the beginning

link to photo album

Upon arriving in Argentina after my lovely 24 hour flight+layovers, I had the most pleasant surprise...the airline left my baggage in Colombia! Arggg! So I spent over 60 hours wearing the same clothes and smelling funky. Good thing I bought special REI traveler´s underwear :p

Uriel, my first couchsurfing host, has been so good to me. He woke up early to ride the bus to pick me up from the airport, helped me yell at the airline, cooked yummy food to share with me, and gave me a key to his place. Un chabón re copado! He even invited me to take a weekend trip to Mar del Plata (5 hours away) for his mother´s birthday, and his family was so incredibly generous and hospitable, I still can´t even process it.

My first few days in bsas were unhappy, mostly because the language barrier was so frustrating for me (I can write, read, and speak....but not understand!). The Arg accent is especially difficult  because it sounds Italian sometimes and not all sounds are enunciated. People in bsas seemed a lot like New Yorkers at first, intimidating and cold. Moreover, the 10pm dinners were a huge adjustment..maybe my hunger made me grumpy.

But now, I´m so much happier after having met so many cool people; couchsurfing.org helped a lot with making new friends and assimilating smoothly. I actually have friends who accompany me around the city and invite me to live life with them, hang out with their friends, eat with their families. Wow. I´ve experienced so much in just one week. One of Uriel´s friends taught me some Aikido, another showed me around La Boca and taught me a ton of Arg history and bad words I never learned in Spanish class. I taught one of Uriel´s friends a Taiwanese hand game and he was so stoked. I went to a Tango class with a bunch of other couchsurfers from all over the world. I slept over at the house of a really cool girl from CS.org and she showed me some punk and vintage clothing shops and I taught her some fun art games. I hung out with an awesome Argentina-born Taiwanese girl and she invited me to hang out with her group of friends (mostly Asian, just like it is in the states haha). That was a really mind-blowing experience, hanging out with that many different Asians speaking Spanish...in an American-themed diner restaurant in Argentina @_@

More on food, my embarrassing faux pas moments, etc later. Sarah arrives in two days and I can´t wait :)

To finish, I love this hilarious Arg comedian talking about street harrassment in Argentina:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTPJwSPc5lc

hasta luego...chao chao boludos!
beso,
JWong