We made it!

Apr

Bummer, I just typed up a posting and then misread the pop up because it was in Spanish and erased it. Starting over!

We arrived safely in Buenos Aires around 10:15am this morning. The trip here was long, but relatively uneventful. We had virtually no layovers except for enough time to eat at Wolfgang Puck’s in the Denver airport for lunch yesterday. Denver to Dulles was a couple of hours long and I personally passed the time watching the movie, “Finding Neverland.” It was a good, tear-jerker.

We arrived in Washington D.C. with enough time to walk to our gate and begin boarding for Buenos Aires. The flight to B.A. was roughly 10.5 hours long, so with the 4 hour time difference, we arrived this morning around 10:15am. We all tried to sleep the best we could but airplane seats are not the most accomodating for a good night’s slumber.

I think we were all happy to get through Immigration and Customs and see an energetic group of Rotarians outside of the sliding glass doors waiting for us. We introduced ourselves and then stopped to have a cup of coffee (cafecito), talked about our schedule and eventually were on our way to the various host families homes.

This afternoon, I enjoyed a wonderful time with the mother of my host family, Christina. We ate an amazing lunch complete with vacio (meat), the best chorizo I have ever had and a salad. Afterwards, she took me to see the river, which she said is the widest river in the world. I couldn’t see the other side (which is Uruguay.) The river is very polluted from factories in B.A., so unfortunately people do not use it for recreation, although I did see one sailboat. There is a wonderful park down by the river where many school children were having their equivalent of PE classes and were playing various sports from rugby to soccer, in uniforms.

Christina, along with some of the Rotarians at the airport speak little to no English so it is forcing me to practice my Spanish, which is good! I think that both the individual’s who first language is English as well as thoses whose first language is Spanish were surprised that we could not communicate better, but as we all warmed up in our second languages, communication began to improve rapidly.

Currently, I am enjoying the most quaint office in a very quaint, skinny, tall, row-type, duplex-house. There are spiral stairs coming up from the kitchen with a view of a wonderful garden outside. The houses here are much like those in Mexico but they seem to be in slightly better shape, in general. Granted, I have only been here for a couple of hours though and as my host so graciously pointed out, I have only seen a very small portion of the city. Basically, she said I haven’t seen anything.

So, we made it safely here. Next on the agenda: a nap, shower and tomorrow we are off to the zoo! Oh and I better be a gracious guest and try the wine that my host was raving about.