exnat

For the first 18 years of my life I lived with my parents. After that I left for college and for the next 8 years I mostly with friends and, every odd summer or so, with my parents. When I came to Buenos Aires I lived with my friends Lysa and Juan for the first few months. Then I decided to move out into an apartment by myself.

I MOVED FROM HERE…

I had never lived alone before and it was incredibly intimidating on a few fronts. However, as both of those facts made it more attractive, I decided that it was now or never. For a multitude of reasons ranging from economic solvency to fear of themselves many people never get the oppurtunity to live alone and I took it with gusto. I’m interested to hear what other solitary expats feel about living alone in Buenos Aires but this is my experience.

I was faced with two options. I could rent a fully furnished place for the prices you see on craigslist. That wasn’t going to happen. Or I could find a nonfurnished place that didn’t need a garantia because I didn’t have one. (I write about garantias over here.) Well, a coworker of mine was luckily vacating his apartment and I moved right in. It was one bedroom, one dining room, one kitchen and a den. Unfortunately they were all combined into the same room. There was also a bathroom. I should explain about the kitchen. It wasn’t really a kitchen. It was a “kitchenette” which is the what the foldaway bed is to a real bed.

…TO HERE

My first problem was that I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have plates or silverware to eat the food that which I could not cook without pots and pans. I couldn’t even buy food in the meantime because I had no fridge. I ate a lot of empanadas for the first few weeks. I should also mention tha, while I had no sheets, bed, or lamp, I did have a futon which my friend Alexis had given me on her departure back to the States.

The lack of these items exposed other, more glaring issues like 1) I did not know how or where to get them and 2) I did not know how to ask. I was still at that stage where people think that because you speak like a 4 year old you must have the same needs and desires as a 4 year old. While this was actually true I had the additional “adult” responsibilities of being a consumer and buying my own toilet paper.

Starting from scratch and getting all the items to live in an apartment was very difficult for me. I don’t really know why it was so difficult but I think that I was so overwhelmed by other things that it was always impossible to get the bigger picture of what was going on, what I needed to do what I wanted to do. This was made much more difficult by the insane, nagging eternal question: “When are you going home?” I didn’t have any idea and my life was a constant weighing of things that would never have seemed like a big deal: should I buy chairs and a table if I’ll be here for a year? How many chairs? How big of a table? and so on. Even after a year and a half, with no immediate plans to return and an apartment full of everything I need, I still play this game: Should I buy a washing machine if I’ll only be here one more year?

BATHROOM AND KITCHENETTE

So living alone not only brought up these very existential questions, it also isolated me from my friends and from an immediate social support network. Now if I were feeling down, or even just wanted to hang out, there wasn’t anyone automatically there. I would actually have to pick up the phone and call folks. This would have been great in a world where I already had a social network but, in retrospect, I was asking for trouble by doing it. This isolation was compounded by the fact that this was the first time I was living in a city anywhere close to as big and bustling as Buenos Aires.

Looking back a bit over a year later I’ve moved to a bigger and nicer place, am much better adjusted, and love not having to worry about other people’s dishes. I also love that I have my own furniture and can do whatever I want.  It makes me feel more solid, less transient. Living alone helped me in the long term, perhaps, but taking the plunge so soon, without having fully acclimatized set me back overall and made the integration process more difficult than it had to be.  If you are moving to Buenos Aires and you are deciding between the two and have never lived alone before, approach it with care. It’s not for the faint of heart.

NOW I LIVE HERE

IS THIS A TOUR? SIGN UP NOW TO FIND OUT
As seen on craigslist. I now conduct tours of Buenos Aires. And, because everyone needs an awesome company name, I’ll be:

3 Lefts Make a Right Tours

MAKING “FRIED TART”

I like Argentine food. I like pretty much all of it. However I have noticed that there is a certain distaste among some expats, especially Americans, for Argentine food. Every expat has had their love affair with the juicy steaks, red wine, and dulce de leche on everything. This lasts about a week. Then they begin to get bored, then to whine a bit, then the real bitching starts. “I hate empanadas.” “Not pizza again.” “Please, gets me a real salad.” They complain that pizzas here tend to be overloaded with cheese, inevitably somehow involve ham, boiled eggs, or something similar.

