two and a half cents

Yesterday I wandered in to a bookstore that was having a sale. I found ¨The House on Mango Street¨ in Spanish for about $3USD. What a steal! I decided to buy it. In pesos, my total came to $9.90.

I handed the woman at the checkout a $10 peso bill. She took the money, I told her I didn´t need a bag, she handed me my book and moved on to the next customer. I waited patiently, assuming she had forgotten my ten cents, or that she was going to have to scrounge up a coin or two once she had waited on the other customer. But she finished, and then just looked at me like, What the hell do you want? I asked, ¨Hay cambio?¨ (Is there change?) She gave me a really mean look, one that made me feel like I has just said the stupidest thing in the history of the world, and then put a mean little smile on her face. ¨You really care about ten cents?,¨ she asked.

Of course I did. Coins are valuable here - the buses only take coins, and everyone hoards them away because there are so few due to the fact that coins are worth more when they´re melted down than they are as money, so the bus companies sell them, which creates a shortage of coins. One of the first pieces of advice I received about Buenos Aires, before I´d even left the U.S., was ¨Save your coins!¨ So, lady, the answer is yes, I want my ten cents. And how very presumptuous of you to assume I wouldn´t.

¨You don´t have any change?¨ I gave her a very incredulous look. ¨No.¨ Another demeaning stare from her. What was I supposed to do? Argue over a tenth of a peso - or two and a half pennies? After a brief staring match I figured I´d be the bigger one and just walk away. But the entire walk home I was fuming. I don´t care about the money - I´m dating someone who actually throws pennies into garbage cans because it annoys him to have to carry them around - but it´s the principle of it. I bought your stupid used book, I want my stupid ten cents. And don´t look at me like I´m some idiot. And if you really don´t have any change, then tell me up front, nicely, and apologize, and ask if it´s okay if I just let the ten cents become a donation to the bookstore. Do not, however, treat me like I can´t do simple math and I don´t know exactly what´s going down.

I wanted to reach across the cash register and perform some ninjitsu on that scrunched-face, coin-hoarding, mean, mean woman. And I really wished I would have asked for a bag, for the sole reason that she would´ve had to replace it and it would´ve made a little dent in her Thieving Profits.

steve´s pizza

In Austin, Minnesota, there is a restaurant called Steve´s Pizza. It´s one of Austin´s two hometown pizzerias - the other being George´s. If you grow up in Austin, you´re raised eating Steve´s or George´s, but never both. Austinites are very loyal to their pizzerias.

Whenever the subject of pizza is brought up, be it over a beer at The B&J or while biking through Todd Park or while shopping at Hy-Vee, an argument inevitably breaks out over which plain-named-man makes the better pie. Insults can get pretty nasty. I´ve never known anyone to switch over. You´re born a Steve´s eater or a George´s eater; your destiny is decided for you. Kind of like growing up a Packer fan instead of a Viking fan, I suppose.

Anyway, I grew up a Steve´s eater, and I´ve been content with the destiny life handed me. The pizza is so delicious - the crust is light but flavorful, the sausage grease pools together with the cheese grease in a fantastic manner, the seasoning is always perfect. Yum. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Point is, I love this pizza. Almost as much as Argentines love fútbol. And today in my Spanish class I met a guy from South Saint Paul. I got really excited. The Twin Cities! I love the Twin Cities! Don´t you? Isn´t Minnesota the best?! I explained I wasn´t actually from Minneapolis, that I was from a small town in southern Minnesota. Which one? Austin, you probably don´t know it...

But he did. He had been to Austin. He has a good friend who grew up there. He´d been to LeRoy too (not that that matters, but I think it helps solidfy the fact that he wasn´t just passing through on I-90). He said he really liked Austin, that it was a nice little town. (Shocking.) And, most importantly, (I´m sure you´re all ahead of me on this one) he has eaten at Steve´s Pizza. More than once. And he loved it. It was like finding a fellow Earthling while tromping across Mars. Okay, maybe that´s a little drastic, but still! To find someone in a tiny little Spanish class in the middle of Buenos Aires who had actually eaten Steve´s Pizza was a wonderful surprise. It made me really happy. And hungry.

The End.

