- Another technical account of getting started up in Buenos Aires. Per my training in anthropology, I would like to whine defensively that this is based purely off of my experience living in Buenos Aires and is no way representative of what living in Buenos Aires is an standard/typical/objective sense, if such a thing could be established. A different friend informed me that he is planning to come down to live here had some questions after reading my previous posts. Therefore, I answered them and now, published them, grammatical worts and all.
- Thank you.
That did help me gauge where I'll be stepping off, I think. My goal is to be down there in September. Would that be shooting myself in the foot from the get-go?
Also, who did you fly down with? I'm planning on buying a ticket this week.
What's your story with health insurance?
I don't have a TEFL certification. Is this necessary going in or could I take a class while there if necessary?
What would a good cushion be going down in terms of cash? I was hoping to have about $5000. More, less?
I'll send more questions as I think of them...
Thanks again for your help,
Benja- Good questions, some I know the answers too, otheres I will find out the answer.
As my friend Teo Valdes put it (he was teaching down here before me) somebody who was contracted for a year walks off the job on a friday in september because they felt like quitting and they can put whatever they want on their resume for the time they were down here. That institute promised to have a native teacher year round and suddenly they need someone to start monday. Its all about the money here, no one REALLY cares if the students develop a proper relationship with their teacher. In short, while the main hiring season will have officially finished, many American schools start up in september and I´m sure lots of people who were planning to have a short english teaching adventure before going to college have given their employer the bad news. Thats what I calculate anyway, I,ll try to consult some peeps.
Plane, no idea, I could ask my mom if you want. It was a graduation gift.
Tefl will definitely make you a more attractive candidate. Again, in my experience, no one really cares if you´re a good teacher or qualified for that matter, but many of them throw some acronyms on their advistement (TEFL/TOEFL/BBQOMG certified native teachers) and they want to be able to back that up. So, in my experience, no one asked to see my tefl before interviewing, although I did make sure to mention it in my resume (CV) and they did want at least a digital scan of the article after they hired me. But, no one followed up on it or otherwise verified it as far as I know, asi que, you could probably make a convincing enough facsimile and send digital images to people if it gets asked of you.
of course, that route is rather ¨argento¨. I think taking a course is a fine, if less rogueish, method. I do believe they offer month long training courses here and I believe they advertise they fact that they{ll hook you up with a job afterward. No idea if thats true. I do also believe that they give you some kind of field training, where you actually get some students and you make lesson plans that you actually execute with real ESL students. this kind of TEFl certification is seen as the most desirable, if youre looking at this as a long term investment. Sadly, i found that out from the teaching of my TEFL certification which was in the basement of a local university and definitely involved no real esl kids. So I would say, come down and take a course, if you want to take a course as it offers the most advantages.
Cushion? Brother I came down here with 2300 dollars. I live/lived pretty cheaply, but if you can find some rent outside of the usual fuck the foreigner gangbang, you could retire on that money.
In precise terms, it depends on your estimated expenditure. Going out in this city is ungodly expensive, at least relative to what you{ll earn. Drinks in a bar, food in a restaurant can set you back 200 pesos pretty easily, and thats 20 hours of work for me. Two and a half days work (I work four hours a day, so sue me). Food remains quite cheap, although inflation is imperceptibly working its magic, a weeks worth of groceries couldn{t cost 100 pesos. Meat is quite expensive actually, because Argentines will pay any price for it. I have a student who works for Southern Beef who tipped me to that bit of info. Aguante chikin, loco.
So 5000 seems like a lot of money to me. You could have quite a bit of fun between that and a job. I had a lot of costs starting up and before i got employed i think i spent almost a 1000 dollars. (Rent was 450 dollars of that) I ate out some (1 to 3 times a week) and bought wine with my girlfriend, so I wasn{t exactly bare bonsing it, but I scrimped during the week.
I hope I}m not spelling out the obvious or talking too much, but the key is to think in both dollars and pesos. I used to think only in pesos and refused to spend anything out of my savings, but I was living like a poor man in buenos aires. If anything is worse than living like a poor man in the united states, its living like a poor man in the second-world. So ive opened up my bank account to some things important to me, like tango singing classes, and hopefull, capoeira classes. A bit pricey, but what on earth am i doing in this city as a musician if I{m not learning about tango. I{m also hopefully going to start investing some of my money in rehearsal room shit for a band I want to start, pay some musicians, etc. this is a great city to start something creative up.
Health insurance, I got my fingers printed the other day, ha, so at best it would be another 1 or 2 months for me to get ¨pre pago¨which is like the nice company sponsored shit. I{m on the public plan at the moment, which involves long times, I{m told. I don{t know much more about it, except that. Part of the plan is not to get sick (bad plan, I know) but in a real emergency if it happened tomorrow, i would go to a nicer hospital and foot the bill. The heatl systems prices aren{t jacked up by malpractice insurance shit here asi que its much cheaper.
Hit me with the next round, and I believe I will publish this correspondence to my blog.
Nathan
This is Nathan Lane, your funky-fresh maniacal-magical plane-hopping, jaw-dropping world-traveler extraordinaire servin' it to you fresh from the high-rises of Buenos Aires. This just in from the scene, cats. The good people of this fair land have taken to the balconies, banging pots and pans to air some political sentiment, taken the fight to the roofs, if you will. You heard me right. Argentina's cacerolazo has reared its ferrous head and breathed some fire into the political scene. In the midst of ongoing domestic agro-political crisis, an important vote was on the precipice of stalling when the people took up a fashionable tradition and stood on their balconies and banged pots and pans. The fence-sitting senator quickly decided voted in favor of the legislation. The most famous of these cacerolazos ended in the resignation of the then-president, so take it seriously, friends. I don't wanna give the impression that the country is in revolt around me, but there are gathe
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