Unos puntos lingüísticos y culturales

Whew! I’ve written before about the variable weather, but right now I am just plain old burned. The sun is really high in the sky, at an angle I haven’t seen since Tanzania and South Africa, and it has just been frying me up. I know, I know—why didn’t I put on any sunscreen? Naïvely I was hoping for a tan. This is the kind of burn, all blotchy, that is not going to darken nicely. Now I have to wear a scarf and sweater for the next few days until it gets better.

Obama has arrived in Buenos Aires, and the Argentine news corps is having a field day about it. Since I got up this morning the TV in the hostel has been streaming a never-ending (not even for commercials, it feels like) live feed of Obama’s doings. Obama’s visit has not been without controversy, for some reasons I’ve mentioned before, and for some other ones that I think I probably shouldn’t go into here, but that I have learned something about being here in the hostel with everyone around me buzzing about the visit.

One thing I can talk about that I find interesting is the use of the word “Yankee” (okay, “yanqui”). I’ve heard it many times here, but before I’d never heard it used outside of, say, U.S. history class—certainly not in other languages and other countries. I don’t know its exact meaning: does it simply mean American, or does it have a pejorative flavor? I’ve only heard it used in the latter sense, sometimes synonymous with “gringo” (as in “That American, he was so yanqui, his haircut, the way he dressed, hahaha”), and sometimes a bit more harshly disparaging (talks of unwelcome foreign influence, for instance). It’s different.

Speaking of slang, yesterday I had a kind of interview with a U.S. PhD candidate for her research that has to do with the Argentine dialect, and it’s gotten me thinking. I’ve never been very interested in learning Spanish slang, because all the times I’ve learned slang it’s been from some native speaker or the other and pretty unique to their country. “Ah, in Colombia we have this one word that means this!” “In Puerto Rico, they call that this.” “Yeah, we say it differently in Chile…” It’s interesting to note the regional differences, but no way do I want to internalize them—the whole point of slang, I feel, is to be consistent. Slang shows you have a regional specialty. And using slang can make you seem more authentic, or pretty laughable (ah, so you’re that kind of gringa!), especially dependent on how accurately you use it; mixing up slang from different areas probably just makes you look ridiculous.

So, as someone who spent most of my life learning Spanish in U.S. classrooms with non-native-speaker teachers, developing a U.S.-generic (maybe bordering on Mexican, if anything, but probably not even that) accent/dialect, learning slang always felt like a waste of time. Even if I’d memorized purely Mexican slang, I didn’t know which Spanish-speaking countries I might wind up in, and a lot of slang is strictly non-transferable. Studying abroad in Spain, I was more amenable to learning slang, considering that it was at least actually in context, but I also guessed that I’d be heading to Latin America later on, and was still hesitant about going too whole-hog Spanish.

But finally, I’m here in a Latin American country for an extended period of time, not just four months (as in Spain), and it’s finally a long enough period that I really want to invest in the slang and focus on the accent and finally, maybe, hopefully, develop some kind of authentic dialect. My accent is so generic and I’ve always wanted one with a nice regional flavor. As it happens, I’ve always been enamored with the Argentine accent. The big aspect of it that everyone always loves to talk about is that Argentines pronounce their “y”s (some of them, anyway) and their “ll”s (as in “llama”) with a “zh” sound (like the “s” in “measure”), rather than the “y” sound (like the “y” in “you”) that most of the rest of the Spanish-speaking world uses. The “zh” sound happens to be my favorite sound in any language—something I adored about Slovak, that it was full of it!—so you can see where my preference comes from. (Fun aside: I once read an article about the linguist who was hired by the producers of Game of Thrones to invent some languages specifically for the show. He was talking about how he’d decided on the sound of the Dothraki language, and he said he’d tried to include lots of words with the “zh” sound in them, because it was his absolute favorite. Hey, me too!!!)

What I like less about the Argentine dialect is how singsong the cadence can be, like Italian—I really grew to love the Spanish cadence, which is much more downturned and direct-sounding—and I don’t really care for the “vos.” Specifically the vos makes me a bit sad because I love irregular verbs, especially the ones that have dipthongs as part of their irregular conjugations (tener à tienes; querer à quieres), and the vos takes away those dipthongs (tener à tenés; querer à querés) and it’s less fun. Ah well… I’m trying to pick up the vos, in part so I sound more authentic, and in part because part of my philosophy of having a good accent/dialect involves not just picking and choosing. The whole point is it’s got to be fully integrated rather than patchily adopted from several sources. 

