Dear Big Logos,

I’m alive in tango central! I have my own apartment! Suddenly I am full of exclamation points! This place is more dashing than I ever imagined. For a city that declared its autonomy in 1994, and proceeded to suffer a catastrophic depression in 2002, things seem to be running smoothly. Slight chance of an energy crisis. The word on the street is gasoline. Instead of a White House there is a Pink House. A plaza. A cathedral. Traffic lights change from red to yellow to green. It is okay to put the pedal to the metal on a yellow. The question of what to do with dog poop on the streets is a common and controversial topic of conversation. Most of the streets are named after famous men: Alvear, Calvo, Peña, Roca. The newest neighborhood, Puerto Madera, named their streets after famous women. And many of these famous women are—guess—poets! Increiblemente. I bought an anthology of poetry out of a cardboard box marked two pesos. The poets in the anthology call themselves The Elephant School. So far, no elephants in the poems.

I spent the first week living with Red Boots. Prior to my arrival, she fell madly in love with a German whom she met at the Academia Buenos Aires. They spent six weeks in bed and then he left to traverse the wild South American west with a buddy. There are so many places to tick off one’s list when visiting here—Iguazu Falls, Salta, Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego—and a whole lot more that I intend not to see, captivated as I am by this city and content to ask the questions: What exactly is in my empanada? Why don’t people talk on cell phones as much here as they do in other cities? How come dogs roam without leashes? When will you visit so we can cross the Widest Street in the World? Who is that guy staring at my feet and what does he want with my shoes? Where do all the hipsters go?

At first, Red Boots was inconsolable. She wanted to call the German guy. I convinced her we should call the Netherlands instead. They took us to Bereber, a delicious Moroccan restaurant in Palermo. We waited outside the door, as is the case at many restaurants, and rang the bell. It is unclear if potential diners are ever refused entrance. One must ring the bell. Total bill for four people (cocktails, appetizers, entrees, more cocktails): 150 pesos, or 50 dollars.

Another night, Red Boots and I were hungry for oysters. Since we live on a port, we assumed the oysters would be fresh and salty. Except we live on a port on the Rio de la Plata. Not the plata which translates to money, rather the plata which translates to silver. Except there has never been a silver trade in Buenos Aires. And herein lies a recurring theme of Buenos Aires: it is what it is not. The name of the city, for example, does not mean the city has good air, as its translation would suggest. The name comes from the patron saint of sailors. When we ordered the oysters, the waiter raised his eyebrows and said something that we understood as—“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Oysters? Raw? Are you sure?” They tasted like a river. A dirty one with broken teeth. We felt sick and returned to the apartment where we watched TNT, the only channel that consistently speaks our language via Bridget Jones Diary II and American Pie III.

At the end of Red Boots’ tenure in Buenos Aires, it was time for me to enroll at the Academia Buenos Aires and seek out the poetry scene. I spend most of my time—when I’m not trying to figure out how to exchange these coins for those oranges—looking for books in English. Here are the books in English in every single bookstore I’ve visited from San Telmo to Palermo:

1) Death in Venice by Thomas Mann 2) Sex and the Floating World by Timon Screech 3) Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki 4) Loving Che by Ana Menendez 5) Blood in Kansas by Jack Logan

Yes, it is a strange mixture, I agree. In between these are the rare finds, such as Marquez, Kundera, and W.S. Merwin’s translation of Antonio Porchia’s Voices. Porchia spent a lifetime compiling it. The poems are anaphoric, six to eight lines on a page. Here is my favorite: “Yo no estoy conforme de ti. Pero si tu tampoco estas conforme de ti, yo estoy conforme de ti.”* I finally found the secret English bookstore thanks to a tiny ad in the Buenos Aires Herald. Walrus Books (617 Estados Unidos) stocks a ton of the Beats along with the basics and a healthy selection of Argentine literature in translation. I attended my first poetry reading, held in a restaurant, on a closed-for-construction street. There were some familiar things—dangle bracelets, large shawls, big hair, the negligent waitress, the requisite heckler. However, the reading itself was unlike any I have ever attended. This reading was called a cycle. It went a little like musical chairs. There was a long rectangular table on a stage. The emcee announced a name, or two names, or five names, and the poets would walk to the stage. By the time I left, we had heard eleven poets. They each read a poem or two followed by a Q&A. One of the questions was: “What is your favorite word?” The answers: corazón, pasión. It struck me that I might be overestimating the quality of the poems due to my sudden exclamatoriness. Plus, my ears are slower than my eyes when it comes to understanding Spanish. The best part of the evening was meeting Natalie Portman’s identical twin, Giselle, who quickly gave me all of her numbers and emails and blogspots.

I go to school downtown, four hours a day, Monday through Friday, where my teacher is a petite ex-tango dancer who speaks very little English. The other day, after a particularly redundant lesson, she said: “You are boring.” I think she meant: “You are bored,” but it’s hard to be certain.

• “I do not agree with you. But if you do not agree with yourself either, then I agree with you.”