Down the rabbit hole

“What if I should fall right through the center of the earth... oh, and come out the other side, where people walk upside down?"
So I didn't fall down the rabbit hole - I came on a 747. But Buenos Aires does feel like Wonderland sometimes. It's so crazy and exaggerated and temporal and my life here is so changeable and accelerated. It's a different reality every weekend. And yes, there are people who want to help you, people who want to trick you, and people where you can't tell the difference. It can feel like a big urban Disneyland with different themed cities and towns, where the character of the city changes completely from one block to another. And you have to abandon the idea that things should make sense all the time, because they don't.
Why the sentimental shrooms-esque rambling? I guess because I'm leaving Buenos Aires in 6 weeks. I don't even want to write it down, because then it will be true. Now that I know I'm leaving so soon, I'm taking a closer look at everything around me, and becoming a little anxious and sad that my life here is slipping away from me and coming to an end. Even though I've been here almost a year, I feel like I've only begun to scratch the surface. And of course, because it's the law of the universe, I've finally met someone, just as I'm about to leave. C'est la vie, right? Maybe I'll be back, maybe not. I have a feeling I just might wake up one day in Northern California with a Buenos Aires-withdrawal induced panic attack and flee the United States again. Of course, if McRepublican wins this November, I'll be too ashamed to leave the country and will have to hide my face from the world for 4 years. Or buy a lot of maple-leaf clothing to wear when I travel.
I don't remember how the story ends. Alice finds her way out of the rabbit hole and back home, but is she happy when she gets there?

I ♥ Argentina, reason #5,786

The schedule.

So, this morning I stumbled out of bed at 9:30 a.m. and slunk into the kitchen to make a cup of life-saving mate cocido. I don't do well in the mornings. I don't really even like to talk to anyone until I've been awake for at least an hour. Anyway, the Argentine mom in the apartment where I live was in the kitchen, took a look at me, and said, "It's way too early to wake up, isn't it?" (Although in Spanish.) Now. It wasn't sarcastic. What a nice, nice thing for an adult to say. Yeah, I still don't think of myself as an adult, maybe because I don't think I'll ever reach the age where I like to wake up early and give younger people a hard time about sleeping late. I love that about BA. At home if you look tired in the morning, or whine about waking up early, people will probably tease you or make you feel lazy. But here it's like, duh, no one likes to wake up in the morning. It's a given. Isn't that how it should be? Does anyone really like waking up early everyday? I think I've met like two of those people in my life and I felt kind of uneasy around them.
The schedule here is just so much more perfect for how I like to live - waking up late, working till late, eating dinner late, having long lunches and long coffee breaks. You have time to relax when you get home in the evening, because you don't have to go to bed at 11 p.m. to wake up at 6 the next morning. Of course, it can get a bit out of hand with the nightlife, and it's a problem when the only moments of daylight you see are in the cab ride home at sunrise. But having a job kind of prevents that problem from happening during the week.

Up next: I also love Argentina & Argentines because the whole country seems to have a crazily intense sweet tooth. And they are not apologizing for it. I think you need to be raised on loads of dulce de leche from a very young age to have that kind of tolerance for sugar.

Talento Argentino

Talento Argentino may be the greatest show of our time. I've never watched America's Got Talent, but I can't imagine that it holds a candle to the Argentine version. I searched youtube for a video of the guy to the left, "El Rey," but unfortunately couldn't find one. All I can tell you is that I laughed until I cried. And well, I do that pretty often, but everyone else I was with laughed until they cried as well. Judge Catherine (below) was obviously moved to tears as well. But not by El Rey - by a group of breakdancing kids from the street. South America really does silly reality tv shows a lot better than the United States. We have a lot of trashy shows about famous-for-being-famous people where nothing happens (The Hills/Girls Next Door*) while South America has a lot of shows that just make absolutely no sense, but in a completely awesome and unapologetic way. There is usually some vague gameshow premise, but, in addition to the host, there will also be, like, a random guy in a full-size panda suit, a male model wearing tiny tightie-whities, a squirrel, and a geisha wandering around, or possibly dancing. Or a guy with a comb-over dressed in a hot pink unitard with huge fake boobs stuffed into the chest (picture the Principal in Billy Madison.) I'm not making any of that up, I saw all of those things on one show alone last night. And then they all jump into a swimming pool at the end. Amazing.
*That doesn't mean I don't watch The Hills & The Girls Next Door. Holly's my favorite.
**(both photos from talentosargentinos.com)

