Becoming bonaerense

When you join an embassy community overseas, one of the perks is being assigned a social sponsor. Usually, you’re matched to someone who is of a similar age and station in life and this person is tasked with showing you how to live like a local. I really lucked out: my sponsor, Vanna, is simply AMAZING. (And yes, I tell her this to her face.)

Although she’s 5 years younger than me, we have many similar interests, the most primary of which is an absolute adoration for all things food-kind. Better yet, she’s the only other embassy employee who lives in my building. So pajama potlucks are going to be all the rage for us.

Between her and the entry-level officer (ELO) coordinator, JM, I have had quite the busy social calendar. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that I’ve had the potential to have quite the busy social calendar. I haven’t taken advantage of every invitation to go out, but I haven’t said “no” much either (and I’m only doing so now because I seem to have contracted the Argentine crud; to explain, the “insert country’s name here” crud is a term da’ Momma created to describe the cold-like symptoms one develops when one is new to a place and your body acclimates to the air contamination and other environmental factors previously not experienced).

The day after I arrived, I had my first dinner invitation to join a few other ELOs (an ELO is someone who is on their first or second tour with State and has not yet become tenured) for a steak dinner. There is a lot of talk – bragging really – about Argentine steaks. I have to admit that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of red meat, so when I say that the steaks and bife de chorizo and whatever else I’ve eaten thus far taste just fine to me, please take it with a grain of salt. Clearly, if you eat nothing but steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you and I are not cultivating the same taste buds. That being said, I did really enjoy the plentiful guarniciones that accompany any purchase of steak in this country. On the night in question, the steaks were served with chimichurri sauce, criollo sauce, spinach, squash, mushrooms, and a whole host of other little ramekins full of tasty delights. It was like a guarnicion tapas menu!

So clearly my brain isn’t in peak form, because now I’m going to talk about another outing to a bar whose name utterly eludes me. (I will never be able to visit any of these places again, as I cannot remember a single thing!) Some colleagues got together for a happy hour on my first Friday. The caipirinha I ordered was pretty awful (Delvis, where’s Grill from Ipanema when you really need it???), but the homemade french fries and potato chips were pretty damn awesome. And, since it was my usual dinner time, I ate a LOT of them.

Since I’m not cool, I haven’t quite mastered the art of being an Argentine yet. The typical Argentine’s day goes a little something like this:

• Work
• Post-work coffee with friends at a local café – and there are at least 2-3 of them per block
• Dinner starts anywhere from 10PM to midnight – no restaurants open for dinner before 8, and most won’t even unlock their doors before 8:30 or 9
• It is downright UNCOOL to show your face at a club before midnight, and all the true club kids won’t make an appearance before 2AM
• Around 7AM, you drop into another café or confitería for un cortado y medialunas (coffee and croissants, basically), if you stop for breakfast at all, and then…
• You start another day of work.

It is highly apparent to me that I will never quite live up to the Argentine reputation. The best I can do is gaze longingly at all the beautiful Argentine men and mutter (under my breath, of course) that the Argentine women should go eat a cookie (a bag of cookies, in fact).

This is the preface to my stating that my first happy hour ended by about 9PM, when the second and third wave of colleagues and friends were just arriving at the bar, ready for happy hour. Dear lord, I am not worthy.

Despite my oft-repeated claims of lameness, I did have a busy and late Saturday. Brunch was at Tea Connection with my social sponsor and her sister, who were showing me around the neighborhood where I would be living very shortly. I mention Tea Connection because it just may be a new frequent hangout for me. First of all, it’s adorable. Second of all, it serves many different kinds of teas, an actual breakfast menu, and a whole host of other tasty, homemade treats. And perhaps most importantly, it has WiFi. Score!!!

Vanna also showed me my new building, which pretty much rocks my socks off. It’s a very modern affair, with a pool, playground, party room and grill on the ground floor, a gym on the top floor, and 2 saunas and 2 Jacuzzis on the roof (the saunas and Jacuzzis are separated by gender, which explains why they’re double-double your enjoyment). The building also has functioning heat – awesome!

Saturday night was the Marine Corp’s 70’s and 80’s party, for which I made JM be my date. And by that I meant that he would escort me so I wouldn’t have to show up alone. We had dinner at some steak house in his neighborhood (he lives in Belgrano, I live in Palermo), basically the only restaurant willing to open its doors at 8PM. Which means that we were standing at a locked door at 8PM and the staff reluctantly let us enter.

There I had my first taste of provoleta a la parrilla, which is basically a huge block of cheese fried to perfection on a grill. The best description I can give it is calling it a grilled cheese sandwich without the bread, and for which you probably should invite 3 of your closest friends to share. It’s a delicious trip to the land of heart disease.

