, I'm not sure if the doctor-to-be is the person I should be taking relaxation advice from.  But in all seriousness, he's right.  I'm working on it every day.

I have plenty complaints though that need addressing:
-I don't live in the cleanest environments, in my home nor in the streets where there is garbage piled IN the intersections and there are cockroaches evading my footfalls all over the sidewalks once it gets dark.
-There is no spicy anywhere.
-People do not cover their mouths when they cough/sneeze.
-The subways are overcrowded.  The buses are also overcrowded.  Transportation generally overwhelming.
-My bed is broken but not broken enough to be fixed or replaced.


And yet, who doesn't have complaints?  There are also moments when the city surprises me in a good way...what I imagine falling in love with the stranger you were arranged-married to feels like.  For example:
-A blind man to the right of me on the subway told the woman he was talking to on my left that he could tell he was sitting next to a girl because of my perfume/smell (aka deodorant and my sweat, but who's telling?)
-An adorable little boy on the bus grabbed my hand as I was getting off and whined in Spanish "don't leave!"
-Every time someone bumps into someone they know on the street and they stop sidewalk traffic just give each other a kiss on the cheek
-The Kosher McDonald's (I will acquire photo evidence soon)
-The French architecture lit up at night
-The Korean restaurant I just discovered
-Gelato everywhere
-The smell of meat grilling anywhere, anytime
-Sharing yerba mate

The view from a friend of a friend's apartment

There are plenty of other things that irk me and others that dazzle me but that's the nature of being alive, isn't it.  By far the most irksome of all though was when on the day I had to start the process of having my student visa instated, there was a subway strike.  Because the subway wasn't running, there were a million people trying to get the bus so none of the buses I needed would stop at my bus stop.  Zero.  Plus, it was rainy and cold and it was the one day that week I decided to put on shorts FML.  In any case, I stayed home that day following the advice of my host-mother and had to take care of my visa things on my own which wasn't bad since there were no lines or anything else to make me crazier than I already was.


My relationship with the subway here, aka subte, gets even better.  Note sarcasm.  Yesterday, in spite of having given myself 1.5 hours to get to my class on the other side of the city which should really take just a 30 minute subway ride, took me the full 1.5 hours to get there.  There was an accident on the line I would have taken so I hopped on a bus that got stuck in traffic and then walked another 10 blocks to the university.  My Spanish friend laughed and told me I just needed time to adjust when I told him the Universe loves shitting on me.  So now that I'm much more adjusted, I think I can safely say that it isn't the Universe (capital "u") but specifically the transportation universe that loves shitting on me

"La Puerta Roja" bar
Says "Red Rum" on the door but can't really see it

Expensive as hell charcuterie board

So while I love the pace and the energy of this city, albeit extremely diluted by New York standards, I'm realizing that a city is a city and there are much more expenses to urban living.  BsAs is definitely not Middletown, CT.  The real zinger is that I do not have a meal plan here where I can swipe my nifty little student ID and get a coffee, buy my groceries, grab a quick sandwich, indulge in late night chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks, or do my laundry.  I don't really miss school but I do take the convenience of our tiny ass campus for granted, 80% of expenses paid by Mom.  Now that my receipts are piling up (don't get excited, Christine..I'm still not budgeting like you) I'm feeling the hurt in my wallet.

Giant metal flower sculpture that opens and closes with the sunrise and sunset

El obelisko

A very wide Argentinian avenida

Exploring the city is actually quite fun.  It's very different from any other Latin American city I've been in, not that I've been in too many.  But unlike Cusco, Peru or Antigua, Guatemala, Buenos Aires boasts European architecture like she's actually European, not just the transatlantic colonial stuff.  While the city has its very scenic and picturesque parts, it's actually not the sights that really capture my attention.  As a proud Wesleyan student, I have to say that the best part of the city is its history and it has a living breathing history at that.  Ever watch Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Evita"?  Well ignore everything the musical ever taught you but you should still get the sense that Peronism is something a world apart and very unique to this country's wild social and political history.  (I suggest wikipedia-ing everything I mention here if I've lost you so far)  Evita is evoked as a charged socio-political symbol even today.  That definitely says something.


