Week One / Month One

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Today marks my one week anniversary in Buenos Aires, but I feel like a month or more could have passed. The porteño lifestyle is different from life in Bariloche, for better and for worse. The first half of the week I was a little overwhelmed as I adjusted to the pace and people and frenzy of city life, but now that I've figured out how to interpret the bus schedule and fend off unwanted attention ("Callate chamullero" = "Shut up sweet talker" --> works like magic), I'm becoming enchanted with BsAs.

I took my first tango lesson this week and relished it, though I realized I have quite a ways to go before I'll be able to fulfill my dream of becoming a sultry, leg-kicking lady of the dance of love. I've gone to a boliche or two (discotheques), a fixture of BsAs nightlife, where the porteños party until the sun comes up. Which is how I ended up going to bed at 6:30 a.m. today and sleeping until half past 2 in the afternoon. I woke up only to be a waste of space until about nowish as I prepare to turn in for the night, finally update my blog, watch the lightning roll across the sky, and listen to Kings of Leon for about the hundredth time.

Tomorrow I will be a much more diligent Spanish student again. I'm waking up early to escort a new student to the Spanish school on the public bus for her orientation and so paying forward a favor that made all the difference for me on my first day of navigating public transportation and beginning classes.

I've met some great people here, though many have already left to begin the next leg of their journeys through Argentina. Friendships are so transitory as a traveller, and it's an interesting (read: agonizing and yet wonderful) exercise to get to know a person only to send them off as you become real friends.

I'm vaguely contemplating the direction of my life today... which is to say worrying marginally about my future job or lack thereof, but I stress marginally. I still have three months left to keep that concern on the backburner, but it is crazy that almost a month has already passed since I first set foot in Argentina.

In about a week my mom and sis will arrive, and I'm very much looking forward to showing off my Spanish (even though at the moment I feel like I've forgotten all of it -- a late night at a boliche will do that to a person I suppose) and exploring more of the city with them.

Hope everyone is well. Thanks for your e-mails! It is nice to keep tabs on life at home.

¡Besos!
Heidi

p.s. Pictures include a photo of the kitchen in the apartment where I'm staying with another Spanish student and three locals; building, mural and street performer in San Telmo where a huge market stretches for streets on end every Sunday; and Casa Rosada (equivalent to the White House in the U.S.) and the Pirámide -- lit by the sun's only appearance that day -- in Plaza de Mayo, one of the most important places historically and politically in BsAs. Every Thursday, since 1977, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) have gathered here in rememberance of the 30,000 deseparacidos of the Dirty War, in which the government "disappeared" people in an effort to quash resistance. Their efforts were instrumental in returning civil society to Argentina. There's also a group called Las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo (The Grandmothers...), who seek to identify and reunite with their biological families the children of the deseparacidos, who were taken from disappeared mothers and raised as the children of the same government officials responsible for killing their biological parents.