You know what’s really time-consuming? Keeping a blog. Ha.

So yeah, I’m finally here, and I have to say, being alone in another country feels great.

You’ll have to pardon me not taking many more pictures, as I want to take pictures of anything and everything, but I don’t exactly want to go flashing around to the whole known world that I have an expensive DSLR camera with me, and that I’m a clueless foreigner at that. Once I get my bearings a bit better and look like I know what I’m doing, I’ll take more environmental shots, etc, etc.

For now, though, I’m taking pictures in the privacy of my own dorm and whenever I deem it safe enough to do so. As in this above photo I shot of myself in the bathroom of the Milhouse Avenue Hostel:

So this hostel is pretty awesome. If by chance you ever come to Buenos Aires, I highly recommend it. As soon as I walked in, a 20-something-year-old hippie dude called out to me from behind the counter. The most prominent sign when you walk in reads, “PARTY – Tonight at 11:30.” Staff is really hospitable. They play awesome music (Led Zeppelin when I walked through the door, right now some kind of jazz-rock fusion stuff). Oh, and the security is through the roof. You’re most likely only going to find other foreigners here, I’d say. I ran into several people speaking Portuguese. It felt good, not being able to understand what they were talking about. Like I was in a real cosmopolitan community.

So my Tio Rico thought I was going to arrive on the flight tomorrow, not today. I waited for him for about an hour, being heckled by a helpful, perhaps overbearing or even creepy old guy who kept offering me a ride in his taxi. He was missing some teeth and was a wiry man. He seemed pretty trustworthy, though. Regardless, Lesson #1: Don’t accept rides from overenthusiastic strangers that hang near airport exit terminals.

LAN Chile Airlines comes highly recommended from me. It was hard to understand the English, so I can honestly say you might miss some really important directions if you didn’t have a handle on Spanish as well. But there were televisions on every seat, great foodstuffs and cute, crying babies to boot. I waved to Matheus, the little guy next to me, and he then kept waving back at me the whole ride, staring at me with wide black eyes.

I tried to teach him the peace sign, but sigh, to no avail. He’ll have to wait a few years for his inner hippie to arise.

Anyway, I got served in-flight vodka. Drinking age is 18 in Chile and Argentina. We weren’t quite out of the US when they offered me wine, beer or hard liquor, but maybe the drinking age up in the air on LAN Chile is 18, no matter where you are.

In any case, it was good. And you see that cheesecake in the corner of the picture there? Delicious. How about the TV screen? Movies, TV shows, music, and much more in both English and Spanish, sometimes Portuguese. EDIT: You can’t see the TV in this pic, I apologize, but you can probably imagine what it looks like.

As soon as the plane landed, I realized it was raining. Oh no! So I didn’t get to see Buenos Aires from above.

I did get to experience winter in Santiago, though. Man, they’re not kidding when they say it’s winter down there – it was snowing! More like flurrying, but you get the idea.

Well, I’m off to traverse the unknown and find a cell phone, as well as see if I can contact two IES students who happened to arrive early as well. In any case, there’s a party tonight, so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of dancing, as well as opportunity to meet people from around the world. Woot.

Last note: If you ever travel internationally, make sure you take off all of your metal chains and apparatuses, shoving them into your bag beforehand. Of course, I’ve taken care to be conservative with necklaces, etc., before on flights, but lo and behold I spent several minutes stripping at security this time around… Yeah. Don’t be that guy.

Location: Avenida de Mayo 1245, Buenos Aires, Argentina