How to pick up a package in Argentina*

1. Get text message from old landlord that a package arrived two hours after returning home from retrieving deposit.

2. Travel back to old apartment again to pick up package. Get handed package slip with instructions to obtain package from a post office branch in Retiro (two subte rides // 45 minutes away). Since it is 3:40 and the office closes at 5:00, decide to go tomorrow.

3. Wake up, take the subte with two transfers to Retiro (the city's insane bus station // pickpocket central), cross nine intersections to arrive at indicated post office kiddy corner to station.

4. Enter a large room full of people waiting. Listen to a man calling out numbers, have no idea what numbers to which he is referring. Ask two different people before getting led to an obscured ticket dispenser; take number 567. Realize that the man is currently on number 422.

5. Wait in this room while about one or two numbers are called per minute. After 30 minutes, get handed number 496 by a man who is giving up and going home. Wait 30 more minutes.

6. When 496 is called, take package slip and passport to the man behind the glass, who examines both, tears off one section and hands it back to you (wonder why on earth it took so long to do that for 74 others). Gape for a second when he tells you to go to wait in the other room.

7. Enter another wide room full of people, realize that this time the number called is a five-digit one on package slip. Listen for any kind of order or continuity in recitation of numbers, find none (55743, for example, could be fifty-five seven four three, five five-hundred seventy-four three, or aaaaaany similar combination). Panic that you will never get your package due to the shitty quality of the microphone and your beginner/intermediate Spanish listening abilities (remember vamos a escuchar? not helpful here).

8. After thirty more minutes and more fretting that "66336" has already been called, listen closely and think that maybe, maybe that number has just been recited. Enter the mystery door into a long hallway to find the man with the microphone and verify.

9. Show him the slip with "66336" and have him give you a package addressed to Samuel something. See the real package, ask for that one instead, and get handed it while being asked "what exactly is inside?" Since you don't know and are desperate to GET OUT OF THE POST OFFICE, guess and say food. When he nods, take tha package and run (/walk quickly to the exit of the strange hallway).

10. Shoot the man who stops you at the end of the hallway an "are you freaking kidding me" look when he tells you you need to pay for the package, get waved ahead, and finally exit the building. Cross nine streets again and find the subte to head home.

11. When the subte doesn't come for 25 minutes, open the package and start eating the Cracklin' Oat Bran inside. Upon its arrival, jam into the train with the hundreds convened in wait and try not to hit anyone with the corners of the large box. Fail.

12. Four hours and fifteen minutes after leaving for the post office, arrive home. Promise yourself never, ever, to take the USPS for granted again.

*NOTE: despite the cynical tone of this blog post, still one of the best packages I've ever received (thankyou thankyou thankyou Ryeon!)