Me falta más tiempo!

Lately I’ve got a song stuck in my head.

(this one, to be exact: )

It’s catchy, and it’s by my favorite band I’ve come to discover here (when besties Ale Sergi and Julieta Venegas team up to form an Argento-Mexican supergroup, you know you can’t go wrong), but it’s the lyrics that are currently relevant to me.

O-o-o-o-o-oh! Me falta más tiempo. O-o-o-o-o-oh! Ya está amaneciendo…

(I need more time. The dawn’s already breaking.)

Here’s a quick breakdown of my life this last month.

Early July: Total boredom. Nothing is new in La Plata, I’m in a rut of a routine, and walking around town to have something to do doesn’t even appeal. I’ve walked every block too many times to count.

The rest of July: Traveling! What a fantastic interlude! I really can’t overstate what a great time I had. In terms of planning, the way I spent all the resources at my disposal (time, money, energy), and smoothness of execution, it couldn’t have gone better. I did a great job on all those counts, which is satisfying in and of itself. But I also just had a really good time. I met lots of great people, saw some great things, and above all really enjoyed my own company. I never felt either alone nor lonely, and spent my days invigorated with a sense of adventure and pure freedom, balanced perfectly with a feeling of purpose. I confirmed my faith in my own ability to travel—everything that goes along with that. It was revitalizing, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

First week of August: I return to La Plata after a much-needed vacation, full of energy and promise and ready to double down and be purposeful again: start projects, pick up those threads of possible leads I left dangling before, actually go to bed at a reasonable hour every night. And then (literally that same night) I get sick. And sicker. And sicker. I wound up having to spend the whole week either in my bed or in its immediate periphery. (The exception was one day when I went to Buenos Aires in the morning for an embassy appointment I’d had scheduled for a month, with a half-inch stack of completed paperwork I was ready to turn in, only to be completely turned away for something I couldn’t have anticipated. A bummer, and then I came back to La Plata and devolved into wretched sickness.)

I was recovered by the end of the week, and went to Buenos Aires at night with friends for another friend’s birthday party, but I couldn’t shake the disappointing feeling that all the anticipatory momentum I’d been building up during my trip had abruptly come to a halt.

Today, happily, I recuperated it!

Not long ago I was contacted by a young woman here in La Plata who is going to be a Fulbright Spanish language assistant at Williams (what a lucky placement!) starting in a couple weeks. She’s a primary school teacher, and she wanted to know if I was interested in meeting her students. Rather than a strict presentation format, she wanted to have her students write questions to ask me about myself and the U.S., and to have me ask them about Argentina in kind.

Well, of course I was so delighted that she had contacted me! I only started working with kids when I was in college, through Spanish-bilingual volunteer programs and abroad, in Granada, teaching middle schoolers English in Spanish. Before those experiences I assumed I didn’t do well with children, but I’ve come to find I really love working with kids, and really appreciate my time with them. I realized today, being with the kids, it’s something I’ve actually really missed since graduating from Whitman and leaving the volunteer scene in Walla Walla.

The school happens to be only two blocks from my apartment, and it’s run by a Jewish organization. (It’s a private school, but the morning primary school is totally secular. Then in the afternoon they have Jewish religious schooling, and the school also functions at a synagogue, since there aren’t any otherwise-designated synagogues in the city.) It looked very similar to the Catholic school I taught at in Spain. (Good times!)

Pía, the teacher who’d contacted me, was absolutely lovely. I sat in a large circle of maybe twenty-five kids, ten- and eleven year-olds, in a multi-purpose room. The kids had prepared lists of questions for me, and at first they went around clockwise asking them, and then of course, they quickly lost their shyness and got more and more eager and talkative, until it was everyone clamoring excitedly at once to ask questions. (Pía had to quickly restore order.)

The kids were so great. Most of the questions were of the “Do you like—“ or “What is your favorite—“ variety (Do you like Messi, Do you like Ronaldo, What is your favorite music, What is your favorite holiday), but there was also one about the differences between the American and Argentine educational systems (precocious!), and an inquiry as to which American university was the very best (shoot for the moon, kids). It was a lot of fun. At the beginning I would answer a question and then tack on a question of my own for the questioner to answer. (I always enjoy myself. To the boy who asked me, “Why are you here?”, after explaining I was teaching English, I asked, “And why are you here?” He replied, good-naturedly, “I live here.”) But soon the energy got so high that there was no time for me to interject a question before the next person was asking me their own burning question. Still, they definitely got speaking practice, and had a great time.

At the end, we went into the adjoining room for a quick presentation from me. I’d prepared a dozen photo slides of different parts of the U.S.: a map, picturesque snapshots of the mountains-coast-forests Washington-state trifectorate, and then West Coast, East Coast, Southwest and Midwest regional highlights. The kids loved this, oohing and ahhing with wide eyes at every picture. Then, to finish, we took some pictures together as a group. I felt like such a celebrity! They were all fighting over who got to stand next to me, and then afterwards everyone wanted to have individual pictures taken with me. Gotta love kids. A really nice group. Such a fun morning with them!

Afterwards, I went out with Pía and her friend, another English teacher at the school who’s shipping off in a couple weeks to be a language assistant in Ireland, to a nearby café. They were wonderful and we had a great time. Both promised to put me in contact with their friends and contacts at local schools so I can give more presentations like this, which I would absolutely love.

So, today was a good day, and I did other fun and good things in it besides, but to return to the way I started this piece…

With the return of my feeling of vigor and purpose, I’ve suddenly realized time is passing really, really fast. That’s always how it goes, of course. March and April stretched for forever (not in a bad way, just in a full way), but suddenly I feel like September is going to gallop up on me. I only have three more months here, which feels like nothing. (Okay, I have four more months, but the last month I’m planning to spend traveling Chile, and travel-time runs on its own alternate-universe timeline.)

Siento que el tiempo se va perdiendo, desaparece ya/
Es como arena entre mis dedos que siempre se me va

(I feel like I’m losing time, it’s already disappearing/It’s like sand slipping through my fingers…)

I think this feeling is really setting in suddenly for a few important reasons.

1) I tipped over the halfway mark while I was traveling. Now I’m over halfway and I’ve realized counting to late-December is a misconception. (Again, traveling in Chile doesn’t count.) Three months is nothing.

2) Argentina is really normal to me. It’s been this way for quite a while now, but I think I only started noting it consciously recently. My life in Argentina is not a parenthesis within my broader, necessarily-American, life. It is my life. I know how things work and feel equanimous towards them. There isn’t this grating, oppressive feeling of being in the wrong country, which I definitely spent a large part of my long, long winter in Slovakia bowed under. It’s not a sense that you dislike where you are (though it definitely can manifest in the form of petty resentments towards your immediate surroundings); rather, it’s a sense that you’ve been somewhere else for too long.

The metaphor I always thought about in Slovakia comes from The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman, one of my favorite books. In it, there are untold multitudes of alternate universes that one can access through portals. One man unknowingly steps through one of these, and then gets lost and can never find his way back to his own world. He flourishes in the new world he finds himself in, but bodily there’s a toll for spending too long in another world—all such travelers eventually die.

Whew. Not to get dramatic on that front, but that’s how I felt in Slovakia: an almost bodily unease that had built up the longer I spent away. I knew it was one of the later stages of “culture shock,” which far from the acuteness suggested by the “shock” part of the phrase, is much more pernicious in its chronic stages; but there was nothing I could do about it.

I expected the same in Argentina, since this is only the first time since then that I’ll be spending a year out of the country. But it hasn’t happened. I’ve had to contend with the inevitable lows of boredom and listlessness, but that general malaise of “wrongness” isn’t here.

And I don’t think it’s going to suddenly rear its head, either. In terms of cultural adjustment, everything has only gotten easier and easier over time. As I’ve said, I understand how the country and the culture works; I navigate it all smoothly, unconsciously. I can (and often do) enjoy taking a moment to step back outside of myself for a moment to say, “Look at you! You’re in Argentina, you’ve normalized all of this. Wow, how and when did that happen? Good for you!” But outside of these conscious impositions, it’s just my life that I’m living.

