First Impression

Well I made it, luggage was all there, and so was the nice man holding a sign with my name on it. Coming from Cleveland, which was at a low of 17 degrees when I left, and arriving to 80 degrees and extreme humidity was quite a shock. So was the size of Buenos Aires. It's impossible to look at a map and fully comprehend just how big of a city it is. My taxi driver was flying from street to street (I stress flying because here no rules apply on the roads, in fact most four way intersections that don't require a stoplight don't have stop signs) I could hardly figure out where we were and where we were going.

Well my final destination was in Almalgro, a northwestern sub-section of Buenos Aires. The barrio, or neighborhood where my host mother lives is a great representation of the European and Latin American influences that combined to form Buenos Aires. It's almost as if someone has placed parts of Spain, Italy, and France in the middle of Mexico. There are beautiful plazas, cathedrals, and buildings surrounded by open-air markets and palm trees. Although quaint in it's appearance, Buenos Aires is a very busy city. People, pets, cars, and motor scooters are ever present, which made for a loud night's sleep my first night.

As for the weather, I arrived towards the end of summer and rain has proven to be the great indicator of a season change. Similar to Florida, it will be sunny and beautiful one minute and then out of nowhere will come a torrential down pour. When it rains it pours here! The first few pictures that I'm including are of the flood that occurred on my second night. I was home alone; my host-mom was in the suburbs visiting her daughter for the night, when the power went out. It had been raining heavily for about an hour, so I went to the window to see if others had lost power. To my surprise, there was about 3 -4 feet of water flowing down the street. As this was the first time I've experienced such a thing, I was curious and ran down stairs with my camera. Shocked at what I saw I initiated conversation with the locals about what was happening. They new right away that I wasn't from Buenos Aires and it wasn't my accent that gave it away. It was the fact that this sort of thing happens about once a month. I proceeded to question them about how long it will take for the water to go back down and the one man said as soon as it stops raining it will be gone in less than a half hour. Two minutes later the rain stopped and the water was gone in 20 min.

So enjoy the first few pictures of the flood, but please note that this city is very beautiful I just happened to be there during one of its messy moments.