Furthermore, as you may know, Argentina was under the rule of a brutal military dictatorship from 1976-83.  A popular practice to weed out subversives was the act of "disappearing" a person.  Latin American military dictatorships of the 20th century were such fans of "disappearing" that the Spanish reflexive verb to disappear, desaparecerse, became an active verb, desaparecer, connoting that one could actively disappear another.  Because, well yeah, the military disappeared a ton of people.  In Argentina, that number is about 30,000 people kidnapped, tortured, buried in mass graves, dropped from helicopters into the ocean, etc.  The point being, the city isn't just the "Paris of South America", not just some pretty thing with pretty parks and pretty buildings.  I mean, every city has its ugly underbelly but this is something beyond the usual stories of corruption and boss systems.  But life goes on, another incredible reality that the city of BsAs attests to.

The old water-processing plant
At one point was the secret hiding place of the body of Eva Perón
before it was disappeared to Italy

And this is how life goes on.  I'm in a new country starting a new life and obviously, it does weird things to my insides.  Or so I thought.  The newness of everything probably does contribute a bit to my troubled bowel movements but this is what really happened.  Fresh prunes...these delicious little plums I couldn't recognize as the things that make you GO.  When I was about 8-years-old, I had a cup of prune juice before school thinking it was just any kind of normal fruit juice and then I got to school breaking into a cold sweat and stumbling to the little girl's room, a big deal considering I avoided public bathrooms for the greater part of my life like the plague.

One to offset the other

Other than the bathroom problems which have more or less subsided at this point, I'm having a pretty great time.  I'm taking my time exploring the city since I have a solid 5 months here but I've been poking around little by little.  I spent one Sunday enjoying the sun out in gardens and parks.

Entrance to Japanese Gardens

Funny little bull on a column sitting in the sky

Just a few blocks away from the tranquil Japanese gardens you'll find a giant park in the neighborhood of Palermo.  It's called los bosques de Palermo, a fabulous chunk of green in the city.  There are people playing street hockey and rollerblading all over the place, people taking strolls and riding bikes, other people just smelling the roses in an extensive rose garden in one corner of the park.  There are also white ducks hanging out in and around the lake at the center and then a ton of folks picnicking or just lounging around on the fields.  

In a huge park called las bosques de Palermo

Stretching after riding bikes around the park

Yaniv shirtless and sweaty from tackling rollerblading
Bikes are better because you don't have to work so hard for a good breeze

Fancy roundabout

That night, we went to a boat party out by Puerto Madero, a neighborhood considered one of the richest in Buenos Aires.  As per custom around here, we were out there by around 2 AM and stuck around for about three hours.  I of course nearly fell asleep standing and then actually did fall asleep on the bus.  Also to clarify, the boat party was nothing exclusive but rather a bar/club/lounge on a boat docked on the water.  Don't be jealous.

I'm on a boat, ________

"I just wanna dance" --JT

I figured I'd cover the topic of food the next post since it definitely constitutes a very big part of my daily life but here's a preview.  There are things that I'm loving and hating about the food situation here.  I'm a sucker for fruiteries and tiny little fresh produce stands, for bakeries, butcher shops, specialty shops for spices, eggs, etc.  However, I walked into a large supermarket today and it was like walking into a dream.  Convenience is truly a marvelous thing.  

Eggs sold wrapped in newspaper sold in half-dozen packets
at the corner produce stand

So super-efficient mega-supermarkets are a rare breed around here but there is a bigger problem.  There is no spicy here.  If a country's national dance were correlated to the spiciness of their national cuisine, Argentinian tango would point to some ultra spicy spice.  But this is not a scientific theory and I can't find a decent bottle of hot sauce anywhere.  You can't even ask for it on the side in a restaurant.  Once woman asked me if I wanted soy sauce instead.  No. I want something to satisfyingly burn the inside of my mouth. I was so frustrated I bought a bottle of ají picante which is a more vinegary sauce with only a fraction of the heat I'm used to.  And then I brought it to dinner out at a restaurant and when I forgot it, I went back 10 minutes later and picked it up off their counter to which the proprietor responded in Spanish, "oh, that was yours."  Because why else would they ever have such a thing?  Spicy food is mythical in this strange place.

