Villa Malcolm

What a great night! Tonight I had my first real Buenos Aires tango experience. Well, I've had some classes that have been good but hadn't been out dancing too much. Last week I went to one milonga (that's what a social dance party is called in tango) but it was a gay milonga where I wasn't exactly a hot commodity. Tonight I went to Villa Malcolm which was technically a practica (practice session) but functioned basically like a milonga with the benefit that it started and ended early--9:30 to 1am--compared to the milongas that go until 3 or later.

The evening started off well because, to my surprise, I knew people there. First soon after I arrived were Jennifer, Korey, and Mila, who all taught at Tango de los Muertos. Later a Swedish guy showed up who I'd met earlier today at a class, and then later in the evening 2 more people that I know from tango in NY and Boston came (Shorey and Michael). It felt really nice to see familiar faces. Also, Korey and Mila did a show that was really awesome; they always do something new that I've never seen anyone do before.

It was a pretty young crowd and today there was actually a surplus of leaders, so I pretty much danced straight through, and with lots of good dancers. Actually, more of the better people I danced with were not Argentine but other tango tourists. Also among the Argentines I danced with, I think a bunch of them knew each other and I must have made a good impression on one of them to make the others ask me. I got some nice compliments and at the end of the night various people asked if I wanted to go to one of the other milongas that were just getting going. I declined since I have spanish class bright and early tomorrow (well, 10 AM but still) but it's good to know that in the future I'll probably be making friends in transport from one milonga to the next.

Costs & Exchange Rate

Before I left, I was telling everyone about how great the exchange rate was for Americans: 3 pesos to a dollar, but with each peso having the buying power of a dollar. Turns out, that was only sort of true: there are a lot of things that cost the same in pesos as they would in dollars, and for the most part I'm used to to thinking of pesos as being worth dollars, but there are also a lot of things that cost way more, and a handful of things that cost significantly less. When I buy different things I switch between whether I think about it in pesos or dollars. Does that make sense? Here are some examples of prices:

• Bottle of water/soda from a kiosk: 1.5-2 pesos; similar to what it would cost in USD
• Bus or subway fare: .70-.80 pesos; cheaper than USD
• Cup of coffee: 4.5 pesos; expensive in USD but normal if converted
• T-shirt from boutique-type store: 25 pesos; a bit high in USD? or maybe this is pretty much normal? but cheap if converted
• Empanadas: 1.3 - 2.5 pesos each; fairly cheap in dollars
• Leg wax: 14 pesos; way cheap in dollars - it would be at least 40 I think - and SUPER cheap when you realize it's just $5!
• Towel in a department store: 30 pesos; expensive
  
• Tango class: 8-14 pesos, similar to USD
• Ice cream at Tosci's equivalent: 4.5 pesos for a very small (but satisfying) cone
• My room in well-located 4 bedroom apartment: 920 pesos
  

And finally, quite strangely, box of Twinings tea: 17 pesos! Not only expensive in pesos, but that's $6 american! I think it's the only thing I've encountered so far that is actually more expensive than in the US, though I understand that imported things generally are. For me, it's just confusing in terms of what to use as the determining factor for whether something is "too expensive" -- but it's weird to think about in terms of people who actually earn pesos, and pay 6 times as much for a cup of coffee as for the bus.

Apartment

After a week in Buenos Aires, I moved into my apartment yesterday afternoon. The apartment search was very educational; I had to go to new parts of the city and got to see the insides of several local apartments. Kitchens here are tiny! Most of the ones I've seen are the size of my bathroom in Cambridge; the stove tops generally have 4 burners, but are 1/2 - 2/3 the size of ones I'm used to in the US. The sinks are more like the size of a bathroom sink (though deeper) and there might be 2 feet of counter top. One kitchen I saw was literally a closet off the hallway: there was a sliding door which, when opened, revealed two burners, a mini sink, and about a foot of counter (plus this one wasn't as deep as the other counters, which are generally the same as at home). That kitchen didn't have an oven besides a toaster oven. Actually, that apartment was strange because there wasn't really any common space, there were two bedrooms (which were both fairly large) and a bathroom and a little table at the end of the hallway that had the closet kitchen. Even some of the larger apartments I saw had tiny kitchens, like one three-bedroom with a large living/dining room. The bathrooms, on the other hand, are mostly significantly bigger than mine in Cambridge, so having a tiny kitchen can't be solely a function of needing to conserve space. Right? But I can't think of any good reason that you'd want your bathroom bigger than your kitchen.

The apartment that I moved into is fairly big, with 4 bedrooms. Nico, the guy who rents it out, doesn't live here but around the corner; apparently he grew up in this neighborhood and the apartment is his family's. He rents it on a month-to-month basis, mostly to foreigners. The rooms are furnished, each with a single bed, desk, and dresser (mine's a built in closet/dresser; see the pictures...). Before I came, there were two people living here; Rachael from Canada and David from Chile. My friend Bright, who I know from doing tango in Boston, is also in Buenos Aires for a few months and was also looking for an apartment, so he moved into the other room that was available here. It's cool because if I go out dancing late at night I won't have to come home all alone. Previously we had talked about getting an apartment together but I felt like that might have made it harder to meet new people in the city; this seems like a good compromise.

I had a choice of bedrooms, one looks a lot nicer because it has a window onto the street with plants in a window box and a tree right outside, but that meant it would be fairly noisy, and also the bed wasn't too comfortable and the dresser wasn't really big enough and didn't have anywhere to hang stuff. Instead I took the room with a window to the inside courtyard; the downside is that the air coming in the window isn't as fresh, and there's not enough natural light (I basically have my overhead lights on all day) but it's much more quiet, and a ceiling fan makes up for the lack of a breeze from outside. I guess the plus side of the lack of light is that once I'm done with Spanish classes which start at 10 AM, I'll start staying out a lot later at the dances, and won't have to worry about the sun waking me up early in the morning.

Topics

Day 4 in Buenos Aires. There seem to be so many interesting things to write about, but so far I haven’t had enough experience with any of them to write more than a few lines…so here are some of the interesting things that I may want to write more about later:

• Ice cream. What I’ve had so far has been really good. All the places seem to split their menus up into categories of base flavors: chocolate, cream, dulce de leche, and fruit seem to be the basic ones, each with various combinations of nuts, brownies, chocolate chips, etc.
• Empanadas. Eve and Cruz have developed a rating system, A - F, for empanadas from various bakeries. They get one of each variety, such as beef, chicken, tuna, ham and cheese, corn, etc, and rate the fillings as well as the crust. Actually, of the empanadas I’ve had so far, I think that I’ve had better ones in Boston (like Cafe Brazil chicken and corn empanadas, delicioso!).
• Apartment Search. I’ve only visited two apartments so far, both this evening, and they both kinda sucked. It was cool looking on craigslist from Boston and seeing that apartments seemed so cheap, ($250 - 300/month) but it turns out that’s for stuff that is below my standards…like a room with no window in a house I’d be sharing with a 50 year old man.
• Spanish classes. I just started yesterday. I’m in a class with a Scottish couple and a British guy; both of the guys are named Paul and are in the music business.
• Ok, there are so many more food things: pasta, alfajores (dulce de leche sandwiched between two cookies), grapefruit flavored drinks, tartas…
• Cost of living. Many things are really cheap, and nothing so far is expensive when converted to dollars, but it seems totally random which things are comparatively expensive.
• Tango. Clearly I’ll have much to say on this, but so far I haven’t actually been dancing except one class.