Sure, things aren’t going to be the same as at home but they have a point: the flavors rarely change and there is little diversity. The same ingredients are repeated over and over. The classic place has eight flavors of empanadas and some places can boast 10 or 12 but really everyone here orders the same thing anyway. Porteños simply do not demand or want a variety in the dishes they are served. Pasta is traditional and good but they tend to stick to very strict ingredients and recipes — no crazy pink vodka sauces to be found here.

Going to the spice aisle, even in a very large store is at an exercise in frustration. Here, the idea of a large selection means 10 brands of salt, 10 brands of pepper, and five brands of Parsley. Porteños look on with fear as their expat friends add spices that they had to buy Barrio Chino .

Argentines have a lot of respect for their cooking tradition. As a culture folks here don’t like mixing in random things and experimenting with the same “no rules” attitude typical of Americans. One thing that’ll be interesting to see is if Starbucks’ presence pushes local coffee menus into offering more iced drinks. It might not be so. Diva provides one porteño reaction in her blog entry: Just say no [to Starbucks]. It’s a really interesting read and it’s good to see porteños aren’t just opening the door to US corporate culture. God knows how many expats are here just to escape Starbucks…

While many American expats miss the crazy diversity of home, perhaps there’s a method behind the staid and conservative Argentine cuisine. Apart from the famous eating disorder problem, perhaps this explains their thinness when compared to their yanqui counterparts. I was recently listening to a radio show about rethinking our ideas about thinness and one caller mentioned a very important point: that in places where they sense of cuisine, people feel more connection and derive more pleasure from their food than in places where folks are confronted by many choices, none of which they have cultural connections with. In turn, this connection and pleasure has been linked to gaining more nutrition from the food one eats, allowing for smaller portions. Personally, I think that this sense of cuisine helps porteños maintain their weight, even in this dulce de leche culture of medialunas, alfajores, and cream sauce.

Though it isn’t the 30 pages that I promised Diva, here is an excerpt from my travel diary:

The air in Chilecito was crisp and we walked around the town checking in and asking about various things: where to eat, where to look for property, where to buy artesanias, what we could visit and how. I’m not big on visiting things and I was very happy to just chill out and join Juan and Lysa as they explored the neighborhoods looking at plots of land. We walked up and down the streets, until we came to a very cheerful looking Cemetery. Lisa was a bit worried about living right by the cemetery because of the spirits. “You shouldn’t worry so much about the spirits from the cemetery,” I said, “It’s the spirits from outside the cemetery that you should watch out for” I joked.

CEMETARY SUBURBIA

The cemetery was kitschy: no graves, only tombs painted all kinds of colors with brass ornaments and other gaudy accouterments. In the center of the cemetery is a completely unnecessary overlarge 40 foot cross. As I explored the place, looking for photo opportunities, I heard voices of visiting relatives. I felt strange taking pictures of peoples’ intimate things. I tried to avoid the visitors because I imagined I might be a little worried if I saw someone taking a picture of my mother’s grave. It gave me a weird feeling to gawk at the finery of the dead, especially as I was taking my photos ironically. As it was, the disembodied voices were always just around the corner, but never “caught me in the act”.

THE BENT CAST IRON GATE

Far in the back was a bent cast iron gate, a thing out of place in this garish world of pink houses. Through the gate, I could see only a wasteland of rocks and dirt, which I found out later was an ancient incan burial ground. From where we stood it looked desolate, as if the tombs were beautiful shops in which the spirits work and at night they go home to the slums in which they really live. Or perhaps there are neighborhoods of spirits and we are in the nice rich neighborhood, looking out at the wasteland of poverty like a twisted mirror of the world of the living.

CEMETERY MAIDEN

“This place is dead,” Lysa half jokes, and she and Juan start leaving through the central path. I follow a bit behind and as I reach the central cross I find three young women standing by it. They cannot be more than 18 years old.

“I can’t check out the 18 year old girls in a cemetery.” I think. “That’s just wrong.”

As I approach I lower my eyes respectfully. And with the look of the Recoleta cemetary’s cats they wait for me, watching my every movement with interest lazy. Just as I pass, one says, “Chau” in a seductive voice. “Chau” I mumble as I stumble off. I had the most distinct impression that these maidens of the cemetery were just that, and I walked away without looking back.

