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.
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