A Place to Call Home

We moved! Finally we can stop sharing a closet for four and start walking around in our underwear.

I feel like I need to write the whole story in order for you all to share in our feeling of complete and utter relief.

Our landladies, well they aren’t technically our landladies but our understanding of the situation is that the owners of the apartment commissioned these two sisters to rent out the apartment. Mimi knows this girl, Samantha Fernandez, and she was living in Argentina, working. As luck would have it, she was going back to the States just as we were getting to Argentina. She is the one that put us in contact with these two women.

Their names are Susana and Amalia. These two sisters live together and rent out apartments. They do not speak clearly and they are constantly forgetting that they are talking to two girls that do not speak Spanish fluently. When they do try to clarify things, they do so at the same time and then start fighting about how to adequately get their point across. They will tell us how to do something one hundred times and when we do as instructed, they tell us that they never said to do that to begin with! All in all it is really confusing and frustrating.

One example.

They said that we could stop by anytime to drop off some money for the deposit and the first few months of rent because the landlords have stated that we must pay them in cash, not by checks, credit cards or money orders. How convenient for them.

<---our room in the hostel

A few days after Susana and Amalia said this, Mimi and I came back with some pesos. When we got to their apartment they looked shocked and perplexed. They didn’t know why we were giving them money and they then asked us to call be for we came. I think the worst part is they speak to us like we are kindergarteners. (I guess that’s understandable because I do speak Spanish at about the same lever as a 5 year old)

We finally got into the apartment and everything had a nice layer of scum: the walls, the floors, the plates, everything. Not only that but the décor is something strait out of the 1970s… doilies on the tables, black lamps accented in gold and some nice mirrored night stands.

The second Mimi walked in she said, “If my mom saw these curtains she would die.” The curtains are really grotesque. They are a grayish color and at first glance, they look dirty but we have concluded that that is just how they came. Gross.

Tonight Mimi and I made dinner. (Thanks to Mr. D’s lovely recipe of meat and potatoes.) Everything was in the pan all ready to be put in the oven, and then we realized, we had no idea how to turn the damn thing on! It is a gas stove and after a few seconds with the gas on, we concluded that it didn’t have a polite light. As we are waving around the lighter in the stove, I am having visions of us getting blown up. We ended up deciding that this was not the best way to go about lighting the stove. Perhaps it was time to consult the neighbors.

There are four apartments on our floor. We knocked on each one once and then rang to doorbell for each one. No one was home. Finally one person was home. His name is David (said daveed FYI) and he answered his door in basically his underwear (apparently he likes to walk around in his underwear too) and said he would gladly help us out right after he put something sensible on. He was really nice and tried not to laugh when we told him that we didn’t know how to light our stove! Haha

All in all, we really love our apartment. It is located on avenida Santa Fe and Puerredon. It is literally right across the street from the metro and it is in the neighborhood of Palermo. Our building has a security guard at all times as well. (AKA it is nice and safe… parents and grandparents you can now take a breath.)

We have a nice balcony and the picture of outside is a view from it. The only drawback to living on such a central place is that it is loud! I’ll just have to put my notesinspanish podcast on every night while I fall asleep. (maybe I’ll start dreaming in Spanish faster!)

Lots of love,

Jenna and Mimi


<---Our little kitchen!



Our room in the hostel
View from our balcony and our living room.