Even if you only focus on the slang of one country, though, I still feel like there’s a risk involved with using slang, more so than with more formal words. First, you had better really know how to use it, because if you use it wrong it sounds really ridiculous, not just incorrect the way using the wrong formal word does. And secondly, you might come across as trying too hard—we all know those people who are way too “down with tha homies.” I feel this way about the word “che,” which is one of the most famous Argentine slang words. (That’s where Ernesto “Che” Guevara gets his nickname from.) As far as I can tell, it’s a vocative thing, like “hey—” when you’re addressing someone, trying to get their attention. I think I know how to use it, but I’m going to hold off for quite a bit. Don’t want to come off as trying too hard too soon.

Something that’s surprised me culturally is how open and friendly Argentines are. They always say hello to everyone when entering a room, including a room full of strangers; they even will say hi to strangers on the street, or at least smile at them. This is American etiquette too, of course, but definitely not European. Certainly in any European city you are expected not to make eye contact and keep to yourself. I had gotten so rooted in my mindset that outside of the U.S. no one did things like that, that I’ve been completely taken by surprise here. I was waiting outside my hostel to meet my Fulbright contact here yesterday, and a woman was walking by with her tiny daughter who couldn’t have been older than three. Adorably, the little girl looked up at me and piped up, “¡Buenas!” (“hello!”). Child etiquette and adult etiquette can obviously be two very different things, but in the same situation it would have been just as likely that the mother would have said the same thing to me. Certainly on a personal basis Argentines are very friendly, very happy to talk and meet people and help others out. I often see people stopping others to ask for directions, and that’s a very easy, natural kind of interaction.

I’m going to look at one, maybe two, apartments later today (we’ll see how the communication with one of the landlords works out) as possible housing options, so fingers crossed for that. And then my roommate in the hostel (my only roommate at the moment—the Brazilians left yesterday) is apparently a professional tango dancer, and has come all the way from Tierra del Fuego for a giant tango show tonight in La Plata! I had no idea this was going on. She gave me the place and time, so yes, I’ll definitely be there!

Speaking of word-of-mouth, a fellow Fulbrighter friend whom I’ve kept up with since orientation just emailed me today to tell me that there’s going to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate speaking in La Plata tomorrow! I was familiar with Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who won the prize for his work related to the last dictatorship (“dirty war,” but that’s a bad term), but had no idea he’d be coming here. Tomorrow is the 40^th anniversary of the start of the last dictatorship. I’m definitely going to his talk! All these things going on, and I’m only accidentally coming to hear about them. So much better than not finding out about them at all!

Okay, here's something interesting. Here's a song from one of my favorite Argentine bands. They have a strong Argentine accent, but they call the song "Nadie Como Tú," rather than "Nadie Como Vos." Hmm…trying to appeal to an international audience, I guess? But it's not like they shed their accent...

Love,

¡Bienvenida a La Plata!

[This post was written in two installments (easier that way, in terms of time), so this first part was written yesterday.]

Well, I’ve made it to La Plata! I arrived here by private car (Fulbright arranged for it) yesterday at a quarter to 11. It was only a 45-minute drive by the time we got on the freeway and felt very fast. One of these days, sooner rather than later, I’ll have to figure out the bus system so I can go back and forth from BsAs whenever I want or, more importantly, need to. The bus system in BsAs, especially as compared to the simplicity of the metro, seems pretty complex, but the bus to La Plata comes every ten minutes.

Check-out from the hostel in BsAs was at ten, but check-in at the La Plata hostel wasn’t till 1. So, after dropping off my luggage at the hostel, I had about two hours to kill. It’s amazing how much you can do in two hours! I didn’t have a map of La Plata, but the awesome thing is La Plata is entirely on a grid, and the streets are not named, but rather numbered. I noted my hostel was at the corner of 16 and 50, and I was good to go. The only confusing element to the system are the dozen or so diagonal streets that cut through the otherwise rectangular grid. I noticed that where they would intersect the other streets, the numbering would get off somehow (as in, I would be on 46 and want to get to 47. But then instead of 47 there would be a diagonal intersection, and on the other side was 51. No idea how that worked).

Within a block I found myself at the cathedral, which is the town’s biggest landmark. It really is a very nice cathedral. I went inside, and it turned out it was 11 o’clock on the dot, and mass was beginning. I was tempted to stay (the great thing was the priest was speaking into a microphone, and the acoustics of the echoes with the vaulted ceiling were awesome), but after a couple minutes of waffling I decided I could come back basically anytime.

