Landed

So my parents said goodbye to me at the airport just before I went through customs... and then all of a sudden I felt like I was gonna puke. Crazy. It just came on so suddenly: what if my luggage gets lost, what if I get robbed the moment I arrive in Argentina, what if I don´t like it, what if I can´t handle it. All the paranoias that people had put into me started coming up. Should I trust the person exchanging my money for Argentine pesos? Why does she keep saying ¨One for me, one for you¨ when she counts out my money?

So on the flight I was a bit scared. But more calm. And I slept when I could. Supper was served at 1 in the morning... followed by two more meals on that flight, plus another meal on my connecting flight. Or maybe that´s one more meal than I had. I dunno it´s hard to say. Yeccch. Gross food.

The moment I started to calm down was this morning when the plane was starting to land in Santiago de Chile. It was a clear sky and beside me were the incredible Andes mountains. They had no snow or trees on them, just some shrubs, it looked like I could just run straight up them. So beautiful and so calming... then I quickly got on my transfer flight to Buenos Aires.

Outside of the Buenos Aires Airport, where 30 or so left-wing Peronists officially (and many more unofficially) were killed by right-wing Peronists upon the return of Juan Peron (Evita´s hubby) from his 12-year exile, it smelt of pina coladas. Fresh pina coladas. Mmmm, nice. I wanted to talk about the city with my driver but I´m pretty sure he didn´t speak English. So I said what little I knew and he drove me to my residence where the landlady, Gladys, was doing the opposite of waiting for me.

My driver called the number on my contact sheet and I spoke to a woman from the school who said she´d contact Gladys and the moment I stumbled this out of my mouth to my driver, he said ¨Bueno¨ and left, giving me an encouraging honk as he drove by, with me standing in front of the gates. Luckily, two girls from the school were just coming back from shopping a couple minutes later and let me in. And fairly soon after Gladys arrived, apologized that she thought I was coming in tomorrow, as most students do, and showed me around. She´s very nice and speaks a helpful slow Spanish (but almost no English).

After talking to some of the people here, I kinda felt like a sissy. I mean, I feel pretty adventurous for coming out here, but some of the people are staying way longer and doing so much more. Granted, they´ve been here a while, so they´re accustomed to it. The two girls who let me in are from Paris and southern Holland, there´s a girl from Norway, a girl from Tel Aviv, a girl from Ontario, California who now lives in Orange County (but does not watch The OC), a girl from Norway, one other girl who I forget where she´s from, and a guy from Sao Paulo, Brazil who has been here for six months and has an Argentine boyfriend here. Who made me some killer maté. I´m looking forward to drinking that drink. All the time. And hopefully I´ll be able to squeak along without drinking alcohol. And by ¨squeak along¨ I mean be able to hang out with people and meet new other people. I don´t think it´ll be a problem. Maybe I can pass it off as a Canadian thing...

So anywho, that about does it for now. I´ll have more posts when I actually do things in the city. I think I´m going to get some Chinese take-out with a bunch of people tonight. It´s this girl Fleur´s last night here (she´s the one from Holland) before she goes off to Guatemala for six weeks. Everyone´s speaking English here so I´m able to communicate with people fine, except for Pedro (from Sao Paulo)´s boyfriend who only speaks Spanish, but Pedro was acting as interpreter for any words I didn´t understand or can´t convey. So yeah... here I am.

Should be fun. :)