(In retrospect, maybe it was a little weird that in our brief conversation I managed to ask him if he´d ever eaten Steve´s...)

things i miss

Walking across the Hennepin Bridge. Eating burgers at the bar at the 112 eatery. My bed. Cold beer at The Bulldog. Andy. Running along the river. Laughing with my friends. Having dinner on the deck with my family. Cream in my coffee. The convenience of an American cell phone plan. Monday yoga. Eating dinner without the television on. Fast computers. Brunch. The way music from my iPod fills the condo, and dancing to it in the kitchen. Hugs. Thai food. Sitting in my underwear and eating ice cream straight from the carton. Bad American television. Soft toilet paper. Clean air. Vegetables.

the liver incident

Up until last night, I´d been a model homestay daughter. (Well, with the exception of breaking the lock on the front door. Twice. And that time I knocked over a dinner glass and its shattered pieces flew to every corner of the room. But anyway, that could have happened to anyone.) The point is, I´ve been respectful and polite, and, most importantly, have secured my status in The Clean Plate Club by sopping up every last morsel of food from my plate with a piece of bread at the end of every meal. I think the only thing I´ve ever left on my plate is extra fat from steak. And everyone does that, so it´s okay.

But then last night happened. Carlos dished up plates of steaming food, and I helped carry them to the table. I was really hungry, and knew I was going out later, so didn´t ask for my normal amount of ¨un poco¨ because I figured I´d be up late and would appreciate the extra fuel. I should know by now that ¨un poco¨ works with Lourdes, but to Carlos its still a full plate ... which means if I don´t say anything, I get a mound of food. Literally.

Well anyway, it looked good - a heap of rice covered in a sauce of tomatoes and onions and peppers and meat. (Or at least what I thought was meat.) It was steaming in my face and my mouth was watering and I was trying to be patient while everyone sat down and began to eat. Finally everyone was settled and I dug in. The first bite tasted a little funny. Hmm, maybe it was just a bad bite. But then the second tasted really funny. Funny enough for me to need to wash it down with water. I was starting to worry; there was a lot of food in front of me. Bite three was all my brain and taste buds and stomach needed to say, ¨Okay, that´s enough. This stuff is nasty. And if you keep eating it, we´re not going to let you keep it down.¨ Damn.

I sat and pondered the consequences of shoveling it down without breathing and hoping I didn´t throw up versus leaving it on my plate and facing the wrath of wasting food and feeling like an inconsiderate guest in someone´s home. The seconds ticked away as I watched everyone eat and exclaim how delicious it was. I went over the lines in my head. ¨No, no me gusta, perdón. No me hace sentir bien. No estoy acostrumbrado a comer este tipo de carne.¨ (¨No, I don´t like it, I´m sorry. It doesn´t make me feel well. I´m not used to eating this kind of meat.¨ )

Now, I´m sure most of you understand how strange this is for me. I love food. I am not picky. I will eat almost anything put in front of me. I have a tough stomach, one that rarely causes me to vomit. So the fact that the thought of putting one more bite of this mystery meat into my mouth caused me to feel nauseous is a clear indicator of just how much it repulsed me.

So I sat, wringing my hands under the table, and started thinking about what type of ¨meat¨ was sitting before me. My best guess was liver. I´m not sure if I´ve ever eaten liver before; I don´t think I have. Maybe it was just intuition, or maybe the knowledge of what liver tastes like is in my genes, since my mom ate a lot of liver growing up. (If you like liver, I´m not judging. It´s just not for me.)

Anyway, the dreaded moment arrived. Carlos asked why I wasn´t eating. I took a breath and fed him my rehearsed lines and waited for the hammer to fall. He looked at me skeptically, then simply told me, ¨Well, it´s what we´re having to eat tonight.¨ This I understood. I was not asking for a different dinner ... I was just not going to be able to eat the one in front of me. I felt like a little kid being scolded for not eating her vegetables, and being threatened to be sent to bed hungry.

He told me it was liver (suspicion confirmed), and that everyone in England, France and Spain likes to eat it. Not really a linear thought pattern , since I´m from Minnesota and have Dutch and Norwegian ancestors, but okay, point taken. I sat in silence, looking down at my plate, trying not to breathe in liver fumes, feeling very uncomfortable.

After a little while he told me I could have some rice with just the sauce if I wanted. Sauce infused with liver taste. I politely declined. Then he offered rice with just butter. I politely declined again, choosing to eat a piece of bread instead. It was very awkward.

Then, thankfully, the plate was cleared and my pile of internal-organs-on-rice was dumped into the garbage. I felt relieved not to have my guilt and embarassment staring up at me from my non-empty plate anymore, but still embarassed to have wasted so much food.

I realize this might not sound like a big deal, but I´ve learned how offensive it is to leave food on the plate, and I´ve been praised numerous times for being such a good eater and never wasting any food, and Lourdes has told me more than once not to disappoint her by not eating everything I´ve been served. There´s a lot of pressure going into mealtime, I tell you. Food is no joke in the Lavie household.