I passed at least a dozen parks and plazas in the course of my wanderings, but definitely the highlight was the park with the zoo at its center (I don’t know its name). Lush is the only word I can think to describe it. It was huge, far more than just a neighborhood plaza, and basically a very dense forest of immense eucalyptus trees, which are one of my favorite trees, and pines. There was also (and this is something that had never shown up on the maps I’d seen of La Plata) a gorgeous water area. It looked like a riverbank, the river itself wide and a perfect shade of Nile-green, dense and wild tropical plants shading out both sides. Huge palm trees, aloe vera plants, blooming hibiscuses and eucalyptuses; the air smelled like California, sweet and dusty and fragrant with flowers. It felt like I’d stumbled into Macondo from One Hundred Years of Solitude. Now this was something you could never find in Europe, absolutely South American.

I got lunch in the outdoor asado café facing the zoo entrance. The menu was divided into two columns in terms of price: “sólo” and “completo.” I was guessing that the “sólo” options were either half-orders of the “completos,” or that the “completos” came with sides like fries or lettuce. So I ordered a hamburger, “sólo.” The waitress looked a little incredulous and repeated the order back to me, but I didn’t think much of it because she looked even more incredulous when she asked if I was going to order anything to drink and I said no. (The beverages are often more expensive than the food. I’d rather just drink my tap water out of a water bottle between meals than spend $2 on mineral water with the meal.) Less than a minute later my order was brought to me. The waitress tapped the bun with her finger as she set it down. “Una hamburgesa sólo,” she declared. My thought: Wow, yeah, that is sólo una hamburgesa. It was just a slab of meat on a bun, nothing else. I looked incredulously at the pictures they had hanging up of their food, all with veggies spilling out deliciously, and then realized those were obviously the “completo” versions. Why have the two price distinctions at all? Does anyone ever just want meat on bread? Oh well. The meat itself was very good, definitely not a flavor or texture of meat I’ve ever had before.

Yesterday was Saturday, and it turned out there were so many fairs going on everywhere! There was a big one in the square across from the cathedral, a young-person-oriented Christian Rock festival, and I also stumbled upon a very large, clearly weekly, crafts market in a different plaza. Later in the night, I was trying to meet up with a girl whom the guy who was in La Plata with Fulbright last year had put in touch with me (long story why it didn’t work out—anyway, we’re getting lunch today), and wound up at a huge St. Patrick’s Day festival in still another plaza, called a “beer party” with lots of food stands and a live band on a big stage. I stayed almost an hour there to enjoy the band, who were great; I left once it got dark, because I don’t know how it’s like on the streets after dark here. Don’t get me wrong, La Plata feels very safe, but you never know about after-hours.

It turned out that the streets felt safe (lots of people of all ages out everywhere) but it was so dangerous navigating them. All the streets that aren’t big thoroughfares (and even some of those that are) have no stop signs or traffic lights to regulate them at their intersections. (And given the grid design, there are a lot of intersections.) The way cars work it is they just go, and if there’s traffic coming from another direction, they kind of interlace themselves, one car by one car. As a pedestrian, the cars aren’t stopping, so you just have to get in the street and walk when there’s a big enough gap (that’s me, at least—everyone else, including ancient old ladies, just walks and assumes the cars will slow down. They haven’t for me, yet, so I’m not going to push it). All of the streets are one-way, so it makes it a bit easier, except where the diagonals come into play—then you’ve got four lanes going in different directions and a middle area where they’re crossing that’s a no-man’s-land where cars can do u-turns and head off in the opposite direction. And no one uses their indicator. So that’s tricky. Anyway, coming back to the hostel after dark (only at 7:45 pm) was so tough because many of the cars didn’t have their lights on! I saw several other pedestrians almost mown down because they couldn’t see those cars, either. And I was dressed in black… Whew. Had to be careful.

Surprisingly, it’s chilly here. Well, yesterday morning was quite toasty, but in the afternoon the weather turned cold; I put a light sweater on, but I would have been more comfortable in my peacoat. It feels like late September back home. And it is definitely Fall here. I didn’t see this in BsAs, but at least in La Plata there are brown leaves on the ground everywhere, and people out raking them up. Layers are definitely essential to the weather here: one minute it’s torrential downpour (but warm), then the sun comes out and you start sweating heavily, and then a cloud passes over the sun and suddenly it’s freezing.

[Second part of post, written today: ]

I really like La Plata so far. It has its city center which suddenly, in a matter of a couple streets, gets really bustling and feels more like a metropolis like BsAs, and then just five or ten blocks in the other direction are the quietest little residential areas. I love the mix. Giant, beautiful trees everywhere, of course. I came across one that was particularly lovely this morning, on a little island between lanes of traffic by itself, like a tulip tree and in full bloom, but instead of tulip flowers, it was putting out something like pink hibiscuses. And all over the tree were enormous (to the point that they make you a little nervous), jet-black bees. They really filled up the flowers when they were inside them! A wonderful sight to see.

