Another tired Saturday. It’s a little rainy and cloudy down here, but that makes it refreshing and a good excuse to hole up in a café, like right now. Right on the corner of Ravignani y Paraguay, where I live, there’s this funky old café that’s called Café-Bar Montecarlo that for the most part plays mellow good music, like Feist right now and has a beautiful old bar decorated in red leather and wood and a camero who wears a suit and a nice selection of whisky, bourbon and gin behind the counter. The tables all have beautifully carved legs and the chairs are those funky old ones made of red leather and wood. Wainscoating halfway up the wall, checkerboard tiled floor, mirrors lining the walls, so I can stare at myself as I write.
My class has been going pretty well; it’s kind of interesting to be able to design lessons, it’s actually pretty fun, though putting the lessons into practice sometimes hits a few bumps in the road. I go to class Mondays-Wednesdays from 10-5 and talk about everything from how to get students motivated to how to explain Conditional 3 to people, which is used to express regret, without making a depressing class. My classmates include 7 American girls, 1 New Zealand girl, one girl from Manchester, an Argentine-Israeli and a kid from Australia. We make quite an interesting bunch on occasion, a music/dance-obsessed, Argentine-culture-seeking group of self designated ex-pats. Half of the kids are staying here after the course is over (yay us!) and the other half is heading back to US or continuing on with their travels shortly after the course finishes.
Thanks to class and the nonstop activity of BsAs in general, I’ve had (present perfect: have/has + the past participle) a nonstop week. In other words, pretty fucking amazing. Last week, I spent time at a plastic Jesus theme park, a Boca game, Brazilian/Argentine drum troupe, milonga close to home, and salsa dancing. Yeah, like I said fucking amazing.
I think the strangest thing I’ve done yet was by far the Jesus theme-park. It’s not like there were rides and roller-coasters that you go on. It’s more like a themed-park where everything is plastic. Even the palm trees are plastic and they grow in Buenos Aires (not plastic palm trees, real palm trees). Everything is like a giant cheap nativity scene. It goes through the creation story, all the Stations of the Cross and Judas betraying Jesus. There are a couple of plastic statues placed randomly about of men who look they are in utter pain or rage, don’t quite know what their deal is. You can file into theaters and watch a plastic reenactment of the nativity. Joseph moves his head up and down a couple of times and there’s a fog machine. Same with the last supper. I got to see Jesus get resurrected… twice. He only gets resurrected up to the waist so I don’t know if it really counts.
Jesus is located right across the street from the most popular club in town right now. This club is open until 10 or 11 am on Sunday mornings. So ideally, you would go rage to techno and do drugs you’ve never heard of at Pachá and then head to see Jesus in the morning. Really, he gets resurrected every hour on the hour, so you don’t have to wait around very long.
I also made myself dinner the other night using the oven. Unfortunately, I still don’t know how to turn the oven on. Es todo ahora. besos
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
To be Argentine
Just taking a moment to appreciate the awesomeness of Nick Cave. If Heidi were still around, she’d tell me that he was Australian. Therefore Australia is as awesome as Nick Cave. Obvi-po. But let’s not head off on tangents before we even get started.
Speaking of countries that begin with A and things that make them awesome, I think truly the most Argentine thing I’ve done so far is head to La Rural. La Rural is like every county fair you’ve been to with really, really large tractors. Aside from their tractors, La Rural celebrates everything else from the Pampas and really anywhere outside of Buenos Aires. There are cows, chickens, pigs, artesanal foods, bulls, horses, turkeys, goats, and gauchos and more tractors, just to give you a sampling of some of the amazing things we came across.
La Rural is crawling with people. Everyone goes: parents, kids, preppies, grunge kids, hipsters, there is no one you will not run into. It’s like the entire country comes together in Buenos Aires to celebrate the less chic, homey-er aspects of Argentina, which is so strange when BsAs prides itself on its culture and fashionista reputation. It’s kind of nice to see a bunch of people who come together to celebrate each other, even though their lives can be so completely different.
La Rural is like a theme park for the country. Inside, not only will you find the crowds (and the lines -- dude, people line up for their specialty dulce de leche), but there shops that sell “gaucho” clothing (we’ll get into that in a minute). There was one American Apparel type set up, except instead of American Apparel it was definitely sporting the farm-wear aesthetic. The small concession stands sell alfajores (imagine an ice cream sandwich with dulce de leche instead of ice cream), milenesas (hotdogs), hamburguesa completas (self-explanatory), and café. As a side note, this is not Nescafé, which their Chilean neighbors would offer. No, this is really coffee, espresso machine coffee. On these rickety tables they will pull out a heavy duty espresso machine to offer the quality you deserve in a decent cup of espresso. With the selection of meats at these stands, you can only imagine why the animals at La Rural look none to happy.
