And We Are Off!

Finally the day has come! My husband Monsieur G (he is French and would like to remain private, hence Monsieur G) and I are leaving for our next adventure together in Buenos Aires. I have decided to create this blog mostly because of how useful I have found other blogs about moving/living in Argentina. Since the blogs I have been skimming through, for really the last six months, are full of so much incredible and juicy insider info, I thought it would only be fitting to repay my gratitude by putting my own blog out there.

As I have never stepped foot on South American soil I am extremely excited to be thrown into a completely new city and culture. I have so much buzzing through my head I can barely think straight. Here are a few thoughts:

Things that I am excited about:

• The food (Steak! Even though I find myself eating barely any red meat in the US, I am sure the steak will be delicious. Ice Cream and pizza! The Italian culture apparently greatly influenced the gastronomy of the city, big time. Empanadas, Peruvian food, French pastries etc.)
• The weather: Right now it is spring and soon to be summer!
• Sitting at a café drinking café con leche while people watching. After spending a lot of time in Paris I really crave the café lifestyle again, which Starbucks really does not come close to comparing. Plus I have read that many consider Argentine women the most beautiful and fashionable women in the world, which makes the city perfect for people watching.

Things I am nervous about:

• Our apartment: It is always scary renting an apartment online without the ability to check it out first. I spent many hours searching through the ads on Craigslist, most of which being pretty horrible deals. We were finally tipped off about a reliable rental agency called BYTargentina, which has hundreds, maybe thousands of rental options (anywhere from 1 week to a year). The woman we dealt with seems very trustworthy and the pictures of our place seem nice, not to mention the fact that it comes with a MAID SERVICE once a week! We are paying $750/month for a 55m2 in Recoleta. I’ll update with pics once we are there.
• Getting robbed: We lived in DC for the past 2 years and let me tell you, there are many crime-ridden areas. If the threat of mugging is all I have to worry about in Buenos Aires, for the most part, that is less scary. The popular way hooligans go about mugging the, ever so obvious, tourist is that part that makes me cringe. Apparently they douse the unsuspecting victim with some kind of mixture of crap, when at about the same time, another person (usually a seemingly trustworthy looking woman) comes to the rescue with tissues just long enough to advert the fact that her accomplice has taken off with all of your stuff. Sounds pretty disgusting. Now I think that anytime a porteno comes to help me out with something I will react with extreme anger.

My Goals while I am there:

• Become fluent in Spanish
• Find an interesting internship/job (This could be tricky but I always have teaching English as an option)
• Try to make some good porteno (the word to identify the locals) friends. This sounds pretty easy but honestly my time spent living as an expat in London and in Paris I really only had expat friends.