The silver lining of all of this was that it was Juan´s birthday, and Carlos had baked him a cake, and since I was starving I had room for two pieces of the double-layered-strawberry-cream-carmel-merengue conconction. It was really good, and made me feel better. Plus Carlos even smiled at me when he offered me a second piece, so I don´t think he was mad at me. Phew.

However, The Liver Incident now holds second place in the Top Three Worst Food Experiences Of My Life, along with the intestine and brain I ate in Spain and the goat stew with fur still stuck to the meat I ate in Kenya. The Intenstine and Brain Incident wasn´t that bad, because I was at a restaurant with my parents and could spit things out and not finish what I´d ordered, so it holds third place. But The Goat Stew Incident was a whole different story ... I mean, the villagers in this town slaughtered a goat for us - a very meaningful, rare, expensive gesture - and ladled up the soup and sat next to us with expectant looks on their faces. I had to eat that whole bowl of soup, goat hair and all. Now that deserves a blue ribbon.

The Incident has also given me a new perspective on a memory I have from my childhood. We had an exchange student from Costa Rica stay with us for a month or so when I was about seven or eight years old. His name was Steven, and he had a hard time adjusting to life in the U.S. I clearly remember him absolutely hating cross-country skiing, really wanting to go to the Mall of America, crying on the phone to his parents in the hallway, driving an electronic car across our newly polished hardwood floors, and wasting an entire bowl of cream-of-wheat because he didn´t like it. Now clearly cream-of-wheat is no chopped liver, but maybe to him it tasted just as awful. For some reason I was really upset about the wasting of the cream-of-wheat, and it´s a memory that´s stayed with me. But now I have a new understanding of The Cream-of-Wheat Incident and of what Steven must have been going though. It feels good to be able to shed a little light on something that caused me such confusion as a little girl.

not just a tourist

This afternoon I went to Pura Vida to grab lunch to go. (Pura Vida is a little juice bar slash soup-sandwich-salad spot that serves things with fresh vegetables, which is something I do not get much of in the meals at my homestay.) I´ve started making a habit out of eating there, because it´s close, reasonably priced, delicious, and makes my body tingle with healthfood happiness.

Today as I stood waiting for my Mediterranean sandwich on pita bread and banana-strawberry-orange juice smoothie, one of my yoga instructors, Chris, walked in. He was with his mom, and they were there to have lunch. So Chris introduced me, and we chatted, then he ran into someone else he knew, a guy who had attended high school in for a year in the U.S., and I chatted with him as well. We talked about Missouri, and Minnesota, and laughed about how your hair freezes in the winter if you walk outside with it still wet. Then my order was ready, so I told Chris I wouldn´t be making it to class tonight, but would see him tomorrow morning, and told everyone it was nice to meet them, Ciao.

Now this may seem like a fairly boring story. ¨Okay, Lia, you ordered lunch to go and ran into someone you knew and made plans to go to yoga tomorrow. Your point ... ?¨ My point is, I suddenly realized that I live here. I have routines. A place that I´m becoming a ¨regular¨ at. I ran into someone I knew. Not an American I met through my program, but a local Argentine who I met all on my own. And I ordered my lunch in Spanish, from a Spanish menu. And was introduced to people in Spanish. And talked about obscure things like frozen hair. In Spanish.

It was fantastic.

Then as I was walking into my apartment building my host mom was on her way out. I asked her how she was, and she told me she was in a hurry as she threw a quick kiss on my cheek. Another seemingly normal situation. Except, before this morning, I wouldn´t have understood what she said. I just learned the word for being in a hurry in class today.

I love it when things like that happen.

one month

I´ve hit the one month mark of my Argentinian adventure, and as I think about the past 31 days, they seem to have flown by and stood still at the same time. I think that at the end of my stay here I´ll look back on this first month as the hardest of the five - leaving home, adjusting to life here, overcoming lonliness and defining what I want to get out of my time in Argentina. It was a hard month, yes, but it was such a good one too. It was filled with learning and growth; it was not only an important month of my trip, but a significant month in my life. Oh the lessons I´ve learned...

That it´s good to not have everything go my way all of the time; growth comes when things are hard. That I need to be more patient. That I would never want to live in a big city permanently, but it is a fun thing to do while I´m young. That my life in Minneapolis is so full of love and rich with friendship that it fills me up, even from thousands of miles away. That traveling isn´t as fun without someone to share it with. That I´m strong. That I really want to learn how to salsa dance. That Buenos Aires is a truly fabulous city, but it will never be my home. That although I´d feel lost without Andy´s love, with him I have not lost myself. That it´s important to live life with intentions rather than expectations, and treat each lesson handed to you with the care and attention it deserves.

