Oh, I can add photos!!

A typical evening at the Casa Peru.
And a sample of fine CP cuisine.My Pascuas Weekend Tripmates.
First stop on the Pascua's Weekend tour of the Central Sierras.
El Durazno, Central Sierras.
Our little red auto braves the great flood!

A colorful fiesta!
These guys were amazing & I danced my face off.

A Moment's Just A Moment

Things are falling into place.

A few days ago my English student, Leandro, informed me that he had 3 new pupils for me. During our class, identical twin brothers suddenly showed up to meet me and schedule appointments. I hadn’t realized that Leandro literally meant he had them in the flesh. After our lesson he brought me to the office of his friend, Mariano, who told me he wants conversation classes. When I arrived at Mariano’s office he was in the midst of a meeting with Sofia. When Sofia heard about the classes, she decided she wanted in. And not only that, but she also wants private lessons 2 or 3 days a week! We got started right away. Saturday evening I went to Mariano’s apartment for a two and a half hour conversation class with Leandro, Augustin (one of the twins, the other will come next time), and Sofia. It was so much fun! We ate cake too. For me it was great even without getting paid because it was an opportunity to hang out with a bunch of portenos. And, of course, eat cake. On top of the cake and the good company, this is a very lucrative situation for me because I’m “teaching” them all at once. After our session, they all scheduled their first private lessons for Monday! And the gravy is that they all work in the same place, and I can just stay there and see one after another. No travel time!

I walked towards the bus stop after our session glowing and humming and thinking about my tremendous good fortune. I arrived at a busy intersection. A man walking ahead of me started to cross the street, and I started with him but soon realized that the light was changing, so I moved back to the sidewalk. He didn’t. I watched this man get hit by a car going about 50 miles per hour. This image will be forever emblazoned in my memory. Standing only about 10 feet away, I shrieked and ran to get help but plenty of people had already seen what happened and rushed to him. I waited there for 20 minutes, and by the time I left, the police had him sitting up and talking. Finally I made my way home, shaking the whole bus ride.

Things can certainly change from one moment to the next.

As some of you may have read in the news, Buenos Aires and the surrounding areas spent the past week enshrouded in a cloud of smoke. No one really know what happened (there’s some speculation of a government conspiracy), but probably the farmers in the countryside were burning their soy fields to enrich the soil and they burned so many hectares that the smoke made it all the way to the city and even into Uruguay. My eyes burned, my throat itched, and no Mediapila this week! Soccer had to be canceled! Finally today the cloud lifted, the sun came out and I spent most of the day outside.

Last week the Olympic torched passed through Buenos Aires, and since portenos mount gigantic protests about anything and everything (I’ve seen more than I can count in my 5 weeks here), I expected a mammoth opposition to the flame. I went with a couple of Europeans to take part. As it turned out, about 100 hundred people showed up for this one. Mostly foreigners. I had a great time all the same! A girl I went with made a sign that said, “Escucha! Tibet llora,” which means, “Listen! Tibet cries.” Along with this, she made a giant Q-tip so as to encourage people to clean out their ears. At one point I held the Q-tip up to Pablo’s head while he gave interview after interview to the press in broken Spanish. The next day my friend Maria forwarded me a video montage of the torch ceremony from the major Buenos Aires news source… Pablo and I made the cut! Here’s the link if anyone’s interested. I’m in there for just a moment, but it’s hard to miss the girl in the bright blue shirt holding a giant white stick against a man’s head. http://www.lnteve.com/video2379-la-antorcha-en-buenos-aires

