Chaska in South America

Sorry to all of you that I promised to keep updated via this blog and have so far not written a single thing! I just haven’t sat down at an internet cafe long enough to write a full entry. Hopefully I’ll be able to write at least once a week from now on to let everyone know how things are for me here. Wow, I’ve been here in Buenos Aires for over two weeks now! Things are going well for the most part, and I really like it here. It’s amazing how different my life is now from just a few weeks ago…I love this feeling of change and new experiences. As most of you know already I think, Matt and I plan to be here in Argentina till the beginning of December and then plan to travel the whole summer throughout Peru, Chile, and Brazil. We’ll be visiting Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Guatemala before coming home too but are still not completely certain when that will be.
Matt arrived in California September 9, and that basically began our whole adventure. We left California on Sept. 14 at 1am and had quite a trip getting here….a total travel time of over 24 hours. We flew on a super cheap South American airline, TACA, so I guess we basically just got what we paid for. It really wasn’t that bad, but we had an 8 hour layover in Costa Rica and about an hour layover in Lima, Peru…we got to Buenos Aires at like 3am. Our first couple days we both felt a little bit strange, it was like finally getting something you’ve been aticipating for a really long time and then once you get it, it really isn’t that great. I’m not sure why we felt like that, but we both did. Maybe because our first impressions of Buenos Aires were that it was basically like a run down Madrid…very similar to Madrid in a lot of ways, but a lot smoggier and not as clean in the streets and stuff. It wasn’t like being in this entirely brand new place where everything is a brand new feeling. Now that I’ve been here for a couple weeks, I’ve definitely changed my attitude from my first impressions of this city. It really is a great city with a lot of really great things to offer, and I’m really enjoying exploring it and learning more about it. The food is awesome and sooooo cheap. You can have a full meal with absolutely everything included for about $5. The people are all super friendly as well. Definitely different than Spaniards, who tend to be a little more closed upon first meetings.
Matt and I moved into an apartment really quickly. We didn’t plan on finding a place to live till at least a week after arriving, but the hostel we were staying in wasn’t the nicest or most comfortable place to be and we just ended up finding a place that worked out for us. It’s really tiny, and I know we are probably paying way more than we should be, but the location is really central and it’s fine for the few months that we’ll be here.
We wanted to start working as soon as possible, so that we don’t end up spending all the money we have saved up before we even start our real travelling. EBC, the company Matt and I got our TEFL certificate through and worked for in Madrid, helped us out by giving the names and email addresses of over 150 English schools here. Both of us emailed our resumes out to every single school on the list and had phone calls for interviews by the next day. Since then, we have both been hired by a couple different language schools, teaching business men and women at their offices (really similar to what we did in Madrid.) However, the pay is REALLY low and we don’t have very many hours at all. I’ve come to realize that I’m not going to be able to support myself on the money I’ll be making teaching here. I originally had planned to come back to Buenos Aires after travelling all summer to continue teaching till about June or July…I’m really not sure that I can do that now. I’ll be close to broke by the time we finish travelling. I’ve had to consider the possibility that I may have to come home a few months sooner than planned…maybe even by April or May. I really had anticipated being gone a full year, but I’d much rather spend my saved money on travelling than just living in one place, so that means I’ll spend my money a lot more quickly. Who knows, something may happen that will allow me to stay longer. I’ll just have to wait and see. I start teaching classes this week, so I’ll let you all know how they go in my next entry. I’m looking forward to meeting the students. Matt and I are both really dying to make some new friends. We’re having a fun time together, but we’d love to have some other people to hang out with! It’s hard being a guy and a when we’re out because everyone assumes we’re a couple and want to be left alone, which isn’t the case at all! We did get invited to a party on Friday by another American teacher from one of the schools we got hired at. We had a really fun time and got to meet some cool people, who we’ll hopefully hang out with again.
I promise to write much more frequently from now on, and I’m sure this blog will get a lot more interesting after December once the real travelling begins!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2005 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.