Stormy Weather

I am now aware that my mom and dad are keeping up on this blog, but I did say that everythings gonna be honest, so i guess all I can say is enjoy mom and dad...


Waking up in a city on the other side of the world was a lot disorientating than I expected. Besides a thunder storm that seemed to both shake the apartment and my perception of this city as some sort of Latin American paradise, I woke up alright.
My host mother (Susana) led me down the few blocks to the bus, or comunalista (not be confused with comunista or I guess the word for bus in spanish that I learned, autopista).

She threw a few coins into some strange machine, said some words to the driver, and continued to give me explicit instructions on how the buses work and what way to get home. I turned into default, smiling and nodding with a few affirmations in Spanish thrown in for good measure.

At this point I noticed a disturbing habit that I was developing. I looked on every person on the bus, anyone who I moved close to, with utter suspicion. I felt that my status as a foreigner stuck out ridiculously and robbers were circling me from all sides to take advantage of the easy mark.

We got to our stop and she dropped me off in the lobby of an impressive old mansion where the program was holding its orientation. I looked around as all the other students said their farewells to their own diminutive little old ladies and found some vaguely familiar faces from the flight down.

4 Lessons from Part 1 of Orientation:

1. Train Stations in Buenos Aries are full of prostitutes, gang members, robbers, drug dealers, sith lords, evil wizards, satan himself, al capone and the rest of the Chicago mob, with osama bin laden thrown in for good measure
(no really, supposedly any area near train stations in the city are strictly no go)
2. If you have a stain on your shirt and someone offers to help you out, shout no, run away, because it’s never a man helping his fellow man, it’s part of an elaborate mugging scheme that seems to be repeated ad nauseam across the city 100 times a minute

(ironically every travel guide I read and every one of the hundreds of safety warnings my mom read warned about this trick. You think people would start to catch on)

3. If you are ever in your apartment and see smoke or water leaking under the door it’s not a flood, or a fire, its you guessed it! Someone trying to trick you into opening your door and then robbing you blind

(no explanation needed, exactly how it sounds)

4. If the people of this city devoted their ingenuity in mugging to something productive, the Chinese aren’t overtaking the United States in this century, it’s the Argentines
(and that this nation needs more security near train stations, don’t millions of people use them everyday?)

I had lunch at what appeared to be the Argentinean version of KFC, except that it had a sit down section, served beer (less than a dollar per can of something that tastes much better than PBR) and tasted good.

Then I set out to solve my greatest problem yet in this country. I had no cell phone! How was I supposed to get through classes without text-flirting, not to mention 18-bit phone games, and most of all communicate at all.

I found a sketchy little place that reminded me of those electronic stores near Times Square run by foreigners, but of course, now I was the foreigner. I decided against a phone from the Argentine version of Best Buy due to price. In this country, the dollar is worth about 4 Argentine pesos and rapidly gaining ground. I’d be more willing to drop 30 bucks on a scam than have to hold onto something that costs like 70 American. It’s worth it to take the risk.

I bought it, even though I kept getting text messages from someone already? My ego was a bit busted when the owner turned to his friend to run the exchange in English as opposed to my stilted Spanish. I think it’s because I asked for an automovil (car). Easy mistake, movil, sounds like mobile, etc.

The final part of orientation was a lesson on the autcomounialistas/buses in Spanish. They have approximately 500 bus routes that run through this city which require a mini guide book and god knows how much orienteering to figure out how to get a few blocks. I guess there’s still a place for cartography majors in this world. Or at least my Orienteering Merit Badge from Boy Scouts.

On the bus ride home, I sat with a few people who couldn’t help but laugh all day at my wide-eyed love for “adventure” (aka walking a few blocks to buy a phone). I thought to myself though and realized that I wasn’t overplaying anything. Why shouldn’t buying a phone in a foreign country be an adventure?

My dinner conversation included an explanation of American life in a bubble. From suburbia where you know none of your neighbors, drive anywhere, center life around the television living life vicariously through one’s boobtube poison of choice. Life on a campus, while an extension of the circle, still a restriction on one’s life to a lala land (which is the same in any college city or suburb because let’s face it, most people have a leg up from families and if you don’t, I truly admire you because you’ve got much more ability to handle this world than me so far).

But here I am now, while still having a leg up from my family (which I am of course thankful for), my life now rests on my own independence and ability to be able to deal with simple life issues turned completely upside down because everything familiar is in actuality far from that.

In every way I am now out of the bubble and completely free, in a city, with independence, thousands of miles from most commitments. But everywhere I find myself held back, feeling like a child when trying to undertake the simplest transactions, afraid of not evil robbers lurking on every stoop, bus, and street corner, but my own abilities or lack thereof.

On the bus ride, I touched on some of these themes and found out the girls riding the bus with me shared similar goals on this trip. Forgive me if this is the first time of many that I am going to repeat this, You have no idea what you are truly made of until you throw yourself completely off balance. Only then will you be able to find your true nature and bring your greatest attributes to the surface.