My first day!

Well, here I am, In Argentina!  This post was actually written in a word document on Sunday, but I won’t have connection to the internet until Monday (hopefully).  My host mom is actually in the States right now, so her mom is here, making sure there’s someone at the house and to take us around, and essentially be a fill-in mom—well she told us to call her “Tia” which means Aunt, so I guess she’s my Aunt.

For those of you that don’t know, I am living with another IES student, and her name is Yelena and she’s from Penn State.  We were actually on the same plane, sitting quite close to each other, on the ride from Dallas to Buenos Aires, but it wasn’t until we were in the customs line that we decided to ask if the other was an IES student.  Turns out we live together!  She’s really sweet, but a little overwhelmed with everything; she wasn’t ready for total Spanish (my host mom Ines teaches English, and so we would have been able to talk in English before diving right into Spanish), but my Tia doesn’t speak English…only Spanish.  So I’ve kind of been playing translator all day, and now my brain hurts.  But, on the plus side, I remember more Spanish than I thought I would!  And I’ve been speaking it all day, that I’m so tempted to start writing this in Spanish…I’m also kind of translating it to Spanish in my head as I go…that’s good, right?  But also confusing, and not helping my headache.

Anyways, I guess I can start at the beginning of my trip: the flight.  Man those planes are small!  American Airlines, who knew?  I ended up sitting next to a guy who was travelling with some of his work buddies, and they sell wine.  They’re spending about a week in Argentina and then a couple days in Chile, which is reverse of how it normally is.  One of his buddies was sitting right in front of him, and we talked a bit and they joked around with each other.  They had a…somewhat biting sense of humor.  I just mean that every time his buddy turned to ask him a question, the guy next to me would say, “Yes ma’am?”, which I must say, took me off guard a bit at first, but I got used to it.  But because he is a business man and he has made many international trips, it was really helpful for me to sit next to him when they passed out the customs forms.  He helped me fill it out correctly, and I’m grateful for that.  As far as sleeping on the plane goes…oof, it was rough.  The seats were so uncomfortable!  If I had my neck situated, my bottom, and when I rearranged to sit more comfortably…ten seconds later my bottom would hurt again.  Also, sleeping with a seatbelt on is restricting to say the least.  I slept for maybe a combined total of four or five hours, so it wasn’t too bad I guess.

So then we get to the airport and go through customs, and at this point Yelena and I have found each other and know that we are housemates and so we are sticking to each other like glue.  We got our bags and then started heading for the main entrance where there are a couple of girls from the IES staff with a sign that says “IES students” and they had a photo list of the 5 of us that were all on the plane together (so yeah, there were a few students on that plane).  Ok, I just want to add here, that my backpack weighs no less than 35 pounds, my suitcase (on wheels) is 48 pounds, and I have a duffel bag that’s probably another 25 pounds or so.  This is a lot of weight!  Also, I’m wearing a jacket, and it’s like, 65 degrees (F) so I’m sweating and I feel gross.  So (after making a wrong turn and backtracking) we get to the other IES people and they call us a cab and Yelena and I split the $240 (AR) bill…so it was about a $60 (US) ride, and it was like 40 minutes, so…I think that’s a good deal?  Although the landscape was beautiful, I was so tired! I started to doze off, I couldn’t really help it.  The cab driver didn’t know much English, and Yelena and I were both pretty much just exhausted and trying to take in as much as we could.  My point is, it was a pretty silent cab ride.  Before I started dozing, however, I did notice a few things about Buenos Aires.  As far as roads go, lanes seem to be optional.  They have yellow lines to divide oncoming traffic, but once you’re off the highway, the streets are wide enough to have two lanes, but there are no lines to indicate orderly lanes…so you can pass people or drive next to them, or whatever you want, except it’s dangerous because there’s less order!  Also, we were listening to the radio and they had some songs in English and some in Spanish, they did play “Moves like Jagger” by Maroon 5 and that made me happy. Another note, they don’t censor the songs… Also side note: there was some dude just riding a horse on a field next to the highway. Just riding a horse like it was totally normal. I was a little taken aback.  I mean, he was the only guy doing it.  There were other people out and about, but none with horses.  So anyways, we pull up to the apartment, and the people at IES gave us a sheet of paper that had the address on it so we could show the taxi driver (and also know for ourselves) and on it, it said Ines lives on the fourth floor.  So, not really knowing what to do, we pressed the button (still outside the building) for the fourth floor and this old, scraggly voice starts talking to us.  Ok, at this point we had pretty much been speaking English the whole time and so I really wasn’t in Spanish mode yet.  After about 20 seconds of confusion from both ends, the doorman rings us in and tells us where the elevator is (I assume they told him we would be coming).  So we get into the elevator, which barely holds us and our luggage (and ok, this elevator is one of those with the accordion-style doors (an outer and an inner) and you have to open them both or close them both when you want to go (I guess that’s kind of obvious) and you have to remember to close the doors when you get off…I’m like, 0 for 2 on that…hopefully my record improves. 