All the language hurdles have been jumped. I’m even—finally!—crossing into that territory, the final frontier of the standards I set for myself for satisfaction with my language skills, where my mouth speaks before I can think. It can be an unnerving feeling, to have my mouth think faster than my brain, but it’s always something I’ve aimed for. My Slovak skills were so far below where my Spanish is, but that was something I had in Slovak that I never had in Spanish before, and something therefore I’ve always known was lacking. I’m sure it comes from the difference in the way I learned the two languages: Slovak, primarily through speaking and listening; and Spanish, through reading and writing, with a distinct lack of native-speaker-access and opportunities to practice speaking.

(This same skill in Slovak, by the way, was what got me in somewhat-hilarious and also cringe-worthy trouble when I got back to the States. Taking Spanish classes my freshman year of college, for months every time I opened my mouth to participate in class, Slovak would come out. Even when I consciously tried to guard against the impulse, I couldn’t prevent it. My mouth was programmed so that when I opened it to speak a foreign language, Slovak was going to be tripping off my tongue. Strangely, and kind of hilariously, my classmates absolutely never commented on this or even seemed to notice. Thank goodness I only had –one- run-in with accidentally saying the Slovak word for “yes” [“áno”] in a Spanish-speaking context… )

Back to the point of all this, I think because Argentina is my normal, time is really going to slip by at this point. Time drags when you feel like you’re living between parentheses. Time flies when you feel totally unburdened, and full of energy to boot.

3) I got in to the Peace Corps! I actually got in to the Peace Corps over a month ago, but I actually hardly thought about it at all during the nearly three weeks I was on the road. (Too busy living in the moment!) I got back to La Plata and suddenly it became very real. It’s so exciting. I’m not just daydreaming of tropical fantasies; I’ve been thinking about it as realistically and holistically as I can. But despite many fears and dreads, the excitement outweighs it all. As always, I’m also just so glad to have it settled, and I won’t have to spend months in limbo worrying about what else I might do if I don’t get in. I got in! I’m going! (Insh’Allah.) I’m going to a place that actually says insh’Allah! Alhamdulillah to that! (And they say that one, too.)

I think it’s the suddenly-actualized prospect of Peace Corps Indonesia that’s affected my feelings on time here more than anything else.

Above all, three months is nothing next to the idea of 27. That’s just Pre-Service Training—you have to go three months before you even get sworn in as a Volunteer to start the two years that actually count as your service.

With all my sudden excitement at my new horizons, I’ve felt myself shift focus. I’ve loved throwing myself into studying Indonesian. And I’ve already begun to mourn my Spanish. There’s no way to predict these things to a science, but losing years’ worth of language while I’m immersed in Indonesia is just an inevitability. I’m always learning new words in Spanish, and looking up words I don’t know is a reflex I couldn’t turn off if I wanted to. But I suddenly don’t see a need to buckle down on my Spanish and deliberately study more specialized vocabulary anymore, either. (Not that I’ve done much studying of that sort, but I have felt guilty at times that I haven’t.) What do you do when you know you’re going to lose so much of it so soon anyway? My general language goal here remains the same that it always was, to be able to speak at a rate and with a depth of quality that I consider “fluent,” to satisfy the incredibly exacting standards that I set for myself. I’m getting there; at times (more and more these days) I realize that I am there. There is so much intrinsic value for me in getting there.

And, in the face of losing so much of this soon enough, I find myself appreciating Spanish with a fullness, tinged with a lightly-desperate sadness, that can only be described as a nostalgia for my current situation. (This happens to me a lot, actually. That’s what I get for living in the future rather than the present.) I know I’m going to miss this all so soon: Argentina, which I’ve never stopped enjoying; my language abilities (sure, I’ll learn Indonesian, but never to the level of Spanish, and I’ll always love Spanish for that); Spanish itself.

To return to the three-months-compared-to-twenty-seven theme: talk about needing to aprovechar!*

* (I’m not a huge Spanglish person, but whenever I’m speaking English with someone who knows Spanish, I always leave this verb as-is. It basically means “to take advantage of” [in a benevolent sense, as in “I want to make the most of this experience!”], but it’s just superior in Spanish.)

I’m going to be missing this country and everything about my life here all too soon. But luckily I’m not missing them yet. So while I’m still here, I need to make the most of it. Three months—let’s go!

Love,

Sabés que te has acostumbrado a la vida argentina cuando...

(Another previously-unpublished post from my archives.)

4/27/16

Six weeks in: You know you're starting to adjust to Argentine life when... (arranged thematically)

FOOD

->You have a really early dinner at 8 pm, and feel weird about it. (Note: when I’m just preparing food for myself in the kitchen, I usually eat dinner around 11.)

->Your favorite part of the day is sitting down with a spoon and your tub of dulce de leche. 

[Corollary: You correctly figured out, and later had this corroborated by Argentines, that Vacalín is the best dulce de leche brand, hands-down.]

->Even though there are a couple of things you want at Carrefour that you can only get there, you actually remember this time that if you go in, you’ll be waiting in line for at least twenty minutes. Come on. It’s just not worth it…

MONEY

->You strategically claim to have no change in certain situations where you can get away with it (e.g., Carrefour; with obnoxious BA taxis [yeah, they complain loudly, but I really couldn’t care less], etc.) so that you can both get back more change and also hoard it up for when it is absolutely necessary (paying at fruit & vegetable stands; having small bills for tips in restaurants/bars; splitting the bill when out with friends).

->You have learned what the deal with “monedas” is. Monedas are coins, and while there are 1- and 2-peso coins, I’m talking about the coins worth less than a peso. 50-cent peso pieces are rare, and 25-cent pieces even more so (you can count on the fruit & vegetable stands to usually have them, but no one else); but there are 10- and 5-cent denominations as well. (If 1-cent pieces exist, I haven’t seen them.) I only know this because once I got back one of each of these tiny coins as change. I showed them to my friends later and they were amazed: "I didn't know those still existed!" 

Story time: My second day in La Plata, and my fifth day in the country, I went to a supermarket for some groceries. I paid, and the cashier gave me back a 1-peso coin as change. There's no extra, hidden sales tax; the cashier was simply not giving me seven cents back. "Um, what about the seven cents?" I asked her. She gave me such a priceless, world-weary, 'are you serious' look that I think it'll always be seared into my brain. "Seven cents," she said, shaking her head, "it's just nothing." I shrugged and left the store, unwilling to argue. Did she really not give me the proper change just because she found seven cents to be so paltry? Every cent matters to me! (And then, of course, I later came to discover that not only is seven cents really nothing, but even 50 cents is often nothing. Cashiers round the total as best they can, to 25-, 50-, or 75- cents after the full pesos, but more often than not patrons such as myself simply don't have monedas, and then the cashier just knocks the cents off the total. So they're grateful when you actually give them a moneda to pay for the cents of your total, but if you don't have any, that's how it goes, just to be expected.) 

->You've learned that crisp bills carry clout. You will often get looks based on how crumpled and decrepit your bills are (and it will always be worse the smaller the denomination--there is nothing sadder than a little blue 2-peso note, filthy, torn, stained and wrinkled unrecognizably). You used to think it was silly to care about the state of one's bills--it's not something you can usually control, and it doesn't change their status as legal tender--until you found yourself falling into the same trap, shamefacedly trying to hide the most pathetic bills in between some nice ones as you handed them over to the cashier...

->You appreciate 100-peso bills as huge and very expensive. You are very nervous when paying for a small-ticket item with a 100-peso bill. Until just a month ago, it was the largest denomination there was. (Now they've released the new 500-peso bills, "the jaguar," they're called, for their lovely big-cat design.) You're always apologetic when you do so, and many places will not have change for it. (Also, it equals less than $7 USD...) 

ON THE STREETS

->You cross streets like a pro, remembering to always check behind you (for buses turning into your lane--you'll never see 'em coming!).