Now I would like to discuss a prominent issue here in Buenos Aires: “moneda” or coins. For some reason, Argentina has a shortage of coins. I have heard that this has something to do with the mob. However, you need coins in order to take the buses, which most people do more than once a day. This has turned Buenos Aires into a city of moneda horders! Myself included! Some days I want to take the bus, but lack sufficient moneda so I have to buy something I don’t want just to get change. For a while I tried to do this at the kiosko (small shop) down the street, but the man there won’t budge!! The other day I tried to buy a small chocolate, and he wouldn’t sell it to me!! I said, “I know you have SOME change!” and he said, “No I don’t.” And I said, “Yes you do, I know you do!” And he said smugly, “Of course I would like to sell you that chocolate, but I just don’t have change.” And I said, “But I really want the chocolate!” And he said, “I’m sorry.” And then my voice turned to a whimper and I admitted, “But I NEED to take the bus, I’m late! Please!” (**imagine all of this in broken Spanish) And he still wouldn’t budge! I have pledged never to return, even if my wallet bursts at the seems with the stuff. I imagined a Seinfeld Buenos Aires in which “moneda horder guy” is a reoccurring character. But really, sometimes this situation turns me into a person I don’t want to be. When the lady at the fruit stand looks at me with her sad eyes and says, “Do you have 50 centavo?” and must answer coolly, “No, I will need change,” even though maybe I have 80 centavos! It’s a bit cruel, but it’s every man for him/herself when it comes to cambio (change).

I’m leaving Casa Peru at the end of the month and moving to Palermo, the swanky barrio with all the lovely parks. I’m looking forward to the change because of said parks, and because I will have more privacy there. That said, I will miss my house and I will miss the slightly grittier neighborhood of San Telmo.

Something I have learned here in Casa Peru: share with people.

Most of my roommates are from Europe, where apparently life is a bit more communal. In Casa Peru, when we buy food we share it. We cook food and we cook for everyone who wants some. It’s really a lovely way to go about things. We don’t count who bought what. No one owes anyone anything. Sometimes my greedy American past haunts me and I find myself overcome by the compulsion to hide some tasty treat I’ve just purchased. But then one of my roommates offers me a delicious meal or a glass of wine, and I remember to take my bag of cookies out of my private cubby and offer some to everyone.

What I Think I've Learned About Argentina #4:

1. Boys and girls here cannot be just friends. If you tell a man you want to be just his friend, he thinks you are engaging in an elaborate game. There is actually a word for women who play it: "histericas"

2. The public university, UBA, is completely free to anyone. You don't even have to be from Argentina. And you don't have to apply and get in, you can basically just go. And for most things it's the best school in the country. Students and alumni have a lot of UBA pride.

3. There is a "food" here called dulce de leche that ought to come to the US. It's really just sugary milk that ends up looking, feeling and tasting something like soft caramel. It's so obvious, I don't know why the rest of the world hasn't caught on. I'll bring some back.

!Tranquilo!

First thing today I bumped into my friend Pablo in the kitchen and he said something to the effect of, “What’s your plan for today? I’m sure you’ve got something going on, you always do!” And I thought, YIKES, I’ve already managed to establish this reputation in 4 weeks of living in a foreign country. And in a foreign country where “go, go, go” isn’t exactly the traditional lifestyle. This past week I haven’t even left myself the time to write a blog. After this conversation in the kitchen, I decided to plant myself on the back porch with my book and my journal and spend the day doing nothing in particular. Running from place to place and activity to activity is not the way I want to spend a year in Argentina! I am going to make a conscious effort to calm my tendency to over commit and over “do”. So what kept me so busy this week?

-For the past 4 weeks, I’ve been taking 20 hours/week of group Spanish classes. I’m done now, but I’m still going to continue taking private lessons with my really fabulous teacher, Florencia. If anyone decides to come to Buenos Aires and study Spanish, I highly recommend my school, Expanish. It’s a lovely place with a terrific staff. This week I spent more time with people from the school—figured I’d make some connections with folks before the end of my time there. Check.

-I got a job with an American company called VivaTranscriptions. Basically, doctors send in audio dictations and this company hires out people to transcribe them. I’m not transcribing (thank god), I’m just correcting the dictations. Though I’m sure it will be about as boring as it gets, it’s perfect for me because it’s so flexible! I can work as many or as few hours per week as I fancy, and I can travel! I can do my job from somewhere else, or I can pass up work for any given amount of time. The office, peopled by 20 and 30-something-aged American dudes, is very laid back and friendly. I start tomorrow. PERFECTO!