I bring my own hot sauce

Like any good Asian, I get my Asian cravings and even if they might use too much rice and rarely use raw fish and put cream cheese in everything, I will still buy sushi from the food court at the mall.  A girl's gotta eat...what she wants to eat.

Just alright sushi

Amazing gelato

I feel more and more at home as I develop habits, as my lists of likes and dislikes grow, as I feel as though my host-family here has really adopted me and that I've adopted them.  

Host dog: Odisea

Curious/judgmental Mollo

But that doesn't meant in any way that any one back home can be replaced by the Argentinian alternates.  My mother for example, the most amazing human ever, could never be replaced by me nor any other person that has ever met her.

"Hi!  We miss you!"

My two solid weeks of orientation finally concluded in a relaxing day trip to Tigre.  Tigre is the point of confluence of all the little waterways that flow into the delta right outside Buenos Aires and where the Río de la Plata slugishly reaches the ocean.

Taking the train out to Tigre

Boating out to one of the many islands in the delta

Parilla for lunch

Art..?

We spent the afternoon at a "recreation center", a space with a soccer field and a pool with suspicious water.  People were swimming in the river and then were kicked back onto land by one of our supervisors for fear that someone might get sucked into spinning turbine of a passing catamaran.  Also, the water is asqueroso as that same supervisor said.  Disgusting.

All I wanted was to kyack that afternoon...
Mission failed

Back to Tigre and then back home

That night, in spite of having spent the day relaxing, I was completely exhausted.  The heat, the dirt, the sun and the socializing just drained the energy out of me.  But I went out on a pub crawl anyway, paid my 100 Argentinian pesos (25 USD) and sought out the tequila that would turn my night around and convince me that I was having a good time.  I at least carefully explained to a group of Argentinian men who had successfully cornered me that I admired the bonds of friendship wingmen shared but that double-teaming, como se dice en los EE.UU. (U.S.A.), is not something I support, no thank you.  Don't worry folks back home, I had my back-up Yaniv lingering nearby keeping an eye on his little Asian pal.  Plus, I've been going to the gym and I have some rudimentary survival-fighting knowledge passed down from my brother-in-law so watch out sleezy night creatures (aka man-vultures), guard your cojones, pelotas, huevos, your testicles because I'll remove them from your body if you provoke me.


That weekend, a solid 17 days since the last time I had kimchi, I had a hankering for kimchi like...well I have nothing clever to say so I'm just going to say, like Korean who hasn't had kimchi in 17 days.  So I rallied the troops and we went out to share a meal at a restaurant just two blocks from my school called Biwon.  Dinner was inspired.

Dooboo kimchi (no pork! win!)
Dolsot bibimbap and galbi to follow

And then Sunday rolled around and I felt like I needed to do some more exploring.  The Sunday fair in San Telmo really hit the spot.  It's a popular tourist destination where they sell all sorts of goodies.  Overpriced by Argentinian standards but for visitors, it's worth it since they don't know any better.  I didn't buy anything since I had my sister Christine's voice using the loudspeaker in the space known as my guilty conscience within my mind but there was one stall that tempted me and tempted me hard.  The copper pots and pans, the giant copper milk jug that would sit on the ground and from which I would poor out just the tiniest saucer for my cat if i were from the 1930s, these were the things that pulled me in and had me staring with my mouth slightly agape, just wide enough to let spit collect and almost spill out in a long thread of drool.  The drool didn't actually happen but it could have.  That's how badly I wanted these things.

But at the end of the day, things are still just objects and I was glad I didn't make any useless purchases.  The best part of the day was yet to come anyway.


Recoleta is another fancy-pants neighborhood of Buenos Aires and arguably the most wealthy.  They also have quite an extensive park right by the famous church and above-ground cemetery where Evita was finally laid to rest after having been lost for 16 years.  I didn't get the chance to roam the cemetery but I was introduced to a fun little motley crew of Australian soccer players..finally some non-Americans...

Reggae band in the park in Recoleta

The excitement stops there for the time being.  This past week has just been about getting a grip on real life, settling in and feeling less panicked about classes.  Now I get to make plans for St. Patrick's Day this weekend and carefully plan just how to fit a good amount of beer into a body that generally rejects liquids, even water.