->You know to resent things on the road in the following order: 1) motorcycles 2) buses 3) cars. Motorcycles for their volume (no mufflers, never!), impunity, and sometimes lack of headlights at night. Buses because when they turn, they turn, and God help you if you are in the road. 

->A full hour goes by before you process on a conscious level that there’s been a loud (of course, drum-based) protest on the street outside your window for the last two hours…

[Corollary: you have finally succeeded in turning the constant din of horn-honking, grating engines, revving motorcycles, and squealing bus brakes into a meaningless white noise.]

->You have memorized all the mass-reproduced political graffiti messages. When they pop up in your world, it's like seeing a familiar face. 

LANGUAGE

->You know how to respond to any number of riffs on the “hello, how are you?” stock conversation-starter you will engage in however many times a day. (¿Cómo estás? ¿Cómo andas? ¿Cómo te va? ¿Todo bien? ¿Qué tal?) [Correct answers: “bien,” “muy bien,” or “todo bien.”]

->You know that you must call yourself an “United States-ian” rather than an “American” (it works in Spanish, but not English—to be fair, I’ve been careful to never make that faux pas) and that Argentines call their language “castellano,” not “español.” (This being a funny irony. The Argentine dialect originally came from the Spanish region of Castile, so yes, it is “Castilian,” but within Spain “castellano” has a very different meaning: it simply refers to the language that we call Spanish [as opposed to Gallego, Basque, Catalan or other languages of Spain—it’s like the distinction between saying “Chinese” or “Mandarin.”]. So Argentines call their dialect “castellano” to distinguish it from “español,” and yeah, there’s the irony…)

->It’s easier for you to understand people when they speak to you in Spanish than when they take you for a foreigner and speak to you in English.

Tango, un aniversario y comida de nuevo

Hey all!

I know, I know, you've given up this blog for dead. Well, I'm in a blogging mood. I've got a new post fresh off the press, but to keep this chronologically-tidy I'm going to post these first--"these" being two posts I wrote months ago (with a third lumped in to this first one), back in March and April, which I never got around to publishing for whatever reason. The dates when they were written will be noted at the top of each post. It's particularly funny for me now to look back at the one I wrote six weeks in. These were all things I consciously noted?! I think I stopped noticing any of these things back in May or so. It's certainly interesting for me as an "artifact" I can chart my cultural-integration development by...

3/24/16

Last night and this morning I had a few very uniquely Argentine experiences.

Last night, I went with two of my roommates here at the hostel to a tango show put on by the city, part of a four-day tango festival here. (I only heard about this through my roommates.) One of my roommates, a fifty-year-old woman named Susanna, had apparently come all the way from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world (it’s the gateway to Antarctica, down on Tierra del Fuego), to dance tango in La Plata. It’s a little incredible. But, as she was telling me last night, she does things like this several times a year: takes off work for a week to go to a tango festival, dances and recharges (“I don’t see a psychiatrist. I never get sick. Tango is all I need.”). Susanna, me, another roommate (I never learned her name!) and her boyfriend, Gonzálo, both in their early thirties; and Juan Carlos, a seventy-five-year-old gentleman, went to the show at 8 o’clock. It was held in the Dardo Rocha Cultural Center, a really lovely historical building that used to be the city’s train station however long ago. (Dardo Rocha designed the city, making it the first planned city in South America.)

The night had two parts. The first was the “espectáculo,” or performance, and the second was the milonga. The hall we were in was gorgeous, with a polished, alternating black-and-white tile floor, Neoclassical columns and a very high ceiling--unfortunately, that high ceiling was terrible for acoustics. Anyone speaking or singing into a microphone echoed unintelligibly and the tango band (a keyboardist, guitarist, violinist, and accordion player) was impossible to make out. For the espectáculo, they alternated orchestral performances, a singer accompanied by the orchestra, and dancers accompanied by the orchestra and sometimes also the singer. Since the acoustics were, as I’ve said, awful, I definitely got the most out of the dancing performances. They were absolutely wonderful, all put on by professional tango dancers, dressed in striking dresses and tuxedos, high heels, kicking their legs high and interlacing them quickly and even doing many lifts and drops. I thought it was impressive, and awesome to watch; my fellows at the table, however, found it repellent. Juan Carlos kept shaking his head dismissively: “This is an ugly scene,” he said. “This isn’t tango.”

The show lasted probably only half an hour; we clapped, and then all the chairs around the stage were cleared away and the audience changed over, with most people leaving and new people arriving. After a break of maybe an hour, or an hour and a half, it was time for the milonga. A milonga is basically a dance hall where regular people come to dance tango. The orchestra had left, so the soundtrack was tinny recordings. 

The way it works is this: you come with your friends and partners and sit around a table to the side of the dance hall. You get food and alcohol for your table. Women can come dressed in anything, but the vast majority wear a skirt or dress and absolutely high heels. (Designated tango heels are the ones that have a little strap running from the middle of the toe cap up to the ankle strap—it helps them stay tightly on your feet when you’re flashing them around.) If you’re a woman who’s shown up in her Converse, you’ll have to stand on your tiptoes while you dance. Men can absolutely wear anything (though a few did dress for the occasion, one guy in a black and white suit to match his partner’s outfit), but they also should step lightly on their toes while dancing. 

Tango songs, which are the slower of the two kinds, last about 2.5 to 3 minutes, while milonga songs, which are much faster, are no more than 2 minutes. So the songs are very short! And they always seemed to end so unsatisfactorily, cut off in mid-thought, with the dancers themselves never seeming to be able to predict when the music would suddenly die. Tango songs are played in batches of three, milonga songs in batches of four (there’s a word for these groupings but I don’t remember it). You can choose to change partners either after a batch or after a song. There were several husband-and-wife pairs who only danced as a couple the entire evening, but for everyone else, the majority of whom had also come with their significant others, changing partners was part of the game. Nobody declines an invitation to dance, no matter whom it’s from. (There are lots of extremely subtle cues people use to signal interest or the lack thereof in a dance with a particular partner, but regardless, the dance itself never lasts long.) We stayed for four hours at the milonga. You do the math: about 100 songs in that time period = the potential to have a hundred different partners! Of course people do sit some songs out, and don’t necessarily change after every song, but definitely everyone got around and danced with everyone else multiple times.

Juan Carlos was right: the milonga was very different from the tango show. I still think professional tango shows are incredible, but milongas are very special in their own way as well. There were people of all ages there, from teenagers to seventy-year-olds, and everyone was a skilled tango dancer. They didn’t, however, dance tango the way you probably think of it, with the kicking legs and legs wrapping around other legs up to the thigh, the dips and all that. It was much more subtle. The man gives all the directions through different hand movements on the woman’s back (the woman closes her eyes—and often the man does, too). It’s basically just a serious of steps, forwards and back, sometimes pauses where the woman will cross her foot over the man’s or something like that. There are occasional twirls. There’s definitely room for personal style, with some of the younger dancers swaying in a kind of bachata-inspired way, and some dancers who would flash their hips much more, or slide their legs longer. There’s a lot of passion in tango in general, but I think this metaphor is pretty accurate: a tango show is sex, and the milonga is romance. (In Susanna’s immortal words: “Es la historia del amor en menos de tres minutos.” ["It's the story of love in under three minutes."]) I didn’t dance at all (everyone dancing was at a very high skill level—absolutely no room for beginners), so I was just sitting watching for four hours. It was lovely to watch, but it also felt almost invasive to do so, watching something extremely intimate.

We stayed until 2 am. I was yawning at 8 pm. Yes, that was a very hard six hours to get through. Very beautiful, and also very tiring. (It would have been more fun if I wasn’t just sitting the whole time.) But I definitely wasn’t going to walk back to the hostel by myself, and nor did I want to pull the group away from their dancing early. I finally got to bed at 3:30—whew!—and set my alarm for 8:30.