Man, living abroad really packs it in. Maybe a lesson a day keeps the ... swine flu away? Anyway, it kind of feels like I´m in college and I´m majoring in Life Lessons with a double-minor in Challenging Myself and Patience. It´s been fun, and I´m excited to see what other lessons life adds to my ever-growing list ... and how all of this contributes to Post-Argentina Lia. Argentinalia. Argentinacita. Argentinaliacita. Argenliacita.

I think it´s time for bed.

a very good day

Today was a very good day.

Today was a good day despite the fact that I had to wake up at 6:45am, which is quite literally the middle of the night, according to my internal clock. And despite the fact that when I walked to the kitchen groggy-eyed, I found my host brother Juan still awake, playing video games in his robe, an entire ¨night¨ of sleep still ahead of him.

Today was a good day because I started my first day of Spanish class. Since I won´t be able to start teaching for a few more weeks, I´m taking two weeks of classes to brush up on the subjunctive and have people correct me when I use the wrong verb tense. And I really liked my teacher. And the school. And they gave me free tea and cookies.

Today was a good day because starting something new means an opportunity to meet people, and I really need to make some more friends. And, lucky for me, this little Spanish institute had some good ones, from Australia, Seattle, Israel, California, Amsterdam, New Zealand and everywhere inbetween. They were nice, and fun, and interested in making friends too. My lucky day! I wonder if they could see the crazed look in my eyes, the one that screams ¨I´m really desperate for friends.¨ I wonder if I came off as creepy.

Today was a good day because I got to take a nap.

Today was a good day because I went to a really great yoga class. And did a headstand for a full minute.

Today was a good day because after dinner, instead of listening to melancholy music and thinking about Minneapolis, I found myself singing out loud to Neko Case and thinking about all the little internal changes happening in the depths of my soul.

Today was a good day because I looked at my planner and realized I have something scheduled for every day, and every night, this week. With people other than myself.

Today was a good day because it was the first day since I´ve been here that I had the thought, ¨Maybe my time here is going to pass by too quickly.¨

Today was a very good day.

sometimes

Sometimes I find myself thinking, ¨Maybe I should have come to Argentina at the end of July instead of in June, since I won´t even start teaching until mid-August.¨ But then I realize how many great things I´ve experienced so far, or I think about all the Spanish I´ve learned, or I have a night like last night that fills me with Argentine contentment.

Saturday night dinners in the Lavie household are usually drawn-out affairs. Friends and family come to eat, much wine is drank, my host dad Carlos spends all afternoon in the kitchen preparing amazing culinary treats, there is much talk and laughter.

And last night was even more special, because two of Carlos´ cousins and their husbands came for dinner. From listening to them talk, I gathered that they hadn´t seen each other for a long time, and from observing the fact that Carlos started preparing food on Friday instead of the usual Saturday-afternoon routine, I figured this was going to be one smashing meal. (I was right, by the way.)

Around 9 Carlos put on a video of a really fabulous flamenco concert. The singer´s voice was an incredible contradiction of rough and sweet, and the piano player downright amazing. (For you music lovers out there, I will ask Carlos who this singer was when he wakes up at his usual Sunday time of 5 or 6pm.) We sat and drank red wine and I was sucked into the music.

Then we were ushered into the fancy dining room (this was the first time I´d ever seen it used), where plates of meats and cheeses and baskets of fresh bread were laid out on the long table. We ate from those plates and drank more wine and my ears buzzed with conversation. A woman´s beautiful, low voice came from the stereo, filling the gaps between words.

It was exciting, realizing the level of my comprehension - they were discussing things like ocular lobes and political rights, and I understood. I even took part in the conversation, discussing my travel plans and my family and why I´m here in Argentina and whether or not I voted for Obama and what I studied in college. It was an exhilarating feeling, realizing that I can converse with a table of adults in Spanish at a dinner party.

Then came the main course - plates of fresh ravioli stuffed with sweet cheese, swimming in a homemade sauce of tomatoes, basil and garlic, and topped off with sausage cooked in white wine and freshly grated parmesean cheese, accompanied by more bread and (you guessed it) more wine. It was heaven.

And what is a Saturday night dinner without dessert - rice pudding, apple tart and an assortment of ice cream flavors. Holy full stomach. I was absolutely stuffed. And tired from the wine. And so content I felt I would burst. (Or maybe that was just because of my really full stomach.) It was a very good night indeed.

family dogs

So when I got here, the Lavie family dog was dying. His name was Floy, and he was a big Rottweiler. Except he was so sick and old that his ribs were all showing, and his hip bones stuck up like those of a cow. He could barely walk, and spent his days either on the floor of my bathroom or in the corner of the kitchen, looking really sad. Sometimes he drank some water out of a bowl held to his face, and every once and a while he managed to eat a few bites of steak, which had been grilled and seasoned to perfection just for him. It was really hard to watch him die, laying under a tattered towel for a blanket, slipping and sliding and falling on the tile floor whenever he tried to stand up. I started to wonder why they were keeping him alive and letting him suffer.

