The water in our apartment got shut off in the middle of John’s shower this morning. I was oblivious to this because I was in the living room conducting on-line training for aproximately 115 people. It’s sometimes weird working from home.
The water has been off all day, but when I went out around 6PM to get groceries the doorman/superintendent told me that the water would be turned on somewhere around 8 or 9 PM because a pipe broke and they are repairing it. When John went out he heard that the water would be turned back on at around 9PM. Both of us were wrong. We were in the midst of cooking dinner at about 9:15 when the water was turned off again. Apparently the doorman was telling us that we would only be able to use the water between 8 and 9. Neither one of us heard it that way - I swear that’s not what the guy said! Just another example of the struggle of everyday life when you have no idea what people are saying 80% of the time.
We had a huge set of thunderstorms here yesterday and as John and I were slogging through the rain to the cafe I had an epiphany. You see, umbrellas are called para (for)lluvia(rain) here - makes sense doesn’t it? As I looked out from under my hood at all of the lucky people who owned umbrellas it suddenly struck me that the English word parasol was para (for)sol(sun). Yes, I know it should have been obvious LONG ago, but most of the time you just don’t think about these things until they smack you in the face.
We have seen an increasing number of signs, especially in the small kioskos stating “No hay monedas” - we have no coins. There has been such a shortage of coins in the past few weeks that small entrepreneurs have sprung up selling people coins for more than their face value. The government has been involved in trying to investigate the mafia de monedas and the subway system was forced to let riders ride for free last Monday because they could not provide change to people buying tickets. Read more from the International Herald Tribune.
Everyone guards their coins. When you buy something - even at large groceries, they always ask you if you are sure you don’t have any smaller bills or maybe some coins. When we do provide exact change the thanks we get is so enthusiastic - as if we have done them a HUGE favor.
Friday night we went with friends to the Armenia Restaurant (that’s really the name) on the first floor of the Armenian Cultural Center in Palermo. ***Note - as in most places in Europe, the 1st floor is what you would call the 2nd floor in the U.S., the ground floor is not counted*** This building is also home to a milonga in the basement and dance lessons to prepare for the milonga on the ground floor. I have no idea what’s above the 1st floor, but the building is a busy place.
It was as authentic as you can get in Argentina. Right down to the sign over the bar that stated (in Spanish, of course) “DO NOT LET TURKEY INTO THE EU.” We had Mediterranean mezes - hummus, tabbouleh, eggplant, roasted vegies, etc. and then meat kabobs, rice, and salad. The food was very good.
The highlight of the evening was the show. Two dancers came into the empty spot among the tables and danced for us. First two Armenian numbers and then more fast paced Greek dances. The audience participation portion came and many people went up to dance. After everyone at our table hemmed and hawed a bit I decided “why not” and joined in. It was a blast. After the twisting, turning line dance, they had us all sit around in a circle while the principal dancers and then some audience members danced around a glass of ouzo and money. It was really interesting to see some of the audience members get up there as some of them obviously knew what they were doing. The owners of the place broke a few plates, but instead of having people dance around them, they broke them off to the side and swept them up right away, which we all thought was a little odd, but made sense if you don’t want people to trip. The dance ended when someone spilled the glass of ouzo.
The smell of the ouzo brought me instantly back to sitting along the waterfront watching the sunset on Paros. It was such a strong memory trigger that I was homesick for the island and our friends Wilie and Rob (if you are reading this, drop us a note - Γειά! Τι κάνεις;)
We didn’t bring our camera, but I am hoping I can get some shots from our friend to post later.
Two Sundays ago we went to the Feria de Mataderos. It’s a regular Sunday afternoon market where you can find a little bit of everything: homemade wine/pastries/cheese/other foodstuff, leather goods, CDs, jewelrey, toys, carvings, clothes…they pretty much have it all. They also have live music, dancing, singing, and general entertainment. Unfortunately it was pouring rain that day so most of the vendors, musicians and dancers stayed home. We will be going back on the next sunny Sunday.
We went with a group of people from our school - a true international group as we had people from: Norway, Sweden, France, Italy, Brazil, U.S., Wales, and South Africa. We took the colectivo (city bus) because it only costs 90 centavos or 1 Peso depending on where you are going.
We wandered around the booths looking and buying small things until the smell of the parrilla was too strong to ignore and we sat down to eat choripan {chorizo(sausage) + pan(bread)=choripan}.
We ended up in a restaurant/dance hall to escape the rain and had a great time listening to live music and watching people dance. There was a mixture of people just walking in and dancing and some people who showed up in costume. It was great fun!
I managed to go and get my haircut today without it turning into a disaster. This is a major accomplishment as it’s a scary thing to do even in a country where you speak the language. I remembered the words for appointment, cut, dry, and curly with a few others linking them together and a few hand gestures thrown in I was good to go. I went to a nice place in Recoletta as opposed to one of the cheaper places and with wash, cut, dry, and straightening iron it ended up costing me US$23 - including the tip.
In the middle of the haircut when the stylist was trying hard to talk me me I realized, for the second time today that I need a lot more conversational Spanish practice. I’m ok in the exercises in the book and can write out conjugations of all sorts of irregular verbs, but then I get out in the world and can’t pull up the necessary words from the alphabet soup that is in my brain. Next step - conversation class.