I wouldn’t set my alarm unless I had to, and so yes, there was a reason; one of my Fulbrighter friends who lives in Buenos Aires emailed me yesterday to tell me that today, to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the country’s military coup, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel was going to be speaking here in La Plata. So I got up early, and got there at 9:30 when it started. They had set up rows of chairs in a blocked-off side-street in the downtown area around a small stage in front of the Centro Provincial por la Memoria (CPM). I didn’t know this, but apparently the CPM here in La Plata houses all the archives of the relatively-recently (early 2000’s) declassified government documents surrounding the last dictatorship. So that’s pretty huge. The building blends in well with the supermarkets and mobile phone kiosks around it, so much so that walking down the street I probably wouldn’t even notice that the front of it is covered in a blown-up iconic black and white photo of the Madres and others protesting the dictatorship in the Plaza de Mayo back in the seventies.

I got there at 9:30, but it didn’t actually start until 10:15. In that waiting time, I tried to avoid eye contact with people, lest they start a conversation with me; I felt a bit uncomfortable being there, as a foreigner intruding upon this very Argentine trauma. After opening remarks from the CPM’s director, the microphone was passed to one of the two guests of honor, one of the original Madres de Plaza de Mayo. She was tiny but very spry, with her white handkerchief around her head and a placard with a photo of her disappeared son around her neck. (A cultural note here: The moment everyone realized that she would be sitting to give her speech, everyone suddenly stood up, pulled their rows of chairs closer with a deafening, collective scraping noise, and got out their phones to snap pictures and record video. It was really hard to see her between all of that!)

Then it was Adolfo Pérez Esquivel’s turn to talk. I left afterwards, hungry for breakfast. Two empanadas, como siempre.

4/13/16

Yesterday a nice Peruvian guy I met here a few weeks ago invited me to an event on Facebook that was a kind of weekly foreigner meet-up at a bar downtown. I thought, why not, and off I went. But…I couldn’t find the bar. I really don’t know how, because I walked up and down the street it was on at least three times, but nope, I didn’t find it. (Sure, I could have asked someone, but I hadn’t been too gung-ho about going anyway, so it was my excuse not to. Maybe next week.) 

But I wound up walking around for two hours just having a lovely evening stroll; happened to find the only Mexican restaurant I have seen so far in the city (dinner tonight? You know it!); and to my surprise was catcalled for the very first, and then the second, time in this country, about fifteen minutes apart, both times by the guys hanging off the backs of the garbage trucks. (The catcalling—or lack thereof—has really pleasantly surprised me. Even in situations where there is no way I would not get catcalled in the U.S.—you know, walking alone down a dark street, three guys hanging out the side of a bar watching me—it simply doesn’t happen here. Everyone minds their own business, and I love it.)

Finding the Mexican restaurant was exciting not only because I’ve been having a real need for enchiladas recently, but also because I’ve had such a hard time finding non-Argentine food in general. (Italian- and French-inspired places don’t count.) Don’t get me wrong, the empanadas haven’t gotten old yet, but one of the things I always miss most in foreign countries is the lack of abundant food diversity from around the world. Nobody has it like we do, and I’m spoiled as a result. 

Also yesterday, I happened to find two other “exotic” restaurants! I had to meet with a professor at the university, and along the bus route I happened to see a restaurant called “Bambu” which billed itself as catering to vegetarians. Sounded good to me! I am definitely on the hunt for more veggie-heavy food options. So later, once I’d gotten back from the university, I found Bambu on foot. But I didn’t even stick my head in the door. I could see through the windows it was full up with people. Next time.

I did, however, get some Chinese food today! Yesterday, walking on the usual strip that I walk every single day (the block my apartment building is on, which passes a supermarket, a fruit stand, a kiosk and the laundromat where I drop my clothes off to be washed, dried, and ironed for a paltry sum), to my astonishment I saw a sign I’d never seen before: “Sol rojo: comidas chinas y argentinas” (Red Sun: Chinese and Argentine cuisine). 

I’m not sure how I’d always glanced over the actual sign, but I do have a bit of a theory. Here (as in Spain), when shops are closed they draw down thick metal gratings over their storefronts, in front of the windows and everything, so that all you see from the street is a wall of metal. When the metal is out, the shops just blink out of my awareness. Even though the store sign is still there over the top (though not illuminated, so at night you’ll never see them), my eyes slide right over them. And although the timing is less erratic than in Spain, few stores have their hours of operation posted and sometimes they will be closed and I won’t know why. In Andalusia the siesta was strictly observed, and from 1 or 2 until 5 or 7 or even 9 most of the city would be closed down tightly. Here, you don’t feel the siesta much (though in the more traditional provinces it is observed), but 5 pm a lot of restaurants are closed up tight. (Which makes sense, considering lunch is over and dinner isn’t until 9 at the earliest, but really more like 10). This is all to say that I’m always discovering new places in familiar areas, depending what time of day I go out exploring, and that’s an incentive for me to go out at different times, and go to the same places at different hours to see what’s changed. Maybe that’s how I’d missed Sol rojo before. Anyway, although I’d picked up two empanadas at the university cafeteria, I was committed to going to Sol rojo for lunch (the empanadas will be dinner…though I accidentally may have gotten an eggplant-filled one, so that may be a bummer).

It turned out to be a serve-yourself buffet, a really impressively-stocked one (such a range of so many different foods, and all home-cooked--talk about serious daily preparation involved there), and true to the tagline, it was a mix of Chinese and Argentine foods. There were foods like fried rice and chow mein, dumplings and wontons; and also eggrolls filled with ham and cheese (good ol' Argentine jamón y queso, always a winning combo), flan, and milanesas (thin, breaded meat--considered "very Argentine," until you remember that most cultures have something exactly like this). I loaded up my plastic container and paid by weight. It was delicious. Such a good find. 

Epilogue: Present-day (August) Rhiannon speaking here. I would later go on to discover that Sol Rojo is a vast chain, found all over La Plata and Buenos Aires as well, which is only open for lunch. I'm a big fan. 

I did wind up going back for dinner to that Mexican restaurant I'd passed the day of that blog post. Little did I know Deirdre's boyfriend's parents' axiom about Argentine cuisine: "never eat fish or Mexican food." True to form, that meal was hands-down the worst I've had in Argentina, and one of the more expensive. It was a plate of three mini enchiladas (each a little bigger than one of my fingers), one cheese, one mushroom, and one beef. It was just dry tortillas with dry filling rolled inside, and then the outside of the tortillas were browned a little to make them even drier. Forget about sauces or any liquids. Forget about salsas and spice. It was dry and tasteless and $11, which in Argentina can buy you an entree, drink and dessert at a respectable restaurant. Plus I had to listen to an hour of the worst CD of covers you can imagine. (I later came to learn that this CD is part of a vast genre of terrible, Muzak- and reggae-inspired covers, often with the gender of the original- vs. the cover-singers swapped, to very bad effect, that plays in many restaurants and other venues throughout the country. Someday I need to ask someone what's the deal.) 

Pasear por Palermo: la mezquita y más

Hi guys!

So, I haven’t been in the mood to blog at all recently, but I had a great day today [that is, this last Thursday] and coincidentally I’m all in a fever to write it out, for whatever reason. So, yella (Arabic: “let’s go”)!

Recently I haven’t had much to do—well, not super-recently, for the last few weeks, I guess; but with the recent torrential rain keeping me from taking long walks and cooping me up inside, I’ve felt it more acutely recently—and last night, on a whim, I decided to look up the Centro Cultural Islámico Rey Fahd (King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center)’s website.

I’ve been wanting to go since way back when I was applying for the Fulbright... which would have been around June 2014. (God, that’s crazy to think about.) Anyway, when I was working on my Fulbright application I was researching Muslims in Argentina, and trying to find information on what the community/cultural life was like, I immediately came across the King Fahd Center. For obvious reasons. It’s the sole mosque (or Islamic cultural center) in Buenos Aires, and, keeping in mind that Argentina has the largest Muslim population in the Western Hemisphere outside of the U.S. and Canada, it’s also the largest mosque in Latin America. I love visiting mosques of all stripes, and was guessing, even before I found out my city placement, that I would have many opportunities to visit Buenos Aires, so I was excited to make a “pilgrimage,” so to speak, eventually.

