Don't forget!

I thought this was sort of an interesting cultural thing. I took this picture in the bathroom of a McDonald's. The sign says, "Please remember to take toilet paper before entering the stall." Yes, that's right, the toilet paper is on the wall on the outside of the stall, and you need to bring it in with you. I'm not sure what the point of this is, but it seemed funny to me. This is not how things are in most bathrooms here.

By the way, note that they use the English word "box". There are lots of English words in use here, especially among younger people. I suppose it's because of the influence of Jóligüud (Hollywood as pronounced by a Spanish speaker) and the American music industry. A few examples: the "living" is the living room; "a full" means at full capacity; "feeling" is like warmth or friendliness between two people; and "restraurant" is sometimes said instead of the normal Spanish word restaurante. The words often mean something subtly different from their meaning in English. Also, they are normally pronounced with a Spanish accent, so they are often hard to recognize.

Another movie

Yesteday I went to see another movie with my friend Noelia. It was called Derecho de Familia (Family Law is how you'd translate it, I guess). This one had an all-Argentine cast, and I think I only understood about a third of the dialog. So basically, I understood the basic plot but missed all the subtleties and the jokes. If nothing else, this gives me a point of comparison for a couple months from now when I should have improved a lot.

I had my clothes washed today for about US$2.25 for one load. That's cheap enough that it's probably not worth the hassle of washing them myself at a laundromat. Any of you that are thinking of coming in July, remember that you can have your clothes washed here for pretty cheap. And they even fold them for you!

Today in my Spanish class the teacher, who has a real passion for literature, recommended to me a comic book (of all things) called El Eternauta (The Ethernaut). It's science fiction, but on another level it's a social commentary. During the dictatorship here in the 1970s he was arrested and never seen again. His four daughters, their husbands and all of his grandchildren also disappeared. I'm planning to read it over the weekend, and then we'll discuss it on Monday in class.

A movie

I went to a movie called El Método (The Method) this afternoon. It was in Spanish, made by an Argentine but most of the cast was from Spain. I think I understood 2/3 or more of the dialog, which is pretty good for me. Wouldn't you know it, though, that the Argentina character was the most difficult to understand. I guess I'm still not quite used to the accent.

The movie was pretty good, especially considering I picked it mostly at random. It's the kind of movie I probably would have chosen to see -- I guess I'd call it a drama and psychological thriller. The first half reminded me of Twelve Angry Men, if any of you have seen that.

The subway near my house wasn't running this morning. Apparently that happens sometimes, usually due to a strike as I understand it. I ended up taking a taxi instead after waiting for 20 minutes with everyone else. Tomorrow or Thursday I should attempt taking the bus to my Spanish class. It probably isn't any faster than the subway, but I won't need to change buses as I do with the subway.

First day of Spanish classes

I had my first day of classes today. My teacher's name is Romina. This school is pretty small -- I only saw 5 students including me during the morning session -- so it's a one-on-one class, not a group class. The teacher wasn't completely prepared today because she didn't know what level of Spanish I spoke, but we were able to fill the time with conversation and some exercises. Tomorrow she'll have more things prepared.

I'll take these classes for a week and see how I like them. There are many other schools in the area, so if this doesn't suit me I can find another place. I'm sure they'll be fine, though. At this point I just need someone to force me to talk so I can practice and gain confidence.

My cold has moved into my chest, so I bought some cough syrup today. They even have sugar-free cough syrup here!

The weather has been pretty nice that last 3 days. 68-70 degrees, but with the humidity it still feels pretty warm. It's interesting, I guess I'm not used to the humidity. This morning on the subway I'm wearing a short-sleeved short and sweating a little. Almost everyone else has on either a jacket or a sweater. I would have died wearing that much clothing.

I found paper towels

I've spent quite a bit of time the last few days trying to find familiar items in the stores here, which isn't quite as easy as you might expect. Today I finally found paper towels, for example. They're hard to spot because the rolls are the same width as the toilet paper and exactly twice as high. So, you can't just eyeball the package; you actually have to read it and look for "rollos de concina" ("kitchen rolls").

That's just one example of the various things I've been looking for. I'm still having trouble finding spices, but a friend here tipped me off to where I might find them.