Every night, halfway through dinner, like clockwork, he´d summon up the strength to hobble into the dining room and plop himself down by the table. And every time he did this I lost my appetite. Someone needed to hold his head while he lowered himself to the ground because he didn´t have the energy to hold it up himself. It made me feel really sad. Sometimes he smelled, and a few times he threw up on the floor. My host mom Carmen cried every day about her perrito negro (little black dog), especially when he wobbled in to lay next to her during dinner. I rubbed his ears and stroked his nose sometimes, and he seemed to like that.

Then one day I came home and Lourdes told me that Floy was gone. I couldn´t understand if he was at the animal hospital or if he had died, but I finally figured out he was just at the vet. But then the next day I learned that he was dead - they had put him to sleep. I felt mostly relieved, because he was clearly in a lot of pain, but also sad, because he seemed like he was once a really sweet dog. Carmen was upset, but surprisingly more stoic than I thought she would be. I suppose when you watch something or someone you love suffer, that part is sometimes more difficult than actually letting them go. Somehow I´ve managed to live 24 years without experiencing this. I consider myself very lucky.

So I figured that was the end of Floy, until Lourdes called me into the kitchen yesterday. ¨Veni! Floy está aqui.¨ (Come! Floy´s here.) Hmm, I thought, this can only mean one thing. And sure enough, I was right. They had cremated him. And his remains are now stored in a fancy little box on a shelf where they store their wine. I´m not sure how I feel about this. Never having experienced the death of a pet, I don´t know if this is normal practice, or something done for dogs who belong to rich Argentine families, or just something the Lavie family felt they needed to do. But Floy is with us once again, and every time they serve me a glass of wine with dinner, I think of him sitting in that little box on the shelf.

Then last night I had a dream that I came home from Argentina and Andy had bought a Yellow Lab puppy, and it was already seven or eight months old. In my dream I was pissed - not because he bought a dog that sheds (this is an ongoing discussion between the two of us - whether we will some day end up with a shedding or non-shedding dog... you can guess which side I, the one who cares about home cleanliness, am on) - but because I wasn´t there to play with it when it was really cute and tiny, and I was worried that he hadn´t implemented as strict of a training regimen as I would have. But it was still really cute, and Andy had waited for me to get home to name it, which was nice of him, so we debated over Huey, Hubert and Howie and finally settled on Howie. But then Howie got away and ran down a busy street and we panicked and chased after him, and when we found him he had hurt his paw, but was okay. I felt really relieved and gave Howie a hug.

I think the conclusion of all of this is that Andy´s persistence that I learn to love dogs as much as he does combined with the sympathy I felt for Floy have finally softened my cat-loving heart to the canine world. However, I don´t see myself ever cremating a family pet and keeping it in the wine cooler.

tango

On Wednesday I went to my first tango class. I receive two free tango classes with my program, and I was excited to check it out, though I was unsure of what to expect. I had imagined a clean, small, white room with tile floors, like all of the ballet studios I´ve ever seen. I´d pictured a small group of people my age, all there to learn the basics, just like me.

What I got was a brightly lit, colorful, jam-packed room in what I concluded must be a restaurant or café during the day. I arrived a little early, and watched as some boys practiced break dancing and two girls rehearsed some funk-type dance moves. While I watched, people slowly trickled in to the studio, in small groups, in pairs, alone. Men and women, old and young, Argentine and American. The Argentines started strapping on shiny high heels with fancy straps and warming up on the old wooden floor. I started to get the sense that this was not going to be the quiet, serious little lesson I had imagined.

At 7:30 on the dot a tall man with slicked-back black hair and tight pants put on loud music, glided onto the dance floor, instructed everyone to get behind him, and started doing tango moves. I counted almost forty people dancing behind him, trying not to step on each others´toes. We danced in a group for a while, going over some ¨basic¨ steps, then he broke us down into four lines, and we danced across the floor that way. Then we were split into two groups - beginners and advanced - and learned a few new moves, which we practiced in pairs.

