My Home Stay Mama

My home stay mother, Isabel, is an interesting character. I have lived with her for three months now and I know surprisingly little about her. We are ships passing in the night. I am going to write this from a fair, observatory distance because at this point I’m embarrassed to ask her about herself. In fact, generally, I’d say I am slightly intimidated by her. I come home after class and she usually isn’t home. There is some pasta left in the microwave for me, or a pizza in the freezer and the table is set. My roommate and I, another girl from NYU, heat up the meal left for us, consume it, wash our dishes and go back to our rooms. I occasionally see my host-mother in the kitchen as I am on my way out but not always, and I occasionally see her when I come home, but not always. But she is a friendly woman. I appreciate the space she gives me; I know others in the program who have to say where they are going and when they will be back to their home stay families, whereas I never the next time I will see her.

I didn't have a picture of my home stay mama, so here's a frozen pizzaI was not in Buenos Aires for very long before I started making the joke that everyone in this city is a hustler in one way or another. My home stay mother is a perfect example of that. She does not house exchange students because she wants to experience another culture, or because she wants to share her culture with others. Rather she has a constant, year round circulation of students and travelers housed in the three spare rooms in her apartment. She does not seem to have, or at least I have no been able to deduce that she has any other form of income. In the three months the other girl from NYU and I have been living in her apartment we have had four other roommates in the other bedroom for various amounts of time. There was a girl from Boston College living here for a month before she found her own apartment, a girl from Holland doing a month long Spanish emersion and two travelers who have stayed for two weeks each. The last time someone new came she did not tell me before hand and on my way to my room from the bathroom I ran into a 45-year-old man in the hallway with no idea why he was there. Now that bedroom is open and I have been woken up in the morning twice this week to foreign Spanish voices in the hall outside my door as Isabel shows the room and apartment to potential renters. She’s not breaking the law, but she’s certainly working the exchange student system. It has made for an interesting home stay experience.