Last week I took a vacation to La Rioja, to a town called Chilecito. It was my first vacation within Argentina since I went to Mendoza over a year ago. Even that was just for the Semana Santa long weekend. Overall it was very cold. And it snowed a little. It was really nice for a change from the humid Buenos Aires weather.

FREEZING

The place is untouched to all tourists except backpackers on their way to somewhere else. The reason for the trip is that a friend of mine is looking into buying land to move there to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city.

CHILECITO

Though land in Chilecito is quite cheap (she’s looking at spending about $2000 dollars) there are some complications. The first item, which could theoritically be good or bad, is that everybody knows everybody and, in a strange Twin Peaks kind of way, they’re all in eachothers business. As La Riojas doesn’t produce many professionals like (doctors, engineers, etc.) these guys come from outside and form a bit of a ruling clique. This means that the folks who own the land are not locals but rather are from Cordoba, Mendoza and the like. Each time we went to a restaurant or confiteria to meet someone about seeing a house or advice on a property we would see a group of 8-10 older men talking easily around a big table. The person we were going to meet was invariably meeting with others we would see later. I am not used to this small town process and I distrust it.

This is made altogether more sketchy by the nature of the second complication which is that, like most provinces in Argentina, about 70% of the land does not have acceptable paperwork of ownership. And it is precisely this kind of land that sells for the $2000. People told us stories about how, because the paperwork is disorganized sometimes folks sell the same land to two different people because of the way things are filed. I’m used to a system where there’s a kind of a process. There’s a law that says you have to pay lawyers an amount to verify such and such a claim and there are consequents if people cheat. Here it’s not so much the case. It’s a free country: wide open.

CHILECITO BOASTS AN ABANDONED MINE

I live a block from Carrefour but if I go there, even for just a few items, I bargain for 45 minutes at least. The reason why is that it’s a is a place where you get lost. By USA standards it’s just a normal store but for Argentina it’s huge. Today Carrefour was crowded. Very crowded. Everyone got paid for the month and it was a Saturday evening of insanity in the aisles. And the checkout lines were even worse. I had 15 items and could have gone for the 15 items line but it was so long that I just couldn’t bear it. So i went to the line where the pregnant women get priority.

There’s something about supermarket lines in Buenos Aires that’s completely infuriating. It’s actually not so bad but for someone pampered on the USA “check yourself out” system, waiting for the bus seems like a short exercise. I was pessimistic and wanted to get home to make my butternut squash soup (without the butternut).

That’s when I saw the checkout lady. Girl. Checkout girl. She was a girl. And she was worth checking out if just because she was the only smiling person in the store. I don’t know why she was smiling but she was and it was infectious. I got a strange sensation that she didn’t actually work there, that somehow she didn’t fit in. It was as if she were only doing this checkout gig as a favor to and that she was happy cause it was fun compared to what she normally did and she was helping someone out.

She looked over me and I looked away. I always look away. Everyone checks each other out here, are you supposed to look away? I look away for sure. Whatever. I had a strange idea that she would ask me why I was in the pregnant woman line and not in the 15 items line and I could say “oh you were smiling and I just wanted to be in your line” as a compliment. But then i remembered that “line” (cola) also translates to “butt” and I didn’t want to say that. I gazed at the Gillette Mach 3 razorblades. I felt like I was in an episode of Peepshow.

It was my turn and she was friendly. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever seen at that supermarket before. She looked happy. She looked me in the eye and she made smalltalk. We talked about how the store was busy, how she was hurrying. But she didn’t hurry with me. She asked me who knitted my scarf and I told her I knitted it. She said she could see because of the errors in it.

We came to the last item. I asked her her name. She told me it was Janeen. Or Jaleen. I didn’t understand but it didn’t really matter. I walked out on air.

The point of this story is this: As you walk about in the world, you reshape your universe. Not just in the passive way that you view the world through filters. Your very filters interact with the world. Her smile made her day. And then mine as well.

