Apartment-hunting, friend-making, and general bearings-seeking

The rest of my first week, from Wednesday until Friday, was spent figuring out the city. I in no way am an expert now, although a few days of really trying to get your bearings can go a long way, even in a city as behemoth as Buenos Aires. Wednesday was another day for walking, this time starting to head more west towards the neighborhood of Once (own-se). Supposedly once the center of Buenos Aires' thriving Jewish community, and home to the only Kosher McDonald's outside Israel, there was no explicit evidence of Jewry, and the area was just as packed with diversity and people as the center. Since then I (think that I) found out that much of the synagogues, etc. are in the northern neighborhood of Belgrano.

The theme of Wednesday was craigslist.org, and the section devoted to shared apartments. There was really no shortage of places listed, although some of them are clearly posted by brokers trying to get you to call them for a place that may or may not already exist. I tried to stick to the ones that seemed like they were actually describing one apartment, with some sort of plausible situation. I emailed about ten of them, and before the hour was up I had already heard back from one. Then I heard back from another, and within 24 hours I had already visited three apartments. As Goldilocks taught us many years ago, the third option is usually just right, and so, within 72 hours of landing at Ezeiza Airport, I locked in the deal. I had already paid for two more nights in the hostel, so I would get to move gradually, but it was a huge relief to already be done what had seemed to be the most difficult task I was face with. I'll devote a future post to the apartment I chose.

Fortunately, I didn't have to spend all day in the internet cafes, and made a phone call to the house of a family friend of a family friend of mine from the US. The connection was a loose one, and the result a long process that started just by emailing my rabbi to help me find a Jewish family in BA to celebrate the holidays with, but right away they invited me to their home for dinner that evening.

Dinner that night was spent with Marina, the friend of the friend, and her sons Martin, who's 20, and Sebastian, who's 18. They live in a stylish apartment near the Palermo Park that is filled with artwork, owing to Marina's husband's passion for art. We ate steak prepared perfectly, a punto, and sipped the Malbec I picked up at a wine shop to bring. We conversed for three hours about language, culture, Argentina, Europe, the US, college, and my plans for my time here, and it wasn't until after midnight that Martin and Sebastian took me back to the hostel in their car. I was so touched by their hospitality and their eagerness to welcome me to their city. We promised to get together often, and I looked forward to having a home away from home while I'm here.

On Thursday I met up for lunch with Alexis and Brennan, two friends of mine and fellow '08ers from Stanford, who are spending a year here rather than rushing into jobs. They are currently living in a tourist apartment in Belgrano, just past Palermo on the subte, and we walked around for a few hours together. It was great to reminisce about the farm, and we started planning for a big Thanksgiving dinner for any and all American friends that we find here in BA.

So, within only two days of being here, I had already connected with two friends from middle school, two friends from Stanford and a local Jewish family with sons around my age. This is not to mention the friends from the hostel: a pair of Dutch guys spending a year backpacking, guys from Ireland and Sweden, and a group of six Americans traveling around the world by road in a pair of Toyota (read: sponsorship) trucks. They had already been driving a year and a half through Europe, Siberia, Asia, and Africa, arriving by boat in Buenos Aires only to be held up for a month by Argentinian customs officials. Suffice it to say I wasn't nearly as lonely as I could have been, and I knew that as time progressed I'd only make more friends.