One Month

Today marks the one month anniversary of my time in Buenos Aires. I arrived 31 days ago, on a Wednesday in the rain. Today is cool but bright and sunny. Today also marks my first payday, or would, if it wasn't Saturday, since I get paid on the tenth of each month. My first pay check in pesos!

At the moment, I am sitting in front of my computer in my bathrobe, listening to the String Section Quartet reinvent (and in my opinion improve) Coldplay, and drinking a mug of coffee. Except for the fact that the coffee is instant coffee and I can hear trucks and dogs and children from outside as if they were in the room, this morning could be any morning at home in San Diego or in my dorm at Carleton. It is nice to feel so comfortable here, but I hope that with that comfort I don't stop noticing all the life happening around me.

Yesterday on the subway I watched a woman breast feed her baby while a couple standing next to her communicated in sign language. And then I spent the twenty minute journey home from work looking at my feet; I had accidentally smiled at the man standing next to me. My Minnesotan reflex to smile at everyone I make eye contact with is a little out of place here, especially between a woman and a man, so I try to remember not to when I can.

Actually, Argentines and Minnesotans have a lot more in common than I expected. For instance, Argentines love to talk to you, whether they know you or not. Just as you can end up talking about the weather in Minnesota for half an hour with an old lady in the street, here you can end up talking to the woman selling you shoes for thirty minutes. Yesterday I bought a pair of black sneakers to wear to work on the days when I have time to walk. Before I left the store, I knew that my saleswoman had two children, that she thought the British were normally frigid people, and that she had watched a tourist get his watch stolen while having coffee with her daughter—"be careful when you walk down Florida! There are so many tourists." After twenty minutes of talking, she confessed that at first she had thought that I was Russian—"All the Russians my sons work with are so pale and skinny!" Then, when I spoke, she had thought I was British. Personally, I thought I was getting significantly less pale and skinny here, walking every day in the southern sun and eating asado.

I have had conversations in grocery stores, in taxis, at the store where I buy my organic empanadas, in bars. I even end up in conversations with people I may never meet. On the phone, it is considered rude to ask to speak to someone without first talking a little with whom ever answered. Even if someone calls for Klau, they ask how I am doing first. Yesterday, I spoke on the phone to a woman long enough to learn that she was a widow with a daughter who lived in the United States. "Does everyone in Los Angeles live in enormous houses?" Everywhere I go, people are not only willing but eager to talk to me. It makes a (San Diegan) Minnesotan feel a little bit more at home.