Naturally, I’ve been getting errands done these last couple days. (The best thing being, of course, that by having things I have to do I have destinations to walk to, and that helps me chart out everything in between—noting where the fruit stands are, where are the supermarkets, the parks and the public schools.) Yesterday, purely by accident, I came upon an ATM that accepts my card! You can take out up to $1500 pesos at a time (= $100 USD). For a $6 fee. The fee is outrageous, but I’m so happy to have cash. Paying for the private car to La Plata (Fulbright is going to reimburse me, but I had to pay upfront) and for my weeklong stay in the hostel really ate up my cash reserves. Whew. This is good. I also went to Movistar today (after asking some Argentines on their opinions of the different main brands) and got a SIM card for $20 pesos ($1.30). I’ll figure out how that works and send you guys my new phone number so we can Viber very soon. And then I’ve been looking at apartments on a listing website, and emailing the landlords of all the properties that look promising asking to set up tours with them. Several have responded to set up times with me, but the issue is then I have to ask where exactly is their property’s address (the website shows general maps, but doesn’t give the actual number of the places), and none of them have gotten back to me in that respect. (E.g., “Let’s get together today at noon.” “Okay, where exactly is the address?” No response, and noon came and went.)

Yesterday was really fantastic. I had such a good time. The Fulbrighter who was in La Plata last year has really helped me out, and one way was he put all his Argentine friends in contact with me through Facebook. There’s a semi-official group of maybe seventy people or more here in La Plata, made up of some Argentines and some international students from elsewhere in Latin America, all of the ones I’ve met so far in their early thirties, who hang out all the time and who have been friends with every Fulbrighter in La Plata going back something like five years. I had been messaging on Facebook with a girl from this group, and I got together with them yesterday. Two of her friends picked me up from the hostel, we walked a long ways to someone else’s house, and there we met up with other people and had lunch, delicious ravioli with a meat sauce that one of the guys had been preparing. That was about six hours. Then we went to sit in the park and drink mate, another two hours. And then a guy from the group took me and the French girl who was there (she’d met one of the girls in Bolivia, and now was staying with her for a couple of days) to a bar for dinner and drinks, another three hours. It was just so much fun. The people were awesome, my Spanish flowed so naturally and well, it was all really relaxed. I really liked the French girl, too—she didn’t speak any Spanish, so we spoke in English and really hit it off well. Hoping to see more of these people soon. Apparently next weekend is a giant kind of convention for their group, so we’ll see how that goes.

In terms of Spanish, I’m amazed at how easy it is. I’d always heard so much about how tough the Argentine accent was, and I had had trouble watching some Argentine movies without at least Spanish subtitles. But here I’ve really had no problem at all. I’m probably at 90% in terms of understanding, but that last 10% is cultural/contextual more than anything else. (For example, getting some empanadas for lunch today, the woman at the restaurant handed me my change and then a slip of paper that she said I could go deposit. It was old and yellowed, with the number 728 printed on it, and on the backside someone had scribbled something in pen. I asked her what it was for, and again she said I could go deposit it, something about the lottery… I guess it’s a lottery number for the provincial lottery, but how that works, I have no idea.) The accent is really very easy to understand, and the “vos” is intuitive; it only gives me pause when some asks me something using “sos,” which is the vos-conjugation of ser, “to be.” Something like, “¿Sos de dónde?” (“Where are you from?”) just totally takes me by surprise; I always forget that “sos” is actually a verb (rather than “¿Eres de dónde?”).

One other thing I have trouble with is when people say terms in English. I can’t understand them! And when I finally do, I feel really bad—I’m not trying to make it seem like their English accents are bad, I just honestly can’t understand. For instance, yesterday at lunch the people I was with started talking politics, and they started talking about “don eltram” in particular a lot, which was something I wasn’t familiar with. Then they turned to me: “What do you think of don eltram?” “Uhh, I don’t know…What is that?” They were incredulous. “You don’t know about don eltram?” “Uh, no…” “He’s running to be president of your country!” “OH!!! Donald Trump. Okay. Yeah, I have an opinion on that…” They must have said the name a dozen times and I hadn’t gotten it at all. I’ve had a few things like that. Pretty awkward.

I have just been absolutely loving it here. It’s so fun to be in a new country, free to do whatever I want, meeting lots of great people (at the hostel, too, I’ve made friends with a few Brazilians). Let’s hope I can find good housing soon, and then I will feel all set.