“Eventually” came a lot quicker than I anticipated when last night browsing the Center’s website I discovered tours were given Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at noon. Saturday was out (I’m always busy on weekends); Tuesday next week I hope to be traveling (there are no classes at the university due to final exams)…so Thursday it was, even though I only figured this out pretty late at night and I usually don’t like to do things with such little planning. But, come on—after going to BA last weekend, I’d learned it’s so easy and really not a big deal in the least. No planning required, besides some Google Maps consultations. And besides, I had no obligations in La Plata and was really itching for a change of scenery. The only little snag was I wound up staying up till 3 am, and I calculated that I needed to get up at 7:30 in order to safely get to the mosque before noon.

Naturally, I didn’t feel awesome when my alarm went off, and I considered just going back to sleep, but I’m proud I overcame that urge and made myself get up and shower. The thing I was most concerned with, timing-wise, was being able to get on the bus to BA. Bus stops in Argentina are often totally unmarked (the majority of them, in fact), but you’ll always know where they are by the line of people waiting there. The lines used to shock me and really stress me out—like, I’m literally waiting on the next city block, I’m so far back in this line, and I really need to catch this bus. I love using that past tense—“I used to”—but let’s be real, the lines still shock and horrify me. (And yet let’s keep some perspective, please—nothing can ever touch the bank lines, above all the Great Line of April 18^th outside the Banco Nacional de Argentina that had to have had over four hundred people in it, and growing every minute.) But I’ve tried to keep my cortisol levels in check as I’ve learned just how many people waiting single-file can get swallowed up in standing-room-maximized buses. Just because there are 60 people ahead of me doesn't necessarily mean I won't be getting on that bus. 

My big fear today with the BA bus was that I would be going around commuter time—9 am—and the last time I’d taken the BA bus, it had only come once every hour. If you’re too far back in the line, the bus will get full and you’ll have to wait for the next one. I could afford to miss one bus and still make it to BA with enough time to get to Rey Fahd.

So I got to the bus station and yes, sure enough, the line for number 129 was long and snake-like, twining around into the parking lot. But I was optimistic. I only had to wait maybe 20 minutes before the bus came. Bad news, though: the bus driver didn’t load the bus the way intracity buses are filled up. Once all the seats were filled, that was it. (Not sure what the protocol is on this, because sure, it’s an hour-long ride, but usually there’s 1-3 people who just stand in the aisle the whole time, no more seats for them.) So I just missed the cut-off. That’s okay, I was guaranteed to get on the next one, and timing-wise I had enough time for the delay. But to my pleasant surprise, the next bus came only 20 minutes later, much earlier than I’d expected.

(I have looked everywhere for bus schedules, online and in person, and have yet to find a single one. I’ve got to ask around about where these can be found. As of now, I operate purely on guesswork. This also applies to the bus I take to the university on a regular basis. The bus comes every 15 minutes. Every time it comes, I check the time on my watch to try to figure out what kind of schedule it’s operating on. Every. Last. Time. it’s a different time. There’s zero rhyme or reason that I can decipher, so I just show up when I can and hope I get lucky.)

The bus ride to BA takes exactly an hour. As far as actual time barreling down the road, it’s probably 35 minutes or so. The rest of the time is waiting in traffic or at stoplights, finely threading through clogged BA streets, etc. So the distance is not far. The ride is nice and restful, along pastures and wide irrigation ditches.

I wound up getting off one stop too early in BA (there are at least three different stops along the same street—the largest street in the world, incidentally), but it was only a difference of a couple of blocks.

To my extremely pleasant surprise, the hand-me-down BA map Dad gave me—which it should be noted I appreciated upon the first time I used it; it’s excellent—turned out to have a metro map on it, too. I took the metro from Avenida 9 de Julio to Palermo. It was my first time using the BA Subte. Not much of an accomplishment, considering metros are always extremely simple, but hey, that’s one more “now I’ve done it”s to cross off my list.

And so I arrived in Palermo. Palermo is one of the nicer barrios (I read somewhere that it’s “middle-class,” but my friends who live in BA all consider it rich…), known for having a boho vibe. I went up one street from the metro station, and there was the mosque complex! Yes, it’s really enormous. Certainly the biggest mosque I’ve seen outside of Turkey and Egypt. It takes up probably three city blocks. The perimeter is encircled by a tasteful, and also efficient, black barred fence. It has two huge minarets—and good for them on that! lots of mosques in non-“Muslim countries” are forced to have really short minarets to appease the neighbors—at least two domes, one smaller and one larger; many different buildings, and it’s not clear how they all interconnect; and sprawling, very healthy green lawns. Very idyllic.

It was 11:15 and I had a little time to kill. Having satisfied myself that I had very immediately found the mosque, I went looking for food. Unfortunately I was just in the wrong area, I guess. I went down several roads and they were purely ultra-ritzy (laughably so) apartment buildings, no food in sight. I was starving at this point, and knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the tour with how hungry I was, so I finally had to give in and go to the sole food option I’d passed, a little kiosk. Kiosks only sell junk food, so my breakfast was an individually-wrapped giant alfajor (a sweet kind of pastry confection with dulce de leche in the middle). Delicious, yes; healthy choice, no; but oh well.

When it was finally ten minutes to the hour I went back to the mosque complex’s gate. To my surprise, there were about a dozen other people waiting (in a tidy line, of course). I had expected to be the only person up for the mosque tour at noon on a Thursday. The guard who checked us in was all business: ID out and in your hands before you present yourself! I realized I only had a copy of my passport with me and despaired a little, that I might be turned away. I got out my U.S. drivers license, too, and good thing I had that with me—the guard rejected my paper passport photocopy but was quite content with the license.  We had to lock up our bags in lockers; only cellphones (whatever would fit in the palm of one hand) were allowed. The safety precautions make sense, sadly…

We would up being a group of about 20, and I was really surprised, that we were so many; more so when our guide, a middle-aged man in a button-up shirt and suit jacket, met us in the reception courtyard and said, “Oh good, you guys are a really small group, we’ll have a nice, intimate chat with this one.” (Paraphrasing of course; this is obviously in Spanish.)

The courtyard was lovely: a fountain set into the shiniest, most freshly-polished granite tile floor you can imagine. (And I was imagining: rolling on it, roller blading over it, sliding around in socks on it…) It was very quiet; it had the feel that we’d entered some utopian city, walled off from the world.

Our guide led us first to the colegio. My first new information: I had had no idea there was a school in the complex. It’s elementary school only. Aside from the regular school curriculum, the students learn about Islam and Arabic—so lucky! We wound up seeing several of the children, first playing in the distance, and then when they came inside, the boys running up to shake hands with our guide, with big smiles and “salaam aleikum”s all around. The children were adorable, I can’t even tell you. Such good, clean-cut kids.

Then our guide led us to a classroom, where adult Arabic lessons are held. (Bummer for me that I can’t access those!) Our guide had initially started the tour by acknowledging that people came to these mosque tours for usually one of two reasons: either just to tour the facility (hey, that’s me!), or to have a chance to learn more about Islam. The time in the classroom was to give people a chance to air some of their questions while allowing us to be seated comfortably. And it was very clear that most, most, most of the people on the tour were there for the latter reason.

The questions began. The guide made it repeatedly clear that he was happy to answer anything, that these tours were a kind of outreach on the part of the Islamic community to debunk myths about Islam and spread the knowledge. I understand why the Islamic community has that sentiment, and bless them for it. You really had to admire our guide’s patience and good-naturedness. But God—what obnoxious people on the tour with me! Just obnoxious. The questions ranged from the outrageously general—“so what does Islam believe? Tell me everything”—to the offensively pointed: “but women are considered slaves, right? How can you say it is a religion of peace if thieves get their hands chopped off!” (And for the love of Allah, people, turn off your cell phones! I was ready to grab them and throw them against the wall—loud pings going off throughout the tour every few seconds, and half the people just texting the entire time…)

This question and answering went on for over an hour. I didn’t learn anything about Islam I hadn’t known before, but I did find one thing in particular that our guide spoke about curious. He said that Allah forgives all sins but one, and that is the crime of “association” (not sure what the proper English translation would be?), that of associating anything with Allah except Allah (i.e., worshipping any god but Allah, or in addition to Allah. Allah’s Oneness, tawhid, is the most important thing).

