Hola! Welcome to Buenos Aires

38.5 pounds. The lady at the AA counter seemed pretty impressed that I packed for 6 months for under 40 pounds. Not so impressed that she upgraded me, but that might mostly be due to the fact that first class was full up. Anyway.......So here I am in Buenos Aires where it has been raining pretty much the entire time since the plane touched down on Tuesday morning. And I have to say that coming from cold NYC, it is warm and about 100% humidity. I don´t think my hair has been dry in two days and walking about 20 blocks with my backpack this morning made me want to take a shower all over again!

I arrived Tuesday morning, my bags made it safely, and I found an ATM all in good time. In line waiting for a taxi, I met a guy from Mexico who had just arrived to start his PhD work in Sociology. We chatted about US and Mexican politics for a while. He was saying he has been involved in politics for a while, and might consider running for senate when he is done with his studies...I´ll have to be on the lookout for him on the Mexican politcal scene! The taxi ride into the city was about 40 minutes to the B&B I had booked in the Palermo section of BA. The city is lovely, although I was a bit surprised that in many areas pretty much anything that is not nailed down has graffiti on it. I´ll write more on the city later.

The area I am in, Palermo Soho, is pretty much like the soho in NY with the funky shops and interesting looking restaurants, but without the pretentiousness of NY. And many trees which is quite nice. I got a cold just before leaving NYC and so just walked around the neighborhood the first day I was there, intending to go to bed early. I wanted to get something to eat for dinner around 7;30, and the b&b guy looked horrified that I wanted to eat so early. He was sure nothing would be open yet, and so directed me to what he considered a fast food place across the street. I am not sure what made it fast food as anywhere else it would look like a regular restaurant, but did notice ( each day) that many locals are having coffee right around that time in the afternoon. Apparently it is pretty crass to have dinner any time prior to 9 PM. Anyway, I had a nice half bottle of wine (for $3) and a very tasty ham and cheese panini.

Yesterday was a work day. I made contact with a spanish school I am interested in and then went down there (in downtown) via the subway and signed up for class. It appears that pretty much the entire week next week is a holiday here in Argentina, so we will be having classes 5 hours a day for 4 days next week, rather than 4 hours a day 5 days a week which is what we will normally do.

After that, I went over to San Telmo to the South American Explorers clubhouse. About a week and a half ago at mom´s I had seen an ad on Craigslist for a room for rent at a clubhouse and when they described the other clubs you could use (in Quito, Cusco and Lima) I knew it had to be SAE, as I am a member of that group. Anyway, it turned out the room was let to someone else, but on Tuesday, they wrote me to say that another room had become available for exactly the time I need! So it works out perfectly! I was thinking to do a homestay for Spanish school, but in looking at the options on the website, it became pretty clear that a homestay here in BA in equivalent to just living in someone´s apartment who is usually at work and they all speak English, which would defeat the purpose! The manager at the clubhouse confirmed that in a city like this, homestays are really nothing more than renting a room and an Argentine person shows up to collect the rent every week. It was also more expensive to do a homestay, so again, this works out great as I will get to meet people from all over the world and speak Spanish any time I want to! There are pictures of the clubhouse here:

http://www.saexplorers.org/clubhouses/buenosaires/pictures

The picture with the stairs are the steps that lead up to the bedrooms, of which there are 3. San Telmo is cute--kind of looks like the East Village prior to gentrification. I didn´t spend much time there yet as I will be there for a whole month to check out. What I did check out though?
8 pesos for the wash and fold baby!!!! I´ll fill you in on the quality of laundry service after I check it out. :)

This morning I moved from the b&b to a hostel. I will be paying $8 a day vs. the $30 a day I paid at the other place. There are 16 beds in the room, but totally doable for 2 days. Oh, and this hour I have spent on the internet? About 75 cents compared to the $8 I spent in NYC...

Off on my Journey....

So I am off in a few hours to the airport for my flight to Buenos Aires! Seems like it has been so long that I have been planning this trip that it is a bit hard to realize it is here already. And the biggest issue on my mind today? You guessed it--my laundry. Those of you that know me well will hardly be surprised since my life seems to revolve around the never ending issue of when to drop off the laundry, be availalbe to pick it up, etc--such a continuing saga I won't even say anymore about it.

I swear that someday I am going to write a book about my time in New York and it is going to be called My Life in New York As Seen Through the Eyes of My Laundry". Or something of that nature. Yes, I am very concerned about the fact that I have undone lanudry from my weekend here and someone is going to be burdened with the never ending issue of my laundry here in a few hours. :)

But anyway, thought I would take the remaining few minutes of the internet service I paid and arm and a leg for today ($8 for one hour!) to update this blog since clearly I haven't done it forever. I must say that if it costs this much down there, you folks might not hear from me all that often!

I have spent most of the weekend cleaning my apartment for the lovely couple who will be living in it for the next year. I must say that having to move or make a change in your life once in a while clearly helps you to clean out all the crap you have accumulated. I threw out 6 large trash bags of stuff I don't need and the dust bunnies under the bed were so big they needed to be caged!

As for the trip--really the only thing I have done so far is book accomodation for the first two nights at a lovely bed and breakfast in the Palermo section of BA. A little on the expensive side ($30 a night) but a nice place to unwind after an 11 hour flight and figure out where I am going to go to stay and start getting in touch with Spanish schools, as I have totally slacked off on that.

OK, better head out for now, back to the apartment for the final packing of my bag. And of course have to prepare the laundry for the lucky recipient. Stay tuned here for further adventures of my laundry..........