¡Hola Buenos Aires! El placer es mío…

SO THIS IS EXCITING. I’M IN BUENOS AIRES. I’VE BEEN HERE FOR FIVE DAYS. IT’S AMAZING. AND TOMORROW IS MY ¡¡¡¡¡BIRTHDAY!!!!!

Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. But actually, life is so good right now. I arrived in Buenos Aires last Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon, and was met at the airport and whisked into the city by a very friendly driver named Victor, who over the course of our drive informed me that he is one of 15 children in his family. And then he listed them. On his fingers. Which required his taking both hands off the wheel. On a five lane freeway. Yesss. ¡Bienvenido a Buenos Aires!

I survived the drive into town, thankfully (I guess being 1 of 15 sort of gives you a pretty good survival instinct, right? If 14 brothers and sisters haven’t killed you, driving with no hands on the freeway doesn’t stand a chance! Right.). In case you have no idea what the heck I’m doing in BA, let me explain (Mom, this is for you....KIDDING. Mostly). I’m here in Buenos Aires for eight weeks, until May 15, volunteering with an Argentinean organization called Voluntario Global. VG, founded in 2005, supports social organizations in different working class neighborhoods in Buenos Aires by providing funding and foreign volunteers. I’m staying in the VG Volunteer ¨Club¨, which is basically a hostel for the VG volunteers, complete with kitchen, common room with TVs and computers, etc. There are no other Americans staying here, and I haven’t met a single other American while I’ve been here, which is cool but kind of weird. The other volunteers are from Europe...England, Scotland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany. Everyone is pretty young, probably between 19 and 25, but it’s hard to tell. I’m definitely on the younger end.

So, how am I spending my time? I’m doing two, hopefully three projects. Three afternoons a week I’m helping out at a community center in La Boca, a working class but pretty interesting/vibrant neighborhood (famous for its brightly painted houses), where they have an afterschool program. The program’s stated purpose is homework help, but not all the kids bring homework to do so it’s a lot of playing educational games/ just having fun with the kids...to provide a fun, wholesome, hopefully somewhat educational place for them to be. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons starting this week I’ll be tutoring a couple high school kids in English...the classes are supposed to be for adults but a few highschoolers keep coming looking for help with their homework so I’m going to be their point person. I’m excited. And then I think Monday and Wednesday mornings I’m going to be helping in the community kitchen in the community center. Sophia, a super nice British girl who is also volunteering at the afterschool program, is also working in the kitchen those mornings so I’m excited for that. BUT tomorrow is a special memorial event (not sure what that means...I think it’s a march?) in La Boca so the community center activities aren’t happening but I’m going down to the center anyway to take part in the festivities. And then Wednesday is a national holiday, the Day of Memory for the military junta. So stuff is cancelled again. So I won’t start in the kitchen until next week I guess.

The community center is SO COOL. It has a sewing factory cooperative run by people in the community, where they make and embroider T-shirts, uniforms, etc. They’ve also just started screen printing. Also the kitchen, a big space where different community groups gather, the after school help...it’s a hopping place. Lots of Che Guevara memorabilia everywhere ... which would normally sort of bother me but they’re the real deal Guevarians, right? Without the armed guerilla movement thing. No worries, Mom.

Other than volunteering, I’ve been doing TONS of sight-seeing/ exploring. SO MUCH walking around the city, and this weekend I’ve been riding this double-decker tourist bus all around town. It’s a gorgeous city (a bit grimy, but in a cute way I guess?), the architecture is INCREDIBLE. FOR SERIOUS...every single style you can possibly imagine, which makes walking down the street slightly hazardous because I’m always looking at the buildings, not where I’m going. Like Boston (and Shanghai, to a certain extent), BA is a city of neighborhoods, which makes it a real pleasure to explore. Even though I’ve barely scratched the surface, I feel like I already have a feel for the city because I understand the different neighborhoods. I seriously just can’t wait to keep walking and walking and walking. And I will be doing lots of walking probably until I figure out the bus routes, which are horribly complicated. And the metro is a bit of a joke...like the MBTA, except slower, without AC, and with about a third of the service area. So not like the MBTA. Much worse than the MBTA if you can believe it. But again...WALKING. LOVE IT.

You know what I also love? Leather. Boots, bags, jackets...drool. The big question is brown or black? These are the things I worry about.

Other highlights include the Oscar-winning Argentinean film ¨El secreto de tus ojos¨ that I went to with some other volunteers. Very good but definitely a thriller. Also, cooking for myself has been pretty fun. Also, cafes. Every day I have my cafe con leche in a different place and read my book. It’s an integral part of the gap year growing experience, I swear.

Today I went to El Museo Nacional de los Artes Decorativos, which is a BEAUTIFUL mansion in the French style filled with superb pieces of art. Every room is a different, exquisite style. Kind of like the Isabella Stewart Gardner but a little less over-filled and you can tell that the owners weren’t as crazy. Just crazy rich. It’s much more just this rich family’s house, filled with their beautiful things, NOT a rich eccentric pack-rat obsessive groundbreaking woman like Isabella’s house. But very cool. Also have fallen in love with this bookstore-slash-cafe in Palermo (my favorite neighborhood so far...chic but not kitchy, filled with cafes and bookstores and boutiques...LOVELY). Also this health-food vegetarian cafe where the waitresses where these awful floral uniforms...WITH CAPS. Poor them. But the food is good.

OK I think that’s all for now. I have lots to say. But I have to go to bed so that I can wake up and HAVE IT BE MY BIRTHDAY. WOOOHOOO. Yay turning 19...the most insignificant birthday of my life so far. But still, it’s a birthday.

Oh one more thing...just want to apologize for the excessive number of times I used the word ¨Ishkabibble¨ in my last post. I found it quite irritating when I just re-read it. I guess, as usual, I was over-enthusiastic. Slash desperate for a unifying theme? Yes. That too.