Introductions

So to avoid future confusion… I’m traveling with some folks. In fact, Casa Jardin, our hostel, has turned into some sort of family home. It’s funny how you automatically bond with people when you’re in an unfamiliar situation. We cook dinners together, go out to dinners together, go dancing… And then when we wake up in the mornings we go out to coffee together. It’s turning into a real relationship rather quickly.
The hostel is a funky old town house with windows everywhere. You walk up a winding staircase to enter “the lobby,” where there is always someone sitting behind an desk made out of a really old sewing machine, a wooden cabinet and a night stand. The computer has free internet, when it works. Normally, one of four people is sitting at the desk. Rosanna is the hostel manager, she’s a thirty something studying accounting and has some kickass shoes. Many of our discussions revolve around traditional Argentine fashion; one day she told me I looked Argentine as long as I didn’t open my mouth. Fernando deals with all the scheduling of rooms and drinks a lot of maté. He also seems superhip since he’s always on his spiffy Apple computer in the lobby, so I feel a little intimidated when I talk to him. Sebastian doesn’t speak any English, which sometimes makes it a little hard to communicate with some in the hostel, but makes for a good game of charades. He still seems to have all his baby fat in a cute roly poly kind of way. Lots of times, we’ll wander in the door and he’ll be watching an American movie dubbed in Spanish. (btw, Sam, we watched a dubbed version of Top Gun, my life is now complete). The last person who is often here is a dude who is studying English (language, not lit). Our conversations are always a little bit fun because I get to talk in Spanish and he talks in English and then we correct each other in our nonnative language. It’s actually awesome.
The people in the hostel are always changing, but like us, there are some long term folks who will be here for about the same period as we will. **We** consists of Monica, Kevin, Jenny and I, just so you know who the cool kids are. We also often includes Heidi, this awesome chick from Sydney, Australia who is taking a Spanish class here. She’s a vegetarian, has a strange fascination with hippies and seems, for some strange reason, to really enjoy hanging out with a bunch of Americans from the Stanford coop community. There’s also a girl, Maia, from the Richmond section of San Francisco. Now she’s a graduate at Columbia and is doing here doing research with an Argentine think-tank. The girl from Holland, whose name sounds something like Merlouse, is also down here for a while doing pediatric work in a hospital for part of here studies. She and I discuss the trials and travails of apartment searching (problem solved on my end at least). Then, there’s the Norwegian dude who is studying political science here, likes electronica music, surfing in Uruguay and eats a lot of meat, including reindeer (sorry, Rudolph). The pretty much consists of our daily cast of characters. Más, más tarde... ¡Besitos!