As it happens, I did a research project on this topic in my Islamology class in Granada, on sin and forgiveness in Islamic jurisprudence. Islamic jurisprudence (“fiqh”) is fascinating stuff! All scholars are agreed that Allah forgives basically any sin. There’s an oft-quoted line in the Qur’an that says “[Allah] forgives whoever He wills and punishes whoever He wills.” It’s made clear that Allah can forgive anyone for anything at any time… Except there’s also that line that goes “Surely Allah forgives not setting up partners with Him, and He forgives all besides this to whom He pleases.” This is the sin of association, called shirk. And this is where fiqh gets interesting. While everyone agrees shirk is certainly the worst sin there is, Islamic scholars can and do interpret things any infinite number of different ways, so there wind up being three different opinions about Allah’s attitude towards it:

      1)  Shirk is the one sin Allah will not forgive. That’s it, game over.

      2) Shirk is terrible, but if you fix your ways and repent before you die, Allah may forgive you. (I mean, He probably will, but it’s always up to Him, so who can say for sure.)

      3) Allah can choose to forgive anything at any time. This includes shirk.

I was curious about our guide’s matter-of-fact statement on shirk for a few reasons. When I had done my fiqh research on the topic, I had found the different viewpoints, but not the number of scholars on each side of the issue. And quantity matters! What are fringe views, and what is basically universally-agreed-upon? Was our guide’s view of shirk the mainstream view (consulting Wikipedia, I think so), or just that of whatever school this mosque follows? (“Your mosque has strong ties to Saudi Arabia. Do you follow the Wahhabi school?” would have been a more interesting question than most that were asked…) I also found it interesting because our guide kept stressing Allah’s attitude towards this as exemplary of His radiant compassion…but did anyone else in that extremely-Catholic room catch the implications of this aspect of doctrine…? I’m not pointing fingers here (lots of strains of Christianity believe the same thing, in reverse), just curious as to what my tour-going compatriots caught on to or didn’t.

After our guide finally put an end to the questioning, once he realized how late it was, we continued our tour by going to the prayer hall. The main event! We left our shoes in a large granite antechamber. There were boys from the elementary school scampering about everywhere, having the greatest time sliding around in their socks on the silky smooth floor. I’ll say it again—so adorable!

The prayer hall was lovely and vast, with spaces for 2000 people. The floor rug had come from Saudia Arabia, and was richly red and gold with designs to designate spacing of worshippers. In the middle of the room, under the huge dome with a sparkling crystal chandelier hanging off it (great acoustics in there), was a kind of podium set into the floor where the imam was sitting. The Eastern wall, which the room faced, was mostly window, and the room was lit purely by natural light, a common theme throughout the mosque complex that I appreciated.

It turns out we were there just in time for the midday prayer. Our guide bid us sit down on the floor near the back of the room, and a minute later the adhan started. We were behind some benches, so I couldn’t see the imam once we sat down; but I’m pretty sure it was he who gave the recitation into a microphone.

Men in business suits started trickling in, and the boys came in from the antechamber, wriggling with excitement. Only about a dozen people, men and boys together, ended up coming. (Above us, on a higher tier hidden by decoratively-carved screen, was the women’s prayer section.) The adhan was exquisite, but also the quickest I’ve ever heard; instead of repeating the lines several times, as you always hear when the call is coming from a muezzin in a minaret, the imam only said each line once, and was done in probably thirty seconds. Then he led the men in prayer, through the movements of standing, to hands on knees, to standing, to prostrating on the floor, to standing once more, using vocal cues.

I’ve never gotten to see the prayer in person before. I was torn between feeling very lucky, and also uncomfortable, having essentially been told by the guide to stare.

After many cycles of the prayer movements, the imam signaled it was the last one, and then everyone sat down for the sermon. A man in a suit came forward to sit next to the imam and was given his own microphone. I’m not sure if the imam didn’t speak Spanish, or if he just preferred it that way, but he spoke only in Arabic (strong Gulf dialect—the most beautiful, in my book), and the man next to him translated seamlessly into Spanish.

The sermon was interesting. It was not a sermon of the kind I’m used to in Christian churches. Rather than a rousing, motivational speech, this was bullet points—just quick, practical pointers. How you should thank Allah before a meal. How you should always ask permission before entering someone’s home or office. How you should identify yourself by name when you arrive at someone’s house, rather than just saying “it’s me.” These were run-over in a quick, matter-of-fact way, with no transitions between them, and then very suddenly it was over; the worshippers were bid to greet each other (exactly as happens at a Christian mass, everyone shaking each other’s hands and wishing them peace), and then the group disbanded.

Afterwards, our guide led us to the library, which had a nice selection of books in Arabic, Spanish, and English, and was decorated by two full-wall-sized photos of Mecca, for another sit-down “ask me anything” chat about Islam. What followed was more questions that were either offensive in their insinuations or just offensive because really, couldn’t you have been bothered to do the most basic research on Islam before coming here, rather than coming and expecting an hour with a guide to teach you everything about the religion? But oh well. They deserve a lot of credit for coming and having the pretense of wanting to learn, at least.

On our way out of the complex, two and a half hours later, we were given full-color, 100+ page books called “A Brief Illustrated Guide to Islam” (but in Spanish). I’m so excited to read mine over and get to learn about Islam and practice my Spanish! Two for one!

I was hungry for lunch after the mosque visit, but after walking around for a half hour or so I could only find one place with empanadas. There was no menu on the wall or prices; I ordered two empanadas and after they had been heated up I asked how much I owed. The woman gave me a look and told me 36 pesos. I could tell just from her face that she had decided to overcharge me for being a foreigner. Also, I know the price of an empanada. Haggling isn’t a thing here, and I wasn’t going to call her out on it, so I had to satisfy myself with just being really annoyed. So it goes…

I spent the rest of the day walking through the huge gardens that dominate Palermo. The sprawling parks, punctuated by various ornamental buildings and lakes, reminded me of Madrid’s Parque del Retiro. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect, a cloudless blue sky and bright sun, 75 degrees, a soft breeze. Vicious mosquitoes in the shade, though! Whenever I’d start to get hot and be tempted to seek tree cover, I would quickly get flushed out into the sun again by their swarming. Geese abounded, too—the most well-fed, plump and snowy geese you’ve ever met. Culturally the parks had a great vibe: friends picnicking on the lawns, lovers sharing ice cream on park benches, and heavy traffic along the paved paths between roller bladers, bikers, and joggers.

Originally my plan had been go to the mosque and then go to an art museum after, but once I got out of the mosque, given how many hours it had been and also how lovely and huge the park and gardens were, I decided to just walk Palermo and enjoy the day instead. I had seen a Japanese garden marked on the map as part of the park complex, but when I got there I found out there was a steep admissions fee, plus the whole thing was very shady (=mosquitoes) and looked tiny. I also avoided the zoo, but did pass through some botanical gardens.

It was 4 o’clock by then, and I started calculating when I should take the bus back to La Plata. I figured getting on the bus by six would be a good plan. And then…I remembered most jobs in Argentina end at 6 pm. Whew! Close call on that one.

I decided to start heading back right there and then. I took the subway back to the “microcentro” to the obelisk that marks the center of the Avenida 9 de Julio, and found the stop for the La Plata bus. Amazingly, I only waited about five minutes before the bus arrived. Almost nobody was on it. I successfully beat the rush hour! I had the best kind of day. It was honestly just perfect. Round-trip bus fare to BA? $5. What a great little mini-vacation! There’s no reason I shouldn’t take one more often.

