La Vida Diario

I'm finally starting to get set into a rhythm here in Argentina. A normal day starts with me speed walking the 7 blocks from my house to Circolo Italiano, where we have orientation, both because I'm usually late and because the faster I move the less piropos I get. When I arrive we have some sort of lesson where they teach us about all the ways we could die in the city, what classes to take, etc, then we have a break where I wander around the area with my friends, and then it's back for another few hours of riveting information. After orientation is over for the day I usually head home, where I hide in my room and try to make as little noise as possible so that the family wont know I'm there until dinner.

Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE my host family. They're absolutely amazing. However, I have no idea what they're saying. After dinner every night we usually sit at the table for hours and just talk and so if I was to spend too much time w/ them before dinner my neck would be sore from nodding and pretending like I understand. I am proud to say, however, that today I understood the majority of the conversation at dinner and I think I'm getting a lot better. Therefore, I've been trying to spend a little more time with them, watching tv and playing cards, because I don't want it to seem antisocial or anything (....though we all know I kind of am.)

Then, if it's a good night I'll go out with friends. Now, I've only done this once so far, and it brings up an area that I'm still not comfortable with here: Public Transportation. Since I live so close to the Circolo and that's pretty much the only place I go every day I usually don't use the taxis, subtes or collectivos. However, the majority of the bars and boliches are in Palermo. I live in Recoleta, the next barrio over, however it's definitely not a distance I would want to walk, especially at night. On Wednesday when we went out I tried to call a taxi and I was supremely unsuccessful.

Initially, after fumbling a lot trying to understand what the operator was saying and make myself understood, I was told the taxi would be there in about 10 minutes. Right on schedule, the taxista called and said he was downstairs, so I go down.... and the taxi isn't there. I tried to call the taxista back but I'm assuming he used a phone in his taxi because when I tried to call him it connected me to the company's main menu again, and I had to go through the arduous task of explaining my predicament to the operator in broken Spanish. Eventually, she connected me to the taxista and apparently he had the wrong building number, so I told him the address and his response was "we don't have any taxis in that area." Now....this seems a little odd to me, since he was presumably on the right street, just a few buildings down and, unlike most streets in the city, it's a two-way street soo I'm not sure why he couldn't just drive down to the correct building...but you know....whatever. So anyway, from there I tried to call a couple of other taxi companies and again I had difficulty understanding them and being understood, and eventually, before I could secure a taxi, my phone just stopped working.

I'm not really sure what happened, however I still haven't gotten my phone to work. I had just bought 15 pesos worth of minutes that day, so there's no way that short call to the radio taxi used up that many minutes. I tired to call the help service to get it fixed, but of course I had a bitch of a time trying to explain my problem, and then the woman just kept saying I needed to buy more minutes.

Anyway, with the help of my host family I eventually got a taxi and went out, however it's still not something i'm comfortable doing on my own (to get back home me and a friend that also lives in Recoleta had the bouncer at the bar call us a taxi)....and really it's not even possible until i get my phone fixed.

As far as the colectivos and subtes are concerned, the colectivos worry me because for one, if I've never been to an area before, how would I recognize it to know when to ask the driver to stop? Also, apparently the amount you pay depends on where you're going, but i don't really understand how that's determined. Like do you tell the driver right when you get on? And really how would the driver know if you really got off at the stop you said you were going to? I'm sure he can't monitor every person on the bus. In general, I just want to wait to use it w/ someone who has already done it (and definitely not at night) so that I don't get lost or look like a spaz or anything. The subte seems simple enough, I just haven't had cause to use it yet.

Anyway, that's pretty much the gist of mi vida diario and some problems that I have yet to conquer. Oh, and highlight of my week thus far? Walking into a couples table at the bar and knocking their glass bottle off, causing it to smash on the ground and break into a thousand pieces, ushering the entire bar into shocked silence.....closely followed by laughter.

Yeah....

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Piropos: Catcalls which are very common in latin american countries and don't really mean anything. I'm pretty sure the men just hit on women out of a sense of obligation.

Subte: subway

Colectivo: the city bus

Boliche: A club/discotheque

barrio: neighborhood

Bienvenido a Argentina!

Hey guys! So this marks day 4 in Argentina. For the sake of brevity, i'll just recap the most interesting part so far, my arrival.

When I first arrived a taxi driver was assigned to drive me to my host families house. This was the first taste I received of how really different the Argentine accent is. I thought I was prepared for this anomaly, but apparently not. Every other word out of their mouth involves a "sh" sound that, for us normal people, is usually a "ya." If you study spanish you know what I'm talking about, not to mention the fact that their intonation is closer to Italian than any spanish I've heard before, making it hard to differentiate between and recognize common words. Anyway, so in addition to just trying to translate from spanish to english, I have to translate from Castellano (what Argentines call their version of spanish, of course pronounced Casteshano) to regular spanish and then to english. It's a bitch.