And oh, my dancing partners throughout the evening! That was the best part. Advanced dancers so serious about getting the steps right they wouldn´t even look at me. Young men who smiled shyly and held me delicately. A teenage boy who was clearly nervous and his sweating made the smell of his cologne even stronger, yet he moved me across the dance floor with sure hands and admirable concentration. And, my favorite, a boy who couldn´t have been more than eight or nine years old who walked right up to me and took my right fingers and left hip in his hands and led me around the room with the confidence of a grown man, not some scrawny kid four and a half feet tall.

And speaking of little kids, there was a group of girls around eleven or twelve years old who were there together, and they were amazing. They all had those fancy tango shoes on and knew every step and danced with the grace of grown women. No wonder Argentine women are so sexy, when they start dancing and moving like that before they even need bras.

It was fantastic. The room was full of energy, of women being twirled around, of loud tango music and shouted reminders to keep your legs long! your back straight! step in a straight line! put that toe right there! pause! turn! go!

I will be back next week, and for many weeks after. I found out that the cost of the class is only $15 pesos, or about $4USD. An hour and a half dance class for $4? I´m there. I will never be a tango-fessional, that´s for sure, but it´s fun and full of life and I get to be put to shame by ten-year-olds and dance with sweating teenage boys. Talk about a great Wednesday night.

an empty dress

Sometimes it seems to me that my life in Minneapolis is contained in a snowglobe that I hold in my hands, turning it over with each memory I carry with me. Everything and everyone held in time, suspended in a world that from far away seems even more beautiful than before. It sits in my palms, on the tip of my tongue, at the edges of my dreams. So far away, yet so clear and crisp in my mind that I feel as if at any moment I could reach into it and touch someone´s hand, unlock the front door, run my fingers along the worn red fabric of the couch, slip into it like some empty dress on the bed laid out for tonight.


*Author´s note: I wish I could claim this last phrase as my own, but I can´t. It´s a line from a Band of Horses song. A beautiful line. A line that I love. A line that turns itself around in my mind like a woman twirling in slow motion, her dress filling the air. And I know a few of you recognized the line when you read it. And I almost didn´t write this little explanation, because I wanted you to feel special, like we´d just shared a secret. But then I thought about everyone else who wouldn´t know, and who would think that beautiful line was mine, and I felt guilty. So I wrote this. And now you can all go and listen to one of my favorite songs. It´s called ´I Go to the Barn Because I Like The.´

fumigation

This morning I was enjoying a cup of tea while I checked my email in my pajamas. The door buzzer sounded, and few minutes later Carmen was talking to someone in the kitchen. Then I started smelling something funny, very chemical-like. I thought to myself, ¨Hmm, that´s odd.¨ Then a guy wearing a Ghostbuster-like tank on his back walked by, spraying chemicals into corners. Well that´s just great. Don´t worry about me, I don´t need those brain cells anyway. I grabbed my tea, and retreated to my room, hoping the chemicals wouldn´t seep under the door. I emerged a while later to smell incense. Of course! Why didn´t I think of that. Incense clearly cancels out the detrimental effects of cockroach-killing chemicals. Carmen later explained that the fumigation was just a preventative measure. There weren´t even any cockroaches in the house. Perfect. Thank you for shaving a few weeks off my life. Oh Argentina, with your secondhand smoke and dirty exhaust and fumigation, you are so not good for my lungs.

photos

Some of you have been asking to see photos... and since the internet here doesn´t always cooperate, I think it´s easiest to just send you to the photo album I´ve created on Facebook. I´ll try to start posting some of my favorites on here, but for now, enjoy!

a day in uruguay

Yesterday I went to Uruguay for the day. Yes, that sounds funny to me too.

One of my friends needed to renew her tourist visa, so she, two of her friends and I got up at 6am, took a three-hour ferry across the Rio de la Plata, spent the afternoon wandering around the tiny, old town of Colonia, and took the three-hour ferry back. It was a beautiful day - not very warm, but sunny - and it was so nice to get out of the noise and traffic of Buenos Aires and wander down cobblestone streets, linger over lunch and sit on a beach in the sun.

I may do this trip again in September when my own tourist visa is up. Or I might just cross the border into Brazil when I go to Iguazu falls. Or maybe I´ll go to Chile for the weekend. It´s so odd and wonderful to have all of these options tucked into my pocket.