Blah teaching English blah blah

So, I just got home from teaching English for 11 hours straight without breaks. Which seems a bit illegal, but.. Come to think of it, everything about my employment here is under the table, so whatever. I'm alternately so sick of thinking about/talking about teaching English but then it is kind of the majority of my life here - all of my friends are either English teachers or students. And it has such lovely moments. Like today, I had a new student who is a total beginner, doesn't know how to say hello or how are you, who I was kind of dreading, but then he turned out to be totally sweet and adorable AND, has one of the most amazingly hilarious situations that I have ever heard - after about an hour of struggling through English we took a break and switched to Spanish so we could get to know each other and chat. He showed me a picture of his beautiful wife and three gorgeous daughters and told me that they are all English teachers. Except the youngest, who is fifteen, but she speaks English fluently. I guess they like to chat in English when they want to leave him out of the conversation! He is also very well-traveled, so I can't imagine how he's managed to escape English for so long.
Anyway, after that class I had a student who makes Jude Law look like Quasimodo, who I kind of try to behave normally around but get distracted by his gorgeous green eyes while he's doing the TOEFL speaking section. He's the student who I had a running joke about with the director of my institute, because he has been my student for weeks and weeks and had never brought up his girlfriend - which doesn't sound strange, but if you are studying for the TOEFL, you pretty much have to discuss every aspect of your life with the teacher, and he is a family friend of the director so we knew he had a girlfriend. I like to think it was because he was flirting with me, but who knows. He finally did mention his girlfriend, last week, in the sentence, "My girlfriend's dad is the president of Banco Nacional." Guess I can't really compete with Señorita moneybags, le sigh.
And speaking of my institute, it's totally become like a little home to me, which is really lucky and really rare for English teachers in BA. Most never meet another teacher at their institute and one girl I know picks up her salary from the institute's director once a month on a designated street corner. Safe and classy. But my institute is like a fun, cozy little clique of girls and women. There is hilarious Lili, the recepcionist, who jokes (?) about loving much younger men and recently called one of the students "feo pero, feo feo!" Pobrecito.
There's always celebrity gossip on the computer, various chocolate and candy, and someone to giggle with when the hot students come and go. "Bonbones!" as Lili would say.
There are things I love, and don't want to leave. But then, I kind of remember that I am getting paid so little that it feels more like volunteer work than a real job. Saving money is not an option. It's too bad that that that matters so much, but it does. C'est la vie of being an English teacher.

P.s. (unrelated) Sorry, this is like some horrible stream of consciousness creative writing assignment, but I'm exhausted and ranting. So here's some more: I've been kind of playing the 'naive foreigner' card with this whole political situation, because I don't want to offend anyone that I talk to, but I'm over it. Not that anyone in the United States will know what the heck I'm talking about, BUT - in my opinion, Julio Cobos saved this country's ass, for the meantime at least. If that tax law had passed, there would have been a total crisis. A disaster. I'm sick of seeing all these Pro-Kirchnerista posters about how he's a traitor and "real democracy" would have been to blindly do what his party told him to. Are they serious? The Argentine girl I live with is Kirchnerista and was telling me that it is the president's right to do what she wants and it should be that way, and that the farmers make a ridiculous amount of money. Well. I kind of just said, claro, claro, and smiled when we were talking, because I don't want mala onda, but! I so completely disagree with that. The whole point of a federalist system is that the executive branch doesn't have all the power and can't just act on its own, unchecked. And well, maybe the farmers make a ton of money, but shouldn't the taxes be distributed by income and not by industry then?

Okey. Ya basta. Besoooos...

Dancing

I dare you to watch this without smiling:



More info here.

Happy birthday, baby!

Happy birthday Canada (July 1st), USA (July 4th), and Argentina (July 9th.) I guess something about July just makes people want their independence. Even though yesterday didn't include the excesses of red, white & blue, barbeque-hopping, microbrew-drinking and watching the 3 Bay Area fireworks shows that a 4th of July at home would have, it was still fun. I was the only United States American in the group, but we were all American-Americans, so we toasted to that, and wondered what it would be like to be from a country that was never a colony.
Sidenote: a lot of people ask me if it feels Anti-United States down here. Well, it doesn't. Not on a personal level. Aside from some interesting assumptions that all Yanquis are rolling in money, most people I meet don't generalize. I mean, yeah, they hate George Bush and Paris Hilton, but who doesn't? Apart from one very ignorant 18-year-old from Holland (who had never visited the United States) saying, "McDonald's is not culture," most people realize that we are a huge country, with a lot of different types of people and places, and while we have our share of close-minded, xenophobic people, so does every country. Being here has made me more patriotic than I was when I left. Just watch, next year on the 4th of July, I'll be the one in a homemade dress constructed from an American flag, swigging Budweiser. Well, maybe not Budweiser, yeccchhh, pero me entendés.
On a related note, mate seems to be a very good hangover cure.

