Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Today I met the other professor of our who admitted to beinga Buenos Aires fanatic and spent the first part of class telling about placeswe should visit, things we should do and places online to help us navigate thecity (literally, with transportation, and then to help us find events goingon). She seems to be filled with enthusiasm not just for Buenos Aires, but forhelping us learn Spanish and keeps the class lively with fun activities thatincorporate practicing Spanish in with us getting to know each othertoo—something most professors fail to do. One such activity was an one where welistened to her read a passage we’d just read through out loud and we copieddown what we heard and we all had a laugh about our mistakes (maybe thisexplains why I misunderstand everybody in the streets—because I don’t have amanuscript of what they’re going to say prior to hearing it).
Class passed along quickly and by then it was time for my“lunch”. There were no sandwich bags or Tupperware so I brought everything inits original packaging, making a huge lump in my backpack. The lump wascomprised of an avocado with saltines (maybe that’s weird, but you like chipsand guacamole, right?), some grapes (not seedless. How can something so smallbe so tedious to eat?), rice cakes and a “granola” bar, effectively made ofsugary rice-krispie type things glazed in more sugar. I mean, I’ve made manysignature Nikki Henderson grab-bag lunch extravaganzas before, but this wassomething a little weird. In a country that eats little for breakfast and holdsoff on dinner until 9pm, lunch is kind of a big deal. Not to mention that I’min class for 5 hours and walking everywhere. I need a strong lunch to carry meand a random hodge-podge of simple carbs isn’t going to cut it. (So if you’reever thinking you’d like to send me a care package, Clif bars, peanut butterand healthy snacks would be much appreciated…they don’t seem to exist here).How Argentines stay so thin and power through 12+ hour days, I’m still tryingto figure out.
Another problem I had to solve was that of obtaining a cellphone. Similar to phone stores in the US, they’re very busy here, and kind of acomplete mess. Everybody seems to be having a phone crisis, so even a simpletransaction takes forever and you have to wait in line just to ask a question.Movistar, Claro and Personal are the 3 major carriers here. There are minutedifferences between the 3 between prices and coverages, but there’s essentiallynothing that makes one better than the other. We first stopped at Movistarwhere I waited in line for 20 minutes only to find that the cheapest phone theyhad was $500 (~$120 USD). Screw that. We walked to Personal. While the line wasnonexistent this time, again, the price was still high. Keep walking. Made itto the Claro store only to find they were out of prepaid phones completely.Went to another Claro store, but they didn’t sell prepaid phones. In additionto this whole thing taking forever NOBODY understood me when I simply said Ineeded to buy a pay-as-you-go phone. I’m never confident about my Spanishoutside my house and classes—I can’t understand anything and nobody canunderstand me. Finally, we went to another Claro store and sealed the deal.
The guys at this Claro store seemed to understand me justfine and we spoke in a mix of English and Spanish. The 2 employees also spoke“I’m trying to flirt with you, is it working?”, to which I responded in mynative tongue, “No, not at all, but thanks for trying”. However, this guyscanned my passport (standard procedure for buying the phone) and obviously hasmy name and phone number. What a great place to work if you’re a creeper. He’sactually quite ingenious. I gotta hand it to Argentine men on this one.
As for the phone, it's what I like to call a "totally crappy and technologically retarded phone that just sucks a lot". Even though my cell phone from the US sucks, it's not on this level, which I haven't seen since my first phone in 2002. Really, look at this phone and tell me that's not totally embarrassing and horribly expensive. Korea, how I long for you...
And this seems to be how I pass most of myafternoons—walking up Cabildo, realizing that I am missing a bunch of essentialitems (and people...), and as I make my way up the street, I burn through all the pesos in mywallet. There’s a lot to buy—some of it being things I’d actually want, most ofit being things similar to what we have in the US. I’ve made a deal with myselfthat I’m not allowed to buy anything if I’ve seen something like it in the US(unless I need said item in my day to day life, or to replace my own item). Sofar it’s kept me from even looking in most stores. And if you kept up with myadventures in Seoul and New York, you know that’s quite an accomplishmentindeed.
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