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...