Probably the best thing about this hostel, which is very comfortable and has a good community vibe, is the TV in the kitchen/nook area of the place that runs an MTV-equivalent music-video station around the clock, 24/7. The music is SO GOOD! Every single one of my favorite Spanish-speaking artists ever, all the time. So when I have to be on the computer, checking email or the apartments website or blogging or whatever, if the weather’s nice I’ll sit outside (like now), but if it isn’t, or everyone’s smoking on the patio, I sit at the table and get to half-watch the videos. One night I just sat there for probably three hours watching the music videos with this sixty year-old guy from Valencia, Spain, and a fifty-something year-old Brazilian woman (both very nice people—that’s one strange thing here I also noticed at my hostel in BsAs, is that older people stay at hostels here, too). Listening to music that I love in Spanish really makes me remember how much I love Spanish and how glad I am to be able to speak it. To conclude this blog post, I’m enclosing my two favorite new songs I discovered that night. ¡Que disfruten!

Love,

Segundas impresiones: Buenos Aires

Hello everyone!

My current location: the very tiny inner courtyard of my hostel in the Recoleta barrio of Buenos Aires. The hostel is dingy, but you can’t beat the price, and this little courtyard is very charming: a little bench, a wall of Spanish-style patterned tiles, a stone Buddha on a ledge, a stand for burning incense (recently lit, by the sandalwood smell of it), and giant tropical plants everywhere. To my left, in the next room, the guy working the front desk has the radio blasting; straight above, the sky has a lovely twilight glow. All the benefits of being outside and inside.

Even though this is a brand new city/country/continent for me, and going to such new places for the first time usually feels like a rush where everything is rich and full and new, I actually don’t feel like much has happened since my last blog post a few days ago. It’s not that I haven’t seen lots of things since, none of which I had seen before, but more that since arriving in Argentina I’ve been puzzled by a perpetual déjà vu. It’s not because of the dozens of Argentine films I’ve watched over the years (which actually gave me a different sense of the place than how it really feels here). I don’t really know what it’s from. Maybe it’s that Buenos Aires really is so European. I know, that’s what everyone says—the “Paris of South America!” It definitely wouldn’t be anywhere in France (I say, having never been outside of Anteibes), but I could see it fitting in to the rest of that continent just fine. And I’ve never been elsewhere in Latin America, so I don’t know what might be considered more typical elements of a Latin American city, but I’m just operating on the idea that: 1) I’ve been to Europe; 2) I’ve never been to a “typical” Latin American place; 3) Therefore if something is distinctly non-European, Latin-American-homegrown, it should stick out to me as new and different. But so far nothing has stuck out to me in that way.

Or maybe I’m missing what makes Buenos Aires a unique fusion of Europe/Latin America and not just a European city elsewhere; I’m just reading it as European, and therefore familiar, simply because my brain is so wired to always be connecting and relating new information back to things I already know (which is the same part of my brain that I can’t turn off when it comes to foreign languages). So maybe anything that reminds me of Madrid, of Barcelona, even sometimes of Athens or New Orleans, is just spat out by this impulse of my brain’s. I don’t know. I do know I have an unshakeable sense of already being accustomed to this place. Maybe it’ll go away once culture shock sets in, and everything will suddenly feel very strange. We’ll see.

[Interjection: turns out the “incense burner” is actually a decorative ashtray. (Still smells like sandalwood, though!) Just figured that out when the guy running the front desk just came by to have a smoke…I never thought about it, but yeah, inner courtyards must be a smoker’s dream, design-wise.]

Surprisingly, the area in which I’m able to most notice the Latin American elements of this city is in the fashion. It’s definitely more European-skewed than North American, but you also see lots of things you just wouldn’t find in Europe. For one thing, Argentines actually dress like I want to when it’s 70 degrees out, with everyone in skimpy tank tops and shorts and sandals. In Spain, even in 90-degree weather long sleeves were common, long pants were far and away preferred to anything else, and I sometimes saw people in light cardigans and windbreakers. 70 degrees, you would absolutely see the jackets. I never saw a man in flip flops. So, Argentines have a more relaxed dress code overall (though more formal, European-type style never goes amiss), with a more bohemian, “American” vibe—lighter-wash jeans (as well as European dark-wash), colorful prints, and natural fabrics. The hottest clothing item right now, which you absolutely can’t not have and be a fashionable porteña, and which I really can’t imagine in Spain, is platform sandals—not heels, but instead just a uniform-height black platform of usually about six inches (I saw one woman wearing a pair that had to be ten inches—she could barely move her feet), with straps on top like a regular pair of sandals. I actually think they’re pretty cool, but I can’t imagine walking in them. Basically, European style (clean, chic, upscale) is always top of the line, can’t go wrong, but there’s a greater range of what’s considered acceptable or fashionable here. (And yet American tourists, including me, no matter how we dress, still stick out like sore thumbs.)