But the real attraction of La Rural (I think) are the gauchos themselves. It’s like you’ve stepped into a different universe, a different time period. They wear these sort of newsboy-caps that appear to come in burgundy, navy and black. Then, they wear these hardcore, almost motorcycle, leather jackets, although they ride horses, not motorcycles. The jackets cover flow-y white shirts. Then, they wear something that must be like typical horseman pants, only I don’t know anything about that so they just like strange parachute pants to me. The gauchos sit in the stables, tending to their horses, drinking maté, and chatting with each other. Truthfully, it’s a little intimidating. Also, aside from the fully grown gauchos, there are the minigauchos, who look much, much younger, but may just be my age. When the gauchos aren’t drinking mate and simply looking badass, I think they just ride their horses around in circles and are commended for their technique and such. But like I said, I don’t really know about these things.
In the multitudes of other news I failed to report, I turned 22, saw Bright Eyes, went to Uruguay, got my haircut, am living with an Italian man named Fabio who likes to cook, went to a puerta cerrada restaurant, headed to my first milonga, had a mini PA reunion, went to the most amazing jazz club last night, started class and have spent the majority of my time with folks of the European persuasion. All in all, it’s been quite lovely. Hopefully, these will be more frequent now. ¡Ciao amantes!
Speaking of countries that begin with A and things that make them awesome, I think truly the most Argentine thing I’ve done so far is head to La Rural. La Rural is like every county fair you’ve been to with really, really large tractors. Aside from their tractors, La Rural celebrates everything else from the Pampas and really anywhere outside of Buenos Aires. There are cows, chickens, pigs, artesanal foods, bulls, horses, turkeys, goats, and gauchos and more tractors, just to give you a sampling of some of the amazing things we came across.
La Rural is crawling with people. Everyone goes: parents, kids, preppies, grunge kids, hipsters, there is no one you will not run into. It’s like the entire country comes together in Buenos Aires to celebrate the less chic, homey-er aspects of Argentina, which is so strange when BsAs prides itself on its culture and fashionista reputation. It’s kind of nice to see a bunch of people who come together to celebrate each other, even though their lives can be so completely different.
La Rural is like a theme park for the country. Inside, not only will you find the crowds (and the lines -- dude, people line up for their specialty dulce de leche), but there shops that sell “gaucho” clothing (we’ll get into that in a minute). There was one American Apparel type set up, except instead of American Apparel it was definitely sporting the farm-wear aesthetic. The small concession stands sell alfajores (imagine an ice cream sandwich with dulce de leche instead of ice cream), milenesas (hotdogs), hamburguesa completas (self-explanatory), and café. As a side note, this is not Nescafé, which their Chilean neighbors would offer. No, this is really coffee, espresso machine coffee. On these rickety tables they will pull out a heavy duty espresso machine to offer the quality you deserve in a decent cup of espresso. With the selection of meats at these stands, you can only imagine why the animals at La Rural look none to happy.
But the real attraction of La Rural (I think) are the gauchos themselves. It’s like you’ve stepped into a different universe, a different time period. They wear these sort of newsboy-caps that appear to come in burgundy, navy and black. Then, they wear these hardcore, almost motorcycle, leather jackets, although they ride horses, not motorcycles. The jackets cover flow-y white shirts. Then, they wear something that must be like typical horseman pants, only I don’t know anything about that so they just like strange parachute pants to me. The gauchos sit in the stables, tending to their horses, drinking maté, and chatting with each other. Truthfully, it’s a little intimidating. Also, aside from the fully grown gauchos, there are the minigauchos, who look much, much younger, but may just be my age. When the gauchos aren’t drinking mate and simply looking badass, I think they just ride their horses around in circles and are commended for their technique and such. But like I said, I don’t really know about these things.
In the multitudes of other news I failed to report, I turned 22, saw Bright Eyes, went to Uruguay, got my haircut, am living with an Italian man named Fabio who likes to cook, went to a puerta cerrada restaurant, headed to my first milonga, had a mini PA reunion, went to the most amazing jazz club last night, started class and have spent the majority of my time with folks of the European persuasion. All in all, it’s been quite lovely. Hopefully, these will be more frequent now. ¡Ciao amantes!
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