There were two dilemmas that arose from renting an apartment in Buenos Aires: How would we meet people and how would we improve our Spanish (with the growing number of English-speaking expats with meet each day).

Since Peru, my Spanish has gone from rapidly improving to virtually nonexistent. I credit that decline mostly to the different variation of Spanish here, known as Castellano. (As I mentioned, portenos use different vocabulary, speak with an Italian-ish accent and talk much faster than Peruvians.) Perhaps it was because my Spanish was already shaky, but when faced with the new linguistics challenge, I basically threw my hands up in defeat.

As terrible as it sounds, I began to question how much I cared to really learn Spanish. As much as I love traveling, I’m not one of those people that picks up languages easily, so speaking a foreign tongue is always an uphill battle. But to put it more simply, I got lazy. One day in a boutique, a shopgirl asked me a question, which was probably, “Can I help you with anything?” and not knowing how to respond and too nervous to even say, “gracias,” I pretended I didn’t hear her and walked away. Not my finest moment.

I knew this was a slippery slope, and thanks to Eaman’s desire to actually improve his Spanish, which he constantly practices with any local he meets, we found a solution to both the friends problem and the language barrier.

It’s called Spanglish, a language exchange and happy hour combo event started by an American expat living in BA. (The organization has gotten so big it runs six nights a week in BA and has expanded to Spain and the U.S.) Non-native Spanish speakers get paired up with locals for five rounds of 10 minutes each; they speak five minutes in Spanish and the other five in English. It’s speed dating for travelers.

The added bonus of Spanglish is the social exchange. The people who come to Spanglish aren’t just looking for language help; they’re also the kind of welcoming folk who like to meet people. (Portenos are lovely, but some of the 20-somethins are a bit clique-ish.)

We started Spanglish last Tuesday, when the organization had its weekly beerlingual-bilingual trivia night. A sucker for random facts, I didn’t actually care that I had forgotten almost everything Rosetta Stone taught me. But I figured I should be able to say something before the event, so Eaman and I sat in the park and rehearsed lines:

I am a writer. Soy un escritor. I am from New York. Soy de Nueva York. I like movies and the park. Me gustan las películas y el parque. Hey, I didn’t say I’d be reciting Shakespeare!

But as it turned out, the trivia night was more of an exercise in Scott Baio knowledge–with a couple questions about Spanish leaders thrown in–than Spanish linguistics. (Not complaining!) So we hit up Spanglish’s Thursday night event last week for full-on language exchange.

When I sat down with my first partner, he started in English and asked me questions like, “Where are you from?” and “What do you like to do for fun?” ack! After exhausting all my practiced lines just in the English portion, what would I say in Spanish?

But that’s what I needed: pressure. Suddenly, I dusted off words and phrases I used before, and put together sentences that actually somewhat made sense. It helped the Spanish speakers were really patient, just as they want you to be with their English. I don’t want to give you the impression that I was reciting epic poems and talking slang with the best of them, but I was getting by, albeit only with present tense, and that was a lot better than ignoring a shopgirl.

I don’t expect to become proficient in Spanish, even by the end of our time in South America, and a part of me would much rather focus on Farsi–Eaman’s mother tongue that I can speak decently so far–because that’s a language that’ll have longevity in my life, but I do understand how important language is to feeling immersed in a culture.

That being said, we’re headed to Spanglish tonight. It’s trivia night, baby!

Update: I realized last night that Spanglish isn’t just like speed dating; it IS speed dating. The ratio of local men to local women clocked in at 8 to 0 yesterday. So, with each new male Argentine speaking partner, the first sentence out of my mouth always involved Eaman to set my status straight from the beginning. And there I thought these guys wanted to improve their ingles…

On Monday night, Eaman and I partook in a porteno (slang for Buenos Aires locals) tradition and hit up the weekly percussion jam session known as La Bomba de Tiempo. The 17-member group, whose music sounds like a mixture of Latin, African and dhol music, plays in an open-air space in the city with a new special guest each week. We were lucky enough to come on a week when the group welcomed Brazilian beat-boxing, rapping, melodizing sound machine Marcelo Pretto.

Because our time is free flowing and cost efficiency is key, our first flight out included a nine-hour layover in Bogota, Colombia. Unfortunately, it was from 9pm to 6am, which meant all we could really do was sleep–on cold wooden benches. It was less painful than it sounds, but at 3:30am, when we couldn’t toss and turn any longer and I was hungry from the measly airplane meaI, I grabbed an egg McMuffin at McDonalds and split a cheese croissant with Eaman. (“Solomento huevos” and “solomento queso” apparently meant nothing; both came with meat, which we just picked out.)

With food finally in my stomach, we moved on to security at about 4am, and that was when I started feeling sick.

Eaman and I have a running joke about how sensitive I am…to anything. So when my stomach started hurting at the Xray machines, I didn’t want to fuss. I figured it was my usual general discomfort due, this time, to lack of sleep and new surroundings. But pretty soon, the pain was unbearable. I went from feeling ice cold to sweating bullets and that was also when the dizziness hit me.

The next thing I knew, I was beginning to faint. Luckily, Eaman was behind me and caught me before I fell. I probably blacked out for two seconds, but the airport workers brought me a chair and called the airport doctor, who after asking some questions, deduced that I had probably suffered a bout of altitude sickness, common in those parts, especially for someone coming from Flatlands, USA.

True, I had already started feeling better once I was in the chair–it must’ve just been a sudden shock to my system. But lesson learned: Don’t dismiss even the smallest of physical pains.

But anyway, moving on to less serious matters!

We arrived in Lima wednesday morning, bleary-eyed but very much in the mood to explore, so we wandered around Miraflores, a safe neighborhood known for its restaurants and shopping.

Breakfast at the hostel on our first morning:

The other, less welcome, aspect of Lima was the weather. We had been so sure that everywhere on our itinerary would be warm, but Lima’s winter is, we read up on later, May through November…and we basically only packed tees and shorts.

Thanks to a tip from one of our roommates in our eight-person dorm, we supplemented our wardrobe with relatively cheap sweatshirts at La 5uinta, a less glossy version of TJ Maxx. The roommate, Brandee from San Francisco, is just rounding out a year of travel, so talking to her was like seeing into the future with all her fascinating tips and stories. Also in our room was her friend Natalie, a Brit archaeology student who we saw for a total of five minutes in 24 hours and two friends from the Faroe Islands, which I had never even heard of but is located northwest of Scotland.

After a day of settling in (and napping), we explored the heart of central Lima. Though famous for its Spanish colonial architecture, we had much more of a blast wandering through Chinatown–yes, they have one–and the more off-the-beaten path streets. Again, total score that we look like locals. It was there that we had our first dose of street food–cooked, of course! We were hooked and had to keep turning away from the vendors to not get tempted.

Old Lima:

Cute kid near Plaza des Armas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

First street food for me! Plate of hard-boiled eggs, potatoes and steamed Peruvian corn:

Cute kid eating pineapple:

Plus, Brandee and Natalie, who’ll be there at he same time, are trying to set up a meeting with a shaman for some spiritual cleansing and we’ve already told them we want in on that.