I also had my first Argentine empanadas. In my opinion, these taste a whole lot different from their Peruvian cousins, which is largely because they include hard-boiled egg and olives. Don’t kill me for saying this, but I actually miss the Peruvian version, with its slices of lime to squeeze all over them with their citrusy goodness. (Although, to be fair, the Argentine version is very, very good – it just has a much stronger competitor in my humble opinion.)

Have I mentioned yet how little Argentines value vegetarians here? It is relatively difficult to get any kind of variety - both in restaurants and supermarkets - in vegetables, beans, and non-meat items. This place is all about their steak. (And mate, and coffee…) So when I saw grilled vegetables on the menu, I ordered them. And I was a happy girl.

So yeah, JM and I then met up with a few of his Argentine friends and we headed over to the Marine House, which is in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Or at least it felt like the middle of nowhere. Even with a map, I probably couldn’t find it again.

Regardless, I spent most of the night gabbing away with new and newer friends, drinking water, and avoiding dancing. But because the Marine House is located in the boonies, I had to wait for a long time for a remesa to appear (this is basically an unmarked taxi, which you call for pick-up) and I didn’t get home until after 2:30AM. Maggie was certainly standing at the door, tapping her little furry foot in exasperation…

My first Sunday in country was an even later affair. I started the day with a group brunch at Oui Oui, a fabulous little place that actually serves a real brunch menu. It is there that I tasted my very first submarino, which is the Argentine version of hot chocolate. Basically, they serve you a cup of steaming hot milk with a side of dark chocolate chunks, which you drop into the milk and melt to your little heart’s desire. I can’t say this will become a regular drink of mine, but for you chocolate lovers out there, it’s definitely something you don’t want to miss. And it totally hit the spot, as it was a miserable rainy Sunday. (Note: although I FAILED! in packing warm weather gear, I DID manage to bring an umbrella and my spring raincoat with me. Sometimes I even surprise myself…)

From brunch, it was off to meet with some friends of mine who I met in Peru and are now on some several-month-long South America trip. These are the guys who arrived in Buenos Aires the same day I did, but I was catching them on their last night in the city before they rented a car and started their drive around the country.

Anywho, we ended up in my neighborhood, which I don’t know very well so we wandered into the first open café we saw: Gomez. There, we proceeded to eat milanesa and medialunas and drink all the wine they probably had in stock. Then we moved the party to some steakhouse (again, my memory fails me), where we continued in the wining and dining tradition that is so popular here in Argentina. My head hit the pillow some time around 4AM (and yes, I was still up at 6AM to start another week of work).

This week, I skipped the Friday night happy hour and some Saturday night house party, but I DID end up at some bar in the San Telmo neighborhood on Wednesday (or was it Thursday?) where I saw a live Cuban jazz band play, which was pretty awesome. We were joined later by some DEA folks and, even though we wanted to leave (it was midnight when they appeared), they bought us champagne and we were stuck for at least another half hour. It ended up being kind of interesting, especially considering the fact that one of the guys looked like Kevin Bacon and the 25-year-old Consular intern I was sitting next to was insisting that I was 22- or 23-years-old. Unfortunately for me, the Kevin Bacon lookalike seemed to think I knew all the acronyms and program names he was using and I could barely hear him over the band’s second set. Ah well, them’s the breaks.

But now the Argentine crud has really settled in and I’m making all these super adult decisions not to go out, drink, or stay up late this weekend. So far it’s working out for me – mostly because I set the bar low early on by telling everyone who would listen that I am lame, with a capital “L.”

This weekend has largely been about settling into my permanent apartment (I moved on Wednesday!). I still haven’t received the 250lbs of stuff I was authorized to send by air, so I’m really only working with the things I was able to shove into 2 pieces of luggage and the box of goods I mailed to myself just before departing on the 12th. I also have moved some of the furniture around and spent some quality time thinking about how I will arrange my things when they finally do arrive. Oh, the possibilities!

So I finally did some actual food shopping, which is hysterical since I’ve been eating alfahores (cookies with a dulce de leche filling covered in chocolate), breadsticks, and the occasional serving of rice for dinner, when I haven’t been wined and dined by my new coworkers. I also wandered around a 10-block radius or so of my apartment with Maggie, just to see what I could see. I think I’ll be able to find just about everything I need so when I finally have some money to spend, boy, ain’t nothing gonna hold me back…

And today, just to illustrate the café culture here, I spent about 7 hours at a table in Tea Connection. I started with breakfast with a side of online banking, beveraged my way through lunch and Blog postings, was joined by my friend Karina who Skyped her family while we ordered a round of coffee, and then ordered some shoes online while I slurped through my third and fourth pot of tea. The whole darn day cost me about US$20. And not once did anyone tell me to get my fat, lazy butt out of the chair so they could put another client there.  Money well spent, I tell ya.

I miss you already, internets…