To see some photos of Colonia, click here.

nightlife

We pull up at a plaza ringed with bars, lines spilling out doors, the air buzzing with conversation. We enter one, grab a table and order mojitos and Argentine beer. Three Americans, sitting around a wooden table in the middle of a bar in the middle of Buenos Aires, getting to know each other. We snack on peanuts, swap stories, laugh, shout over the heavy music that vibrates our chairs. Eventually we head out into the cold night to find another bar that one of us had heard about. We walk a few blocks down wide cobblestone streets until we come to a door, unmarked, tucked into a quiet street. The only hint that there may actually be a bar inside the dark building is a security guard standing outside. He lets us pass, and we step through a heavy door to a beautiful old building, with exposed brick, low lights and plush couches lining the walls. The menu has over fifty types of whiskey. Couples make-out all around us, so deeply focused on kissing I wonder if they even notice us sit down. We sip our drinks slowly, chat with the bartender, then head to a cafe, quiet and well-lit, to order empanadas and croissants and hot drinks. We linger, not wanting to leave the worn-in booth, making friends with an Argentine couple next to us. Eventually we grab a taxi, and by 5:30, tired, full, and happy, I fall into bed.

Two nights later, I sit around a kitchen table with three girls my age - an Argentine who grew up in Miami and two girls from Panama. They are all fluent in both English and Spanish, and they slide in and out of the two languages as fluidly as sand slipping between fingers. We mix orange soda with white wine, listen to music from a laptop and talk about dancing, politics, men, friendship, Buenos Aires, and bad American television. At 1:30 we finish our drinks and flag a cab, which speeds us through the city to the water´s edge to a club named Jet. We arrive just before the early-bird cut-off at 2am, so we get in free. The place is just starting to fill up, and by 3 the dance floor is packed. American music pounds through my body - Eminem´s ´Real Slim Shady´, Madonna´s ´Like a Virgin´, Paul Oakenfold´s ´Starry-Eyed Surprise´, Lil´Jon´s ´Get Low´, Kanye West´s ´Stronger´ - it surprises me that everyone sings along, shouting above the music to these lyrics that I grew up with, ecstatic to hear this weird mix of songs from my past. We dance for hours, the four of us in our small circle, giving dirty looks to men who feel it´s their right to touch you without permission, breathing in second-hand smoke, singing until we´re hoarse, wearing glowing neon bracelets around our wrists, watching through the windows behind the DJ as hundreds of sailboats bob in the harbor. At 5:30 we´ve had enough. We stand in line for twenty minutes, elbowing people out of the way as we wait in the coat check line, then stand outside waiting for a taxi as our breath leaves our mouths in clouds. Our cab races back into the city, cheating stop lights and hurtling around corners, until we reach a 24-hour restaurant with flashing neon lights. There we order hot chocolate and eat french fries with ketchup and mayonnaise, discuss the evening´s events, complain about sore feet and bad pick-up lines and the smell of cigarettes in our hair. We part on the dark street with kisses on cheeks, and ten minutes later I am tucked into bed, my ears ringing and my body still buzzing, my clock reading 7am.

hmm...

Well, I learned today that all of the language institutes have been closed until August 3 due to the Swine Flu... there are a lot of preventative measures being taken here to keep it from spreading. So that means that I need to find a way to occupy myself for another month. Hmm. To some this may seem like a blessing. No work? No obligations? In Argentina? What´s wrong with that? And yes, on some level, it´s nice. But on another, I´m the kind of person who needs purpose and structure and to be productive. So I didn´t exactly welcome this news. However, I realize that life is all about attitude, so I decided to look at the positive side and make a list of all that I can do over the next month.
- Practice Spanish like my life depends on it
- Exhaust every friend-making outlet possible
- Travel
- Maybe sign up for an official language class
- Take tango classes
- Visit more museums
- Try to convince a friend or two from home to come down and travel with me
- Do more yoga
- Do so much travel research that my fingers fall off and the internet cafe kicks me out
- Write more journal entries
- Give meditation a try
- Remind myself that some day I´m going to long for this free time with every ounce of my being

my first class

I taught my first English class tonight, though not through an institute or a program or organization or any of the above. My host dad´s sister and my host mom´s friend were over for dinner on Saturday, and talk got around to English. They both desparately want to learn, and once they found out I was here to teach English, it was decided that I would be their new teacher. So now, on Mondays at Wednesdays at 6:30, I meet these two older women at one of their apartments to drink coffee and eat banana bread and talk in Spanish and English about life and men and clothing and food. And they insisted that I allow them to pay me, even though I insisted it wasn´t necessary. So I have a job. And two new friends, I think. It´s funny, I seem to have made more friends who are my parents´age than mine. Huh. But I had the best time tonight, and it´s exciting to see the skeleton of my weekly schedule starting to form. Huzzah!

here and there

Here: Ravioli with handmade pasta stuffed with cheese and peppers.
There: Frozen stir-fry from a plastic bag.

Here: Chilled Chardonnay.
There: Pints of Surly.

