A Nocturnal City

Things have been kind of a whirlwind the last few days, with 150 new faces to meet and an unfamiliar city to explore. Last Tuesday was El Día del Amigo, a day which is basically an excuse to party with friends. The sons of my host were both over to have an asado, or barbecue. They brought all of their friends with them. Weber needs to come down here and take a lesson in how to build a barbecue. In the kitchen, the barbecue is completely brick, is probably 6 feet across and 2-3 feet deep. It has two parts, a smaller one to the left to heat up the coals and a larger one on the right to get down to business. I wander up to the kitchen around 8 to see what’s going on (no one eats before 9:30-10 here) and the coals were already flaming. Ramiro, one of the sons, didn’t think the fire was big enough, so he took an entire 5kg bag of coals and slapped it down on the fire. Needless to say we had a firework show in a kitchen made almost entirely of wood. Ramiro seemed to know what he was doing, but the orange shooting stars flying all the way across the room weren’t a huge confidence booster.

By the time everyone showed up, there were easily 7 or 8 mid-30s Argentine guys all talking at once and telling 7 or 8 completely different stories. Yours truly had a little trouble keeping up with the rapid-fire Spanish. I’d think of something I could contribute and by the time I was ready they had already talked about how good Boca Juniors will be this year, if Ramiro will ever get married and had moved on to another topic. The beef itself was unbelievable; slow cook some prime cuts over coals for an hour and a half and you have greatness.

My days are spent at what appears to be an ex-residence of the rich and famous in a northern barrio. We discuss everything from classes to which parrilla is the best to the apparent lack of money in Argentina (no one has change, anywhere). At first I had no idea what we were going to talk about for a month, but after a week of orientation I can see it’s possible. Wednesday night I went out with a couple people from the program; we found a great jazz bar to start. Well they found it, I got lost and was almost a good part of the way to Chile. We were given these transit guides to the City called ‘Guia T’ that supposedly tells us what the bus routes are. The only problem is, the going route is different from the coming, there is no schedule, and no real precise location of the stops. Don’t get me wrong, the bus system here is probably the best in the world – there are about 200 bus routes that come every 5 minutes or so (sometimes it backfires when you see three of the same number lined up in a row though) – but figuring out which bus to get on where is always a challenge. Sometimes I think Guia T is really short for guillotine and that’s what will happen if I try to figure out a bus. So Wednesday night I thought I had everything worked out, and I got on a bus. The bus driver had some sixth sense that I was a foreigner and after a quick conversation told me that I was one the bus going the wrong way. Good start. I do make it to where I want to go, and find that the internet address for the bar was wrong, so after making a stop in three different restaurants to ask I finally made it. A 30min trip wound up taking an hour and a half. The music was good though. After, we worked our way to the main nightlife district and spent a few hours there. The nightlife scene here is on a whole other level; first, people don’t actually leave home until about 1:30 on an early night. The first stop is normally a bar for 2 hours or so, and then it’s off to a boliche, or dance club, around 3:30. People eat breakfast in these places when the sun comes up at 7. I’ve heard of people lining up around the block to get into boliches at 5:30am. They finally stumble home at 10. We diiidn’t quite make it that far-

Spending time in the house with the host-family will probably be the most beneficial for my Spanish out of just about everything. It’s normally just me and the host-mom, and we talk about all sorts of things. It’s a great way to get comfortable with the language; they’re patient and know you’re trying. I don’t know what happened, but I was sucked into watching a telenovela the other night, or soap opera, with her- I can’t say they’re my thing, but the conversation is normally a little easier to understand than in other TV series. As a host, she is unbelievable – from preparing food, to squeezing orange juice every morning, to answering (or trying to answer) any question I might have, to putting up with my frequent mistakes with the language she’s really the best you can ask for. It should be a good 5 months!