Love,

Alimentos

Hey all. A week ago or so I wrote several thousands of words worth of blog posts, but life got so full that I never finished shaping them up and haven’t been in the mood since (I’ll get around to it eventually). So instead, I’m going to talk about FOOD! Food’s a huge part of my life since it’s really the only thing I buy, and thus my most immediate excuse to go out and explore. (Not that I need an excuse to explore. But having specific goals in mind is very helpful.)

Empanada: The staple of my diet. Really. I survive on empanadas and raw produce. Livin’ the dream. How do I love empanadas? Let me count the ways. First of all, they are extremely widely available, and the cheapest food you will ever find here. Prices range from 14 pesos (a little less than a dollar) to, at most, 16 (with 14 or 15 being most common). You can find them at many kioscos (see below), or at more upscale places that specialize in them. At the kioscos they may only have two or three different flavors (typically carne (“meat”—basically ground beef), pollo (chicken), and jamón y queso (ham & cheese)), while the specialty places will have fifteen or so, and the selection of filling choices changes daily, apart from the three staples just listed. Each of the different fillings is identified by a different style of crimping on the empanada edge (though this is internal to the shop; there aren’t universal rules about these things). I’m not a ham fan, usually (though I did like Spanish jamón), but jamón y queso may, surprisingly, be my favorite. Cebolla y muzzarella ([sautéed] onion & mozzarella) is also up there (the onions here are so incredibly sweet!), as is caprese (tomato, mozzarella, basil). Pollo I’m a little leery of, having twice (!!!) found giant bones in my pollo-empanadas. We’re talking two inches here. Meat here is often more grisly than we’re used to in the land of pureed pseudo-meat, so both times it took me a second of careful chewing to realize that I hadn’t just gotten a tough portion.

Two empanadas is the perfect amount of food, a very full meal. And here’s the best part: you’re supposed to eat them with your hands! It’s awesome. Most empanadas are baked, and non-greasy on the outside, so this is quite easy. Some empanadas, however—and these are much, much harder to find—are deep-fried. I’ve actually only found two kioscos that sell these. I knew they would be a health nightmare, but I tried them just for curiosity’s sake, and they ended up being quite interesting, a totally different texture than the regular, baked kind. They kind of flaked apart in your mouth. (Also, they had to be eaten with a fork. They were falling apart so easily.) Whether you buy your empanada at a lowly kiosco or somewhere more high-end (just kidding, empanadas are never exactly “high-end”—they’re simple lunch food, nothing more), they will always ask you if you want it heated up. My very first time I said no, because I tend to prefer things at room temperature (and they are often eaten that way), but I instantly learned that was a mistake. They are much, much better hot. Heating them up always takes longer than I expect it’s going to, at least five minutes but sometimes up to ten (they get taken to the back room and popped in an oven there). Still, like I’ve said, it’s worth it.

Eating so many empanadas, I do wonder about how healthy this is. The dough is white flour, so there’s that. But if you choose your fillings wisely, it’s kind of getting all the food groups? Whatever, they’re awesome. At least I limit myself to only two a day. I have them for brunch, maybe around 1 pm or so, snack on fruit the rest of the day (I’ve got to get more veggies in there, but the options have not been too appealing so far), and then find some way to mix it up a bit for dinner—ñoquis (see below) or the like.

Tortas: Literally the word for “cake,” these are sold everywhere that empanadas are sold, and feature the same kind of dough as empanadas, but in more quiche-like form—big rounds of stuffed dough, cut into slices as you would a quiche. A “porción,” or a slice, is slightly more than double the price of a single empanada, which makes sense as the slices are quite large, as wide as a hearty slice of pizza and two inches thick. Another difference between these and empanadas are the fillings: empanadas have a greater range of fillings, and tortas tend to have more “mixed” fillings, like quiches. So while the second-most common empanada filling (after “carne,” basically ground beef) is jamón y queso (ham & cheese), you would never find a ham-and-cheese torta. I have once seen one that was filled with ham, cheese, and hard-boiled egg, however; but sautéed onion with bleu cheese and maybe spinach and egg is much more common. I’ve tried my share of tortas, but at this point I’ve accepted I just prefer empanadas. There’s more dough (always my biggest priority), you get to eat them with your hands, you can mix and match with different flavors, and I tend to prefer the empanada fillings anyway.

Supermarkets: My favorite thing about supermarkets is the smell. It’s a smell I associate with European supermarkets, very distinct (and to me, laden with nostalgia), that for some reason U.S. supermarkets never have. Supermarkets tend to be a lot smaller than American ones, with more of an emphasis on dry goods than refrigerated ones. It’s not so much that the foods sold are strange and foreign to me, but rather that the emphases are different. Lots and lots of aisles of bags of finger foods, some sweet and some savory; and appropriately, consuming such foods socially in large groups is very cultural. Large sections of bagged mayonnaise, ketchup and “sauce for meat”. Miniscule sections of dairy products. The selection tends to be similar just about everywhere (U.S. supermarkets being similarly homogenous), but I have found some bigger supermarkets have more of what I may be looking for. (What can I say, I’m American, I want every option under the sun available at my fingertips.) One kind of supermarket that can be a little different are the “chinos,” those which are run by Chinese immigrants. The prices tend to be cheaper there and the brands are sometimes different (no Milka, for instance). For some reason some supermarkets use the term “autoservicio” for themselves in lieu of “supermercado”—I have no idea what this means. (Literally: “self-service.”)

Today, to switch things up from my empanada-heavy diet, I decided to buy bread, cheese, and veggies (bought separately, see below) to have around so I can make sandwiches. I had thought I had a pretty good idea of prices here. But no, I got a huge shock—a package of eight, sandwich-size slices of mozzarella cheese (there were only three kinds of cheese, all the same brand, all similarly-priced—and this was at the biggest supermarket I’ve seen inside the city limits) was 86 pesos ($5.70)!!! This was especially shocking given the relative inexpensiveness of everything else. (Two beefsteak tomatoes, an avocado, a kiwi, a pomelo and an apple cost me $1.50.) And I was particularly surprised given how prevalent mozzarella is here, one of the most common cheeses around. So, I don’t know what I’m going to do…Cheese is my life, and also my only dairy source. Realistically, I’ll probably just shell out the money, especially considering I’m not spending money on anything else and I’m not exactly hurting for money here.

Also during my supermarket experience, one of my favorite Argentine-band songs came on the radio, "Nadie como tú," to my utter delight; and then, no more than five bars in, the power in the whole store went out. It came back on again about five minutes later, but the song, of course, did not. So disappointing. 

Vegetable/Fruit stands: Only extremely upscale supermarkets, like the largest Carrefours, sell produce. To put it this way, only at the busiest intersection of Buenos Aires did I see a supermarket (Carrefour) with produce inside. Fresh produce and supermarkets do not go together. (And it does make sense…fresh produce vs. dry, not-so-perishable goods are totally different kinds of products.) Instead, you go to a produce stand. These are easily-identifiable by having shelves of produce outside their doors on the street-front. I’m very pleased that where I’m living now there are three within a two-block radius of the apartment; when I was at the hostel, I had the hardest time finding them. I would go out for two-hour walks and happen to stumble upon one, but forget its address and despair at ever finding it again. Shopping at the produce stands is not my favorite thing, though, because most are swarming with yellow-jackets (not to mention flies) who are drawn to all that fruit. (The reason I haven’t bought any grapes here—grapes are by far the worst in this respect.) Produce stands are also a bummer in terms of most things are pretty wilted and verging on overripe (no refrigeration). But, on the bright side, sometimes I see things I’ve never seen before (white miniature eggplant! whaaaat?), and some produce that can be pricey in the U.S. is quite cheap here, most notably delicious avocadoes and kiwis. Tomatoes are meatier, less watery, and are not as red, with therefore a richer flavor. (The U.S. has engineered its tomatoes to be as red as possible, directly causing them to have worse flavor.)

