Key

So my regular porter (security-ish, doorman-esque, receptionist-y) is on vacation. Apparently much of the city is still on summer break. Yes, that’s right. I went from snow and inhumanely cold wind to the end of summer, where without this perfect cross breeze I think I might get a little too warm. Speaking of this cross breeze, LOVE my new place! I can’t tell you how key it is to be able to move into my digs directly. So nice.

It was great, my colleague that met me at the airport came with me to show me around my apartment. She brought out a wad of keys. “Are those really the keys?” I asked. “Yeah.” (Harry Potter fans, do you remember the flying keys in the Chamber of Secrets? My mum calls these skeleton keys.) The locks on my apartment use skeleton keys. This was very exciting, seemed castle like to me. Then I tried to use them for the first time, and the second time, and.. and I realized why this particular style has mostly gone the way of the 8-track.. So we took the elevator up to floor 5 where we were sorta still half jammed in the elevator with my luggage. “Don’t we need to go down the hallway first?” I asked. “Nope, this is it.” I didn’t understand. Yes, you see, this awesome cross breeze is possible because my place IS the 5th floor! At times it takes a bit of explaining to the delivery guys, but it is manageable trade off. And yes, as promised, there’s a guestroom :)

Round II

I plopped down in my window seat; the man sitting next to me asked if I can sleep on planes, “Usually I do alright.” (it was about 10:30pm, I’d pushed through the last week, and managed to fit all my stuff in my bags without the zippers splitting and now, now I was sitting down. Mmm, rest. At last.) I remember waking for takeoff, it’s my favorite part. I woke for my dinner snack. And then I woke for my breakfast snack and then we landed. (11 hr flight, so I think that means I got about through about four REM cycles – it was awesome!) During breakfast the guy next to me was a bit incredulous, apparently every time he looked over I was snoozing. Always amazing where just a couple hours can take you. :)

So just like that I’d landed, made my way through customs, found my bags and the people waiting for me. Apparently there have been a number of demonstrations staged on the “free”way to the airport lately. I think it has to do with an affordable housing issue, though I’m not sure. Anyhoo, the demonstrators decided that a beautiful blue bird Thursday around lunch time was a good time for them to stand (in the middle of the street) for their cause. Consequently traffic was very backed up. So though just before we landed I was noting how US-esque the suburbia grid/pools in backyards looked we were sitting in a normal feeling traffic jam. Then the driver pulled off the freeway onto the grassy field next to the road, joining a herd of about 10 other vehicles, where we sped along at about 20 or 30 mph until the grass was about to turn into trees, at which point we simply forced our way back in-between the cars sitting in traffic. Hehehe ahh, welcome to Argentina! This is going to be fun.

Pre-game

Sigh… made it! (barely..) Being that “I’ve done all this before” has apparently made me arrogant. All the planning ahead really did payoff. (I mean shoot, I got to spend my last weekend in DC with Mateo and my SUPER sis in-law!) However, there are ALWAYS things that come up. First gold star goes to my buddy ShMc as she not only patiently waited for me as I finished packing (thus leaving for the airport to catch my international flight an hour and a half later that I should have been), shipped the extra boxes I ended up with but also gave me a ride to the airport just as it decided to start snowing..

Though I arrived to the airport I still needed to drop the cell phone I’d been borrowing from my mum in the mail, unfortunately the drop box was on the far end of the terminal and my flight was supposed to be boarding in 20 minutes. So I checked in, which took roughly forever, got hammered with a $200 overweight fee on my bag (boo hiss) and then started trekking for this rumored mailbox. Second gold star goes to the nice police officer I asked for further directions that directed me towards the decently short security line and offered to drop the package off for me! (I strongly recommend giving the public servants in your life, foreign or domestic ;) a hug.) I ended up making it to my gate about 8 minutes before boarding, since it was running a couple minutes late. So when I came back from the loo I noticed that my gate, heading to BA, was directly across the hall from the gate departing for Accra, Ghana (if you’re looking at a map, Ghana is sitting just to the right of Cote d’Ivoire). So I looked around just in case I recognized anyone. Sure enough, a guy I knew from work was sitting there waiting to head back. It was great to have a chance to catch up (especially given all the excitement back in CdI since I’ve left.) I may have “done this all before” but sometimes it’s still a little scary, good to be reminded it’s a small world after all.