Les mando un beso a todos!

I heart teaching English

Ahh... Some days I love being an English teacher. Obviously I love it because most of my students are so fun and lovable, but I also appreciate weeks like this one, where, for example, in the last three days I had 7 classes scheduled, but only had to teach 3 of them. There is a wonderful rule among the language institutes of Buenos Aires that if a student cancels less than 24 hours before the class, the teacher gets paid regardless. If a student doesn't show up for class, the teacher should wait 30 minutes and then is free to go (and of course, gets paid.) This is a completely necessary rule, since most students are so flaky (especially the ones whose companies pay for their lessons) and it makes teaching much nicer and more relaxing. At first I was annoyed when students cancelled while I was in the Subte on the way to their class, or stepping through the front door to their office. Or when students just completely didn't show up. Now, I've been outside of the United States long enough to have almost overcome that innate Yanqui compulsion towards organization and professionalism. Who needs it? A cancelled class means 30 - 40 free pesos and a lot of free time. Also, since I would have already prepped for that class, there's no prep to be done for the next one.
Teaching English is a pretty amazing gig if you think about it. No, the pay is not good. But there are some pretty incredible upsides, like abundant work and constant job offers, the most laid-back job interviews I have ever experienced, and the ability to set your own schedule (I don't work before 1 p.m. It's like a dream come true.) And the cancellations are nice too.
Which is why, on days like today, I have time to relax in my perfect new apartment and chat in Spanish about cultural differences between Argentina and Chile and how to make Lemon Pie, go to the completely ghetto gym down the street and try to figure out the treadmills (all Brazilian, all in Portuguese), and post stuff here. Like this poem by Borges, that I love, love love, it totally captures something about the essence of Buenos Aires and how it feels when you accidentallly stumble onto some perfect beautiful little street, with old and crumbling buildings and laundry hung on the balconies, and it reminds you why you love it here.

Calle Desconocida

En esa hora en que la luz
tiene una finura de arena,
di con una calle ignorada,
abierta en noble anchura de terraza,
cuyas cornisas y paredes mostraban
colores blandos como el mismo cielo
que conmovía el fondo.
Todos — la medianía de las casas,
las modestas balaustradas y llamadores,
tal vez una esperanza de niña en los balcones
entró en mi vano corazón
con limpidez de lágrima

Unknown Street

In that hour when the light has the fineness of sand,
I happened on a street unknown to me,
ample and broadly terraced,
whose walls and cornices
took on the pastel color of the sky
that nudged the horizon.
Everything — the drab houses,
the crude banisters, the doorknockers,
perhaps the hopes of a girl dreaming on a balcony –
all entered into my vain heart
with the clarity of tears

AlfajOreo!

A combination of laziness and busy-ness means that not much is getting written on here these days. But I'm breaking my dry spell to tell you all about something seriously amazing that I discovered today. Or rather, that my friend Sarah introduced me to. (Sidenote: guys have some fascination with two blonde girls who have the same name. Sort of like with twins. The best was when, upon hearing that we are both named Sarah and from the United States, one guy asked if we were sisters. 'Yes,' Sarah said, 'And our parents named us BOTH Sarah.')
Anyway. I had heard tell of the existence of an Oreo alfajor, but had never actually witnessed one until today. For all y'all in the USA, an alfajor is a cookie made from two or three cookies stuck together, usually by dulce de leche, but sometimes by fruit or chocolate mousse, and often the whole thing is dipped in chocolate. So, Oreo + alfajor?? Amazing. It's like North meets South! I tried my first one today, it's basically a huge oreo with three cookies instead of two and then the whole thing is covered in more chocolate. And there is no dulce de leche anywhere in it!
Here's the thing about dulce de leche: it's okay. I like it okay. When I first got here I wasn't having it, but now it's alright. BUT I do not love it, and in a country that legally requires all desserts and sweets to contain a certain percentage of dulce de leche, and it is regarded with an almost nationalistic kind of blind reverence... well, it's nice to find an alternative. (I just had this conversation over our Oreo alfajores with Sarah, in which she said that her fiancee, an Argentine, would probably not speak to her for a week if he heard us dissing dulce de leche.)
I hope no one's offended and I don't get deported for publishing negative comments about D. de leche on the internet. I'll just add that I'm not all that impressed by dulce, BUT the beef down here is just as good as everyone says it is. Better. Really, it's fantastic.
That's all for now! Back to packing up and getting ready to move to my new apartment (more on that later.) Everyone down here, enjoy your holiday for día del trabajo!

