Bienvendios a Buenos Aires!

Again, I'm posting from the hostel. I think you can tell how cranky and tired I was from this post!

I’m sitting here at 5am updating from the Mexico City airport. I look a mess because I only slept a couple hours, and I’m really thirsty because I missed the beverage service on the plane. After a long walk, I finally found a food stand that sold bottled drinks. Hopefully Vitamin Water with a Spanish label won’t make me sick. I’m not worried, but I can’t say the same for a woman on the last flight. When we were landing, she walked down the aisle to use the bathroom, and the stewardess wouldn’t let her go. Then she started getting (very audibly!) sick in her seat. Welcome to Mexico everyone!

When I got off the plane, it took me almost an hour to find my gate. It’s not a huge airport, but there are very few display boards posting the departure gates, and not only were the electronic signs fizzing out (I’m not sure if there’s a technological term for this- imagine something from the Twilight Zone or a fifties television), but my airline wasn’t listed on any of them. So I went to an immigration officer who told me to go to the information desk, which had no one in it. Then I asked a security officer and she told me to go upstairs, which only brought me back to immigration. Finally, I found a Mexicana flight to Miami and asked the attendant to look up my flight. She directed me to the gate, which had no signage other than “no fumar.” I asked a girl if she was waiting to go to Buenos Aires, and she said yes so I figured I was in the right place.

So here I am. I have to turn my phone on periodically to see the time, because there are no clocks anywhere— not even on the Twilight Zone display boards! I asked a twenty-something year old girl next to me if she knew the time and we started talking. She was so excited that I was seeing the city for the first time, and I was excited she could understand my floundering Spanish! I realized early on that I speak softly in Spanish because I’m unsure if what I’m saying makes sense. After a while, the conversation flowed, and I didn’t worry about being perfectly correct. We talked about the fact that I’m wearing a tank top, scarf, and capris when it’s winter there. We also talked about the differences in bathing suits in America. I guess we cover up a lot, even in bikinis. That’s about it. She slept at this gate, because her flight from Miami came in last night and she didn’t think it made sense to book a hotel for a few hours of sleep.

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And here I am in the hostel, VERY sleepy but I wanted to email the family to say I'm alive. Buenos noches a todos!

The Great Packing Adventure 7/29

Whew! I'm posting this from the hostel in Buenos Aires. I guess I ruined the ending, which is, of course that I got here in one piece :)

Packing for five months is not an easy task. Usually I rip through my closet and throw clothes in a pile in my suitcase, topped off by any toiletries or accessories I happen to shove in five minutes before we leave. But packing for a semester in Argentina was a little different. Besides all the paperwork I filled out a month ago, there was just so much to do! I had a team of friends in my room, folding clothes, sorting toiletries into plastic bags, and taking inventory to update my packing list. Meanwhile, I was scurrying around trying to gather all my boarding passes, hostel reservations, copies of credit cards, etc. into one three ring binder.

My room doesn’t have air conditioning and it was very hot. We closed the last zipper and decided to jump in the pool as a reward. But wait! After three hours, just when we thought we were finished packing, we realized my bag had a rip in it. I had visions of my bag arriving in the Buenos Aires airport, threadbare with nothing in it but remnants of zipper and fabric. Luckily, my friend’s dad lent me his duffel bag, and we repacked everything all over again.

I wish I could say my last week home was stress-free. First, because of the incessant amount of rain we’ve been having, our basement flooded. My dad was outside in the thunderstorm throwing buckets of water from the basement door, my mom was using the water vacuum in flooded basement, and I waded through strategically planting every old t-shirt, rag, and chamois we had in the house. Then, our hard drive crashed, and I couldn’t connect the printer to my laptop so anything I needed to print had to be downloaded, saved, emailed, and printed out of the laptop downstairs.

On top of all that, my cell phone died the day before my flight, which wasn’t a big deal because I won’t be using it abroad, but it was another thing that would have to be fixed when I came back. Anyway, I stuck it in the freezer for the night and it worked in the morning. Mission accomplished!

I decided to work on Wednesday, because my flight was of JFK left at 1 am, and I would have plenty of time to get dinner and relax a little before leaving home. It was nice to be all packed for once. I was pretty tired after being up late packing, but the department surprised me and had a South-American themed potluck! There were taquitos, empanadas, chimchurri sauce, potato salad, and tostido chips with salsa. It was great way to say goodbye. I packed my things in my bag, and when I got back home, I took an extra long shower, ate spaghetti with the family, and off we drove to New York.