Switching topics a little, I’ll give an extremely brief summary of the last couple of days. We arrived on the 15^th, had our city bus tour then, and then the 16^th and 17^th we had orientation, for about ten hours both days. There were a million different presentations, interspersed with very long coffee breaks. The first day of orientation was held at the office of the Argentine Fulbright Commission, and the second was at the Ministry of Education. Both organizations have different, but joint, roles in our grants.

Probably the most useful thing I learned in the orientation was about my health coverage information during the grant term. Probably what got me most excited was a presentation on the CELU test, a kind of standardized test of Spanish language proficiency. (Europe has their own ranking system, which is the one I’m most familiar with, but I can’t remember its abbreviation right now; and the U.S. has the ACTFL.) It’s comparable to the other European and American models out there, internationally recognized, and, best of all, free for Fulbright grantees to take. It’s only offered twice a year, in June and November, and so I’m going to be signing up for it in May! It’ll be great to have a definite certificate to prove my level of proficiency, and also I’m the kind of person who is really motivated to learn by the knowledge that I’m going to be tested on the material. So I’ll have a good reason to buckle down and study up on my formal Spanish, with the help of the workbooks I brought with me. My goal is to be at the C1 level, according to the European model of ranking. (The highest rank is C2, which is essentially near-native proficiency.)

[Interjection: I’m getting out of this courtyard. I’ve discovered the hard way that not only is this a smoker’s paradise, it’s actually the designated smoking spot for the building. And didn’t I mention it’s extremely tiny?]

It’s eight o’clock here and pitch black outside. That’s one surprising thing: the weather is like summer (you were right, Mom!), and I can’t remember the last time I was in such a humid climate that I was actually compelled to shower at least twice a day; but how early it gets dark is what reminds me of the latitude and the season. (Also, since this place keeps tricking me into thinking I’m back in Spain, I keep expecting it to be bright and sunny until 11 pm. Nope, that’s just Spain.)

Today was my free day in Buenos Aires after the orientation wrapped up yesterday. I’m glad I decided to stay here an extra day. I mean, above all, why not? I am longing to have a place to set up shop more comfortably (I packed my suitcases to the brim, so every time I have to get into them I have to totally repack), but that’s okay. I feel so lucky all the time to have been placed in La Plata, which is only forty-five minutes by city bus back to Buenos Aires (and in fact, many people live in one and commute to the other). It means, among other things, that I feel absolutely no pressure to see everything here in the city all at once. I’ve got time (insh’Allah!). And I wouldn’t want to be placed in Buenos Aires and never be able to escape the din and bustle of it all. The wonderful thing about my situation is I have the control, to come when I want and to leave just as easily. The best of all worlds!

For today, I left my luggage at the hotel in the morning, as I couldn’t check in to my hostel until 2 pm. (Yikes—the guy running the lobby put my suitcases, including my satchel with my laptop in it, which was the only valuable thing I was leaving there, off to one side of the lobby; I asked him if they would be put somewhere else for safety, and he said, Yeah, of course, I’m going to put them elsewhere for safekeeping. Well, guess where they were when I returned three hours later?) Then I took off walking in a random direction.

There’s one thing: my sense of direction in this city is TERRIBLE. Yes, I know, I hear you saying, it is always. Of course. But actually even just visiting Madrid for a couple of days I got to have a really good sense of direction there, and could navigate well without a map. Buenos Aires, on the other hand, is kind of driving me crazy! I go down just a block, turn and go down another, and suddenly I have no idea what direction I’ve just come from, whether I turned or didn’t; it’s really like I’ve just been plucked out of space and set down on some anonymous street corner; it feels like I imagine people with face-blindness feel when they’re looking at someone. It’s pretty disquieting and certainly makes it hard to get around. Maybe, hopefully, as I get to know the city better over the course of the year it’ll become like the back of my hand. Today, at least, I literally could not walk in a straight line without getting lost. Dear God.

So, anyway, I struck out from the hotel this morning in –some- direction, and to my surprise and delight wound up in Puerto Madero, the ritzy, harbor-side district. It was raining, not very hard but enough that I got out my umbrella, but it was warm and steamy out, which is always a really nice combination, I think. I spent a long time enjoying gazing out at the gorgeous gray clouds over the harbor. I really like Puerto Madero. The buildings have the same chic, green-tinted glass style as the ones in Vancouver, B.C., and also Capetown to a lesser degree.