Sí, quiero...

I love this commercial. It's really cute. Maybe now I'll even try the 7up H2Oh! manzana they've been handing out in the subte lately. Anyway, enjoy! It'll make you feel all warm and fuzzy, and Lord knows we all need some warm fuzziness especially since winter just came to Buenos Aires overnight.

Fireflies

Either I am totally losing my mind, or there was a firefly in my bedroom last night. I woke up to a particularly loud crash of thunder, to see a tiny and very brightly illuminated something perched on the chandelier in my bedroom. After several minutes of sleep-infused confusion, I realized it had to be a lightning bug. We don't have fireflies in California, so it took a minute to figure it out. The last time I saw lightning bugs I was 8 years old, on the East Coast, in the backyard of my best friend's uncle's house, catching the fireflies in pickle jars, giving them names and detailed family histories.
Well. If fireflies don't exist in Buenos Aires, please don't tell me, because it means I'm much crazier than I realize.
And speaking of madness, Buenos Aires seems to be a more chaotic mess than usual with the paro del campo going on. No meat, chicken, or milk can get through to the capital. At least I'm learning a lot of new Spanish vocab and don't have to plan lessons this week, because every one of my students is content to give me a lesson on Argentine politics and what is going on right now and their opinion on the farmers, the strike, Cristina, and how she needs to cool it with the botox. And I am of course more than happy to listen, I have a pretty complete idea of what's going on now, much more than I could have just from reading the newspapers.
What I really wanted to post was this story, a well-known Buddhist story as retold by fantastic Bay Area writer Annie Lamott. I try to keep it in mind, especially with all the little things in my life that I'm worried about, like what the hell I'm doing with my life and the fact that I'm about to be living in a refrigerator box on Calle Florida because starting May 1st I will be homeless.
So here's the story:

An aging farmer in China one morning discovers that wild horses have crashed through the fences that surround his farm. "Oh, this is terrible," say the neighbors, looking at the wreckage. The farmer shrugs. "Good news? Bad news? Who knows?" Then the farmer's son is able to catch a few of the horses. "This is fantastic!" say the neighbors, watching the great horses in the corral. The farmer shrugs: "Good news? Bad news? Who knows." While trying to tame the last of the wild horses, the farmer's son is thrown, and breaks his leg. "Oh, this is awful," say the neighbors, knowing how greatly the aging farmer relies on his son. "Good news? Bad news? Who knows," says the farmer. And then, while the son is convalescing in bed with his badly broken leg, the Chinese army comes through the countryside, conscripting all the local able-bodied men for the war raging in the South...

Love, hate, & tango

Last night I went to a lovely party thrown by a friend who is a tango dancer. The party was mostly women, a handful of men, and several Siamese cats. Since about half the people there were tango dancers (sadly, not including me) we got to watch dance after dance of beautiful tango right there in the living room. It was much nicer than seeing it at a tango show or in the street in San Telmo - this was the real thing, people who closed their eyes when they danced, who danced with the same lust and sadness in their movements whether their partner was young, old, beautiful, someone they just met or had known forever. Tango is an amazing dance - beautiful and sexy and tragic. The man leads and provides the foundation of the dance and the woman adds drama with her little kicks and turns. At times, she leans into him on the tips of her toes as if she will fall if he does not catch her.
Tango was not always a well-respected dance. One of my students, who is 17, said his mother told him that her mother, his grandmother, made it well-known that if any of her daughters knew how to dance tango she would kick them out of the house. There is a myth, I don't know if it's true, that tango was created in the brothels of Buenos Aires.
Besides beautiful tango, I saw something else very Argentine last night - fighting and jealousy between women. One was a potential love interest of my friend, who had recently told me she was playing games with him, playing very cold - he was amused by it. The other was a beautiful tango dancer who may or may not be interested in my friend, or she may just hate the mala onda created by woman #1. Either way, they were really doing everything possible to make each other jealous and bringing new meaning to the expression "if looks could kill." It was very overt and created an almost palpable tension between the two women.
Here I'm obligated to say that competition between women exists in all parts of the world, and that there are, of course, exceptions in Argentina. But there is something here that I really haven't found in other places I've been, an essential sentiment of hostility, competition and jealousy between women. Usually I'm exempt, being a foreigner, but sometimes I do become aware of it and it has a real viciousness that I haven't felt at home. Of course there are so many Argentine women are not like that, who are laid back and strike up conversations in the bathrooms of clubs and laugh at the chamuyero Argentine men.
Anyway, last night left me thinking about it. The vast majority of my students are women here and they are almost all very bright, engaging, kind, ambitious, eloquent people. But is that because we met in a classroom and not at a bar? Really, what is with the interactions between women in this country? I feel like it has something to do with the status of feminism here, that there never really was a women's movement à la Women's Lib in the 1970's USA, and gender roles are still very strictly defined. Could be something with economic dependence too. I think it's complicated, and really, ¿qué sé yo?

