I’m new! I want to say I’m just a little stuck on you…On Wednesday, the next of my adventures began when I took a one-way ticket from Seattle to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I’ll be staying to study tango for the next two months. Wait, what?

A few readers may remember that I have a secret history as a figure skater, where I had to perform tango programs at a few different levels throughout my career.  The tangos we had to learn were by far some of my favorite programs, and I ended up finding a parallel love for the classical style of music and dance from Argentina.

During my senior year of college, not long after I stopped skating, I met a classmate who somehow had secured a fellowship to study traditional Indian dance for 9 months in India, and somehow my brain made a connection and thought, “wow, how cool would it be to just disappear and work in a tango club in Buenos Aires for a few months.”  But, the fellowship had closed so I shelved the idea.

That was until I had to make plans for post-Peace Corps, around the same time that I started attending tango night at Chicken Star, a cafe in Bishkek and one of my absolute favorite places in all of Kyrgyzstan (hi, Chihoon!).  Suddenly, everything clicked – I had to fly directly from Kyrgyzstan to the US for my dear friend’s wedding (congratulations, Loren!!!), so I wasn’t constrained geographically for any travel, and I had about two months left unplanned of the summer with which to do whatever I wanted.

So, I cashed in miles for a one-way ticket, and last week I touched down before sunrise in the brisk Parisian chill of Buenos Aires.  I decided to rent a room with a local family through AirBNB, and I arrived at their house just as they were waking up.  Clara, one of my hosts, greeted me at the door in her bathrobe with an enormous smile and a kiss, and welcomed me to the apartment and showed me how to make coffee in their kitchen…in Spanish.

So here’s the thing: I’ve never studied Spanish and I’ve never spoken Spanish.  I’ve never really heard Spanish beyond the comedy sketches of “Que Hora Es?” and the everyday Spanish that is thrown around in English in the United States now.  So it came as a great surprise that I was actually able to get by with the combination of that with French and Italian.  Everyone kept telling me before I came how different the dialect here is… but I actually find it easier to understand because it’s clearer and closer to Italian.

So, feeling gloriously welcomed, I immediately napped before heading out to explore, get a subway pass, get bearings, and most importantly, to get food.  This city has FOOD.  Oh. My. Gosh.  So much incredible food.  The best steak I’ve ever had in my life, alongside cheap wine. The food is expensive but the wine is cheaper than water.  Literally; a copa of vino is like 35 pesos while water is 42 pesos.  What?

In my first few days I just wanted to rest and settle in, so I mostly explored, finding my way around town and getting things lined up with a local tango school where I’m taking classes for a few hours every day.  I even got to do a bit of touristing at the San Telmo street fair, which was a more upscale and touristy version of the bazaars of Central Asia that I’ve been frequenting for the past two years.

It’ll take a few weeks for the full energy of this amazing city sinks in and my life falls into a regular rhythm, but for now I can definitely say this is one of the greatest cities on earth.