Here: Dog-walkers walking 8-10 dogs at a time down a crowded city street; pit bulls, mutts and little rat-dogs straining at their leashes.
There: All-American families out for Sunday strolls around the lakes with their well-behaved Golden Retrievers and Labs.

Here: A doorman who calls the elevator for you and compliments you while you wait for it to arrive.
There: Waiting for what can seem like hours for the slowest, most aggravating elevator in the world.

Here: Writing journal entries about personal growth.
There: Writing press releases about propane.

Here: Drop-off laundry service with one-day turnaround.
There: Watching the hamper overflow, avoiding the inevitable.

Here: Clubs that offer an early-bird cover-charge until 2am.
There: Bars that close at 2am.

Here: Buses spewing exhaust.
There: Hybrid buses.

Here: An hour minimum to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee with friends.
There: Rushing to throw down a double-shot latte on the way to work.

Here: A few small parks surrounded by cement.
There: Lakes, rivers, trees, gardens, and yards, with a few cement patches inbetween.

Here: Ice cream delivered right to your door.
There: Eating ice cream straight out of a carton from my freezer.

independence day

Today was the first 4th of July holiday that I´ve ever spent out of the country. So today, instead of celebrating America´s independence, I went ahead and celebrated my own.

I celebrated the fact that I am independent enough to move to a big city, in a foreign country, knowing no one. That I am independent enough to realize I am the only one in control of my life. That independence can be synonymous with needing support from people who love me. That independence cultivates many things - strength, learning, thoughtfulness, observation, loneliness, introspection, gratefulness, clarity, questioning. That sometimes independence means an unclear path, and that´s okay.

I celebrated how fortunate I am - to have an opportunity like this, to have a life as full and rich as mine, to be able to feel the support of friends and family from many miles away - and gave thanks.

oh, and in case you were wondering...

... if I´m ever going to do anything but wander around the city, eat carbohydrates and do yoga, the answer is ´Yes.´

Today I had a meeting with the director of Road2Argentina, and he gave me a sincere apology for the delay in my teaching start date. He explained that people here are going kind of crazy about the Swine Flu, and therefore all but one of the language institutes have closed. Perfect. But, I have a meeting next week with the one remaining institute, as well as a meeting with Greenpeace. (For those of you who thought I was already doing work with Greenpeace, that was the original plan until they said I´d be doing ´crafts´- I wasn´t sure that would be intellectually stimulating enough, so I switched to teaching English. However, we´re going to work something out so I can be on some more ´stimulating´projects...)

So, in conclusion, next week will hopefully bring me some answers. I may end up teaching part-time and working with Greenpeace part time. It´s all flexible though, and I´m content as long as I´m practicing my Spanish, since that is the main goal of this whole adventure.

That is all for now.

imposter

Yes, it´s true. I´ve been stopped twice - Twice! - on the street by lost persons asking for directions. Somehow, with my blonde (here it is considered blonde, though I tend to disagree) hair, American clothing and gawking tourist eyes, I´ve been able to blend in and disguise myself as a porteña... at least on occasion. And oh how thrilling is it!

(I´ll just leave out the part of the story where I wasn´t familiar with the places being asked about, and therefore was extremely unhelpful... maybe some day soon I´ll step it up to this level.)

namaste

Yesterday I set one goal for myself: find a yoga studio. My body was stiff, my neck and back unhappy, my overall self a little unbalanced. So after some online research, I decided a studio just three blocks away looked like it might do the trick.

I entered an old, narrow building, four or five stories high, tucked inbetween a brightly lit, modern looking gym and a health food cafe that serves (gasp!) salads. I was welcomed by many smiling faces and kisses to my cheeks (everyone greets everyone with kisses here... and yogis´ ´love for every being´ mantra definitely shines in this area), and decided to attend a class at 8pm.

I climed up two stories to a small room overlooking the street. The floor was covered in a squishy blue mat (no need for personal yoga mats here), high glass doors opened to a balcony, the ceiling was a mix of exposed brick, rafters, tiles and stained glass, and a photograph of a happy old yoga man was tacked front and center.

It was a different sort of yoga than I´m used to - it didn´t flow like Vinyasa - but it stretched what needed to be stretched and gave me an hour of sanctuary from the city. The instructor decided to do a Michael Jackson tribute day, which made me laugh. Yoga and M.J. aren´t exactly synonymous in my book, but it worked. And, I even did my first headstand, something I´d never even attempted before. It was an exciting moment indeed.

And then the relaxation at the end... a soft floor beneath me, a dark and quiet room, my body tingling from the attention it had received, slow Spanish words instructing me to relax every last part of my body, from my eyebrows to my ankles.

I think my little Buenos Aires yoga studio and I are going to get along quite well.