Then I walked (kind of) back the way I’d come (really, I was hopelessly lost and even struggled to navigate with my map (you know, I’d find the two cross-streets I was at, but have no idea which direction of the street I should walk down)). Along the way I happened upon some really nice “peatonales,” that is, pedestrian-only streets. And then I came to my destination, Galerías Pacífico, which I’d actually stumbled upon the night before already. Mom and Dad know Galerías Pacífico very well. It’s a fabulous mall, as shiny and posh as they come, with an epically-painting ceiling and a Jorge Luis Borges museum on the top floor (which I planned on visiting both times, and which I forgot to visit both times. Next time, insh’Allah). I went to the mall actually just to go to the food court on its lower floor, where I could use the wifi. I thought I should have my bank routing number information at the ready before I went to Bank of America, my main task for the day, to try to set up an account for money transfers.

Then I went to the Bank of America. It turned out to be back in Puerto Madero (my map doesn’t indicate the barrios, and I have absolutely zero idea where they are, or which one I’m in, except basically for Puerto Madero, which is easy to recognize). It was a bit hard to find, but then I figured out it was in a certain unmarked tower, along with other businesses, I guess. I went in to the reception and asked them where the office was; the receptionist dialed the office for me and put me on the phone. I explained my situation, and the woman at Bank of America explained that this office was for deposits only, and they really didn’t do anything of that kind. So oh well on that one! There was a giant HSBC across the street; I didn’t want to set up an account there without consulting my parents, but maybe next time I’m in Buenos Aires that’s what I’ll do.

Happily, I also found that across from these offices and banks was the Plaza de San Martín, a lush, beautiful park. I looked for, and found, the giant tree at the center of it. It’s a kind of fichus or banyan, and my God! It’s huge. Such an amazing sight.

I found a nice, dry bench and had a little snack of an orange I’d bought at a supermarket the night before (they have all the European supermarkets here! I love them so much; they all have this distinct smell, which for me is pure nostalgia for Slovakia, and which American supermarkets just don’t have, for whatever reason). For dessert I broke off another piece of the giant Milka bar I’d gotten, flavor: dulce de leche. I love being back in a country that has a great Milka selection. I’m not sure yet how I feel about dulce de leche; I mean, I like it, but I think I like other caramel more; but in a Milka bar it’s pretty awesome. Whew. I’ve got to restrain myself from popping out to the supermarket next door and getting another one right now…

[Interjection: So much for self control. I just went to the supermarket and bought an apple and, to my delight, discovered they make mini Milka dulce de leches! This is going to be a very bad temptation for me this year, I can already tell…]

I basically walked in all directions for quite some time, and then returned to near my hotel, to change some money. One thing President Macri, who was just elected in December, has done is change the official money-changing rate to 15:1, Argentine pesos to U.S. dollars. Before he changed it, the official rate was 12:1 and the unofficial rate was more like 17:1. So everyone changed (probably still changes; I really don’t know how locals have or haven’t adjusted their practices) their money “illegally” through private individuals. (It was illegal, but so universal and accepted, even it seems by law enforcement.) So I looked around at a few official money-changing places, and settled on the one with the best rate—15:1 for $100 bills, and 14.8:1 for $20 bills. It sucks I didn’t know beforehand that larger bills were preferred; when I went to the U.S. bank to withdraw money, they gave me my choice, and I chose $20 bills for most of my money, plus a single $100 bill. Ah well. Now I have something like $300 in Argentine pesos, which will hopefully tide me over for a bit. I’m looking forward to getting my first paycheck, which I think will be around April 10^th, because it’ll be in Argentine pesos and I won’t have to change it at all; I’ll immediately spend it on rent and other large purchases so I won’t have to change so many dollars or waste so much in ATM transaction fees.

It was getting to be around 2 pm at that point, and on my way back to my hotel I happened upon the Librería Ateneo, which is apparently on Calle Flórida (which I’ve walked a hundred times now already, but I’d never seen it there). The Ateneo is a Barnes & Noble-size two-storey bookstore, enormous by tiny-inner-city-store size. I had a really nice time thumbing through some books. I look forward to reading a lot in Spanish. It really isn’t taxing at all; it’s just one of those things where I think it’s going to be effort, so I put it off, but then if I find myself reading a Spanish novel it takes me thirty pages before I remember I was supposed to find it an effort.

Then I got back to my hotel, collected my stuff which was miraculously all still there, and hailed a taxi. There are no meters in the taxi, so who knows how they decide on the fee, and I’m also pretty sure it’s not a negotiable thing you can haggle, but luckily taxis seem to be pretty cheap here. I paid $7 for a 15-20 –minute ride to my hostel for the night. (Fulbright paid for our three-night stay in the hotel, but after that we were on our own if we wanted to stay in BsAs.)