Anyways, Ines’s mom is waiting for us at the door and she welcomes us in…and the Spanish begins!  Thankfully I understood most of what she was saying.  She gave us a tour of like, half the apartment (which is still pretty substantial).  There are 4 bedrooms (one for me, one for Yelena, one for Ines, and a guest bedroom that her mom stays in when she visits) and 4 bathrooms. Yep, I have my own bathroom.  So Yelena and I picked our rooms (pretty much it went like this “Do you care?” “Not really…” “Ok, I’ll take this one, sounds good?” “Sure”.  It was pretty simple.  So yeah, she loves on the fourth floor; the whole fourth floor. The entire floor is her apartment.  Four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a family room, a balcony that goes along the whole wall and overlooks the zoo that is right across the street (literally, right across the street).  It’s incredible.  Now, this place is huge, but the rooms are small (but there are like, 12, so it’s ok) but a lot of it is outdated.  For example, I have a typewriter in my room (it’s on a shelf so I don’t know how often it gets used…), as well as a stereo that only plays cassette tapes.  There’s also a small TV that has the number buttons on the side of it (I don’t know if it works, I haven’t actually tried, but it’s here), and that’s just in my room.  There are, however, some newer things as well, it’s just kind of a hodge-podge mix of things.  This place is well-used, but still comfy and cozy.  As I was unpacking my bag, I couldn’t help but be thinking the song “I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here” from Annie.  That’s exactly what I was feeling. 

After unpacking, I took a shower and changed from jeans into shorts and my Tia took us out to walk around the block and get something to eat.  We hadn’t eaten since the plane (at like, 7:45am they gave us a croissant and jam, with some juice and yogurt as well…but since I don’t like yogurt, my breakfast was pretty scarce.) we were pretty hungry, it was like 2:30pm at this point, and so we walked a few blocks and went into a little restaurant/café and, Yelena and I not knowing what anything was, were pretty much mumbling and stumbling through Spanish trying to say what we wanted or didn’t want.  After about ten minutes of that, my Tia just ordered the same thing for all of us.  It was basically chicken and salad.  It was good though, except Yelena had to send hers back because the chicken wasn’t cooked all the way through, and by the time she got hers back, we were already done eating, and she had kind of lost her appetite, so it was kind of a bummer.  But we paid the bill, we each paid for ourselves and it was $32 (AR) each (which is about $8US) and my Tia said that was pretty cheap…so now I know that food will be a big part of my budget. But I also know that breakfast and dinner will be served Monday through Friday at the house, and lunch is pretty much up to us if we want to eat it. 

So when we got back from our little excursion (we also saw the Laundromat and a few other shops and restaurants we can try) I was so tired, I just took a nap…that lasted 3 hours.  And I tried to hook up to a wireless internet and got on for a few minutes so I updated my facebook status and…well that was pretty much it, and after that I was going to write out this entry, but I fell asleep instead.  When I woke up my computer battery had died and so that gave me a chance to try out the converter I brought.  It works!  Unfortunately, now my mouse is freaking out.  It spazzes out when I try to move it and so it takes a while to get to the application I want…and it’s also almost constantly clicking…which is frustrating.  So right now, I actually have 10 word documents open instead of just the one I’m using…and I can’t scroll over anything because my mouse will end up double clicking on it.  It’s especially frustrating to try and close a page that has clickable options on it, because my mouse will suddenly jump to another part of the screen and be clicking all the while.  I’m going to have to try and get this fixed somewhere…but that will be tomorrow.  Also tomorrow is the day that we have an IES sponsored tour around the city, that should be interesting!  And don’t worry, as soon as I can, I will add pictures…I have like four. But tomorrow will hopefully bring more pictures and more memories.

Until then,

Kiki

P.S.  So my mouse is working again!  I wanted to close a window that opened before I closed this one, and it worked fine.  So yes, this is a continuous, right-after-I-wrote-that update.  Sweet!

Also, here are some side notes that don’t really fit into anything, but I just want to say them:

·         My Tia is going to be 94 this year. Yeah, she doesn’t look it!

·         Some student from the program dropped by because he was told this was his homestay…he must have gotten the address wrong, we straightened him out and sent him on his way; he had been here for a few weeks already, so he wasn’t too worried.

·         It’s stinking gorgeous here!