From Queens’ to La Reina del Plata: Chapter 1

A cobbled street in Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina. Photo by: Rosie Aylard.

Chapter 1: The only way up is out, so what on earth am I doing here?

Eighteen hours after stepping onto my flight from Gatwick, I arrive at Buenos Aires Ezeiza Airport. Surprisingly refreshed after falling asleep during take-off and waking up somewhere in Eastern Brazil, I find a sign with my name on it. Before I know it, I’m looking out of the window in the back of a taxi, struggling to identify a single cloud in the blue Argentine sky. I snap out of this trance as the taxi driver, Felipe, turns around to me with a question: “¿De dónde sos?” [Where are you from?] Once I wrap my head around the Rioplatense conjugation of the verb ‘ser’ [to be], I explain that I have come over from the UK to teach English at a school in Buenos Aires. Felipe laughs and asks why on earth I would leave the UK to work in Argentina when most Argentine people my age would seize the opportunity to do precisely the opposite. I tell him that I’m really here to improve my Spanish, realising over the course of the conversation that the Spanish I’ll learn here won’t bear much resemblance to the way I spoke before arriving.

We sit in companionable silence for the rest of the journey, leaving me to ponder Felipe’s question. What on earth am I doing in Argentina? Why did I choose to spend the second half of my year abroad grappling with hyperinflation, infuriating bureaucracy, a variety of Spanish that sounds nothing like what I was taught in Use of Spanish classes, and to do all of these 7,000 miles away from home? I don’t really have a good answer but here are a few ideas.

Firstly, my wonderful A-Level Spanish teacher told me if I went anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world it had to be Buenos Aires. Secondly, I have always been drawn to water and I liked the idea of living in a coastal city – I only recently found out that Buenos Aires is often described as a city that ‘turns its back to the sea.’ Finally, I knew I wanted to have a big adventure, just to prove to myself that I was capable of doing so.

So here I am.

Through speaking to the Argentine staff at the school, and researching the complexities of Argentina’s economy, I’ve begun to understand the cause of Felipe’s confusion. Due to the volatility of the Argentine peso, earning a salary in pesos is so risky that most staff will subtract from their salary the amount of money they need for the month, and convert the rest into US dollars to provide them with some financial stability. Thanks to the illegal but widely recognised ‘blue rate’, anyone coming into Argentina with pounds, euros, or dollars can get twice as many pesos as the official exchange rate would afford them. This further drives down the value of the peso and makes the prospect of moving abroad to save money in a more stable currency highly appealing for many Argentinians. Indeed, many of the wealthiest people in Argentina work for international organisations that pay their salaries in dollars, allowing them to live a life of luxury in Argentina.

The school I work for, one of the most expensive and prestigious schools in Latin America, educates many of the children of the Argentine elite. Walking through the gated community that backs onto the school, you would be forgiven for assuming that you had teleported into an affluent neighbourhood of suburban America, where bikes are left unlocked on front lawns, glass sliding doors display gleaming marble kitchen, and teenagers ride around on pastel blue vespas without a care in the world.

It’s hard to reconcile this pristine bubble with the sprawling Capital Federal of Buenos Aires that the school bus collects most of the teachers from each morning. Walking home from the bus stop, the pavements are scattered with litter from bins that have been searched for anything of value, or edible. When enjoying an alfresco dinner, it is common to be approached by teenagers selling flowers, or clothes, or simply asking for money. Teenagers who, if they put on a uniform and some smart shoes, wouldn’t look any different from the teenagers I spend forty-five hours a week with, teaching them English so that they can move to London or Miami or Sydney to earn more money than they could fathom in Argentina. Just last week one of my students told me that his family is moving to Barcelona at the end of the year for better opportunities. Even for the upper-middle class families who can afford to send their children to a beautiful school, set in eight hectares of Argentine suburb, they are searching for more. Even amongst the elite, there is an overwhelming feeling that in Argentina, the only way up is out.