first impressions

February 2, 2006

It’s Thursday and I have been sweating in Buenos Aires since Monday morning. We arrived in the early afternoon and the weather is as temperamental as I have been feeling. Each day it’s every variety of warm, summer weather. We awake to humid downpours that feel like hot sky showers, the kind of rain that I have only ever experienced in the sticky morning on the North Coast of Maui. In the afternoon the heat is dry and the sun can be blistering. It took less that 24 hours for my gringa skin to redden. When it’s not too hot here it is just beautiful. My first sight from the taxi was a giant wall with graffiti that read: FUERRA BUSH! Something about reading that made me feel more at home than I’d felt for a long time in Santa Barbara.

I think it just feels beautiful to be back in the city where there is always something or someone new to look at. Our apartment is one block for the famous Avenida 9 de Julio (a 16 lane cluster-fuck spectacle of gridlock madness). Most of those interested have seen our apartment at and the inside is exactly as expected. I am writing this from the tiny upstairs desk area that will be home to our excrement of thoughts from Argentina. The photos of the exterior, however, do not do justice to the building. The intricately tiled floors are scrubbed daily; there is an elevator that looks a century old. There are friendly, elderly neighbors and snooty young porteñas who will only grudgingly greet you in the afternoon.

Over the past few years my opinion of the work of Pico Iyer has gravitated from adoration to fanatical. In honor of what will likely be the longest and certainly the most challenging trip of my life, I decided to revisit The Global Soul which was a pretty good decision on my part if I do say so myself. One of the first things I read off the plane was a reminiscence of his childhood that, “I think I intuited, even then, that the airport was the spiritual center of the double life: you get on as one person and get off as another.” Pico always writes in such beautifully accessible terms. In so many ways in only a few days I feel simultaneously like a completely different person and so much more remarkably sure of my own self that I have ever been.

For the most part we have just been walking around the city, trying to familiarize ourselves with our own neighborhood and, as quickly as possible, shake the taboo of being touristas. We have ventured on the Collectivo and Subte, neither of which caused robbery, harm, or death which I consider a small victory. For the most part, Paul has been the eyes and ears of the operation as I struggle both with the language (let’s see how far we can stretch that City College semester, shall we?) and the accent of the porteños which is quite different from the pride you feel ordering carne asada tacos on Chapala Street.

Things are fantastically difficult at times. We have been turned away from, what seems like, every bank in Buenos Aires, as we do not have residency. Not a problem as modern technology makes it easy to access our American accounts from here (¡Viva Internet!). We have our current apartment for one month and are sure now that we are being charged tourist prices and that we can find something better or at least get a better deal on our current place. I think the uncertainty is what makes things difficult. Paul has had patron saintly patience with what feels like constant fretting on my part. I know everything will work out well. Please remember, dear friends, I am writing this following three days at the Argentinean Embassy, American Embassy, on the phone with pinche Cingular, being turned away from banks and half-heartedly looking for a place to spend the next year of my life. It’s just different. When faced with nothing familiar, different can be scary.

And wonderful. My legs ache and ache from walking so far and so fast (Paul walks at least twice my speed). We have done some classics. Highlights include the best meat and coffee in the world. They really are not kidding about those things. Prices are so low that I find myself counting, and re-counting my money in total disbelief at how much I still have. Paul and I are constantly reminding each other that we need to make it last as long as possible but every time we spend $2 each on a meal that consists of more food than either of us can eat we walk away shaking our heads. Life is walks down tiny cobbled streets, past the Casa Rosada, and people just swarming so much my head spins. I hope to spend more time writing (clearly, I need the practice) and dive into the full time tourist business while carrying a camera small enough to look like a little less like a gringa.

From here my Spanish will improve, my English will get worse, my knowledge of the city will become immense…and the world a little smaller. This is an endless spectacle for any thinking of visiting.