So Carlos Menem is back and he’s launching his political bid from La Rioja. If, like me, you don’t know who he is, I will give you a few hints. The first is to consult the obvious fountain of knowledge: his entry on Wikipedia. The second place to check out is his bio at carlosmenem.com, which seems to think he still is President of Argentina. I’m not sure about the factual accuracy of the bio but I could not help but be impressed by its description of his daughter:

In his activities tending to the maintenance of exterior relations, one can mention the role carried out by his daughter, Zulema Maria Eva Menem, in an outstanding position as his father’s and President’s company in the frequent official visits around the world. His daughter impeccably represents the role of First Lady, giving some freshness to the rigidity of the protocol. She has always seemed to be prepared to comply with the rules of the ceremonials subject to the different customs and cultures of the countries she knows. Her elegance in manners and dress, added to her spontaneity and sympathy does not pass unwatched among the highest personalities of foreign governments.

This would be her:

I’m looking for a woman,
That will work to set me down,
I’m looking for a woman,
That will work to set me down,
I’ve bin looking all night long,
She can’t be found.

When I was travelling in Peru I saw this sign and thought it was funny:

The sign says: WE NEED A WOMAN OR A YOUNG WOMAN. I thought it was so sexist it was funny so I snapped my photo and forgot all about sexist Peru.
Buenos Aires is a cool place: big, cosmopolitan, and advanced. But sexist as all get out. So this business is offering a few different jobs on Monster.com. Here are two of them.

The one for the men to apply to:

And then the one for women:

Any coincidence that the project leader should be a man while the person who gives tours should be woman? This is so common here that they will actually say “No. We’re looking for a man” or “Sorry. Only women.”

Machismo society is what it is. I have to be really honest and say that I don’t know why I’m shocked. But for some reason I am.

THERE’S A TEAR IN MY BEER

Last week a bunch of folks met at Antaires to wish Ken a safe and happy journey back to the States. The beer there is delicious and from 7-9pm there’s a 2 for 1 happy hour on pints. I thought I was being really smart by ordering lots of these but apparently I was even smarter because I didn’t pay for any of them. Thanks to whoever bought me the beer. I would have paid but I don’t remember the waiter ever coming round.

One of the things I do remember is how, when we first got there, we chose to sit down at the tall, little, circular tables. This confused the waitress who realized that those tables are really meant for 2 people who want to talk intimately, not 5 individuals who are set on each claiming their own table. She tried to explain this to us and Alan and I, thinking ourselves the most proficient in Spanish, tried to offer various explanations so that she’d leave us alone.

WAITRESS: You guys might be more comfortable at a single table, all seated together.
ME: We’re happy here. It’s all good. Thanks.
WAITRESS: At another table you could all sit together.
ME: Oh no, it’s ok. We each want our own table. We’re quite happy, thanks. Can I order 4 beers at once?
WAITRESS [looking distressed]: Well… would you like me to move all of these circular tables together so that you can talk to eachother?
ALAN: We’re expecting more people. That’s why we’re so spread out.
WAITRESS [Rallying]: If you’re expecting more people I can push some of those group tables all together.
ALAN: Actually, some of us smoke and we just want to be closer to the door.
WAITRESS: Oh, I understand, why didn’t you say so!!!

But the funny thing is that, while some of us smoked, that had nothing to do with the decision to sit there. I’m also unsure if the waitress ever believed that it did though she certainly acted that way. I suspect she was willing to give up on the 4 extra tables and save herself from the weirdness of people who don’t know what group tables are for. I think this happens a lot when you’re speaking a new language. For the life of me I can’t remember ever having an exchange like this in the States.

Expats leave the country for different reasons: from not being able to stand four more years of Bush to trying to ditch that coke habit, from starting up your own third world sweatshop to just needing some fresh air and a change of perspective, we expats troop around the globe. We bring our culture and, more often, our money to exchange for some local flavor.

But for many of us there is an expiration date printed in a place where we just can’t see it. Sooner or later it comes up: that innocent question that hangs like a noose around the neck of every expat. It’s like asking a college graduate: so what’s the next step? It’s a mean question because most college graduates are facing a time of their life where there are fewer clearly defined steps. A better question would be “Do you have another step planned out?”

Either way, like dogs that sniff each others butts, expats ask eachother this question and then judge eachother by it. Keep in mind that part of the expatness of expats is that they’re not naturalized into the country. If you’re immigrating you’re a local that just doesn’t know the language yet. An expat is still keeping their origin as their defining characteristic.   A big part of the definition is that expats are NOT Argentine.*  Expats are always foreigners so there’s a weird status to who’s staying longer and each one of us tries to figure out the trajectory of the other almost immediately.

*Actually this is just one definition… the one I’m using right now….