In an attempt to illustrate what life is like in Argentina for our friends and family who have never traveled abroad, I am going to do a few posts about minutia in the way things work. We usually ignore all of the subtle little differences when we are talking about our life outside the U.S., but I thought we might be able to paint a better picture of life here by paying attention to the little things.
This is our kitchen. Please ignore the post-it notes - I labeled everything in an attempt to improve my Spanish vocabulary. Notice the gas stove/oven. Notice the box of matches and lighters on top of the microwave. Unlike most of the gas stoves in the U.S., we have to turn on the gas and then light the burners/oven. It is similar to the stove we had in Italy except that for some reason we can’t use the oven and the stove at the same time. When you have the oven on you can light the stove burners, but after about a minute either the oven or the stove burner goes out.
Here is a close-up of the dials on the stove. I have highlighted the one for the oven. Notice anything different from those in the U.S.? Yup, there is not any type of temperature gauge here - no way to know what temperature the oven is, or keep it that way. Even if you did have an oven thermometer you would still have to manually monitor the oven to make sure it wasn’t getting too hot or too cool and turn the gas up/down accordingly. While not really that interesting, this is all necessary background information in order to appreciate the fact that I made cornbread the other night.
I bought what looked kind of like masa or some sort of corn meal in Barrio China the week before last so when John made pinto beans the other night (also found in Barrio China) I had to try cornbread. I didn’t have a measuring cup, nor measuring spoons, nor baking powder (just baking soda), nor proper corn meal, nor a temperature gauge for the oven, but I did it anyway. I improvised - a little of this, a little of that, light the oven and stick your hand in to see how hot you think it is and presto, an hour later we had cornbread. It turned out more like corn cake because of the fine grained corn flour, but it was really good. Now, I wouldn’t try a soufflé or anything else requiring exact temperatures, but for most things estimation is fine.
Speaking of baking, there aren’t many baking supplies in the grocery - no cake mixes, very small bags of flour, no yeast, no baking powder, etc. Baked goods are usually purchased fresh from one of the numerous bread/pastry/sweet shops on every block. There are so many places to get fresh baked goods that I imagine it’s rare for them to be made at home.
Here is a picture of our building from across the street. I had to work hard to get a shot without cars whizzing by so you could see the entrance. There is a dry cleaner/laundry just outside our door. We haven’t found a do-it-yourself laundry yet and it’s cheap enough to let them do it all, so why not? We discovered that it is smart to find the biggest possible plastic bags to put your laundry in and stuff as much as you can into each one because they charge by the bag - not weight. Last week we washed the same amount of clothes as we did this week, but because it was in 3 small bags last week we were charged $36 pesos rather than the $24 pesos it cost us for two larger bags this week. Strange, but true.
We were sitting at a sidewalk cafe table a few doors down from our place tonight when we saw a man go past with his dog. The man entered the pasta shop and stayed for 7-8 minutes while the dog waited for him outside. When the man came out the dog followed right along, no greeting, no command, it’s just the way it was. This was remarkable not because it is unusual in Buenos Aires, but because we have seen it before. Not only do they have the largest population of dogs I have ever seen, they also have the most well-trained dogs! I wonder if it has something to do with all of the socialization from being walked in large groups out on the city streets every day.
It’s spring in Buenos Aires and everyone spends Sunday with a leisurely lunch and then maté in the park - so we did the same. We found a buffet place for lunch (didn’t get the name) that had everything from passable sushi to traditional parrilla to generic Chinese food. It wasn’t bad. We then went to the supermarket to get a thermos so we could have maté in the park. Everyone in B.A. carries around a thermos of hot water, a maté gourd and bombilla , and loose mate; so we knew we would have no trouble finding a thermos at the grocery.
We spent about 15 minutes in the thermos section trying to figure out why they sold thermoses without lids. They all came with plastic tops, but not the screw-in lids to keep the water in the thermos. They did, however SELL two kinds of lids. We ended up opening a lid package to try it out on thermoses until we found one that fit. When we went to check out, the clerk said something in VERY rapid Spanish and put our lid off to the side. We had to tell her we didn’t understand and ask her to repeat herself, which she did, this time a little slower and with hand gestures. This was fabulous as many times people simply say the same thing twice at the same speed. It turns out that they keep the thermos lids at the customer service counter and you have to take your receipt up there to get one. Apparently thermos lids are a hot item to unscrew and drop in your pocket??
A brief stop at home to pick up the rest of the maté supplies, a few books, and fill the thermos and we were off to the park. We live very close many parks, but favor the large ones surrounding Recoleta Cemetery because there is a HUGE Sunday market and lots of entertainment. We arrived at the park, found a spot on one of the lawns and joined the thousands of Porteños enjoying the sun.
There were different entertainment groups at work - juggling, playing music, doing puppet shows, performing capoeira, doing acrobatics while hanging from silk fabric in the trees…there was no lack of things to look at.
It was, in fact, a bit like an amateur open air Cirque du Soleil mixed with an arts and crafts fair. Great way to spend the afternoon!
