Day 147 (November 16): The First Week in Buenos Aires

The metropolitan population of Buenos Aires is about 16 million, which is much, much bigger than anywhere our kids have ever been before.

The primary language of Buenos Aires is Spanish, which is much, much different than the only language our kids have ever spoken.

The dinner time in Buenos Aires is 10pm, which is much, much later than our kids go to sleep, much less eat!

In other words, this week has been full of many transitions and most of them have gone pretty badly. Nevertheless, this blog post will include many pictures of smiles and the beauty we have found throughout. Here are a few highlights to motivate you to read through this banal travelogue:

So the arrival was rough. We had an overnight layover in Panama City, which gave us the opportunity (which was awesome!) to visit the Panama Canal. The bummer was that we had to leave for our flight before we had a chance to see a vessel transiting the locks. An unsolicited endorsement: the Westin Hotel was beautiful (and only $125/night per room) and they easily arranged a van that took us to the canal visitor center and then the airport, very seamlessly.

Because our flight was rescheduled, we landed at midnight instead of 9pm and reached our apartment at 2am. The two hour time difference mitigated that a bit but the kids didn't sleep at all on the 7-hour flight. We got great advice to hire a private shuttle in advance, which was much better than having to haggle or negotiate for a ride. (Manuel Tienda Leon, in case you are heading to BA anytime soon.)

We improvised some breakfast (there's a good grocery store one block away) and got picked up at 2pm for a bus tour of the city. This was my first experience booking a tour/activity through AirBNB and it went quite well. The kids survived the outing (barely) and we got to see some major sights: La Boca (home to the famous Futbol stadium and a colorful, old neighborhood near the original port that is key to the city's immigrant history); Plaza de Mayo, the architectural and symbolic center of the city; Recoleta Cemetary, which includes the mausoleum housing Eva "Evita" Peron, who makes a useful protagonist for the kids' understanding of Argentina.

We headed to dinner at an Italian restaurant that we thought would be a safe choice for our tired, disoriented children. We were wrong. The only consolation when you spend two hours struggling with four kids over dinner is that the exchange rate meant all the wasted food didn't cost very much money because of the favorable exchange rate. We stumbled home.

On each day in the rest of this first week, we did school in the "morning" (usually 11-2) and then embarked on some walking adventure. The first day we headed south into the Recoleta neighborhood, which looks like most European cities: five- or six-story apartment buildings with wrought iron balconies, some quite old but most relatively new. There are small stores on the street: butcher shops, green grocers, pharmacies, etc. The scale of retail is very small. The sidewalks remind me of walking in Athens or Florence and nowhere in the United States. Our walk took us to numerous parks (on purpose) and each one had something that amused the kids until it didn't anymore. 

Each park tends to have an enclosed playground with excellent equipment for elementary aged kids. There are usually a few soccer balls in play. In one instance, Ali and Cate took turns being very frustrated that they couldn't join the other kids, not knowing the words and not having the confidence to insert themselves.

We found a grand boulevard (Libretador) with immense parks across from grand apartment buildings. Somewhere beyond is the Atlantic Ocean but we didn't catch a glimpse from where we walked. We made it home with some groceries and cooked a familiar dinner with some substitude ingredients, all of which was mostly rejected by the kids who went to bed mostly hungry and tired.

The next day, our afternoon outing was to the Japanese Garden, which was excellent. The kids loved the Koi ponds with their enormous residents. At one moment, we encountered a class trip whose students were fascinated by Ali's commentary in English. She was surrounded (happily) by gawking peers and thrilled when we discerned that most of them were also six years old. 

Yesterday (Friday), our outing was to the Rose Gardens and the pond with paddle boats. We barely made it there, though. The kids are getting used to walking places and it was pretty hot. We got ice cream and restocked our water along the way but the cheeks were rosy and the little legs were tired. The boat ride produced an opportunity for a family meeting about gratitude and complaining. It hasn't been an easy week for any of us. At least we figured out how to use a local shared ride app to get back to the apartment without having to speak any of our inadequate Spanish!

We were able to arrange a babysitter so Elise and I made plans to meet the cousin of our friend Josh - yes, the same remarkable Josh who set us up in Costa Rica. One cousin turned into two cousins plus a spouse and soon, remarkably, there were five adults at a restaurant having a real conversation. The evening was lovely and the week was ending on a promising note.  The babysitter charged less per hour than I did 30 years ago, which felt barely ethical. The night was partly undone by overnight bloody noses (bad for Cate, minor for Ali) that were probably caused by the medicine we got to treat the surprise onset of allergies (it is spring here!).

We all slept until about 10am, as usual, and immediately began a day of doing absolutely nothing. As I write, the kids are on their various screens watching whatever. For an hour or two, they all snuggled on our bed watching a favorite: Disney's nature documentary about a family of chimps. Because of course our kids love to watch a nature documentary together without complaining!

From the insight/analysis perspective, I think the week went about as well as we should have expected. It's tough to adjust to time zones, language and living in a huge city. I don't think the kids will say they loved BA or demand to come back but I think they'll realize, at some point, that it is an amazing city and that it was a great first place for us to try living abroad. The parks we've seen so far are extraordinary. 

I hope that in the week ahead we get a bit more below the surface. We have an in-home Spanish class scheduled for Tuesday and I think we'll add a cooking class to our agenda. Last night gave us a connection to a cooking class that I hope will give us an opportunity to visit a market so that we try some new ingredients. (Truly, though, Lily could spend the rest of the week just eating fresh mangoes from one of the green grocers on our block.)