I Can Tell I'm Getting Homesick...

When I get Starbucks and then see Wall-E in English. Which, I'm slightly embarrassed to say, I did today. But Wall-E was great, and so was my caramel macchiato.

I've been studiously avoiding the Starbucks here (which opened to much fanfare in May), but when Karen suggested we go, I pretty much jumped at the opportunity. We met her Ecuadorean friend there, so I felt a little more legitimate. Going to the first Starbucks in Argentina with a non-American is kind of an EC in itself.

And despite my decidedly norteamericana night, I'm not exactly excited to leave. I can't isolate exactly what makes me so happy here, but these are some of the things I'm going to miss:

• Ferias: Sure, they all have the same cheap crap, and maybe it's being sold for four times more than it's worth (five times if it's Recoleta). But I love ferias. Even when I don't buy anything, I like just walking around and being a tourist. I like the smell of sugared peanuts, the hippies in their striped cotton pants and dreadlocks, the stalls with hundreds of mate gourds in red and green and purple.
  

• Boliches: It's taken me almost five months, but I've finally realized why I like clubs in Argentina better than clubs in the United States. And no, it's not because they aren't Toad's. (Although that probably also has something to do with it.) People dance differently here. In the United States, if you're not grinding with someone, you're dancing awkwardly in the group while you look for someone to grind with. And I don't like grinding. I think that makes me a prude, but I'm okay with that.

• Lunfardo: What am I going to do with all the porteño vocabulary I've learned? It's taken me a while to get used to it, but I'm starting to be able to use slang in my everyday speech. Bondi means bus, quiqui means anxiety, qué se yo means whatever and re- before an adjective adds emphasis. Also, the voseo is going to make me unintelligible to anyone who isn't from Argentina. Argentines use the word vos instead of tú, and conjugate all verbs in the second person differently that any other Spanish speakers. Guess I'll have to move here. (Am I joking? You decide.)

• Telos: Telo-spotting has become one of my favorite hobbies. A lot of Argentines live with their parents until they get married, which makes having sex awkward and complicated. At telos, you can rent rooms by the hour, without any of the stigma motels have in the US. They're everywhere, but almost invisible in a Leaky Cauldron way. Unless you know what to look for you can walk by one three times a week and never notice it's there. I consider it a sign that I've arrived that I can tell when "Playa Privada" means parking garage and when it means secret sex hotel. (For some reason, the phrase that identifies both garage and telo translates to "Private beach" in English. Also, for the record, I've never been to one. I just think they're funny.)

• The exchange rate: For dinner tonight, I had half a pizza and a beer. It cost me nine pesos, or three dollars, total. I could have gone to one of the best steakhouses in the city and gotten a grass-fed tenderloin steak for 18 U$D. I am not going to feel good about going back home and paying ten dollars for a sandwich at Cosi.

• My friends: I don't know if they qualify as something I'll miss about Argentina, exactly, since none of them are Argentine. But my friends are what I'm going to miss the most. (Except for Melinda and Daniel, who I'm already missing!)
  

Stay tuned for what I'll miss Part II — the food edition!