Expatriate Games

Americans tango and socialize at a Buenos Aires gallery. (Horacio Paone - Horacio Paone)

Love is in the air here. Nowhere in the world do people make out in public more. Kissing couples are everywhere.

Kimberly Daniels, 37, a freelance director of television commercials who moved recently from Venice Beach, Calif., said that when she told friends she was relocating to Buenos Aires, they joked that she would end up with "an Argentine polo player."

At a rooftop barbecue at an expat's home in Palermo Viejo, the slender blonde said she was having some luck on the singles scene. "It's nice to be a foreigner as a female," she said. "Suddenly you're exotic."

But she said there have been some logistical nightmares -- getting a landlord to fix her air conditioning, and dealing with a cell phone company. No matter how wonderful life is in B.A., there are drawbacks.

Common complaints are noisy traffic, a lack of screens on windows despite plenty of mosquitoes, a lack of respect for business deadlines and a dearth of good breakfast joints. (Argentines prefer sweet pastries and espresso to bacon, eggs and toast.) It's enough to make some expats yearn for home. Curry became so homesick for her parents and for "a good bloody mary and a nice omelet" that she went back to Colorado in September to figure out a way to bring her fiance to the States. After three months, she found that she had slipped into her old work patterns of long hours and no writing time.

Curry decided B.A. was for her and went back, planning to stay at least another year and a half. She figured she could earn the $6,000 a year she needs to live here by collecting referral fees for sending former clients to other real estate agents in Colorado.

Having learned fluent Spanish by avoiding English speakers during her first eight-month stint, she's living differently this time, courting expat friends and bringing a little bit of the United States to South America.

"Now I cook a lot of things I didn't eat much in the U.S.," Curry said, standing in her apartment in B.A.'s outlying Nuñez neighborhood. "Like meat loaf and mashed potatoes and apple pie."

Allen Salkin is the author of "Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us" (Warner Books).