-I went to a yoga class. I need to find a new yoga class. I got more exercise walking the 10 blocks to the gym than I did in the hour-long session. Upon entering the studio, I was greeted by another student who was approximately 80 years old, and then the teacher asked me why I had such a thin mat (the ones everyone else used were about 4 inches thick)… bad signs. We never stood up once.

-I don’t need to run down all of my nighttime exploits, but I will say a few things. I’ve now gone to 2 different places which are bars/restaurants/parties inside someone’s house. It’s really a spectacular thing! The food is great, the atmosphere colorful, and the entertainment extraordinary! At one place, we ended up dancing to a 4 piece live band comprised of Spanish guitar, trumpet, trombone and vocals. The musicians jumped up and down in the middle of the room while people danced around them. They played and sang their hearts out—after just one song they were all sweating profusely. At one point the trombone player actually crashed right into me. The energy in the room could’ve knocked me over if he hadn’t. That night it sunk in that I’m not in Kansas anymore…

A tremendous modern tango band played at the other house/restaurant hybrid. I mean FABULOUS! Really, there’s nothing like finding yourself in a tiny room with this kind of thing! In Buenos Aires, you just never know what you will encounter when you walk into a room at night.

Earlier in the week I met a guy named Marcelo who told me that he plays for a progressive rock band. When I was able to list off a couple of his influences he jumped from his chair, hugged me, and I was his new best friend. He told me to come to his show Saturday night, so I got a group of friends together and went. It was AWESOME! The show was in a theater, and everyone stayed seated the whole time. The singer could wail, the guitarist could shred, and my buddy Marcelo could really rock those keys! Apparently this group, Fughu, opened for Dream Theater when they played in Buenos Aires. It’s not my usual style of music, but they are really freakin’ good at what they do. The artistic talent pool here is astounding. A couple weeks ago I saw theatrical/acrobatic show-type-thing. I can’t even categorize anything. The whole thing was gorgeous and the performers were no joke! These people could do incredible things on all manner of strange circus equipment. The entry fee? 15 pesos, which amounts to 5 USD.

Maria and her friends started a soccer team in a women’s league, and she invited me to join. We play on Saturdays, and we stink to high heaven. But it’s great to get out and run around. We won our first game 8-0 because our opposition, uniformed in pink tank tops, was just about as girly as it gets. I could have broken any one of them in half with my left pinky toe. And my right pinky toe is definitely the dominant one. Yesterday we faced far more formidable opponents and lost 2-3. Go Mediapila! (Go Half-Battery!)

I went to a tango class last Sunday, but I think I’ve had quite enough of that. It’s almost obligatory to give it a try here in Argentina, but I’m pretty sure it’s just not my bag. Most of the people in the huge class could actually tango, and I hardly had the opportunity to learn the basic step before I had men grabbing me for a dance. Each subsequent partner enjoyed 3 minutes of extreme frustration with my inability to flick my leg correctly. They implored me, “Bailar! Bailar! (Dance! Dance!)”, and seemed quite unsatisfied with my explanation that I didn’t know how. Call me cold, but I just don’t really enjoy dancing cheek to cheek with strangers.

I didn’t completely succeed in my goal to stay home today. During the writing of this blog, I accepted Pablo’s invitation to go run errands. But I was close! I’m gonna keep at it. Maybe I will become perfectly satisfied lying on a 4-inch mat next to an 80-year-old woman for an hour of light stretching. Maybe as the months go by my blogs will get shorter and shorter, and eventually I will write you just 3 sentences summarizing a week of complete solitude! Maybe after a year I will be holed up with monks somewhere “doing” nothing but breathing in and out!! Maybe just working towards some level of balance would be good.

What I Think I’ve Learned About Argentina #3:

- People here love to talk about politics!

- People here love to ask you how old you are! (And for some reason, most people think I’m about 5 years younger than I am).

- People here talk excitedly about all kinds of future plans, but only about 10% actually come to pass. I’ve learned not to count on anything, and not to get my feelings hurt when someone doesn’t follow through. I think it’s rude to say “no” here so everyone just says “yes” to everything, often with no real intention behind it.