sweet home buenos aires (or) entre porteños y platenses

• LA LLEGADA
  I returned to Buenos Aires, smelling of B.O. and Chilean alfajores, after a 20-plus hour bus ride back from Santiago. I went to hang out with my friend Andrea, a Columbian Buenos Aires transplant and film student, and out of this chance meeting came the offer to fill a vacant space in her 4-person apartment in San Telmo. This will be my home at least for this month, as I work out the commute (45 minutes by bus to La Plata - doable?) and continue to check out housing options in La Plata.
  
  LA PLATA
  I went to visit Prof. Morales and she is an awesome person! She took me around the city, gave me a tour of the academic buildings, introduced me to a few students, and is helping me to get adjusted to moving in. I`m really excited to start doing my discussion sections for the English classes, because I`ve pretty much been given a lot of room to be creative with activities. Also, I might help out in a few literary and cultural studies classes there dealing with American literature (so like, talking about The Scarlet Letter or The House on Mango Street with a bunch of Argentine college students.) Most excellent.
  I also met up with Diego and the Comisiòn por la Memoria. It turns out that Diego lives about 10 blocks from me in Buenos Aires, so the commute is possible. He may even give me a ride there when he gets a car. Things at the Commission are similarly open to my interpretation and plans. I`m going to have an ongoing orientation this coming week and get familiar with their different departments and programs and then see where I can work with them. Also, there are 9 William and Mary students there doing a new exchange program masterfully organized by Prof. T. Three of them are my former Sharpies. It`ll be exciting to work with the Commission while they are there and to once again connect with them and their W&M sized sense of curiosity.
  
  ANYWAY
  I LOVE LIVING IN SAN TELMO! IT IS AMAZING! It is the art and tango capital of Buenos Aires and is within walking distance of the best parts of the city. And my roommates are really nice. Couldn´t be more happy with my housing arrangement.
  
  -----
  
  I´d like to clarify a few correct and incorrect assumptions I had about living in Buenos Aires before I arrived here:
  
• The schools are high quality. Correct. Public universities are essentially free and are high quality. The Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata are both ranked in the top 100 universities in the world and are number 1 and 2 in Argentina, respectively, in terms of prestige. I`m in a good place of learning.
• The streets are paved with gold. Incorrect. The streets are paved with trash, like in most capital cities. But check out the amazing green space and public gardens here! Very amazing and liveable city.
• The food is good. Correct (with qualification). You can get amazingly amazingly good pizza, steak, pasta, empanadas, burgers, wine, pastries, espresso or mate here. It is mindblowingly good and usually very cheap. What you can`t get in high quantity or quality: fruits or vegetables or things your doctor tells you to eat.
• The rent is cheap. Incorrect. The rent was cheap until all the Europeans and North Americans found out and bought time shares in BA and made it hard for Argentines to live in the capital. Housing is a seller`s market. Inflation is still the main culprit, though, since prices of utilities are going up as well - the energy crisis thing having its ripple effect. House-hunting is hard wherever you come from and Argentina`s middle class is sort of disappearing as people have to live with 3 generations in the same apartment.
• Los argentinos son pesados. Incorrect. People are expressive and talk with loud voices and lots of hand motions. True, people wear much nicer clothes than they can afford and they`re very proud of their highways, their Maradona, their team, etc., but they are way nice and will go out of their way to help you out. I didn´t imagine myself as a porteño but I`m liking living in the capi capi.
• Finding work in Argentina is easy. Correct (with qualification). If you work hard and have education, finding how to work shouldn´t be a problem. Unemployment is a bit of a problem in Argentina, but what there is more often is under-employment, that is, people working in jobs they are over-qualified for because of the job market.
  There it is, from my completely biased perspective.