A Typical Day the Porteño Way
Because I am now in Patagonia, my days are anything but typical. We embark on new adventures daily and our schedule fluctuates with the weather and visibility here.
For example, we were supposed to fly out to El Calafate at eleven AM this past Monday, but our flight was canceled due to a storm in Patagonia. We ended up spending the entire day in the airport waiting for our new flight to leave at seven that evening. The flight took us to Rio Gallegos, and from there we had a three-and-a-half-hour drive to El Calafate. After arriving at our hotel at four in the morning, I went right to sleep, only to wake up at nine in the morning the same day for breakfast. Our schedule of events here has now been reconfigured to ensure that we can trek the Perito Moreno Glacier, take a boat tour of Lago Argentino, the largest lake in Argentina, and volunteer at the local dog shelter as planned. We now have a new flight home as well because flights in and out of Patagonia are constantly shifting with the weather in the wintertime.
These past few days in Uruguay and Patagonia have been a little hectic, but my days in Bueno Aires definitely fell into a sort of pattern towards the end of my time there. Each day began at 7:30am when I would rise with the sun, dress, and meet Rita and Nicola in the kitchen for a light breakfast before school. Nicola and I would leave the apartment around 8:30am, once a week at 8:20am to stop at the laundromat and drop off our limited supply of clothing to be washed, and walk to the 50 Colectivo stop to wait for our bus to school. The bus ride lasted fifteen minutes and took us to Calle Florida, a touristy shopping center similar to Downtown Crossing in Boston. From Calle Florida we walked five minutes to Calle Tucumán where our school was located. Upon entering the school each morning, we were greeted with biscuits and pastries and an assortment of coffees and teas to sip on and warm up with. Spanish class would officially begin around 9:15am each morning, but Porteños are not extremely punctual or strict with time so class would actually start around 9:30-9:45am.
My class was a group of six students and a young professor named Flavia. She spoke only in Spanish to us which made class both a challenge and a tool in my Spanish-speaking survival kit. We conversed about our lives in Buenos Aires, practiced verb conjugations and exercises with unfamiliar phrases and grammar in our workbooks, played games such as scategories and hangman, and watched a few Argentinian movies. Class lasted from 9:15-11:00am when we then had a quick break to chat with friends or run out and grab a snack before reconvening at 11:30am to continue class until 1:00pm.
We ate lunch from 1:00pm to 2:00pm, sometimes later depending on the activity we had planned for our culture class that day. The activities ranged from architecture tours to museum visits, to lectures on economy, history, or literature, to trips to famous eateries in the city. The culmination of this culture class was the presentation of the projects we had been working on all month in small groups. My group presented our research on the Indigenous People of Argentina while other groups discussed topics such as Evita Perón, the club soccer rivalry between River Plate and La Boca Juniors, and the street dogs of Buenos Aires.
This portion of the day would end at unpredictable hours, again depending on the activity we had done that day. We were always out by 5:00pm at the latest, which happened to be merienda (the small meal between lunch and dinner) time. My friends and I would usually head to a nearby café and order coffee and pastries or small sandwiches to snack on, make plans for the days to come and the weekends, and get to know each other better. I became very close with a small group of people through the time we spent together during these meriendas each day.
After this refreshing break, Nicola and I would either walk home or hop on one of the many Colectivos that went back to our neighborhood to take a quick nap or work on some homework before dinner each evening. We dined with Rita at nine and had a blast working on our Spanish to discuss the day’s events and those to come. Dinner would end at around 9:45pm and I would usually then shower, finish homework, sometimes skype my mom and friends, and just relax before bed. On weekend evenings, I would use this time after dinner to formulate plans for that night or take a quick power nap before heading out at midnight to join the early crowd at the bars and clubs of Palermo. Coming home before 4:00am is not a common thing for Porteños on the weekends and I often found myself becoming more like the locals with each passing day and coming home later and later after a night out with friends.
On weekdays, however, I would be in bed by eleven because sleep is precious and I was always so worn out after each day in Buenos Aires. Now, because my days are unpredictable, I am missing my time in the big city and looking forward to returning home and the start of a new semester with great anticipation.
