Sweet Home Buenos Aires

I think it's a good time to talk about home life, as I've gotten so many requests and haven't actually talked too much about it. When I was originally deciding on where to study abroad, it really came down to Barcelona or here. The catch with Barcelona, however, is that I wouldn't be doing a homestay. And that, ladies and gents, would have been a shame because so far this experience has been one-of-a-kind.

My day always begins with a mixture of corn and frosted flakes and the news. The morning news consists of crime, weather and traffic. That's about it. If you want a bright start to the day, the news is probably not your cup of tea. Perhaps the best part of breakfast is the fresh-squeezed orange juice. My host-mom, Tina, squeezes it every morning, which is absolutely unbelievable. I told her that Tropicana is perfectly fine, but she insisted. Maybe United Fruit has left a negative legacy and she refuses to give US fruit companies business - I don't really know. But there are definitely no complaints from this end!

Speaking of orange juice, however, there was a crisis with the fresh-squeezed liquid gold. About a week and a half ago now a new student moved into the house. She's from Colombia, and is a full time student at USAL. She's very nice and will be good to speak spanish with - it will be great to have someone my age with whom to make myself look like an idiot with all of my grammatical errors. But no pain, no gain, right? Anyhow, as soon as she moved in the fresh-squeezed orange juice disappeared and was replaced by tang. This was a serious problem. After a couple days I decided it was time for Laura to go - the loss of the orange juice was just too hard to bear. However I brought a peace offering back from Bariloche (a box of chocolates), and all of a sudden the orange juice was back. Add that to the bowl of fruit that my amazing host-mom gives me now (this started after I cooked dinner for her the other night - she's on a diet, but decided to take a break for some chicken pesto pasta. 'A man will cook for me? Of course I'll take a break!'), and breakfast should now be featured in the michelin guide. All in all, my host mom treats me incredibly well and I couldn't be more grateful.

I have yet to figure out her marital situation, however. From what I understand, she is divorced, but her ex-husband comes over almost every day to have a mate and often stays for dinner. I think trying to clarify the situation might turn incredibly embarrassing with my lack of complete control of the language, so I'm just going to pull out the 'nod and smile' card on this one. The kids are also over often (they're both in their 30s), mainly around dinner time. They know what's up. Conversations often turn into what I would consider heated arguments, but as I'm thinking I better start getting ready to break up a a fight I realize that this is the way people talk here.

Along with the family members there are dogs galore, with Matias the older son bringing his two around several days a week and the ex-husband bringing his golden lab whenever he comes by. I don't know how the lab stays so skinny, because he eats the equivalent of a human meal during dinner every night. He definitely has my host family wrapped around his paw, as he easily devours half a loaf of bread every night. He is not quite at Othello's level though.

For dinner, I am normally the only one that eats anything green. My host-mom makes a plate of salad for me that she has me eat before the main part of the meal. She normally dumps more salt on it than McDonald's does on French Fries, but I really can't complain. It really is my only foray into the vegetable group each day. We normally eat milanesas, pasta, beef, chicken or rice. It is always delicious. Spicy is not a word in the argentinian vocabulary, however; a stew we had the other night was termed muy picante (very spicy) by most, but I personally thought it was full of flavor and a phenomenal soup. Maybe I won't ask to cook some Thai curry. In that case I might find myself swimming back to the northern hemisphere before I can say 'wasabi'. The main event of dinner though is the telenovela, or soap opera, which my host-mom watches like it's her job. There's a lot more blood and violence than I would have thought there would be in a telenovela, and Ramiro (the younger son) and I laugh about how outrageous it is sometimes. Only recently however, after weeks of religiously watching it, did I find out that Tina doesn't really like it too much mainly because often things happen that wouldn't occur in real life. We still watch it anyway, and it actually is pretty entertaining.

All in all, living here at 3708 Hipólito Irigoyen is a tough life. After hearing about the homestay situations of other students on the program, I realized I lucked out with housing. Not that I needed to hear the horror stories to know that - I knew I had a great home for the next 5 months from the very beginning. Even with the temporary disappearance of the orange juice.