I've been using the subway to get around the city. It's clean and easy to use. There are parts of the city you can't get to, but I probably won't have reason to go to most of them. I haven't yet attempted to the trains or buses. The buses will take you anywhere, but there aren't any maps or timetables. Of course, they do have a fixed route, but it's a bit of a challenge to figure out which bus to take even with the map book I bought.

I haven't seen a cockroach in two days, but I'm sure they're still there. I bought some roach traps (called Cucatrap, as in cucaracha) and put them in the kitchen and the bathroom. That should help.

Tomorrow morning I start Spanish conversation classes, which I plan to take for 4 weeks. Hopefully at that point I'll be ready to go into the "real world" and work at a job. So far I have only used my Spanish a few times. A couple times someone has approached me to ask me directions, so I guess I don't look that foreign.

Uninvited guests!

I just discovered that I'm not the only one living in this apartment, even if I am the only one paying rent. I found a perhaps 30 baby cockroaches living on top of the lid of a saucepan in the kitchen. There were a couple bigger ones, too, but they looked either dead or very unhealthy.

Ugh. I flushed them all (or nearly all), but who knows if that really kills them? I think I saw a sign saying something about fumigación as I was entering the building for the first time, but I was a bit distracted at that moment so I didn't read it very carefully.

Cockroaches are nasty (not a very original statement there), but I suppose I can live with them for a few weeks. My concern is that I don't want to take them with me when I leave this apartment. I need to think about this a little more....

I made it!

Well, I arrived this morning at about 10:30 am local time. The flight took about 14 hours (including both legs), which isn't fun but it's not too bad. I slept 2 or 3 hours on the plane, so I felt okay when I arrived.

I asked the Spanish language school I'm taking classes from next week to have someone pick me up at the airport, so Jorge was there waiting for me when I arrived. He turned out to be a nice guy, and we chatted a bit (in Spanish) as he drove me into the city. My plan was to drop off my luggage at a hostel and them go to the apartment I had rented via the Internet at 1 pm, the time that the rental agency and I agreed to meet. However, no one answered the door at the hostel when we arrived, and I didn't have the phone number with me, so we ended up going straight to the apartment. We arrived 25 minutes early for my appointment (traffic really slowed us down), which meant that I had to sit outside with my luggage for about 20 minutes until the rental person arrived. That's exactly the situation I didn't want to be in: me and 170 lbs of luggage sitting out in the open with nowhere to go. It sounds worse that it was, actually, since the entrance to the buiding is set back a few feet from the sidewalk, so I wasn't visible to any pedestrians until they were within just a few feet of me. Still, though, I was a bit uncomfortable.

Anyway, we signed the rental contract and now I'm in my apartment. It's a furnished studio, not very large, but it's fine for the first month. My plan is to find a unfurnished apartment and rent that. Even with buying all the furnishings it should still come out cheaper if I stay here more than a few months. Here are some pictures of the place I'm staying.

It Begins Tomorrow

Tomorrow afternoon I leave to begin my adventure in Argentina. I think it's finally starting to sink in that I'm really doing it. Surprisingly, I'm not really very nervous about this whole thing, even though I know that I'm going to be out of my comfort zone a lot, especially in the next couple of months.

And that brings up a question I'd like to answer: Why am I doing this anyway? First off, I've always wanted to live in another country and learn another language. These are just a couple of my "life goals", things I want to do before I die. That's a big part of the reason that I'm doing this. As to why I'm doing to now, well, maybe some of you can relate to this: I've been feeling that I'm getting a little too confortable in life and that it's time to shake things up a bit, so I'm doing something that will force me out of my comfort zone. I'll be meeting new people daily, something that will definitely stretch me. Plus, I'm still self conscious enough about using my Spanish, and I'll be dealing with that every day as well. I imagine I'll get over that quickly, though.

By the way, even though I'm still kind of self conscious about it, my Spanish is actually pretty good. I can read it at about half of my English reading speed with good comprehension, though every few sentences a I come across a word I don't know, leaving a hole in my understanding. I'm less comfortable speaking and listening to others, but I do okay. However, I'm guessing that I'm going to be frustrated often at not being able to express myself well for the first couple of months. Hopefully after that I'll have that experience less and less.

It's going to be quite an adventure!