Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Take me to Kansas, Toto!

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home." While I could certainly go for some of my mom's cooking and I'm sure JooYeon wouldn't mind a clean bed and washing machine, we'd both gladly just settle for an apartment right now. We've been back in Buenos Aires for three days now, searching for a nice, clean, reasonably priced pad where we can hanker down and do some translating, cooking, etc. Our first day was mildly successful with a decent option (after a very non-decent option), but upon awakening the next day JooYeon felt much less excited about it. So we reserved a cheap little hostel in San Telmo and geared up for a long searching process.


San Telmo is the artsy sector of BA which was originally the stronghold for the wealthy until yellow fever and some other diseases ravaged the area 100-150 years ago. Then they moved Northwards towards areas like Recoleta and Palermo (where we are searching for apartments since they are the safest, cleanest, greenest areas). Since then, the area has maintained its artsy, cultural feel but with a more bohemian crowd. I don´t think it would be the best place for us to live for a month or two (safety reasons), but it has been fun to be around the energy for a couple days as we do apartment-searching. The markets are lively and colorful...


And, especially on Sundays, the cobblestone streets are lined with people, vendors, musicians, etc.
I was particularly fascinated by this little guy whose street puppet show was impressively meaningful and heartfelt. His 5 minute drama portrayed a man drinking in the streets who then realized the error of his ways and struggled to get inside, but it was too late. And so he passed away and drifted upwards to heaven, all to a poignant opera song.

But we can´t have too much fun and entertainment... not when we´re engaged in a serious house-searching process...


Our second day apartment-searching was quite a failure and consisted mostly of emailing, phone-calling, and answering machines. In fact, despite our long day, we didn´t manage to see a single place. We were quite tired by the end and luckily found a huge tree where we could eat our stuffed tomato and rest.

Tomorrow, we have six visits lined up, all in decent areas, so hopefully the next blog will hold pictures of our apartment!

2 comments:

  1. Joo Yeon, How cheap are the sunglasses in South America? And Daniel, can you get large blocks of time on a computer to translate? Mom

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  2. I´m not sure on the price but Joo says she thinks they were less than $3. A lot of the prices here are good, but I wouldn´t rank them as "dirt cheap." Except for yerba mate... that is dirt cheap. Computer... yes, there are internet cafes everywhere which vary in quality, but hopefully we will have a computer in our apartment to facilitate things.

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