So anyway, back to this taxi ride. Once we got into Buenos Aires I experienced another first: my first time experiencing the crazy Porteño (BA resident) style of driving. The sole rule here is don't hit anything. If you can accomplish that it doesn't matter if you stay in your lane or cut people off or randomly stop in the middle of the road or anything of that nature. The pedestrians are just as bad, walking out in front of cars anytime and VERY narrowly avoiding being hit. Bikers ride in the street but ignore the traffic lights, riding bikes as far into the intersection as they can be w/o actually getting hit (some while texting) and then, when there's a break in traffic, they speed across trying to beat the oncoming bus. In a kind of related way, yesterday I saw a person standing on the sidewalk while their dog, which was on a leash, squatted in the street in front of oncoming traffic and took a shit. The cars just drove around him like this was a normal occurrence and the owner didn't look the least bit concerned that the dog might get run over.

Anyway, so when we finally got to my apartment the taxi driver went out to buzz up and have them let me in. Well, he stood there for about 10 minutes and no one answered. Eventually, a random man walked up and they began conversing. After a minute the taxi driver came back, said something to me that I couldn't understand, and then handed me and my suitcases over to this random man. Randoman initiated a besito, that weird cheek press kiss thing that they do in a lot of European countries and apparently do here, and I pretty much jumped back from him before I realized his intention. I had heard that they do that here but to have a random man that I didn't know pressing his face against mine within my first hour in the city was pretty disconcerting.

So, then the taxista leaves and I'm alone with Randoman, who I'm sure is trying to introduce himself but I don't understand anything he's saying. The apartment building has a really nice marble and glass front entrance where respectable people are entering, and then a very shady kind of garage-looking side door. Of course, Randoman takes me through the side door. So I enter and it's this empty warehouse type place and there's a random shady teenage boy hanging out in there who says something to Randoman. I couldn't understand, but at the time I assumed they were talking about how they were gonna murder and rape me. Randoman then puts me on the tiny elevator and tells me to press 4, which I really don't want to do because I'm pretty positive that there will be drug lords with automatic weapons up there (I clearly watch too much television.) So, I'm standing there, preparing to die, when I reach the 4th floor and lo and behold my host sister is waiting for me in the hall, sans automatic weapons.

Turns out, Randoman is actually Juan the Janitor. I don't know for certain, but I assume I offended him greatly by mistaking his kindness for a murder attempt.

3 Days Until Departure

...and I think I've gone into shock. Is this actually happening? There's this new thai restaurant that I still wanted to try and I have to go to Shiki sushi about six more times and I have to finish Queer as Folk or I'll just be tormented not knowing how it ends for the next six months. There's just not enough time!

but on the other hand...

YES!!! Only 3 more days.

Less than two weeks to go...

As the title states, there is less than two weeks left before I leave! It's a pretty cool thought, though somewhat terrifying. I always have this thing where impending events don't seem real to me until I'm very close to them. Most of the time right up until the day before I leave it'll just be like "oh at some point I'm leaving the country, but that's not for forever" and it really seems more fantasy than reality. Well, now things are getting a little more real. I finally bought my plane ticket, and surprisingly I got a really good deal on it even though I waited forever to buy it. I also realized that I only have 3 more shifts left at the SRC, which is just depressing.

Most importantly, though IFSA hasn't officially emailed me telling me who my host family is, today I received a message on facebook from a girl who is staying with my future family now, saying that they just found out I'd be living there. She has given me TONS of great info on the family. Turns out there are two host daughters, one is 16 and one is 18, a mom, a maid and a cat. They have been hosting girls for 5 years so she says they're really experienced and easy to live with. The home is in a really good neighborhood in the center of BA and I did some facebook stalking and looked at the pictures that current host girl (subsequently referred to as CHG) has up of the house. It looks really nice and although my bedroom is TINY it'll do. CHG said she considered herself one of the luckiest people on the program to have such a great family so I'm beyond excited. All of my fears of having a horrible overbearing host family have been assuaged. Now my only fear is that there's been some sort of mix-up and I'll wind up with a different, less perfect, family. CHG has also invited me to ask her any questions I have about the family or the program so if you guys have any ideas, let me know!

Anyway, with these things falling into place I'm finally starting to absorb the fact that I'm actually going. Time is flying and I'm terrified that I wont finish everything that I need to do before I leave or that I'll be in anyway unprepared.

I think the only thing to do is just hope for the best!