I check out the bookstore that is built in a theater and the room is cavernous, shelves lining the floor like a ballroom for books instead of people. Volumes on every matter are shelved from the floor to the ceiling, though, the ceiling in some places surpasses the height of any bookshelf. The ceiling is thirty feet high at its maximum. The philosophy section is stocked with every philosopher. Every subject is contained within this building, my paradise. Perhaps it contains most of the world’s knowledge. Large volumes, small manifestos, medium novels, tomes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, photo albums. I envy the people who work here; perhaps they know. It’s an emporium, the clerks selling, and I can imagine the money they pull. The motive is to expand minds. I think about asking the clerk whether she knows she has the best job. “El Ateneo” is the name. This bookstore is strange in its Willy Wonka candy factory way. Stores converted from theaters. That speaks to me as an injustice. Is their motive really to expand minds? I would feel slightly uneasy if it were. It’s a store!

Other places I have been are noteworthy. The poetry workshop meets in a building not too far away that reminds me of a library. The stairways are large and use up a lot of space; the floor is linoleum. I see multiple classrooms. My workshop meets in one of them. The class is in Spanish. I make one remark about someone’s work but that’s the only time I speak except to chat with the instructor afterward. He is a poet after all. Everyone in the class is nice. I am bringing a poem in today that I will workshop with the group. Figuring out poetry in Spanish is hard. Especially when the other poems suppose basic vocabulary you don’t have. Hard to figure out what comment to make about your compatriots’ work. I make it work. This is the first class.

I learn of the fact that everybody lines up in a queue to get on the bus, an unfriendly woman tells me, instead of the vague free-for-all that exists at U.S.A. bus stops, at least as things are in Boulder, Colorado. A guy chats me up after this, asking where I’m from and I say U.S.A., except not trying to brag about it. He grins and asks me about the nature of bus stops in the United States–I tell him that it is a free-for-all there. He says good luck and gets on a different bus, not the one I’m taking. I think about this later. What other parts of American society are strange? The bus stop thing is innocuous compared to certain things. It’s nice when people tell you things you’re doing wrong. Seriously, because otherwise, you’d never know!

I’ll never understand why everyone walks so slowly here. I feel like a pace car, driving pedestrian traffic like a jockey whips a horse. I am used to fast-paced U.S.A. streets, where people get angry when you don’t walk fast. No analogs exist for that in Buenos Aires. Perhaps people get angry when you don’t walk slow enough here. I don’t think people really get too angry in public here, at least to the naked eye of a United States observer. I hear a lot of car horns, but that’s normal. Normal phenomena like that exist in the U.S.A., too. I find myself rushing to compare things. U.S.A. phenomena to Argentinian ones. A bus stop in Boulder, for example, never will have a line formed. One distinction. I can’t tell why this is. Can’t determine whether it’s weird or not.

I went, for the first time, to a university in a foreign country. First off, I’ll say: things were a little different. First things first, the teacher spoke only Spanish. This was in my Metaphysics class. It was being held at the University of Buenos Aires’s prestigious philosophy and letters building.

I met a few people in the class, including Alan, with whom I’ve arranged to study the work of Aristotle and Jorge Luis Borges. That is our homework for Tuesday’s marathon-like class. I say it’s marathon-like because I’ll have 6 hours of straight metaphysics on Tuesday of this upcoming week. That’s a lot of metaphysics for one day.

Alan is my first Argentinian friend, and I also met some of his friends that very same day. That was probably the highlight of my week: hanging out in the courtyard of the University of Buenos Aires philosophy and letters building with my new friends. The conversation subject was philosophy, of course, though I had to say words like “Phenomenology” in Spanish. I tried my best to express my ideas about philosophy.

I joined a gym as of late and am running there every single day (except Sunday, on which the gym is closed). The gym is nice. It pleases me to go there. It’s also right across the street from where I live. (No excuses).

I honestly didn’t expect to make so many friends in the first week of classes, but I did make friends, and I like them all. A metaphysics class, take note, is a good place for me to make friends. That is a good thing.

I still dream about writing novels down here. I try to write fiction and a journal every single day, as well, knowing my efforts some day will culminate in some sort of opus. Whether it’s an opus of fiction or poetry or an opus of funk (music reference), I don’t know what it will be. But stay prepared.

