I have arrived in Buenos Aires, a day late-gracias to a Chilean volcano closing the airport and a little worse for the wear after 24 hours in the air.
I’m sharing a charming three bedroom apartment in a lovely neighborhood with the owner and my host mom, Haydee, (Heidi), a retired widowed elementary school teacher with patience as big as this city of seven million people. Haydee lives alone, but all of her four children live nearby and talk to her either in person or on the phone every day. We live in a very secure building on the third floor of a ten story building with a charming patio that I can imagine would be lovely in the summer.
Like most Portenos, Haydee lives in an apartment that by our standards would be small, but by Buenos Aires’ would be big. I have my own room at the end of the hall right next to the bath. Once she showed me that the light switches are side to side rather than up and down, and that the button to flush the stool is on the wall behind the device, I was relieved of a few initial awkward moments.
She provides me with two meals a day, breakfast and cena (supper), which normally isn’t until 9PM or later. Yesterday when I arrived, it was almost 2:00-- lunchtime--the main meal of the day. Haydee graciously invited me to share almuerzo after I got settled in. For each course she prepared, she took away our dishes and served the next course on a clean plate. First we had hard boiled eggs with tuna, then a shredded carrot and tomato salad, followed by a mountain of pasta with a light marinara sauce, then fresh fruit—all on a plate and always eaten with a knife and fork. If my American style of using a knife and fork was strange to them, they tactfully pretended not to notice. Tonight, boiled Brussels sprouts with baked zapallito, kind of like stuffed green peppers. I can’t wait! Here's Haydee in her cocina with zapallitos:
