well, amigos, it´s been an eventful, clumsy few days here in the mountains. i was going to try to write about it, but if you will check out my most recent pictures (http://picasaweb.google.com/ellen.bucy), you will see why typing is a bit laborious today. happy vday to me;)
not to worry. i am not so easily taken down! but si, i have fractured my arm. the dr says only 2 weeks in this charming cast - so not sure how this is or is not going to change my plans (ie, whether i will attempt the next week of classes without my writing arm). will take it easy this weekend and figure out next steps, but the blog may suffer. i feel like the guy in the diving bell and the butterfly - if only i had someone to type for me. i may work on the telling of this story over the next few days - because it´s a good one and i don´t want to forget - but it may take awhile. i put some captions on the photos and that´s about all me and my left hand can muster today.
i will go ahead and say that i went down having a grand ole time. well worth a trip to the hospital.
anyway, hope you all in one piece. much love on this luvin day. chau!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Viajando y Llegando
(From Saturday, 2/9/08)
I´ve been on the road for a little over four hours now. It´s been four hours of endless flat. Farms of corn and cows, splashes of of marshes and shallow lakes, trees, skies like paintings with perfect puffs of whites and greys. A huge patch of sunflowers just passed by - incredible black faces staring out at me.
It´s familiar and strange. It´s the farmlands of Indiana or Ohio or Kansa or Iowa with the brightnes turned up. The greens are lusher, and the trees! I can´t figure out what it is about the trees here. They´re pines in the desert. There are random patches of them, like they´ve been planted for the purpose of creating a barrier or a shelter, and they´re so varied - all different texture and colors. It´s so beautiful.
This bus is amazing - definitely the way to travel here. I have a deluxe, super-cushy seat, a foot rest that extends all the way, so I can fully stretch out my legs, and I can lean the back of my chair all the way down. It´s like flying first class, just much better scenery. There´s a steward who hands out snacks and meals and beverages. Vino mas tarde, tambien! I´m very glad I chose to travel this way instead of flying. So relaxing - like train-riding - and so much to see. We are supposed to arrive in Bariloche around 10 AM tomorrow morning, and I´m scared I´m going to miss something amazing if I fall asleep!
There are these little "stations" we stop at every hour or so to pick up a new passenger. Basically dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. And, as it was at the bus station in Buenos Aires, it´s always a family affair. A whole carload of folks comes to see off their loved one, all standing outside and waving as we pull off down the road. It´s so old-fashioned. I love it. The deluxe bus is clearly a luxury - and a big deal.
The economic standing of this country reveals itself in little things like that. In more obvious ways, too. This afternoon, a homeless teenager stole the tip I was leaving for my waiter right off the table, right in front of me. Several of these boys had been prowling around this cafe in the bus station. I guess there are no rules against begging in BsAs because it was not the first time in the last month that beggars had approached my table, in the middle of a meal, to ask for money or food. Today, while I was waiting on my food, I watched as one of these boys asked another customer for his leftover fries. When the customer said, sure, fine, the boy just reached his big dirty hand out and grabbed them up right off of the plate.
I had a stack of six 25 cent coins sitting on my table, and when I stood up to heave-ho my enormous backpack onto my back, the kid approached the table, calmly picked up the coins, and just walked off. As he reached down to take them, I said, "No!" I couldn´t even think, I was so dumbfounded by what was happening. He sort of smirked at me, said, "Yes!" and hurried off to snicker about it with his friends. The cafe was crowded; there were tons of witnesses, but I felt totally helpless. Of course, worse, I took several steps away from the table, walking off after the guy, and then realized I had left my smaller backpack on the table. Thank God it was still there - the beggars here work in pairs; one distracts while the other steals.
Several customers told the waiters what had happened. I just stood there, speechless and beginning to burn with anger. One of the waiters headed off after them, but I doubt he accomplished anything. It´s an insignificant amount of money - 50 cents US - so I just walked away. But the way the whole episode made me feel was awful - an ugly mix of embarrassment and fury and disgust and confusion. I´m sure that kid needed that 50 cents more than me or my waiter, but it was the arrogance with which he took it that enraged me. I felt revolted by him and his poverty and his desparation, and I felt revolted with myself for being so revolted by him.
Of course, this wasn´t a dangerous situation by any means, but it was definitely a good lesson. I´m really careful with my things, but I also expect a certain amount of decency from other people. It´s stupid that I can´t trust that if I leave a tip on the table, it won´t be snatched up by a passer-by. Not stupid. I guess I´ve just been spoiled by a world where nobody´s that kind of desperate (or at least the government´s doing a good job of keeping them away). Naivety stikes again.
Anyway, before I really embark on my travels, I am going to try to lighten my load a bit. If your backpack´s so heavy you make yourself vulnerable every time you put it on, that´s a problemo!
I was just surprised to look down at my watch and see that it´s 8:15 PM. It looks and feels like it´s about 3 PM. These long days are good for my health, I´ve decided. I should be sunflower! These fields of sunflowers are breathtaking - looks like a nice place to spend some time.
***
(Sunday, 2/10/08)
I woke up around 2:30 AM this morning and peered out the window to find a sky full of stars. I´ve never seen anything like it. Never seen so many stars. It was incredible. Several times recently, I´ve seen Orion in the night sky over Buenos Aires, but he was always pretty lonely up there. Last night, I could see Orion (because his stars are brighter than others), but he was almost hard to make out because his space was invaded by thousands of little stars. The entire sky was covered. More stars than sky. Gorgeous. How do I explain what it feels like to be laying in a very comfy little bed and to wake to such an incredible sight? How can I explain getting lulled back to sleep by such a sky?
I woke again around 8:30 AM to find the landscape totally changed. The flat farmland had been replaced by rolling yellow hills, the land totally barren of trees. There were tufts of shrubbery - broccoli-like bunches of dry greens sprouting up from the rocky earth and the long, yellow grasses.
***
(Today, the present)
I didn´t finish that because we shortly thereafter arrived in Bariloche. It was facinating, though, to watch the landscape change - to watch those dry, yellowed hills grow into mountains full of pines and deep blue lakes. All in about an hour! I was told yesterday that that yellow area (that´s all I can say about it - yellow), is called "The Step," anywhere in the world. The transition area before the mountains. Anyone know anything about that? Dad-0?
We arrived right on schedule, and I was just bubbling over with excitement as we pulled into Bariloche. It´s unbelievably beautiful here. And cool! I stepped off the bus with a bit of a shiver! By afternoon, it had warmed up significantly, but the mornings and evenings hacen mucho frio!
It´s a smallish resort town - about 100,000 residents, I believe. Tourism is their main industry - skiing in the winter, and everything you can think of in the summer. Hiking, biking, camping, paragliding, etc. Eeeeee! It reminds me vaguley of any town like this in the States - Jackson, WY, Boone, NC. Many of the houses are built in that Alpine style, like the houses in Hound Ears (what is that place called, Jordy? Hounds Run? Hound Ears?) in Boone. Little wedges of houses, built so the snow just slides right down the sides.
I knew my friends Nicole and Kate were just finishing up here, and I managed to find their hostel when I left the bus station, so I got to spend a couple hours with them, catching up, sharing stories of the past two weeks, eating lunch, eating chocolate. (Bariloche, for whatever reason, is famous for it´s chocolate - there are about four chocolate shops on every block. Just what I need after daily helado in BsAs!) Anyway, very good to see them again - they left early this morning for El Chalten and the parks down thataways. Torres del Paine, I believe. Perhaps I will see them mas tarde, no se.
Around 6 PM, I walked myself over to my new house. And yes, this time, it´s a real house -with a back yard and everything. I´m enchanted by this family and their life here. (I keep wanting to write in Spanish, and I´m really trying to restrain myself, by the way.) The parents are in their 50s, and they have a total of five children, three of whom are in their mid-late 20s and have moved away. The others are a 17 year old boy and a 13 year old girl. There´s a real K-9, a german shepherd, who tried to eat my arm yesterday (but I said, ha! Esta bien!), and tres gatos! One´s a little Siamese meowser, who looks a bit like a kitty I once knew named Sue, and the other is an unremarkable little kitty, and the other is a gigantic grey beast. A puma, I think! Reeer! I cannot remember the names of any of these animals - they´re all Spanish. Apparently the german shephard only understands German. (Yuk, yuk, yuk.)
The house is a home. I love it. Everything´s wooden and it´s full of clutter and pictures and history. Very lived in. My kind of place. They leave the windows open during the day, and the kitties wander in and out, and the dog stands up on his hind legs and peers into the windows, so left out! Last night, when I was in bed, trying to fall asleep, I kept getting rudely startled by the dog, who was trying to open my bedroom windows from outside!
It´s a real family kind of family, too. Home-made, sit-down dinners around the table every night, with educational TV afterward. Eerily like my own upbringing. (NOVA´s on tonight, sweetie! Oh boy!) Anyway, it´s perfect.
And...the school is directly across the street. I had my first round of classes this morning, and I´ve been put into 2B, even thought I just finished 1B and should be in 2A. But because the school is significantly smaller (maybe 30 students to BsAs´200), they have merged some of the classes, so 2A and 2B are together. I´m not feeling terribly lost, fortunately. I think 2A and B are mostly for improving listening and talking, so it´s a lot of conversation and not so much new stuff.
There were 12 newbies today - 4 from the US (including me), one from Germany, 6 from Switzerland, and 1 from Austria - so that´s good. And mi amigo, Eric, from BsAs is here, so that´s muy bien, tambien.
The activities the school organizes are almost entirely outdoors, and I´m going to do as much as I can! I think now, I am going to wander down to the center of the town (just a 5 minute walk, maybe - this place is very small) and try to get some info on day hikes. Perhaps I will even do one today!
Allllllll of this is to say, I am happy. I think this is going to be a great couple of weeks.
I´ve been on the road for a little over four hours now. It´s been four hours of endless flat. Farms of corn and cows, splashes of of marshes and shallow lakes, trees, skies like paintings with perfect puffs of whites and greys. A huge patch of sunflowers just passed by - incredible black faces staring out at me.
It´s familiar and strange. It´s the farmlands of Indiana or Ohio or Kansa or Iowa with the brightnes turned up. The greens are lusher, and the trees! I can´t figure out what it is about the trees here. They´re pines in the desert. There are random patches of them, like they´ve been planted for the purpose of creating a barrier or a shelter, and they´re so varied - all different texture and colors. It´s so beautiful.
This bus is amazing - definitely the way to travel here. I have a deluxe, super-cushy seat, a foot rest that extends all the way, so I can fully stretch out my legs, and I can lean the back of my chair all the way down. It´s like flying first class, just much better scenery. There´s a steward who hands out snacks and meals and beverages. Vino mas tarde, tambien! I´m very glad I chose to travel this way instead of flying. So relaxing - like train-riding - and so much to see. We are supposed to arrive in Bariloche around 10 AM tomorrow morning, and I´m scared I´m going to miss something amazing if I fall asleep!
There are these little "stations" we stop at every hour or so to pick up a new passenger. Basically dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. And, as it was at the bus station in Buenos Aires, it´s always a family affair. A whole carload of folks comes to see off their loved one, all standing outside and waving as we pull off down the road. It´s so old-fashioned. I love it. The deluxe bus is clearly a luxury - and a big deal.
The economic standing of this country reveals itself in little things like that. In more obvious ways, too. This afternoon, a homeless teenager stole the tip I was leaving for my waiter right off the table, right in front of me. Several of these boys had been prowling around this cafe in the bus station. I guess there are no rules against begging in BsAs because it was not the first time in the last month that beggars had approached my table, in the middle of a meal, to ask for money or food. Today, while I was waiting on my food, I watched as one of these boys asked another customer for his leftover fries. When the customer said, sure, fine, the boy just reached his big dirty hand out and grabbed them up right off of the plate.
I had a stack of six 25 cent coins sitting on my table, and when I stood up to heave-ho my enormous backpack onto my back, the kid approached the table, calmly picked up the coins, and just walked off. As he reached down to take them, I said, "No!" I couldn´t even think, I was so dumbfounded by what was happening. He sort of smirked at me, said, "Yes!" and hurried off to snicker about it with his friends. The cafe was crowded; there were tons of witnesses, but I felt totally helpless. Of course, worse, I took several steps away from the table, walking off after the guy, and then realized I had left my smaller backpack on the table. Thank God it was still there - the beggars here work in pairs; one distracts while the other steals.
Several customers told the waiters what had happened. I just stood there, speechless and beginning to burn with anger. One of the waiters headed off after them, but I doubt he accomplished anything. It´s an insignificant amount of money - 50 cents US - so I just walked away. But the way the whole episode made me feel was awful - an ugly mix of embarrassment and fury and disgust and confusion. I´m sure that kid needed that 50 cents more than me or my waiter, but it was the arrogance with which he took it that enraged me. I felt revolted by him and his poverty and his desparation, and I felt revolted with myself for being so revolted by him.
Of course, this wasn´t a dangerous situation by any means, but it was definitely a good lesson. I´m really careful with my things, but I also expect a certain amount of decency from other people. It´s stupid that I can´t trust that if I leave a tip on the table, it won´t be snatched up by a passer-by. Not stupid. I guess I´ve just been spoiled by a world where nobody´s that kind of desperate (or at least the government´s doing a good job of keeping them away). Naivety stikes again.
Anyway, before I really embark on my travels, I am going to try to lighten my load a bit. If your backpack´s so heavy you make yourself vulnerable every time you put it on, that´s a problemo!
I was just surprised to look down at my watch and see that it´s 8:15 PM. It looks and feels like it´s about 3 PM. These long days are good for my health, I´ve decided. I should be sunflower! These fields of sunflowers are breathtaking - looks like a nice place to spend some time.
***
(Sunday, 2/10/08)
I woke up around 2:30 AM this morning and peered out the window to find a sky full of stars. I´ve never seen anything like it. Never seen so many stars. It was incredible. Several times recently, I´ve seen Orion in the night sky over Buenos Aires, but he was always pretty lonely up there. Last night, I could see Orion (because his stars are brighter than others), but he was almost hard to make out because his space was invaded by thousands of little stars. The entire sky was covered. More stars than sky. Gorgeous. How do I explain what it feels like to be laying in a very comfy little bed and to wake to such an incredible sight? How can I explain getting lulled back to sleep by such a sky?
I woke again around 8:30 AM to find the landscape totally changed. The flat farmland had been replaced by rolling yellow hills, the land totally barren of trees. There were tufts of shrubbery - broccoli-like bunches of dry greens sprouting up from the rocky earth and the long, yellow grasses.
***
(Today, the present)
I didn´t finish that because we shortly thereafter arrived in Bariloche. It was facinating, though, to watch the landscape change - to watch those dry, yellowed hills grow into mountains full of pines and deep blue lakes. All in about an hour! I was told yesterday that that yellow area (that´s all I can say about it - yellow), is called "The Step," anywhere in the world. The transition area before the mountains. Anyone know anything about that? Dad-0?
We arrived right on schedule, and I was just bubbling over with excitement as we pulled into Bariloche. It´s unbelievably beautiful here. And cool! I stepped off the bus with a bit of a shiver! By afternoon, it had warmed up significantly, but the mornings and evenings hacen mucho frio!
It´s a smallish resort town - about 100,000 residents, I believe. Tourism is their main industry - skiing in the winter, and everything you can think of in the summer. Hiking, biking, camping, paragliding, etc. Eeeeee! It reminds me vaguley of any town like this in the States - Jackson, WY, Boone, NC. Many of the houses are built in that Alpine style, like the houses in Hound Ears (what is that place called, Jordy? Hounds Run? Hound Ears?) in Boone. Little wedges of houses, built so the snow just slides right down the sides.
I knew my friends Nicole and Kate were just finishing up here, and I managed to find their hostel when I left the bus station, so I got to spend a couple hours with them, catching up, sharing stories of the past two weeks, eating lunch, eating chocolate. (Bariloche, for whatever reason, is famous for it´s chocolate - there are about four chocolate shops on every block. Just what I need after daily helado in BsAs!) Anyway, very good to see them again - they left early this morning for El Chalten and the parks down thataways. Torres del Paine, I believe. Perhaps I will see them mas tarde, no se.
Around 6 PM, I walked myself over to my new house. And yes, this time, it´s a real house -with a back yard and everything. I´m enchanted by this family and their life here. (I keep wanting to write in Spanish, and I´m really trying to restrain myself, by the way.) The parents are in their 50s, and they have a total of five children, three of whom are in their mid-late 20s and have moved away. The others are a 17 year old boy and a 13 year old girl. There´s a real K-9, a german shepherd, who tried to eat my arm yesterday (but I said, ha! Esta bien!), and tres gatos! One´s a little Siamese meowser, who looks a bit like a kitty I once knew named Sue, and the other is an unremarkable little kitty, and the other is a gigantic grey beast. A puma, I think! Reeer! I cannot remember the names of any of these animals - they´re all Spanish. Apparently the german shephard only understands German. (Yuk, yuk, yuk.)
The house is a home. I love it. Everything´s wooden and it´s full of clutter and pictures and history. Very lived in. My kind of place. They leave the windows open during the day, and the kitties wander in and out, and the dog stands up on his hind legs and peers into the windows, so left out! Last night, when I was in bed, trying to fall asleep, I kept getting rudely startled by the dog, who was trying to open my bedroom windows from outside!
It´s a real family kind of family, too. Home-made, sit-down dinners around the table every night, with educational TV afterward. Eerily like my own upbringing. (NOVA´s on tonight, sweetie! Oh boy!) Anyway, it´s perfect.
And...the school is directly across the street. I had my first round of classes this morning, and I´ve been put into 2B, even thought I just finished 1B and should be in 2A. But because the school is significantly smaller (maybe 30 students to BsAs´200), they have merged some of the classes, so 2A and 2B are together. I´m not feeling terribly lost, fortunately. I think 2A and B are mostly for improving listening and talking, so it´s a lot of conversation and not so much new stuff.
There were 12 newbies today - 4 from the US (including me), one from Germany, 6 from Switzerland, and 1 from Austria - so that´s good. And mi amigo, Eric, from BsAs is here, so that´s muy bien, tambien.
The activities the school organizes are almost entirely outdoors, and I´m going to do as much as I can! I think now, I am going to wander down to the center of the town (just a 5 minute walk, maybe - this place is very small) and try to get some info on day hikes. Perhaps I will even do one today!
Allllllll of this is to say, I am happy. I think this is going to be a great couple of weeks.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Bragging and Bariloche
Hola! It´s Saturday morning, and I am almost finished packing for Bariloche!
The last week here has been amazing, I must say. Four weeks is a tricky amount of time to be somewhere because it´s time to go just as you´re getting settled and really beginning to dig into things.
But I am leaving on a high note! I had my test yesterday (to assess my knowledge of the second level), and I got a 100! Best in the class, teacher´s pet, and all that. Needless to say, it was a good decision to move out of Hermaaaaan´s class; my new teacher, Victoria, was excellente. Very patient and a very slow speaker.
After class yesterday, there was a small "graduation" celebration up on the roof terrace of the school. They have these every Friday (because people are leaving every Friday), and when you get your "diploma" you are expected to say something in Spanish. I am proud to say that I very coherently said that I had learned a lot and was very thankful for my profesors. I can speak!
I DO think my Spanish is getting much better. On a break during class yesterday, one of my classmates asked me why I was so good at Spanish, and I told her, I´m not so sure you´re right about that. But then all my other classmates chimed in, "No, you are really good...for four weeks? Never having had any Spanish before?" So I´m not sure why this is. I think it´s incredibly helpful that many of the words aren´t really new to me. Even if I don´t know a word, I can make a good guess. Just take the English word I know and add a -amente or -ico onto the end of it. Sometimes I am right - other times I just invent new Spanish words.
Maybe those mortifying six years of Latin did come in handy after all. Roots, roots!
I can very safely say that in four weeks here, I have easily learned more Spanish than I learned French during my FOUR semesters at Indiana. That´s crazy! But it´s true. I am officially anti learning a language in college. It´s the most pointless venture ever. The only way to do it is the way I´m doing it - you have to be forced to speak it every day or it´s just random vocabulary words and memorization. The language needs to be meaningful and useful to you in order for you to USE it.
I had a little farewell dinner with my first profesor, Juan Manuel, on Thursday night. The rule of the evening was that I had to speak in Spanish the whole time and he in English (because he wanted to practice, too). His English is much better than my Spanish - he can string meaningful sentences together pretty quickly and easily while I feel like I am painfully slow. (I have a smart computer up there - it´s just a little slow!) I´d say it was a successful evening because we managed to talk about real stuff and not just, "Mi nombre es Ellen. Soy de Los Estados Unidos. Tengo 26 años." But it is an interesting process to have to use the limited vocabulary you have to say what you want to say. I find that my speech in English is very complicated - I use all the verb tenses you could possibly use and add in unnecessary words to make my speech sound pretty or intelligent. But here, I search for the most basic formula to express myself. It´s such a delightful simplification.
During the course of the evening, Juan made an interesting observation. He said that he is getting to know a very unique version of me - one that none of my friends at home will ever know - because this me is forced to think before speaking and to speak slowly and carefully. He gets to watch the wheels turning up there, as I search for the correct verb conjugation. To me, I think my friends back home are just being spared a very stupid version of me, but to him, he´s watching a work in progress. He´s getting to witness this big change in me. And that´s pretty neat.
I had a big, fun last night with some old and new amigos. I stayed out way too late, but it was easily worth it for the conversations had. It was an amazing feeling (amazing!) to be sitting outside on a Friday night, in a big plaza full of people and noise, and to stop and look around and take in this new life of mine. Six weeks ago, I was still immersed in routine and familiarity, hardly aware of what was ahead of me. I spent last night with an entire set of people I did not know existed six weeks ago.
We are in control of our lives, I think. We can make these things happen for ourselves. We can make change and introduce new lives to ours, but we have to choose to do it. It´s fantastic.
In just over three hours, I will be taking off to Bariloche via bus! It´s a 22 hour bus ride, but these buses are supposed to be really nice and have fully reclining seats. I am really looking forward to the ride - to relaxing and looking out the window and taking in some new scenery.
Tomorrow afternoon, I will be moving in with a new family. And it´s a whole family with a mom and a dad and two adolescent sons. Eek! Will report on that asap.
So now it´s time to finish packing, say goodbyes to Rosa (who, by the way, has taken to calling me "The Princess" - I could get used to that!) and head on down the road. I am a bit sad because new people have been introduced recently that I wanted to know and I am still wanting to know the old people better, but it´s nice to be certain that there are new folks ahead.
Hope everyone´s having a good weekend. Below are a few random noticings I collected over the past few weeks that need to be said before I go.
Okay, this may sound bad, but...There are these signs at a bunch of the bus stops here that have a picture of a person without an arm or a leg. The caption reads, "Una persona sin derechos, no es una persona." My first two weeks here, I was horribly confused by this. The one word I didn´t know in the caption was "derechos," and by using the context clues, I thought it must mean limbs. A person without limbs is not a person? How could they be saying this?? Finally, I figured out that derechos are rights, not limbs... And now I giggle every time I walk by one of those signs.
You are generally not supposed to flush anything, including toilet paper, down the toilet. There are these lovely reminder signs everywhere, but until you actually try to remember not to throw the paper in the toilet, you will not believe how hard it is. Every time I sit down, I say to myself, I will not flush the toilet paper, I will throw it in the trash can. And then without even thinking, I am standing up, turning around to flush the toilet, and looking down at that silly toilet paper, that i´ve just thrown into the toilet. It happens to me EVERY time. This is a hard habit to break.
There are no laws requiring people to clean up after their dogs here, so there is dog poop EVERYWHERE. You really, really have to pay attention when walking down the sidewalk.
The last week here has been amazing, I must say. Four weeks is a tricky amount of time to be somewhere because it´s time to go just as you´re getting settled and really beginning to dig into things.
But I am leaving on a high note! I had my test yesterday (to assess my knowledge of the second level), and I got a 100! Best in the class, teacher´s pet, and all that. Needless to say, it was a good decision to move out of Hermaaaaan´s class; my new teacher, Victoria, was excellente. Very patient and a very slow speaker.
After class yesterday, there was a small "graduation" celebration up on the roof terrace of the school. They have these every Friday (because people are leaving every Friday), and when you get your "diploma" you are expected to say something in Spanish. I am proud to say that I very coherently said that I had learned a lot and was very thankful for my profesors. I can speak!
I DO think my Spanish is getting much better. On a break during class yesterday, one of my classmates asked me why I was so good at Spanish, and I told her, I´m not so sure you´re right about that. But then all my other classmates chimed in, "No, you are really good...for four weeks? Never having had any Spanish before?" So I´m not sure why this is. I think it´s incredibly helpful that many of the words aren´t really new to me. Even if I don´t know a word, I can make a good guess. Just take the English word I know and add a -amente or -ico onto the end of it. Sometimes I am right - other times I just invent new Spanish words.
Maybe those mortifying six years of Latin did come in handy after all. Roots, roots!
I can very safely say that in four weeks here, I have easily learned more Spanish than I learned French during my FOUR semesters at Indiana. That´s crazy! But it´s true. I am officially anti learning a language in college. It´s the most pointless venture ever. The only way to do it is the way I´m doing it - you have to be forced to speak it every day or it´s just random vocabulary words and memorization. The language needs to be meaningful and useful to you in order for you to USE it.
I had a little farewell dinner with my first profesor, Juan Manuel, on Thursday night. The rule of the evening was that I had to speak in Spanish the whole time and he in English (because he wanted to practice, too). His English is much better than my Spanish - he can string meaningful sentences together pretty quickly and easily while I feel like I am painfully slow. (I have a smart computer up there - it´s just a little slow!) I´d say it was a successful evening because we managed to talk about real stuff and not just, "Mi nombre es Ellen. Soy de Los Estados Unidos. Tengo 26 años." But it is an interesting process to have to use the limited vocabulary you have to say what you want to say. I find that my speech in English is very complicated - I use all the verb tenses you could possibly use and add in unnecessary words to make my speech sound pretty or intelligent. But here, I search for the most basic formula to express myself. It´s such a delightful simplification.
During the course of the evening, Juan made an interesting observation. He said that he is getting to know a very unique version of me - one that none of my friends at home will ever know - because this me is forced to think before speaking and to speak slowly and carefully. He gets to watch the wheels turning up there, as I search for the correct verb conjugation. To me, I think my friends back home are just being spared a very stupid version of me, but to him, he´s watching a work in progress. He´s getting to witness this big change in me. And that´s pretty neat.
I had a big, fun last night with some old and new amigos. I stayed out way too late, but it was easily worth it for the conversations had. It was an amazing feeling (amazing!) to be sitting outside on a Friday night, in a big plaza full of people and noise, and to stop and look around and take in this new life of mine. Six weeks ago, I was still immersed in routine and familiarity, hardly aware of what was ahead of me. I spent last night with an entire set of people I did not know existed six weeks ago.
We are in control of our lives, I think. We can make these things happen for ourselves. We can make change and introduce new lives to ours, but we have to choose to do it. It´s fantastic.
In just over three hours, I will be taking off to Bariloche via bus! It´s a 22 hour bus ride, but these buses are supposed to be really nice and have fully reclining seats. I am really looking forward to the ride - to relaxing and looking out the window and taking in some new scenery.
Tomorrow afternoon, I will be moving in with a new family. And it´s a whole family with a mom and a dad and two adolescent sons. Eek! Will report on that asap.
So now it´s time to finish packing, say goodbyes to Rosa (who, by the way, has taken to calling me "The Princess" - I could get used to that!) and head on down the road. I am a bit sad because new people have been introduced recently that I wanted to know and I am still wanting to know the old people better, but it´s nice to be certain that there are new folks ahead.
Hope everyone´s having a good weekend. Below are a few random noticings I collected over the past few weeks that need to be said before I go.
Okay, this may sound bad, but...There are these signs at a bunch of the bus stops here that have a picture of a person without an arm or a leg. The caption reads, "Una persona sin derechos, no es una persona." My first two weeks here, I was horribly confused by this. The one word I didn´t know in the caption was "derechos," and by using the context clues, I thought it must mean limbs. A person without limbs is not a person? How could they be saying this?? Finally, I figured out that derechos are rights, not limbs... And now I giggle every time I walk by one of those signs.
You are generally not supposed to flush anything, including toilet paper, down the toilet. There are these lovely reminder signs everywhere, but until you actually try to remember not to throw the paper in the toilet, you will not believe how hard it is. Every time I sit down, I say to myself, I will not flush the toilet paper, I will throw it in the trash can. And then without even thinking, I am standing up, turning around to flush the toilet, and looking down at that silly toilet paper, that i´ve just thrown into the toilet. It happens to me EVERY time. This is a hard habit to break.
There are no laws requiring people to clean up after their dogs here, so there is dog poop EVERYWHERE. You really, really have to pay attention when walking down the sidewalk.
Apparently, all over the world, there´s a different description for the sound a rooster makes. My teacher was trying to explain to us the Spanish word for rooster, and she said it´s an animal that says, "Kee Kiri Kee". And we all just looked at her like, huh? We figured it out eventually. I said, in the US, we say, "Cockle Doodle Doo", and then the Swedish people said what it was in their country, and the Canaidian woman said what it was Canada. Who knew?
Okay, that is it, and that is all. Chau!
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
High Notes, Low Notes
I did the coolest thing last night. Every Monday night at the Konex Cultural Center in the Once neighborhood, there´s a drum show, and I kept hearing good things about it, so I decided that it was a necessity for my last week here.
And now I know where all the Argentinian hippies hang out!
The show started at 8, and there was a line wrapping down the street and around the corner to get in. I waited for maybe ten minutes, paid my 10 pesos for entry, and then followed the masses into this large enclosed outdoor area, bordered on all sides by buildings. There was a large orange stairway cutting up the center of things, and sitting on the lowest landing were 15 drummers!
Every now and then, since I have been here, I have these eek moments, where I get so excited I shriek to myself (or out loud), and I had a few of these last night. It was my kind of dance party (none of this Green Rock nonsense). Everyone there was dancing - it was impossible not to, even for those of us who need about 20 drinks in order to feel comfortable dancing.
I made my way through the masses of sweaty young people to get an enormous 10 peso cerveza, and then found myself a spot to watch the show. It was awesome. I don´t know anything about drums or drum circles, but it was fascinating to watch. There was a "conductor" of sorts, standing in front of the drummers, but I have no idea how he was signaling them or how they were following his signals. They must have several patterns of beats memorized, and then the conductor sort of leads them through a series of these patterns. Seemed it was definitely improv-ed to a point.
For one "song" a "poet" came out to (sing? shout?) with the drums. I couldn´t really understand what he was saying (that damned Español), but I imagine it was about, you know, sex, politics, something along those lines. I think maybe politics. Freedom. Hippies. I don´t know. I guess it was sort of like jam poetry? (I shouldn´t even try to talk about this because I have no idea what jam poetry is.) During another number, a trumpet player came out. Amazing.
I can´t describe it. I don´t have the words. Those amazing writers who write music reviews for the New Yorker and The Voice and The Times, they have the words. I don´t have them.
But I can say that the place was ALIVE. I felt more alive than I´ve felt in a while. It was hot, hot, the sun was going down, the pot smoke was lingering everywhere I turned, and everyone was just having a good time. Not a wild and crazy good time, just a genuinely good time.
The drums would get going on a certain beat, lulling everyone into a relaxed state, heads bobbing up and down, hips and shoulders obeying the rhythms, and then with hardly any transition, there was a subtle shift, and the beats would break out into an impromptu jam, (I feel unbelievably silly using the word jam. But that´s what it was.) and the audience responded. The whole mood would change - people jumping up and down and shouting and laughing and dancing. It was so much fun! And, what always makes music good, the musicians looked like they were having a blast. They must live for Monday nights.
The show lasted about two hours, by which time I was dripping with sweat, but it was great, uninhibited fun. I´m so glad I went.
When I got back to the house, I was in a terrific mood. Loving my life. I called my parents for the weekly check-in, though, and my mood was quickly brought down a few notches.
"We´ve had sort of an eventful weekend," my dad said. I don´t really like those words. Or I didn´t like them the way he said them. Makes me nervous. Makes everything awful that possibly could have happened, every person that I love, rush through my head at once, makes my stomach sick. And everything is fine, first of all. But on Saturday morning my grandmother started having trouble breathing, and when they took her to the hospital it appeared she had had heart failure. The short story is that she´s going to be on a respirator for basically the rest of her life (which, if you know her, you know she is hating that), but she is going to be fine.
It´s maddening to be so far away when something like this happens, and you don´t even get the information until days after because you can´t be reached. It makes me feel selfish for being here and not being there. For "needing" an adventure, when the people I care about need me. For not getting that stupid post-card in the mail when you wrote it two weeks ago. For procrastinating.
Anyway, I´m quite close to my grandmother Maggie, and I´m feeling a bit disrupted by all of this. Disrupted - that´s a terrible word. Disturbed? Confused? Sad. She´s 91, though, and that´s what happens. The body wears out on us eventually.
This is reality. Living in Argentina, on the other hand, I´m not so sure. It´s some version of reality, I guess. Mine, for the moment.
And now I know where all the Argentinian hippies hang out!
The show started at 8, and there was a line wrapping down the street and around the corner to get in. I waited for maybe ten minutes, paid my 10 pesos for entry, and then followed the masses into this large enclosed outdoor area, bordered on all sides by buildings. There was a large orange stairway cutting up the center of things, and sitting on the lowest landing were 15 drummers!
Every now and then, since I have been here, I have these eek moments, where I get so excited I shriek to myself (or out loud), and I had a few of these last night. It was my kind of dance party (none of this Green Rock nonsense). Everyone there was dancing - it was impossible not to, even for those of us who need about 20 drinks in order to feel comfortable dancing.
I made my way through the masses of sweaty young people to get an enormous 10 peso cerveza, and then found myself a spot to watch the show. It was awesome. I don´t know anything about drums or drum circles, but it was fascinating to watch. There was a "conductor" of sorts, standing in front of the drummers, but I have no idea how he was signaling them or how they were following his signals. They must have several patterns of beats memorized, and then the conductor sort of leads them through a series of these patterns. Seemed it was definitely improv-ed to a point.
For one "song" a "poet" came out to (sing? shout?) with the drums. I couldn´t really understand what he was saying (that damned Español), but I imagine it was about, you know, sex, politics, something along those lines. I think maybe politics. Freedom. Hippies. I don´t know. I guess it was sort of like jam poetry? (I shouldn´t even try to talk about this because I have no idea what jam poetry is.) During another number, a trumpet player came out. Amazing.
I can´t describe it. I don´t have the words. Those amazing writers who write music reviews for the New Yorker and The Voice and The Times, they have the words. I don´t have them.
But I can say that the place was ALIVE. I felt more alive than I´ve felt in a while. It was hot, hot, the sun was going down, the pot smoke was lingering everywhere I turned, and everyone was just having a good time. Not a wild and crazy good time, just a genuinely good time.
The drums would get going on a certain beat, lulling everyone into a relaxed state, heads bobbing up and down, hips and shoulders obeying the rhythms, and then with hardly any transition, there was a subtle shift, and the beats would break out into an impromptu jam, (I feel unbelievably silly using the word jam. But that´s what it was.) and the audience responded. The whole mood would change - people jumping up and down and shouting and laughing and dancing. It was so much fun! And, what always makes music good, the musicians looked like they were having a blast. They must live for Monday nights.
The show lasted about two hours, by which time I was dripping with sweat, but it was great, uninhibited fun. I´m so glad I went.
When I got back to the house, I was in a terrific mood. Loving my life. I called my parents for the weekly check-in, though, and my mood was quickly brought down a few notches.
"We´ve had sort of an eventful weekend," my dad said. I don´t really like those words. Or I didn´t like them the way he said them. Makes me nervous. Makes everything awful that possibly could have happened, every person that I love, rush through my head at once, makes my stomach sick. And everything is fine, first of all. But on Saturday morning my grandmother started having trouble breathing, and when they took her to the hospital it appeared she had had heart failure. The short story is that she´s going to be on a respirator for basically the rest of her life (which, if you know her, you know she is hating that), but she is going to be fine.
It´s maddening to be so far away when something like this happens, and you don´t even get the information until days after because you can´t be reached. It makes me feel selfish for being here and not being there. For "needing" an adventure, when the people I care about need me. For not getting that stupid post-card in the mail when you wrote it two weeks ago. For procrastinating.
Anyway, I´m quite close to my grandmother Maggie, and I´m feeling a bit disrupted by all of this. Disrupted - that´s a terrible word. Disturbed? Confused? Sad. She´s 91, though, and that´s what happens. The body wears out on us eventually.
This is reality. Living in Argentina, on the other hand, I´m not so sure. It´s some version of reality, I guess. Mine, for the moment.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Improvisado Arte
(From earlier today.)
I love this day. I am sitting at an outdoor table on Av. San Juan, drinking a cerveza, eating olives, and waiting for my lunch to arrive.
I love these times of solo dining. I eat peacefully, without worry of what to say. Sounds antisocial, I guess. I like people, but people take a lot out of me. I prefer watching, observing to talking, conversing.
There´s no fast food here. If you want to eat, you are forced to sit down for at least twenty minutes and be at the whim of a restaurant. There´s no running into a deli for a wrap with turkey lettuce tomato mustard to take back and eat at your desk. There´s really not even any to-go coffee (and this is painful for me). It´s nice, to slow down for a few minutes, to take the time to feed myself and relax. It´s sad that back home, we can´t give more time to self-nourishment, even this most basic kind. I think it´s a necessity.
I´ve spent the past few hours wandering around the San Telmo Sunday markets. There are blocks and blocks of vendor booths, selling jewelry, souvenirs, books, art, leather, and many items in the "junk" category. It´s the same stuff, booth after booth, but I think I could - and will - browse all day.
It´s a gorgeous day here - maybe high 70s and sunny - and there´s something about being in the center of the action on a beautiful day that I really enjoy. Overhearing conversations (even if I can´t understand them), watching the tourists be tourists and the vendors be vendors, just absorbing it all.
I wandered out of the crowded market into a small art gallery (because I dream of being an art collector someday and having a house full of special pieces - something from Argentina, perhaps?). Some of the paintings were what I´d call impressionistic and others were more modern - all were simple splashes of color, some just more distinctly resembling real life/objects than others. One piece immediately pulled me in - I can´t explain what it was about this one, but it had a soothing power. The blend of colors just felt right. I don´t know. This is what I love about art. I find it fascinating that someone can spew colors out of their brain and have them make sense to me. I stared at the painting for a long minute or two and then glanced down at the small white card next to it and read the name of the piece, "Improvisado". Coincidence? I think I have to have it, but transporting art may be complicated, so we´ll see.
There are many musicians out on the streets today. I´ve seen several huge antique pianos - very much like the behemoth rescued from Texas that lives in the childhood playroom of my parents´house. Perhaps encouragement to fix that thing up?? It was really cool to see these pianos actually played. They make a sound that´s unlike a new piano. Not nearly as crisp - much darker. You can just hear the age of the thing. Like how a 50 year old opera singer sounds much richer than a 25 year old one. Or how a man who´s been a smoker half his life sounds compared to his non-smoker counterpart.
Anyway, for a long while, I sat and watched this guy play one of these pianos, along with a small ensemble. There were three accordions, the piano, a bass, a cello, and three violins, and they were playing classic tango music. I must tell you that I am beginning to really like this tango music. Rosa plays it in the house all the time, and it´s just sort of sad and nostalgic and beautiful. Makes me feel the same way the music in that French movie I just saw...can´t think of the name...the Edith Piaf story? Anyway, it´s beautiful. And classic. And totally unique to this place.
Of all the street performers and musicians, though, the absolute best was the drum lady. She´s at least 70 - probably a bit older - and had a home-made drumset, made of I do not know what. The main drums sounded a bit like plastic - they looked a bit to me like the tops of cooking spray cans - and the cymbals, the *ching* of the ba dum bum *ching*, looked like they had been stolen from a disassembled tambourine. They were that small. She had little tap tappers on the bottoms of her shoes (my guess is tacs, being an expert at the impromptu tap dance in high school), and she just really went for it. She was getting the beats from whatever music was feeding into her ears from her headphones (the audience couldn´t hear that, of course), and best, I believe she was scatting. It was fantastic. Made me really giggle.
****
It´s been a good, restful weekend. Friday night, I had a pretty low key evening with some new friends - drinks and dinner, and last night, I stayed in with Rosa. Lots of good talks. She is full of advice for me. You know how someone that´s much older orders their advice at you, whereas someone that´s your own age suggests advice? She definitely orders. You do this, you do that. And I feel like I have to do it! But she sort of refreshed my perspective on my trip - not that it really needed refreshing, but I guess after being here for three weeks, the novelty of it has worn off a bit, and it´s like, yeah, I´m in South America...okay. So she renewed my sense of how unique this experience is and how lucky I am to be where I am.
I´m going to meet some folks to watch the Super Bowl tonight. I had to call Rosa a few hours ago to let her know I wasn´t coming home for dinner (house rule is that I must call by 5 PM), and I had to leave a message on her answering machine because I guess she was out. Usually she answers, so in my fumbling and mumbling, I at least can get some confirmation from her that she understands what I have said. But the answering machine is something else altogether. Terrible. I started laughing when I hung up the phone, thinking of what she must think when she listens to that message. I basically said, "I no go to the dinner in your house tonight. I´m sorry. I hope is not late." I was trying to say that I hoped I wasn´t calling too late (because it was a few minutes after five), but then in the middle of the sentence, I realized I didn´t know the word for "too". She´ll get the gist, I´m sure.
Mis amigos, I am missing you all. Three weeks here today, and while I´m not homesick, I do feel sort of sick for something. I wrote a friend this sentiment earlier today (two references, you lucky SOB!) and didn´t really think I´d put it in here, but omitting things like this from the blog makes the blog feel pointless. It´s part of the experience. It´s the downs that go with every up.
I think if I didn´t have this blog to talk to all the time, none of this would quite be real. I´m not lying when I say I like to eat by myself or do things by myself. I´m enjoying my alone time in a way I sometimes think I shouldn´t. But it is weird to experience something and not have someone to turn to and say, "Hey, that was neat. What did you think about it?" So I pour it all in here, to cement it, to make it mine. So funny how important it is to have people to tell your stories to, isn´t it? Oh, mama, that´s the little historian in me!
But now it IS social time, game time! Necesito ir a la bar ahora para mirar el "Super Bowl". Chau, my dears! (That IS how they spell it here - isn´t that weird?)
I love this day. I am sitting at an outdoor table on Av. San Juan, drinking a cerveza, eating olives, and waiting for my lunch to arrive.
I love these times of solo dining. I eat peacefully, without worry of what to say. Sounds antisocial, I guess. I like people, but people take a lot out of me. I prefer watching, observing to talking, conversing.
There´s no fast food here. If you want to eat, you are forced to sit down for at least twenty minutes and be at the whim of a restaurant. There´s no running into a deli for a wrap with turkey lettuce tomato mustard to take back and eat at your desk. There´s really not even any to-go coffee (and this is painful for me). It´s nice, to slow down for a few minutes, to take the time to feed myself and relax. It´s sad that back home, we can´t give more time to self-nourishment, even this most basic kind. I think it´s a necessity.
I´ve spent the past few hours wandering around the San Telmo Sunday markets. There are blocks and blocks of vendor booths, selling jewelry, souvenirs, books, art, leather, and many items in the "junk" category. It´s the same stuff, booth after booth, but I think I could - and will - browse all day.
It´s a gorgeous day here - maybe high 70s and sunny - and there´s something about being in the center of the action on a beautiful day that I really enjoy. Overhearing conversations (even if I can´t understand them), watching the tourists be tourists and the vendors be vendors, just absorbing it all.
I wandered out of the crowded market into a small art gallery (because I dream of being an art collector someday and having a house full of special pieces - something from Argentina, perhaps?). Some of the paintings were what I´d call impressionistic and others were more modern - all were simple splashes of color, some just more distinctly resembling real life/objects than others. One piece immediately pulled me in - I can´t explain what it was about this one, but it had a soothing power. The blend of colors just felt right. I don´t know. This is what I love about art. I find it fascinating that someone can spew colors out of their brain and have them make sense to me. I stared at the painting for a long minute or two and then glanced down at the small white card next to it and read the name of the piece, "Improvisado". Coincidence? I think I have to have it, but transporting art may be complicated, so we´ll see.
There are many musicians out on the streets today. I´ve seen several huge antique pianos - very much like the behemoth rescued from Texas that lives in the childhood playroom of my parents´house. Perhaps encouragement to fix that thing up?? It was really cool to see these pianos actually played. They make a sound that´s unlike a new piano. Not nearly as crisp - much darker. You can just hear the age of the thing. Like how a 50 year old opera singer sounds much richer than a 25 year old one. Or how a man who´s been a smoker half his life sounds compared to his non-smoker counterpart.
Anyway, for a long while, I sat and watched this guy play one of these pianos, along with a small ensemble. There were three accordions, the piano, a bass, a cello, and three violins, and they were playing classic tango music. I must tell you that I am beginning to really like this tango music. Rosa plays it in the house all the time, and it´s just sort of sad and nostalgic and beautiful. Makes me feel the same way the music in that French movie I just saw...can´t think of the name...the Edith Piaf story? Anyway, it´s beautiful. And classic. And totally unique to this place.
Of all the street performers and musicians, though, the absolute best was the drum lady. She´s at least 70 - probably a bit older - and had a home-made drumset, made of I do not know what. The main drums sounded a bit like plastic - they looked a bit to me like the tops of cooking spray cans - and the cymbals, the *ching* of the ba dum bum *ching*, looked like they had been stolen from a disassembled tambourine. They were that small. She had little tap tappers on the bottoms of her shoes (my guess is tacs, being an expert at the impromptu tap dance in high school), and she just really went for it. She was getting the beats from whatever music was feeding into her ears from her headphones (the audience couldn´t hear that, of course), and best, I believe she was scatting. It was fantastic. Made me really giggle.
****
It´s been a good, restful weekend. Friday night, I had a pretty low key evening with some new friends - drinks and dinner, and last night, I stayed in with Rosa. Lots of good talks. She is full of advice for me. You know how someone that´s much older orders their advice at you, whereas someone that´s your own age suggests advice? She definitely orders. You do this, you do that. And I feel like I have to do it! But she sort of refreshed my perspective on my trip - not that it really needed refreshing, but I guess after being here for three weeks, the novelty of it has worn off a bit, and it´s like, yeah, I´m in South America...okay. So she renewed my sense of how unique this experience is and how lucky I am to be where I am.
I´m going to meet some folks to watch the Super Bowl tonight. I had to call Rosa a few hours ago to let her know I wasn´t coming home for dinner (house rule is that I must call by 5 PM), and I had to leave a message on her answering machine because I guess she was out. Usually she answers, so in my fumbling and mumbling, I at least can get some confirmation from her that she understands what I have said. But the answering machine is something else altogether. Terrible. I started laughing when I hung up the phone, thinking of what she must think when she listens to that message. I basically said, "I no go to the dinner in your house tonight. I´m sorry. I hope is not late." I was trying to say that I hoped I wasn´t calling too late (because it was a few minutes after five), but then in the middle of the sentence, I realized I didn´t know the word for "too". She´ll get the gist, I´m sure.
Mis amigos, I am missing you all. Three weeks here today, and while I´m not homesick, I do feel sort of sick for something. I wrote a friend this sentiment earlier today (two references, you lucky SOB!) and didn´t really think I´d put it in here, but omitting things like this from the blog makes the blog feel pointless. It´s part of the experience. It´s the downs that go with every up.
I think if I didn´t have this blog to talk to all the time, none of this would quite be real. I´m not lying when I say I like to eat by myself or do things by myself. I´m enjoying my alone time in a way I sometimes think I shouldn´t. But it is weird to experience something and not have someone to turn to and say, "Hey, that was neat. What did you think about it?" So I pour it all in here, to cement it, to make it mine. So funny how important it is to have people to tell your stories to, isn´t it? Oh, mama, that´s the little historian in me!
But now it IS social time, game time! Necesito ir a la bar ahora para mirar el "Super Bowl". Chau, my dears! (That IS how they spell it here - isn´t that weird?)
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Birding Y Jose-ing
In my haste to bash Hermannn, I neglected to write about a few highlights - actually some of the best moments yet - from the previous week, so I´m going to do that now.
Friday morning before the trip to the futbol game, Nicole and I went to the Ecological Reserve here. Since I´ve been living in Hoboken, NJ, for the past several months and not in Manhattan proper, I´ve forgotten how stressful living in a big city can be. Not stressful like work is stressful or Spanish is stressful - just stressful to the senses. There´s never a quiet moment in a city. This particular city feels more stressful than New York, and I´m not sure if it´s because it´s foreign to me or if it actually is more stressful, but nevertheless, it is sensory overload! The buses seem to be especially loud and smelly here, farting out large clouds of gray smoke every time they pass, and even in your casa, you can hear those silly motorcycles rrrripping up the streets.
All of this is to say that as we were making our way over to the Reserve that Friday morning, Nicole and I were both doing a small bit of griping about things. Ugh! Just shut up, city! Just give me a moment of peace, just one!
And then we walked into the Reserve.
The Ecological Reserve is located on the eastern-most edge of the city, so when you get to the eastern-most edge of the Reserve, you hit the Rio de la Plata, which feeds out to the Atlantic. It´s a relatively small piece of land - maybe the size of the Radnor Lake area in Nashville, maybe a bit smaller - but it is an amazing haven from the racket of the city. You walk into it from the streets of the city, and suddenly, all the noise just stops! Silence! Ahhhhhh. The land is very marshy, but there are walking paths around the exterior of the Reserve and a few that cut down the middle of it, too. The Reserve is home to a good bit of wildlife - plants and trees and many, many birds. I was lucky enough to visit the Reserve with Nicole, who happens to be an aspiring birder. I´ve never met someone who aspired to be a birder before (unless you count mi padre), and I´m a bit of a dummy about birds, so being with her made the place come alive a bit for me.
She said she felt like a kid in a candy store with all the birds. Being the sweets addict that I am, I would never compare looking at birds to being in a candy store, but her excitement about the whole thing was a bit contagious, I must say. She had her binoculars, and she´d spot something and then be like, "That is the COOLEST bird I´ve ever seen!" with the kind of enthusiasm that I reserve for a VERY few things. Then she´d make me look, and she´d get out her pad of paper and write down a description of the bird, so that she could look it up in her book later and identify it.
I spent the majority of the time there, walking a few steps ahead of her, and just breathing in and out. The flowers here are beautiful right now, and it was such a relief to just enjoy for a moment. I find it very difficult to just enjoy in a city - things are too distracting.
When we finally hit the edge of the Reserve, there was the Rio, and again, my friends, dirty, dirty, dirty. I have some great pictures of the "beach" by the Rio - bricks and lost shoes and garbage, rubbish, filth. With the exception of my time in Haiti, I´ve never seen such utter carelessness about a place. It´s very sad. It did make me very thankful for some of the sterilization efforts in America (or in the United States, I should say - people here get very annoyed with you when you call the US, "America". "This is America, too" they say. Oops. Good point.)
It was a great morning. One of my favorites since I´ve been here, I think.
The following Sunday evening, I was lucky enough to go to a Jose Gonzalez show at a little music venue here - La Trastienda. The place was comparable in size to Bowery Ballroom in New York, but they had small tables (with seats!) in the central part of the room that you could reserve, so I actually got to sit down for the entire show, which I find preferable to standing - especially for mellow music like Jose´s.
