a late start

My original plan was to start a blog so as to reflect on my experiences and inform those who might be so interested to know of my whereabouts. I had a lot of original plans--all these sweet ideas about how things would be. I had something very ambitious in mind. In the last week and a half, the ambitious ideas I had for some very comprehensive blog got swept away, and I had agreed to abandon the idea entirely. Now it is back, in a humbler form. I will do what I can to relay my experiences in a way that is hopefully helpful for me and perhaps interesting or informative. That said, I need to get up to date on where I am, what I am doing, etc. I will try to make this brief.

I arrived in Buenos Aires in the afternoon of the 27th of January--so swelteringly hot and the light so bright. The homestay that I had previously arranged dissapointed. I arrived at the apartment building and spent a good twenty minutes walking up and down these rickety stairs, finding that none of the doors had numbers. I could hear the activity of the families within, clinking their plates and changing the channels. This made me feel very alone. Turns out I was in the servants stairwell and the sweating doorman finally led me to the right place. Silvana was the mother of the house, Natasha the daughter (age 21). Silvana was warm, with big leathery arms and a strong bitter scent. Natasha was kind to me, though I think she was dissappointed by my humble atire. The room which I was going to pay good money for was already occupied, by one, maybe two Brazilians who had their clubbing clothes strewn about in such a way as to say, there is no more room here for you. I was to sleep on one of the beds, though not sure which. The one Brazilian sat around the steaming room watching a game show on her computer and Natasha and her friend Frederico chainsmoked in the kitchen. It was not so bad, I could have kept it, made friends with the Brazilians and Natasha and surely Silvana. Instead I made up some very broken excuse about how I actually had a friend who lived here that I didn´t know about before and I was going with her. I left and used the one connection I had in the city--girlfriend of a friend´s brother, Mary. She so kindly let me stay at her apartment for two nights while I went searching for a place to stay. I found a decent hostel, and there I met Leah, a lovely Danish girl who, like me, is here on her own to learn spanish. She and I have become fast friends--actually my only friend. It is nice to have one at least. After a few days Leah moved into a dormitory, and I into the apartment of a little old woman by the name of Elsa. Elsa is a dear woman with a tiny high voice and funny things all around her shady, cool apartment. She sometimes has friends over and they drink beer and smoke cigarettes on the balcony. I think that Elsa thinks I am quite lonely and sad because when I told her that I was going out with a ´friend´she acted much too happy and told me that it was not good for me to be so alone all the time. She has a point, but I have in fact been enjoying much of the time alone, especially in exploring the city, which is an inexhaustive task. Elsa speaks to me in rapid spanish and then will occasionally throw in a few words of english. Although I prefer her to speak Spanish so that I might learn, the way she pronounces english words makes me feel sort of warm and silly. I only hope I sound half as charming as I am struggling with her language, though I doubt it.
In the days I go to school and explore the city. I will talk about school later, as there are some characters there that deserve a bit of development. As for exploring the city, that is not something I can accurately relay. The city lends itself very much to just walking endlessly and aimlessly. Elsa´s apartment is in the shady and family oriented neighborhood of Palermo botanico. Nearby is Palermo viejo, split into Palermo SoHo and Palermo Hollywood. These places are very hip and desirable for a young, often elite crowd. My school is in the microcentre--a nasty twenty minute subway ride away. Nasty because we are like sardines in the subway cars, hot air blowing our hair into one anothers gasping mouths. It is the most unpleasant part of my day. That, and then walking through the swarming streets at lunchtime. It is incredible to always be around so many bodies and though I am fascinated by it, often thrilled, it is in the end just very exhausting. I have now walked through at least part of most of the neighborhoods in inner Buenos Aires, though rarely walking the same streets twice. The city is an incredible mix of first and third world urbanism--most all of it old. I could go on. But in brief, the city has certainly captured and maintained my attention, despite the fact that it renders me feeble.