El Primer Día

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Lesson one: red eye flights without a time change are worse than redeye flights without a time change. Mostly because you have a much longer time of trying to sleep on an airplane, which, at least for those of us with absurdly long legs, is not high on our list of pleasures.Lesson two: expect nothing. I've already been surprised about 14 times by something I wasn't expecting from a city like Buenos Aires. At this point, it might be more efficient to expect surprises. Whether it's the lack of skyscrapers (the tallest building comes in about 5 meters shy of the tallest in Boston -- a city about 1/5 the size of BA), the variety of neighborhoods, or the simultaneous modernity and clear aging of everything from the apartments to the streets, one thing becomes clear: this is not home (if that wasn't clear from, you know, the fact that you're in Argentina, where you don't live).<br style="color:� font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.8599996566772px;" />We landed around 9:30 in the morning, giving us a nice full day to get to know the city. Of course, clearing customs, making the half-hour drive into the city, and getting settled in took up the whole morning plus a bit. I also clearly overpacked, which I realized when getting into the whole settling-in part. True, I am visiting about 7 different climates and ecosystems during this trip, but I'm not convinced 10 sweaters and 9 pairs of shoes is necessary for that.We lunched on vegetable soup and empanadas. Veggie soup is apparently typical Argentine winter fare...who knew? Empanadas are just a universal necessity. Also, it's winter, yes. Southern hemisphere and all that. I may keep bringing this up since it's currently 50º and my body is accustomed to 80º and is not yet happy with the change.After that, a bit of emailing and facebooking, setting up our phones, and bundling up, we went out into the wild of BA. I'm conveniently living with our TA, Lautaro, who a) is Argentine, b) knows the area, and c) is fluent in Spanish. I therefore never have to worry about being late or getting lost. We found El Ateneo Grand Splendid -- a former theater converted into a bookstore, of which I forgot to take a picture -- which we explored until 5. At 5, Argentina played Chile in the Copa America final, which was of course a huge deal, so a big group of us went to a bar. To watch Argentina lose. In penalty kicks. Embarrassingly. It was sad. That also makes this the second dialogue where I've watched the team I'm rooting for lose on my first night in the new city (US-Belgium last year).Coming back to a dinner of some tortilla-wrapped-spinach-with-alfredo-sauce thing and baked apples (somewhat) made up for it, though. The food here is delicious and there is no doubt I will put on weight from that. But it's so worth it.Anyway, it's now 10:30 and I got effectively 3 hours of questionable sleep last night so I'm über-looking-forward to sleeping right about now.One last thing before I go, though: I have a phone, and it gets free incoming calls! Also the wifi is decent enough for an occasional skype session! So if any friends or family reading this want in that don't have my info, just fire me an email or a facebook message and I'm sure we can work something out.And last, but not least, to those of you in the USA: Happy Fourth!

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