Buenos Aires

I have been in Buenos Aires for nearly 3 weeks now and I have essentially written nothing about it. I will try to fix that without going into long diatribes and boring you all.

I am in Buenos Aires to do a CELTA course, which is four weeks long. The course teaches me how to teach English as a foreign language and, at the end, I will have a certificate that is recognized by language schools around the world (unless I fail, of course, but I doubt that will happen). The course is rather intensive and I haven´t had to use my brain like this is quite a while. Hell I haven´t even had to wake up and be somewhere at a certain time in a long time unless it was to catch a bus or take a fun tour. Its been exhausting but also fun. My fellow CELTA trainees are wonderful. Four of us are American (1 New Yorker, 1 Texan, and a fellow Washingtonian), 2 are Dutch, 1 is Argentian, 2 are English, and 1 is Canadian. The youngest is 21 the oldest is probably in their late 40s or early 50s. We have fun. We laugh a lot. We support each other. We got drunk as a group on Wednesday. Its great fun. I´m going to miss them all and I´ve known them for less than 2 weeks.

I am living this fake little domestic life in my own little apartment, going to the same greengrocers to get my vegetables every few days and recharging my cell phone at the same kiosk. (These are practically the only places that I´m speaking Spanish and the workers at these places are sweetly patient with me). How I found my apartment is another one of those "the universe has my back" stories. I decided to do the CELTA course only a few weeks before it began so I was pressed for time when it came to finding a place to stay. I spent some time on Craigslist and Couchsurfing and sent out a few emails. The day before I headed to Puerto Natales I thought that I had found a place but when I arrived in Puerto Natales I discovered that someone else had claimed the room before me. The next morning I was headed to Torres del Paine, which meant I would be away from internet and phones for 5 days and then I would have just three days to find something before arriving in BA. Luckily for me I had managed to take the morning but to Puerto Natales.

The morning bus from El Calafate to PN had been full when I tried to buy a ticket, but I showed up at the bus station in the morning anyway and crossed my fingers that someone wouldn´t show up and I could snag their seat. This is precisely what happened and just before the bus pulled out I was waved on board. As I headed towards the only empty seat on the bus the long haired, 50 something year old man next to it gruffly proclaims, "Ah, shit. I thought I was gonna have the whole seat to myself." I apologize as I sit down. "Well, you´re small and you speak English so its okay," was his response. This is how Tom and I became friends of sorts. Turned out that in addition to living 5-10 minutes away from the hotel I stay at while LA working for Trek America Tom had been renting an apartment in Buenos Aires that he is planning on leaving around March 8th, which is the exact day I am flying to BA. Upon further investigation I discover that this apartment is quite inexpensive to rent and is two blocks from the metro line that goes to my school and in a neighborhood the school recommended staying in. When I arrived in PN and found out that my apartment had fallen through Tom sent out an email to his landlord and when I emerged from Torres del Paine I had an apartment and Tom was there to meet me when I arrived in BA a few days later. To add to the good fortune of this event, while I was on the bus with Tom I realized that my going from El Calafate to Puerto Natales and then back to El Calafate before going to Rio Gallegos was NOT the most logical thing to do. It would've made much more sense to spend a few days in El Calafate before going to Puerto Natales and to then go straight from Rio Gallegos from Puerto Natales. I hadn't figured this out cause I hadn't looked at a map that showed BOTH Chile and Argentina with the cities marked on it. AND my guide book said nothing about going to Rio Gallegos from Puerto Natales (Tom´s older version of Lonely Planet did). How lucky was I that I hadn't realized this? If I had I wouldn't have met Tom and I wouldn't have lucked into my apartment.

Tom didn´t leave BA on the 8th so we ended up sharing the place for about a week, which was an experience. Tom is an interesting character. He has never married and He can be very chauvanistic. He travelled from Alaska all the way to Patagonia, only flying between Seattle and LA, yet spoke little Spanish, which meant that he was often that kind of tourist I roll  my eyes at, you know the one speaking loudly in a shop and pointing at something. He spoke his mind at all times, even when he knew what he was saying would be offensive. This also involved saying things like "Hurry up Grandma" in a loud voice when an elderly Argentinian woman was taking too long to get on the bus. He was completely over the top in that regard. He got really frustrated by some cultural differences and sometimes expressed these frustrations in ways that I considered inappropriate. But at the same time he was great to be around. He was kind and generous. Despite not speaking any Spanish he had an uncanny ability to develop relationships with people, like the doorman or our building or the waiters at restaurants. He made friends with all kinds of people. He would say some chauvinistic comment in one sentence and then praise me for being a strong independent woman in the next. We had a few wonderful afternoons, evenings, and conversations together. On my first afternoon he was showing me around the neighborhood and we sat down at a cafe. He ordered a beer and I ordered an ice cream, claiming I didn´t feel like drinking. Somehow this turned into both of us drinking. We would finish a beer and order anther one. I have no idea how many beers we had. I do know that I was drunk at 7:30pm and for only having known each other for a day or two we had just had a very intimate conversation about our lives. These type of meal repeated itself at least twice. :)

Next post: Interesting tid bits about BA, for example the trash pick up system, dogs, and taxi headlights.