Back in the U.S.S.A.

I miss: the beautiful blue Argentine skies, the way the city always smelled like asado and jasmine, the subte & the buses, sitting in a cafe for hours and hours, the constant noise and energy, walking everywhere, the pretty porteño accent, getting into funny conversations with strangers all the time, getting home at sunrise, 6 peso vodka, alfajores, my students, my friends, everything...
I love about being home: drivers that aren't actively trying to kill every pedestrian they see and that stop to let you cross the street, ellipticals at the gym, mexican food, family, friends, my dog, zero humidity even on hot days, the Barack Obama sign on every house & car where I live, how cheap restaurants & grocery stores are compared to BA, soy milk, and a million other things.

Thanks to everyone for reading this whole time! I haven't decided if I'll keep writing, since it won't really be the Buenos Diaries anymore. But keep checking back. Besos to all.
xx

Happy gnocchi day! Feliz ñoquis del 29!

In case you didn't know, the 29th of each month in Argentina is Gnocchi Day! Can you imagine a better holiday? It comes once a month, not just once a year, and the whole purpose is to celebrate food. More details & quite a nice little article here. The bottom line is that we eat ñoquis on the 29th because of something having to do with payday, either that on the 29th you are poor and waiting for your paycheck, and flour & potatoes are cheap, or that you're celebrating that you got your paycheck, or that you put money under your plate because it's financially auspicious. Something like that. Somewhere along the line all the supersticions mixed in my head and I started to believe that you are actually supposed to put gnocchis under your pillow on the night of the 29th for good luck and prosperity, but I'm pretty sure that's not true. It sounds messy.
Anyway, E & I are going to Las Violetas, my favorite favorite old school BA café, for my last Gnocchi Day in Argentina. ¡Buen provecho!

And some more pictures of gnocchi to get you in the mood...

Gone Fishing...

I'm on vacation! Vacation in Buenos Aires. Taking my last couple weeks in this beautiful city to relax, say good-byes, and scamper around with my beautiful and intrepid friend E who has come wayyyy down South to visit me, and try not to get too sad about leaving.

p.s. it is obviously a conspiracy that Spring finally came just as I'm about to leave and the city could not look prettier. Le sigh.

Ch-ch-changes

I think of myself as someone who doesn't like change. But it seems that I actually have a strange addiction to it, as hard as it is. It's scary but exhilirating to not know what's going to happen next. All good things come to an end, and somehow I suddenly have less than a month left in Buenos Aires.
Yesterday was my last day of work as an English teacher. It's funny - I don't feel as sad or happy or anything as I expected. The hardest thing was saying goodbye to my first beginner student ever, Marcela. I've gotten close to a lot of my students but for some reason with Marcela it was more emotional, maybe because I've really seen her on this whole process of learning a language and I was so proud of her. Despite being completely different (me a random aimless foreigner here and her a mom in her forties with a family and office job and everything) we really clicked and could legitimately have fun and be silly together. In our last class we got close to tears laughing at how much we both hated The English Patient (Marcela: "Like, WHEN he die??") And then we actually both got close to tears again saying goodbye.
I've been trying my best to not think about leaving but for the first time today I did feel a little homesick for California, for family, the way the streets and the people look, how the air smells, and I got a little excited to go home.
Meanwhile I'm just going to appreciate every last minute I get to spend in this city - the way the sky looks and how the elevators smell (if you've been here you know what I mean, they ALL have the same smell), castellano, subte, dulce de leche & asado, the energy and pulse of the city. And as my friend Nina says, Buenos Aires isn't going anywhere. I can always come back.

Unsolved mysteries: Argentines & stairs

After almost a year here, I'm pretty much convinced that Argentines have some genetic/cultural phobia of climbing stairs. Exhibit A: I've been here for nearly a year and I've lived in 5 different apartment buildings, always on a pretty low floor. During that time I have seen someone other than my foreign roommates & myself taking the stairs... 2 times. Ever. Seriously. Three if you count the time in Almagro when the power went out and the elevators weren't working. This just does not make sense to me since it actually takes longer to wait for the 17th century elevator in my current apartment building than to climb one or two flights of stairs.
And it's definitely not laziness or a relaxed cultural attitude towards time. Something hilarious I experience every single morning on the subte is that, as people approach the Florida metro stop, everyone stands up and clusters around the door so they can get off the train as quickly as possible (me included.) What's hilarious about this is that the crowd pushes out of the door, sprints to the bottom of the escalator, and then - stands still for the ride up. Yeah, you know how at home the non-walkers on the escalator stand to the right side so everyone else can pass them? Not here. You have to be the first person on that escalator if you want to actually walk up it.
Which is cool. It doesn't bother me because like there's anywhere that I really need to be 10 seconds earlier that desperately. But I mean, just totally out of curiousity... what is that??
I work in a 28 floor office building here, and I'm sorry, but really people? Can you not just take the stairs from the first to second floor? In the United States, it's kind of impolite, but moreover embarrassing, to take the elevator only one or two floors, unless you have a broken ankle or a heavy suitcase or something. No?

Mystery. But I love it. It's silly and endearing. Besooooooos!

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.