It's frigid outside and I'm poorly dressed for it. Sometime during the last five hours of sitting in class, the sky of Good Airs (Buenos Aires) clouded over to a dull white and all the effects of the morning sun that caused sweat to pour down my face and fill up my base layers during my run to the lake have been negated.
I put my hand on the long, gold, vertical handle of Arribeños 1599 and the doorman buzzes me in. "Hola, Buenas tardes" and he says something in greeting as well that probably included a question such as que tal o cómo le pases but our greetings have intercepted themselves and my frustration disinclines me to stop and clarify.
The door to the stairwell opens easily and closes even moreso, and I have to be careful not to let it slam behind me in a manner pertaining to a prepubescent teenager. Taking the stairs will warm me up better than my two-block walk from the university and I'll probably arrive at apartment 10B the same time as the elevator would, anyway.
I climb to floor one and resolve to count my way instead of relying on numbers, but the smells of dinner distract me. This is strange, since it's only just after 5:00 and dinner doesn't begin until 9:00 pm, but cooking a meal from scratch every night takes time.
I climb to floor two (el segundo piso) and smell the remnants of a shower.
I climb again and the smell shifts slightly to a perfume, but it doesn't have the humidity of a shower behind it. It's strong and floral, like the typical cloud that follows when you pass a woman on the streets of Buenos Aires.
I climb again and this time it's the garbage that has been left out in the hall for my nose to recognize, which is about as far as anyone in the sky-rise apartment buildings that fill this barrio ever has to take out the trash. The newspaper has a stack of its own and wine bottles are carefully placed to the side, but cardboard and paper products are mixed with compost and cigarette butts inside grocery-sized plastic bags, tied at the top. At some point during day or night, the trash will disappear from the stairs to be replaced with more within a few days.
I climb again. Nothing.
Another floor, and the slight smell of tortilla or something breaded. I climb again.
Lingering cleaning solvent drifts from the doors on floor seven, which reminds me of the woman who came to clean the flat this morning and walked in on a sleeping and bleery-eyed American girl still abed. When I returned from my run, she was reigning her cleaning powers over el baño and I managed only to grab a toothbrush and my deodorant in preparation for my first class.
I climb again, and the smells of dinner are unmistakeable this time. The smell of beef is mouth-watering and suddenly I remember the taste of the empanadas I had for lunch.
Floor nine, and I can't smell anything. The switch from frigid cold air to the heated stairwell that I'm climbing at glute-building, calf-burning pace has set my nose to running.
I climb again, and I've arrived. Still trying to figure out what the smells of home are here as I play with my keys in the door - sometimes they turn twice, sometimes once, sometimes not at all - and the smell of stale cigarettes in the entryway obscures all else as I walk in.
¿Querés ver?
Chavi y Lulu, los gatos tan locos y mimados
La vista de mi ventana, arriba y abajo
La cama mía
Hay plantas en todas partes - acá en el baño!
La cocina - muy moderna, ¿no?
El comedor casual donde comemos el desayuno y la cena, a veces juntos y a veces solas
Delpo está teniendo éxito en el torneo Wimbledon ahora y también en la prensa argentina
Nuestra piscina - no está calentada en el invierno
Los coches tan pequeños acá porque hay tanta gente y para estacionar sería un desastre con más grandes!
Pues, eso es mi hogar acá en Argentina.
My first impressions of the country were, in fact, quite limited. The remise (private car) driver didn't care to speak, but cranked the radio to an English radio station that played hits popular in the seventies and eighties. I snapped a few shots out the window:
As soon as I landed, I ran. Literally. The previous homestay student, Haley, and I went out on a jog around the lago de regatas in el parque de Palermo a few blocks distance from our flat. The next day, Saturday, I saw what I could of Belgrano and its neighboring district, Palermo, on foot.
The people of Argentina fill the parks and sidewalks on the weekend (and most days in between). Families caminan juntos and groups of youths (of various ages) occupy their own corners of the park between trees and play fútbol, practice Tai Chi or challenge themselves with a tight-rope walk that they've strung up between dos árboles for this very purpose. Most groups consist only of men, but women are found walking dogs of all shapes and sizes, on leash or off (there are no laws, and no reason to ever pick their feces off the sidewalk, either), and pushing strollers and waving to friends.
Church services are offered from Friday night through Sunday night, but most are Catholic masses.
Since it's winter here, the average temperature hovers around 50 degrees as a high and drops to about 30 degrees at night. Winter is the dry season, so there's not much rain, but there aren't too many hours of sunlight in a day, either. I'm back to the land where the "day" ends at 6:30 pm, but somehow those damn argentinians manage to put dinner off until 9 or 10 o'clock, which of course makes sense when they are saving their energy to leave the house at midnight for a club and return between 5 and 7 in the morning. Happy hour, where drinks, like in the US, are cheap because fewer people show up at the bar at that time, is from 10:00 - 12:00 pm. This Argentinian time tradition doesn't even escape the likes of my host mother, Claudia, who at 67 years of age still holds quite a bit of spunk.
When you change cultures, even the littlest parts of everyday life become new observances, and to list them all would exhaust both you, dear reader, and myself entirely. However, I'll try to hit on the main ones as the inspiration strikes me, so that Argentina becomes something more to you than a place south of the equator or, if you've been here before, shapes into a familiar landscape with details that perhaps you've forgotten or missed.
Mil perdones that a solid Argentinian update has tarried. For one, the internet connection is quite troubled here at times and actually only functions well enough to upload and update in one specific part of the house, which is not always accessible nor does my computer seem to have enough juice, as all my electronics lose their battery life quite quickly here. For two, I was delayed as well in beginning adventures worthy of sharing (which I will). For three, there were other complications...which you will find out later. :)
Happy reading and espero que hayas disfrutado mis primeras impresiones de Argentina!
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