FINALLY—after 10 months of talking about it….I’M HERE. Travel was painless—I didn’t lose anything and I had no trouble with my visa (which says “special visa”). And I made my first Argentine friend on the plane—Jose. Jose is an Argentine grandpa or abuelito that works with IBM and travels between the U.S. and Argentina. When I first saw that I was sitting next to Jose, he didn't look exactly thrilled and since he's a big guy and I was sitting on the inside, I was feeling the same way. But he's a good example of how I've found Argentines to be so far--they never really initiate conversation but once you say hello, they've very warm people. I chatted withJose for about 3 hours, before having a very deep sleep on American Airlines overnight flight. He said my Spanish was good, which made me like him infinitely better and made me feel much more confident in it.
I am staying at the Liberty Hotel in Buenos Aires. I didn’t change my clocks until just now so I THINK I got here around 12:30, showered and then at 2, I met up with the other Fulbrighters and we had a city bus tour. The city is beautiful, much bigger than I imagined and reminds me a lot of a European city.
Had my first pizza & empanada at dinner. The pizza was much cheesier and less saucy than American pizzas. Empanada was okay…it was filled with spinach so that’s not really my thing. I think I’ll like the cheese/meat/unhealthy ones a lot.
I love how the city is broken into different neighborhoods like New York City and all the history about all of them. For example, San Telmo was the ritzy neighborhood until the yellow fever hit the area and all the rich people moved to La Recoleta and the poor immigrants moved into their abandoned houses. I am only in Buenos Aires until Wednesday, but I will have to come back and visit.
More later…off to enjoy the first of hopefully many good nights in Argentina!
BA is usually busy at all times of the day. When I travelled there, I was thinking on where to rent apartments in buenos aires so that it was not loud and crowded and what seemed to be a good neighbourhood for that was called Nuñez. It is a residential area where houses are huge and beautiful, I highly recommend it!
ReplyDeleteKim