First Week In My Apartment

I hope the reader will stay with me on the next few entries, for it might feel as if you’re in a crammed vehicle moving along a bumpy road. I can assure you the voyage will smooth once the events reach current time.

After setting up camp, the sizing up fades as more pressing daily concerns surface: How to make oneself a home, how to find foods I like in the grocery store, how to interact with people in my new community, with friends, with housemates, and with strangers.

Without a job, anyone or anywhere to report to, there are many different directions I can go, creating varying degrees of instability for me.

Needing a place to cope with the rhythms of settling up shop I joined a gym. For two dollars a day, I can play soccer; I can take hip-hop classes, and swimming classes… During the days, I practiced Spanish with my roommates, yet that only lasted for a few days… One night, they hosted a dinner party. Dinner was ready when their guess arrived. I could NOT understand the concepts of conversation during dinner, only the topics; we played board games on a different night.

I’m having many of the same frustrations in Buenos Aires that I had as an infant, a babe, a baby because I cannot speak the language. I think about the halting conversations I have after I reach a point where my Spanish vocabulary won’t take me any further. Learning another language and having no experience with any other language makes it not the easiest thing to learn but the hardest.

Fluency of English among the Argentineans is generationally and socio-economically distinguishable. The younger population, and the more well-to-do speaks English okay. But with the less affluent communication with them are almost all gestures. This difference amazes me, living in one of the wealthiest country in the world and having been reared by a good family that Americans of several generations only speaks English. Once in a while, the more affluent will come in and help me and the other reach an understanding.

On Saturday night, at 10:00 p.m., I met up with the friends that I made at the hostel, Jamie and Anna (from Chicago, and Heidelberg, Germany). We drank and provided each other with some support; our struggles were similar. Most importantly though for us it was time to bogie the night away. At about 2:00 a.m. we went to a night club recommended by Anna’s Argentine roommate. They played a mix of pop and rock. Parched and proclivities for more dehydration, we moved through the crowd towards the bar. “Sex on the beach,” Jamie called out, one hand in her purse and the other in air.

“I’ll have the same,” I said.

Then we journeyed to the VIP section, where the air was fresher and the poseurs have bottles. As typical American clubbing girls do, though an atypical American girl, Jamie refills our drinks with their vodka.

The crowds abated as we sat in a booth with Anna’s new friend. Around 6:00 a.m., we shuffle outside and went up the street for an after party. After we stumbled into the street, it was 8:00 a.m., and we drove to our new friend’s apartment. Across the street was a bakery, and for some reason, Jamie and I got hungry when we discovered this. Inside we order one of every empanada; then we crossed the street, rang and pounded on the doors of the apartment building and sprinted, two-by-two, up the stairs. Between the two of us, but having bought for five we ate every empanada. At 10:00 a.m., we took a cab back to our apartments--Buenos Aires on Saturday nights are endless.