Buenos Aires

Evita's Tomb

I'm in Argentina! I've been here for all of two and a half days and have already managed to attend two tango classes, get kicked out of a private Spanish lesson and visit the China Town of Buenos Aires! Thanks to 40,000 frequent flyer miles, I secured a ticket from Anchorage to Buenos Aires and back again – with a 6-month layover in San Francisco on the way back… during which I plan to take a 6-month long side-trip to Taiwan. Awesome. That is, assuming I get these applications for language schools in the mail here… and that Argentinean mail is moderately reliable. And that these language schools like me…

Dustin in the Kitchen

However, as I continue to procrastinate from finishing these applications, allow me to continue my story: I'm staying with soon-to-be-tango-master Dustin Madden in Buenos Aires until just before Thanksgiving. We have a fully furnished apartment on the 10^th floor, which requires the use of awesome old-fashioned elevators with 2 little doors you have to close before they'll go anywhere. And a carrying capacity of 3 people, which folks here actually follow, as evidently elevators in Argentina occasionally drop when they're overloaded… I think I'll try to skip that one.

In an attempt to learn the past tenses and improve my suddenly relevant knowledge of Spanish, I went to talk to a private teacher this morning that was recommended by a friend of Dustin's… in about 5 minutes, the prospective teacher told me "I can't work with you," and that was the end of that. Oops. Pondering my rejection and the mating behavior of pigeons, I wandered my way to the parks close to "Barrio Chino."

I had forgotten that normal computers only show little boxes where Chinese characters are supposed to be, which wasn't so hot for printing out my applications… hence my journey to Buenos Aires' own China Town in hopes that Chinese people would have internet cafes capable of reading Chinese characters… past beautiful green parks with Buenos Aires folk sunning themselves, sleeping, and making out in the grass, to the four-block area deemed "Barrio Chino." To my satisfaction, the internet café recognized and printed characters like it was surrounded by folks who typed in Chinese! I also liked the little Chinese kids babbling in Argentinean Spanish. Spanish here is lisp-ridden, like Spain Spanish, so we'll see what kind of accent my Spanish comes home with this time.

Dustin and Katie in the Park