In whole, this whole Argentina thing was a good idea. I came down here, not quite knowing what to expect, but it is panning out in my favor. That is good–to say that.

The second class I went to at the University of Buenos Aires was a bit of a different story, as it was difficult to follow, and was designed for a student more advanced in the study of linguistics than I was. The class was called Phonology and Morphology (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) I dropped said class and decided to enroll in another class that seems more manageable. I am liking the aspect of this trip that is related to the concept of freedom. I have a lot of freedom here. It’s not to say that I did not have freedom in Boulder, but I feel like life in Buenos Aires is pretty free. I can do almost anything I want down here.

And so, I will end up with a manageable schedule (that still includes Metaphysics in Spanish). That probably won’t be the easiest course I’ve taken in college. Nonetheless, it seems manageable, and as long as they don’t delve too much into Ancient Greek, I should turn out okay.

I’ve been taking the bus (colectivo) a lot more down here lately because in the subway (Subte), when you ride it, you don’t get to see surface-level things (such as places you’d want to check out later, or whatever else). I like flagging down the buses (you have to wave aggressively to get one to stop for you.) (It’s actually not that hard, but I said that for comic effect).

I arrived here in Buenos Aires, Argentina two weeks ago exactly. When I got off the airplane I knew I was in a different place. Maybe it hadn’t set in yet, the excitement. But I got off the plane and realized that I had changed environments. This was not only a place in which they spoke Spanish only, most of the time, but a different ambiance. Not only were there Spanish words being hurled around by everyone, but there seemed to be a slightly different pace to the atmosphere. And this was only in the airport that I noticed this. This was my first impression of what Argentina was like.

I got to the meeting point where I was supposed to meet everyone else from my program, spoke a little Spanish with the person who was collecting us all, and then boarded a bus they had arranged to take us to a hotel. As we rode the bus through the city, I noticed buildings we passed; many, many buildings. Some were constructed of white bricks, others, pure glass and metal. The city left a distinct impression on me as we rode through its heart.

There were activities arranged for us when we arrived at the hotel. First, a welcome lunch during which we had to learn the Argentinian way of greeting one another or meeting someone for the first time. Women, and sometimes men, were to be kissed on the cheek and hugged. Men were to be hugged at the very least. This had to be done, otherwise, it could cause a cultural misunderstanding. So, all of us in the group kissed one another on the cheek and doled out hugs like free hug day. (None of us knew each other terribly well at this point).

But there was a camaraderie between us all already. All of us had chosen this program for a reason, of course. Thus, I feel like we all had a similar mindset. We all wanted to be in Buenos Aires, whether it was to study literature or to experience the culture or to travel around or to speak Spanish. All of us, I felt, had a reason to be here, and nobody really had the same reason.

Chronologically next was meeting my host family. Mariana greeted me at the hotel. She’s a lovely blonde woman who lives in Buenos Aires who has two kids, both of whom I’ve met, named Daniela and Hernán. The kids are older than me, though only by a little bit. The family is very warm, very nice.

I’ve taken every form of public transit now in the city. I’ve also taken Uber, which I was told is illegal here, but I took it anyway. The bus system is quite good, as is the subway. I will probably not get into the habit of taking Uber much, since it is far more expensive than the public forms of transit.

I will start my classes at UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires) next Monday. I will be taking Metaphysics and a Superior Logic class (the extension of symbolic logic). The classes will be entirely in Spanish. I will also be taking a Spanish language class at FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) which is centered on oral production, as in, giving speeches, I suppose, though I haven’t looked at the syllabus extensively at this point. The FLACSO class starts a week later than the classes at UBA. The classes at UBA will be with local students, while the class at FLACSO will be with the other kids on my program, who hail from all over the United States, and a couple from outside of the States.

I am enjoying my time here so far, and I hope to write a lot more this semester about my experiences here. I have seen multiple cultural landmarks, including the Casa Rosada (the place where the president works), and the Teatro Colón, where aristocrats used to socialize and see shows, and where people still see shows (various operas and classical music) to this day. It is a luxurious theater with some of the best acoustics in any theater in existence today. There are large boxes, seats on the floor, as well as standing room up above at the top for people to enjoy the shows that are presented there.

I am glad to have had time to sit down and write this post, as I’ve been busy here, but not busy enough to prevent me from writing this post.