Hot tranny mess

This is one of the most amazing things I have seen recently. Or ever. It's SNL's parody of Project Runway winner Christian Siriano. Who we looove. You might not fully understand the awesomeness if you don't watch Project Runway, but then, if you don't watch Project Runway you may want to reconsider your priorities in life. Runway is pretty much one of the greatest contributions to pop culture since Full House. So go on, tranny ferocia, watch it.

Heavens to Betsy!

Oh my goodness, boys and girls, it's finally happened. After nearly 5 months in Buenos Aires, I've reached that illusive and yet not-quite-desirable landmark in the life of someone living in a foreign country: when you begin to accidentally run into people you don't want to see. Last night it was appropriately nicknamed Bad Hookup Guy, at an undisclosed location in Palermo Hollywood. His friend was cute, but as la otra Sarah pointed out, he is still Bad Hookup Friend. Anyway, he was nice, I was nice, it was fine. Let it be said that he is actually quite a nice, easy-going guy, and not the "call you 18 times in one half hour" variety of porteño, either. (Oh, you say that doesn't really happen, but believe me, it does.)
Does this mean I'm putting down raíces and becoming a real resident of the city (despite my official visa category being "transitory/temporary")? Or could it be a sign that it's time for me to pack my bags and go?

Nuttier than a fruitcake

Hey porteños - could you please stop making me feel like a raving lunatic when I tell you that I chose to live in Argentina for the simple reason that I like it here?
Let me backtrack a little. I've had so, so many versions of this interaction:
Argentine: So you're on vacation here? Or you're studying?
Me: No, actually, living and working.
Argentine: Oh, I see, you fell in love with an Argentine and came here to be with him.
Me: No... well, not yet anyway...
Argentine: Why then?
Me: Because... I like it here?
Argentine: Why?
Me: Um... the city, the people, the culture, the language, the nightlife, I always wanted to live abroad, I don't know...
Argentine: Out of all the countries in the world you chose Argentina? Are you CRAZY?
(Actually, I'm really not making that last line up. It's word for word from a conversation I had with a student of mine.)
Okay, I know Argentina has problems, that become more and more apparent the longer I stay and the more I see. But doesn't every country? (Especially the good old US of A?)
And where is the stereotypical Argentine arrogance that you always hear about? Is it really sooo crazy that someone would want to live here just for the sake of living here? Dale, porteños, stop looking at me like I lost my marbles. I just like it here.

And here's something else I like, a quote from Welcome to the World, Baby Girl by Fannie Flagg:

"Poor little old human beings- they're jerked into this world without having any idea where they came from or what it is they are supposed to do, or how long they have to do it in. Or where they are gonna wind up after that. But bless their hearts, most of them wake up every morning and keep on trying to make some sense out of it. Why, you can't help but love them, can you? I just wonder why more of them aren't as crazy as betsy bugs..."

¡Feliz dia de los enamorados!

Happy V day, everyone! To steal a line from Carrie Bradshaw, the city is my date this Valentine's. And it's just lovely.

¿Estás aburrido?

My new favorite thing to read online is New York Magazine's fashion blog The Cut, especially the girls who write 'New York Fugging City.' Classier than Perez, more cheerful than BBC news, it's the perfect way to kill time between classes or while waiting for it to be late enough to go out by Argie coolness standards.

*An interest in fashion/celebrities/new york/cattiness is recommended to enjoy this blog.

**Picture to the right - Carolina Herrera show