Mis amigos Camilla and Roger (from Holland), Blake (from Canada), Liam (from Colorado), and Emily (from London) all went with me, so we had a little table to ourselves, had a few beers, and just relaxed. It was an amazing show. If you ever get a chance to see him in concert, you should definitely take it. He´s incredibly talented. A real musician.
After the show, we walked over to one of the main plazas in the San Telmo neighborhood to have a few more cervezas. It was about 12:30 PM on a Sunday evening, and this plaza was alive! Cafes circling the plaza all had tables out for outdoor seating, and there was an impromptu dance floor in the middle of the plaza, where couples were tango-ing or trying to tango or just swaying and loving. The air was cool and the winds were mild, and it was altogether a perfect setting, so we sat, listened to the tango music, watched the people, and talked. These moments are the rewards of putting up with the stress of the city. Also one of my favorites since I´ve been here.
A week from today, I´m heading to Bariloche, Argentina (http://www.bariloche.com/fotos.asp for some pics), for two or three weeks more of studying. I cannot wait. After that, the loose plan is to head back to Buenos Aires to meet mis padres (if they would pulease make a plan?) for a week or so, and THEN, then, my friends, I am off. I´m hoping to formulate more of a plan in the next few weeks (perhaps while relaxing by a lake in Bariloche - eeek, I can´t wait), but ideally, I want to head south first, from Buenos Aires, see a bit of Patagonia, then head back up north, through the Andes, Chile, hopefully take a side trip out to Easter Island (I´ll hate myself if I don´t - I´ve been dying to see this place for about 6 years), then head up to Peru. Depending on time and money, I´ve gotten myself very interested in continuing north from there, to see Guatamala and Mexico and places in between, perhaps. I don´t know. The world is my oyster. I am a free woman, as Rosa says.
At times, the idea of traveling solo makes me a little nauseous; at others, it feels exhilarating. It´s scary in the way that jumping off a high cliff into water below is. Even if you´ve watched people do it and survive it and love it (and then do it again), it´s difficult to not let the scariness of it prevent you from experiencing the thrill of actually doing it.
But I´m doing it. Now that I´ve put it in writing, I must!
Hope everyone´s having a great weekend. Much love.
Friday morning before the trip to the futbol game, Nicole and I went to the Ecological Reserve here. Since I´ve been living in Hoboken, NJ, for the past several months and not in Manhattan proper, I´ve forgotten how stressful living in a big city can be. Not stressful like work is stressful or Spanish is stressful - just stressful to the senses. There´s never a quiet moment in a city. This particular city feels more stressful than New York, and I´m not sure if it´s because it´s foreign to me or if it actually is more stressful, but nevertheless, it is sensory overload! The buses seem to be especially loud and smelly here, farting out large clouds of gray smoke every time they pass, and even in your casa, you can hear those silly motorcycles rrrripping up the streets.
All of this is to say that as we were making our way over to the Reserve that Friday morning, Nicole and I were both doing a small bit of griping about things. Ugh! Just shut up, city! Just give me a moment of peace, just one!
And then we walked into the Reserve.
The Ecological Reserve is located on the eastern-most edge of the city, so when you get to the eastern-most edge of the Reserve, you hit the Rio de la Plata, which feeds out to the Atlantic. It´s a relatively small piece of land - maybe the size of the Radnor Lake area in Nashville, maybe a bit smaller - but it is an amazing haven from the racket of the city. You walk into it from the streets of the city, and suddenly, all the noise just stops! Silence! Ahhhhhh. The land is very marshy, but there are walking paths around the exterior of the Reserve and a few that cut down the middle of it, too. The Reserve is home to a good bit of wildlife - plants and trees and many, many birds. I was lucky enough to visit the Reserve with Nicole, who happens to be an aspiring birder. I´ve never met someone who aspired to be a birder before (unless you count mi padre), and I´m a bit of a dummy about birds, so being with her made the place come alive a bit for me.
She said she felt like a kid in a candy store with all the birds. Being the sweets addict that I am, I would never compare looking at birds to being in a candy store, but her excitement about the whole thing was a bit contagious, I must say. She had her binoculars, and she´d spot something and then be like, "That is the COOLEST bird I´ve ever seen!" with the kind of enthusiasm that I reserve for a VERY few things. Then she´d make me look, and she´d get out her pad of paper and write down a description of the bird, so that she could look it up in her book later and identify it.
I spent the majority of the time there, walking a few steps ahead of her, and just breathing in and out. The flowers here are beautiful right now, and it was such a relief to just enjoy for a moment. I find it very difficult to just enjoy in a city - things are too distracting.
When we finally hit the edge of the Reserve, there was the Rio, and again, my friends, dirty, dirty, dirty. I have some great pictures of the "beach" by the Rio - bricks and lost shoes and garbage, rubbish, filth. With the exception of my time in Haiti, I´ve never seen such utter carelessness about a place. It´s very sad. It did make me very thankful for some of the sterilization efforts in America (or in the United States, I should say - people here get very annoyed with you when you call the US, "America". "This is America, too" they say. Oops. Good point.)
It was a great morning. One of my favorites since I´ve been here, I think.
The following Sunday evening, I was lucky enough to go to a Jose Gonzalez show at a little music venue here - La Trastienda. The place was comparable in size to Bowery Ballroom in New York, but they had small tables (with seats!) in the central part of the room that you could reserve, so I actually got to sit down for the entire show, which I find preferable to standing - especially for mellow music like Jose´s.
Mis amigos Camilla and Roger (from Holland), Blake (from Canada), Liam (from Colorado), and Emily (from London) all went with me, so we had a little table to ourselves, had a few beers, and just relaxed. It was an amazing show. If you ever get a chance to see him in concert, you should definitely take it. He´s incredibly talented. A real musician.
After the show, we walked over to one of the main plazas in the San Telmo neighborhood to have a few more cervezas. It was about 12:30 PM on a Sunday evening, and this plaza was alive! Cafes circling the plaza all had tables out for outdoor seating, and there was an impromptu dance floor in the middle of the plaza, where couples were tango-ing or trying to tango or just swaying and loving. The air was cool and the winds were mild, and it was altogether a perfect setting, so we sat, listened to the tango music, watched the people, and talked. These moments are the rewards of putting up with the stress of the city. Also one of my favorites since I´ve been here.
A week from today, I´m heading to Bariloche, Argentina (http://www.bariloche.com/fotos.asp for some pics), for two or three weeks more of studying. I cannot wait. After that, the loose plan is to head back to Buenos Aires to meet mis padres (if they would pulease make a plan?) for a week or so, and THEN, then, my friends, I am off. I´m hoping to formulate more of a plan in the next few weeks (perhaps while relaxing by a lake in Bariloche - eeek, I can´t wait), but ideally, I want to head south first, from Buenos Aires, see a bit of Patagonia, then head back up north, through the Andes, Chile, hopefully take a side trip out to Easter Island (I´ll hate myself if I don´t - I´ve been dying to see this place for about 6 years), then head up to Peru. Depending on time and money, I´ve gotten myself very interested in continuing north from there, to see Guatamala and Mexico and places in between, perhaps. I don´t know. The world is my oyster. I am a free woman, as Rosa says.
At times, the idea of traveling solo makes me a little nauseous; at others, it feels exhilarating. It´s scary in the way that jumping off a high cliff into water below is. Even if you´ve watched people do it and survive it and love it (and then do it again), it´s difficult to not let the scariness of it prevent you from experiencing the thrill of actually doing it.
But I´m doing it. Now that I´ve put it in writing, I must!
Hope everyone´s having a great weekend. Much love.
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