"Independent Living: Take 3"

Another week passed, with no progress. My friend, Mary Andrews, started looking into shared rooms (yikes, where's my privacy?!) and pensions. There's two basic types of pensions, I discovered: One is somewhat like hotel living, but with a shared bathroom and kitchen. As in the place for $120 pesos, you have your own room, but it's not like you're living together so much as sharing a bathroom and kitchen. These tend to have less restrictions and an older, single crowd--post-university, or never went, working, etc.

The second type are more like A Girls' Home. There's a Señora/Dueña who runs the place (and frequently owns it), often an older single or widowed woman who keeps things in order, assures that certain rules are followed regarding guests and cleanliness, and anything else they may expect. As I've said, they typically cater to university students who go to school too far from home to commute and are frequently segregated by gender.

After a week passed, and I made no progress toward finding an apartment with roommates, Mary Andrews convinced me to look at a pension she had seen. "It's really nice, the woman was just too much for me, I couldn't deal with her. But I think you could! I was really tempted, because it was so nice, but she was just too difficult to handle."

Well, family living wasn't really working for me. I was gaining weight from constantly having bigger portions shoved at me, the Mr. and Mrs. were both sick and grouchy with each other, and I was being dragged to 3 family parties a week, without being asked (or having any desire to go).

So, I went to see the pension. The neighborhood was really cute with lots of shops and bars, and it was a sunny afternoon that just made everything feel better. The Señora was an older woman, who seemed on the conservative side. The room was nice and large, $500 pesos, which was reasonable. The bathroom was disappointing, but there was a decent kitchen. There was almost no common area, but it was peaceful.
We sat down to chat. She could not fathom what us Americans were doing in La Plata. Mary Andrews had warned me about this. Once again, she began asking whose government was paying for our stay, what we were doing, why. I tried explaining it like additional schooling, since it's an internship. No one pays for you to go to school, you pay for it. It's job training. Maybe this confused her more, because then she started telling me about how she'd thrown away the TV because it kept the girls from studying, and we needed to be studying.

She also laid down the rules. "No men allowed, except for your father. Girls can visit, but not in your room, no men." I have a couple male friends visiting and her absolute-ness on this aspect didn't sit well. I'd at least like to show them what my place in Argentina looked like.

On the other hand, it seemed a livable situation. If she drove me nuts, I could always move again in a month or so...it felt more comfortable than my current situation, and if I didn't find something in the next two days, my contract with the family would have to be renewed for another month...

I told her I'd have to bring our program director by to see the place the next day, and we scheduled an appointment...