My stomach hurts.
It's hard for me to sit here and feel like everything's okay...I know it will be okay...but right now I have no job and hopefully will find a place to live within a week (I'm ready for the bare minimum). What I'm not ready for is being without the people that love me and support me. Dad's going back home after a week and I hope I can do this...I might lose my mind.
1015am: Well, I think we are finally getting ready to land in Santiago...oh and by the way, airplane food is pretty gross. I keep trying to interpret the Spanish announcements, but they talk so fast! It will be hard to have a conversation with an Argentinian person but as long as I can ask them to speak slowly (por favor, habla mas despacio) then I should be okay.
If that guy beside me jabs me with his pillow one more time, I swear...
1130am: So here we are back on the plane again waiting to leave Chile...at least Dad's traded seats with me for this leg of the flying. When we were landing, I saw a bit of the Andes!!...that's when I knew I wasn't in Canada anymore...let alone North America - nowhere close! The mountains are breathtaking...I've never seen anything so beautiful and monstrous (side note: first thing we see when we enter Santiago airport is a Starbucks! haha)
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| Starbucks in Santiago |
We arrived in Buenos Aires around 3pm-ish (same time as Halifax)- on the same airplane, mind you. Absolutely exhausted, we de-planed and found ourselves at customs and immigration. It was here that I received my first stamp in my passport! I was thrilled! It was completely empty until today! A porter grabbed my bags (after I randomly had to put two of my bags through another x-ray machine on the way out - maybe they thought I'd acquire a gun or something between the plane and the exit- and an Argentinian dog was sniffing the bags as they came off the carousel) and took a remise (airport cab) which, for a half hour ride, cost about 28us. The exchange rate is 3:1 so it's pretty easy to see how cheap things are (i.e. real leather pants for 30 bucks!).
Driving into the heart of B.A. was pretty crazy. We must have gone through about 3 toll passes just to get into the city. There were so many tenements coming into the city - and the number of trucks on the road in general. After going around in circles on one way streets (they are all one way in the barrios [districts]), we finally found Avenida Reconquista which is near the microcenter of the downtown. We are staying in an apartment with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms. When you walk in, there is a huge metal door that opens to a corridor where there is another glass door....and then you are in this courtyard where ivy climbs the walls and there are plants and little trees and flowers starting to bloom on the walls (like your own mini-rainforest).
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| The foliage between the elevator and the front door |
Then up one flight of stairs (there's one of those old-fashioned metal single-occupancy elevators). The ceilings are so high- about 10ft and the apartment is huge. I have my own little bedroom upstairs.
After dropping the bags, Papa and I went on a jaunt to the mall nearby, the Galerias Pacifico and holy spectacular! Coffee shops and confiterias galore! We stopped in a coffee store where you sit down and order what you want - many Argentinians in this area seem to know English- they learned it in school. My Spanish isn't perfect, but it's coming back to me in bits and pieces and I'm not entirely clueless.
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| Papa in the Galerias Pacifico mall |
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| the ceiling of the mall |
There are so many leather stores! Papa and I walked into this huge leather store where the saleswoman was on us like a hawk.
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| leather store |
We walked down Avenida Florida which is pretty much pedestrian with tons of shopping and flower booths and people trying to sell you things. The buildings here are so European, its crazy! Just like Paris! So at 930pm we went for dinner down the street at Rigoletto where we had copious amounts of wine (Papa went into a wine store beforehand full of Argentinian wine-then we found 5 others on the way back to the apt).
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| wine store |
The restaurant was busy at 11pm and the steaks we had were juicy and melt-in-your-mouth. I got to meet Larry's friend Rafael, who is going to help me get set up and introduce me to some people. By the way, there are too may pictures for me to just stick them up on here...will post on facebook
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