Dulce de leche: A substance similar in appearance, flavor and texture to thick caramel. It is ubiquitous. Many people eat it for breakfast, on toast. I recently made the huge mistake of buying a little pot of it to eat with apples. And then was horrified by how immediately and drastically the fluid level dropped. Point being: if I have it, I eat it. It’s just as addicting to me as caramel—because, well, they’re basically identical. There’s a slight difference of flavor, but not much of one. Dulce de leche is slightly richer, the flavor is a little “darker,” somehow; but if someone tried to pass it off as caramel in the U.S., probably no one would know the difference. One absolutely delicious Argentine sweet that I haven’t had much of but which I love are alfajores. They range from bite-size to oversize ones as big as your palm, and are sweet, cakey pastries with a layer of dulce de leche in the middle, sometimes dunked in chocolate. Yeah, pretty awesome.

Kioscos: (Pronounced “kee’ohkohs”—you would never, ever pronounce the inner “s.”) These are far and away the most common kind of shop you will ever find in Argentina. Every third store on a block is guaranteed to be one. In terms of layout, they all look mostly identical, with the same tiers of candy radiating out from the shopkeeper’s counter. The smallest kioscos (the most common) sell candy and other easy junk food (bags of chips and rolls of cookies), cigarettes, and beverages. They’re basically distillations of gas-station fare. Larger kioscos have a few shelves of other food products and basic supplies (very much like a gas station), and you can often buy more money for your phone plan or add more money to your bus card at these. 

[Side story: Once I had to add more money to my phone plan, so I went to the official Movistar store where I’d bought the phone chip in the first place. I told the woman I wanted to add credit. “Hang on, let me see what I can do,” she said, clicking at things on her computer. Then she shook her head. “Nope, I don’t have any credit I can give you. You should go across the street to the kiosco and buy some credit there.” I have no idea how this system works. How was phone credit a commodity that the phone company had happened to run out of? But yes, I went to the kiosco and was able to purchase the credit all fine.] I would like to avoid kioscos, since anything they sell there I shouldn’t be eating, except I do end up going to them quite a bit, just for one reason…

Milka (!!!): Sold in kioscos. (And many supermarkets, except never “chinos.”) Milka is my favorite chocolate in the world, but unfortunately for me it seems the one place Milka isn’t is the U.S. (They probably even sell it in Canada, and the Canadians just laugh from on high in the North, “Silly Americans with your Hershey’s…”) Milka is an addiction for me not only because it’s just such incredibly delicious chocolate, but also because whenever I’m in a country that sells it, I always feel like I have to “aprovechar” (take advantage of it). My favorite flavor here, which I’m sure is only sold in Latin America, is the dulce de leche bars. They sell them in mini bars, only four squares of chocolate (the perfect size!). But I’ve been shocked at how extremely overpriced all the Milka products are. The mini bars are 15 pesos ($1)—these things are tiny. I finally learned what the deal was, talking to one of the guys at the kioscos. I asked him the price of one of his Milka bars (no price tags on most things—at least, culturally, asking the prices of things is what everyone does and is never, ever seen as rude), and he told me, and said “Yeah, these are imports, you see. That’s why they’re pricey.” Ah. 

Oh well, I still kept buying these bars, because hey, otherwise I spend on average of $4 a day on food, and my salary is quite comfortable, so why not indulge? BUT, just two days ago, I made an incredible discovery. I had been going to a different kiosco every time for my Milka bars, just because it’s fun to switch it up, and also just because I was curious if there would ever be price differences. I had finally really internalized that a mini Milka bar was always 15 pesos, and then—one raining, pouring night, ooh how dramatic—I came upon a kiosco maybe five blocks from my apartment. I handed the cashier the Milka. “Diez pesos,” she said. “Excuse me, did you say “diez”? (ten),” I clarified. “Sí, diez,” she said. My goodness. 30% cheaper than every other kiosco in the city, I tell you. Well, no more trying out different kioscos for me. This little place on the corner of calle 55 and 10 has officially won my loyalty for life. Or, you know, at least the next eight months.

Ñoquis: Sometimes for dinner I like to go down calle 50 (a big thoroughfare, with nostalgic value for me, since my hostel was far down it, so I used to walk up and down it a dozen times a day) and go into one or the other of two kind of restaurant-kioscos there. They’re both “24-horas” brand, so the menus are identical, but the food is very slightly different, so I enjoy alternating. The counter where the cashier is looks like a regular kiosco—the same shelves of candy, arranged identically—but deeper inside the place there’s a long food counter and tables and chairs. You pay for your food at the entrance, where the cashier is; he gives you a ticket, and you take that to the women at the food counter. These “24-horas” places especially feature a dozen different kinds of souped-up hot dogs, none of which looks remotely appetizing to me (thick lines of mayonnaise, ketchup, and minced French fries, for instance), so my go-to are the “ñoquis” (plates of gnocchi).

There are four choices of ñoqui toppings; I like “al verdeo”—I honestly have no idea what it is, maybe sweet green onion? Some kind of vegetable matter. The ñoquis themselves are plump and delicious, served in a buttery liquid (thicker than broth, but much thinner than a cream sauce) with a side of bread and a packet (or two, depends which of the two “24-horas” you go to) of parmesan cheese. The bread is amazing. The flour here is just very different, unlike any I’ve had anywhere else. It’s very fine, and sticky in the mouth. But I really like it. The bread is probably the best thing about the gnocchi platter, actually, to get to sop it up in the delicious, creamy gnocchi juices. Another good thing, though (besides that pasta = life), is the platter is so huge, I get stuffed after half, but then I just go back to the food counter and ask for a box, and they give me one to take home the rest in. (And all this, for just over $3. I love it.)

Cerveza: Despite the great, and inexpensive, Malbecs that Argentina’s known for, La Plata, at least (though others have told me the rest of the country is this way, too, outside of wine-capital Mendoza), is much more of a beer city. Which is too bad for me, since I love wine and don’t like beer at all. It means beer is everywhere, and going to specialty-beer bars is a favorite pastime for many. I haven’t actually had much wine here, unfortunately; wine, for me, is social (I’m not going to buy a bottle to drink by myself, and likewise, going to a restaurant by myself also does not make me want to drink wine), and every social setting I’m around a lot of beer and no wine. (At one party one girl brought a bottle of wine, but guess what—she’s French and a professional sommelier-in-training.)

McDonald’s: The coolest kid on the block. Even if someday I got homesick for some “authentic American cuisine,” I couldn’t go to McDonald’s. Almost literally. The place is always overcrowded to the point where you start wondering about fire exits. I walk by one big McDonald’s pretty often, and no matter the time of day, you can see through the windows that up to its third floor it’s packed, mainly with middle- and high-schoolers in their smart uniforms. (I LOVE the school uniforms here. Oh my goodness. Knee socks, tartan pleated skirts, neat ties and crisp button-up shirts under sweaters…A prep-school dream.) Subway is here, too, but doesn’t seem to be that popular. I’m much more likely to go to Subway sometime…provided I look up some vocabulary beforehand. (“Pickles”? “Italian herbs ‘n’ cheese bread”?) Which brings me to…

Sandwiches: Sandwiches, of a particular kind, are very popular and can be bought at many kioscos, as well as many panaderías (bakeries). These sandwiches are on small slices of white bread, about the size of your palm, crusts cut off, with mayo, a slice of cheese, and/or a slice of ham inside. The catch is each one is about half a centimeter in height. They are so unbelievably thin. I had these a week ago at a picnic with a group of people; the French girl I befriended and I were very surprised when we were offered what we thought was one apiece, only to discover what we thought was “one” was actually a stack of six (and we were supposed to peel off one and then pass them around). They were very tasty, and the thinness factor was interesting.

Ojo de bife: I was seeing this advertised everywhere, at both higher and lower restaurants, and kept thinking, "Really?? Cow eye?! A specialty food, it seems?" But I finally looked it up, and actually it just means "ribeye steak." Ohhh. That makes the ads about "prepared with a Malbec and rosemary reduction” (oh, how sultry!) much more appetizing.

Love,