AUTUMN’S ADVENTURES

If I have learned anything about the Argentine’s that I have come to know, the four most known things are:
1. Argentine’s never have credit for their cell phones.
2. Almost all Argentine’s smoke cigarettes but almost none of them have a lighter and must always ask for “fuego”.
3. Argentine’s never have any money when it comes time to go out on the weekend yet all week they talk about going out on the weekend never once mentioning that they may be without cash when this time comes.
4.  Argentine’s change their plans at the very last minute or they don’t have a plan until 5 minutes before they decide to do it and they aren’t very good about updating you with the change of plans because they are usually out of credit.

Three out of these four things are kind of an inconvenience for me because my friends are my life blood and when they can’t go out or they change their plans on me I’m stuck with nothing to do but sit home and watch tv.  This is probably the hardest cultural thing for me to get used to because I rely heavily on my friends to show me new things and practice castellano with me.  I’m still trying to figure out a way around these problems but so far I don’t have a simple solution.

I will not be celebrating Halloween the way I normally do this year and I’m quite sad about it.  I will be going out and getting drunk as per usual but without a classic Autumn costume.  This will be the first year that I don’t wear a costume on Halloween in 24 years.  Down here Halloween is only for the kids and really it is just a commercial holiday that Argentine’s added to their culture from America.  I asked a few of my friends if older people dress up for the clubs and they said no.  Whyyyyy?
I must remember one of the reasons I am here is about experiencing a different culture and not pout about missing out on one of my favorite commercial holidays.

This morning I was rudely awakened about 4 times by a phone call from a local english teacher that lives and works down the street.  She called me yesterday as well because she wants me to be a native english examiner for her student’s final english exams.  The woman is nice but I know the gig won’t pay well. I told her I would meet with her anyway to talk details.  She only has 2 students that need to take the test and she pays each examiner 10% of the fee that she charges for the student’s semester fees.  For me, that equaled about 54 pesos or roughly $18 for what will probably be 2 hours of work.  I didn’t want to say yes but I did anyway.  I have this weakness for always saying yes even when I want to say no. I don’t know why but when people are nice I have a hard time telling them no. I know I should be more firm, especially when in financial situations…I just can’t.  I know I need to milk all of my skills for as much as I can because I’m running a tight budget, especially my english skills.

I am still searching for apartments and the newspaper classifieds aren’t proving to be very helpful with my search.  I can’t believe it is this hard to find a good apartment.  My next stop is the realtor’s office to try my luck there.

This morning after my class at the university I told Alabi that I wouldn’t be taking private classes with her anymore.  I think she took it pretty well but I can’t tell because she is not the type of person to show emotion.  I told her that I still want to spend time with her because I think she is a great person so we will be having lunch this Saturday.  She’s also going to invite Leila so I can talk to her and ask her more questions about the apartment.

I have decided that Glenda is my new best friend here.  I thought Gabi was but she never hangs out with me so I can’t really say we are besties.  Also, Glenda speaks English so we are able to understand each other and get to know each other better.  Glenda introduced me to her friend Gabi (different Gabi than mine). Gabi #2 also speaks English and has a lot of time to hang out with me so we decided to go look at apartments together.  She took me to a type of house called a pension where I could rent out a room in a big house that shares the kitchen, bathrooms and laundry.  I was hesitant because I expected it to be like a sorority house or some type of socialist living situation.  I’ve already been in that situation with my old college roommates so no thank you.  I’ve learned from my mistakes.

We arrive at the pension and it was a beautiful antique house.  I was sold.  Pensions can either house only women, only men or both.  This one was just for women.  Unfortunately there were no private rooms available and I didn’t want to share a room.  We checked out another pension and I fell in love with it.  You walk in and there is a long hallway.  On one side are the bedrooms and the bathrooms, on the other side is a sitting room, the kitchen and an open courtyard with flowers and trees climbing the walls.  In this courtyard you can also dry your clothes on the clothesline.  The house is antique so everything is perfectly amazing.  The price of the private room was 430 pesos per month which is $143.  Niceeee.  I found out later though that you can’t have guys stay over. I wasn’t happy about that.  Not that I plan to have tons of company, but I do want to keep my options open in case I find a boyfriend.  At this point it isn’t a deal breaker because I don’t have that many options but it really urks me that I would be paying to be living in a pseudo nunery.  There are always ways around the rules, though…

So far I have had 2 political conversations in castellano that I didn’t want to have.  On Saturday, I had a conversation at 7am in the back of a car on my way home from the boliche with a socialist.  I don’t know how the conversation began but it took me by surprise and I had no idea how to communicate my argument of freedom to him in castellano.  It didn’t matter though because he was so stuck in his way of thinking that nothing I would have said would have made a difference anyway, it was like talking to a wall.

A week later, at my favorite karaoke bar, I spent the entire night hanging out with my friends and I met a new friend.  His nickname was Sapito (froggy), he was funny, a little bit emo and we all had a great time together.  I decided at around 3am that I wanted to go dancing at La Peluqeria because all of my other friends were there and half of my friends at karaoke had already left.  Sapito asked if I wanted someone to walk me to La Peluqeria and I wasn’t exactly sure how to get there from the Karaoke bar so I said ok.  I don’t know how but on the walk to Pelu he started talking about Communism and telling me how he is a communist.  I had to refrain from dropping my jaw to the ground.  I couldn’t believe I was talking to an actual communist.  This was my first communist-in-the-flesh ever!  The way he talked about communism was so passionate it was scary.  I politely told him that we could talk about this some other time, which I never intend to do.

I left DC and came to Argentina to escape talking about politics.  Every potential guy I met always wanted to talk about politics and everything was centered around politics.  I didn’t realize that it would be the same here as well except way more leftist.  I’m currently drafting a response in castellano that says “I’m not political, I don’t like politics, Let’s change the subject.”  I hope it works.

A few days ago papa told me that I would need to find a place of my own in December because their other 2 children are coming home for the holidays as well as their old host daughter (the one before my sister) and her husband.  The house would be too full for all of us.  I’m actually totally fine with this deadline because I was planning on moving out in December anyway.  This gives me 2 months to look for a place to live.  All of my friends are going to help me look for a place which will be really nice because I don’t know how I’d manage on my own.  I’m still considering living with Leila (the 70’s decor apartment that I saw the first week I was here) but I don’t want to settle on the first thing I see without comparing it to my other options.  I’ve been told there are not very many options here for renting so we’ll see what I come up with.  When I asked my friends about posting a notice in the colleges to see if I could live with student, they said I wouldn’t want to do that because all of the students are socialists and they know how I feel about socialists. haha.  In the beginning, I was set on living with someone because I wanted a person to talk to in castellano but now I’m thinking that living alone won’t be that bad.

At 8 am, when I returned back from my typical saturday night out, I slipped downstairs with the flowers for my host mom and set them up on the kitchen table with a card tucked in one of the bouquets.  I had to recruit my host papa to find more vases because the one I bought wouldn’t fit all of the flowers I bought.  When I woke up at 1pm I heard mama walking downstairs and gasp at the bouquets.  She gave me a giant hug and kiss on the forehead and thanked me a million times for the flowers.  We had a nice Sunday asado as a family and mama made the most delicious lemon marange pie.