I dropped off my stuff in the hostel, locked up my valuables in a locker, and then hit the streets once more. Again, I struck off in random directions, just there to enjoy the sights, and with the security of a map to fall back on; and again, I got lost while going straight, but I certainly saw lots of interesting things and got a better feel for different parts of the city. At one point I just happened to stumble upon the Plaza de Congresos, which is one of the biggest landmarks in BsAs, and one we didn’t actually hit on our city bus tour before. The Plaza de Congresos includes the very impressive Congress building, with its distinctly-angled bronze dome, and a series of huge fountains and a park.

For dinner, I went to a take-out empanada place. Empanadas are definitely my favorite Argentine food so far. Mom was right when she told me repeatedly that “there are no deals in Argentina.” I haven’t come across a single item that is cheaper than it would be in the U.S., except for empanadas, which are far and away the cheapest food available, usually around 14 pesos apiece. Considering 14 pesos = 93 cents and two empanadas make for a full meal, it’s pretty awesome. And there are dozens of different empanada fillings to try and mix and match, all of which have differently-crimped edges to distinguish them. So far I’ve tried beef & egg, caprese, “humita” (a veggie blend which includes plum and I think a kind of cheese), spinach, creamed corn, ham & cheese, Roquefort, mozzarella & onion, and plain onion; caprese, or maybe the mozzarella & onion, is probably my favorite, but better even than these is the “tortita de calabaza,” which is basically an empanada-like thing stuffed with pumpkin, a.k.a. the best food ever.

I took my empanadas to the Plaza de Peña, a plaza I stumbled upon a few days ago and mentally bookmarked after realizing that, aside from being a lovely park, it’s actually a dog park. There are always dozens of unleashed dogs running around playing with each other. A joy to behold! So I went to that park in particular to get some dinnertime entertainment and enjoy watching the dogs’ antics. I recognized most of the dogs from the first time I was there (including a very large Rottie!). There were two who were clearly best friends, one a tawny mutt with more than a little greyhound blood in her, and the other a shaggy black retriever-mix. The tawny dog sprinted like no other, taking great pleasure in leaping over hedges and benches in mid-sprint. She was amazing to watch. The black dog would gamely try to keep up, and the two tussled wildly in the mud. (Quote the exasperated owner of the black dog, upon returning a half hour later: “Ah, mirá qué lindo te has quedado!” [i.e., “look how neat you’ve kept yourself!” Note the 'vos.' ;) ].)

By the way, I was eating at five o’clock. Dinner time here is no earlier than 9:30, usually more like 10-11 pm. Basically, it’s Spain schedule again. Argentina apparently also observes the siesta as well, which I didn’t know, to varying degrees depending on how “provincial” the area is. Sigh. I don’t mind late dinners, but I don’t like waiting to do so much else at later hours. You wind up staying up late, but you’re still expected to be up working early the next morning.

So, I had a walking-filled day, and then came back here to the hostel—returning to where this post started—and started writing for my blog. It’s now 10 pm, my computer’s battery is about to die, and I’m feeling slightly sleepy. The two guys next to me are just sitting down to their dinner.

Love you all.  

Primeras impresiones: Buenos Aires

[Note the chronology: I wrote this post yesterday.]

This was going to be a very celebratory first blog post. Instead it’s an elegy coated in anxiety. I’ll just cut to the chase: I love what I’ve seen of Argentina so far (that is, only Buenos Aires, from now on always to be abbreviated BsAs—you have been warned!), but I’m also currently freaking out because both my credit and my debit card do not work here. ¡Sorpresa! That’s right—after trying out no fewer than eight ATMs (sweating furiously and praying under my breath every time, for it to work and, more than anything, for the machine not to eat my card), I admitted defeat. Luckily, a bit by the grace of God and, much more so, by the insistence of my dear mother, I have $700 USD cash with me to tide me over a little while I frantically figure out what to do. That is the current mar on my experiential pleasure.*

( *EDIT: Thanks to the incredible sleuthing skills of my parents, we discovered that there isn’t actually anything wrong with the cards, just that only a few ATMs will accept the debit card (I didn’t know you couldn’t use a credit card at an ATM to withdraw cash…in retrospect, that seems pretty obvious). I miraculously found one that did work, just an hour ago…it charged me about $6 USD to get out less than $50 USD’s equivalent (what appeared to be the maximum amount allowed) in Argentine pesos. Crisis—somewhat—averted… now to figure out how I’m going to get out money in the long term.)

But as to that experiential pleasure, there is quite a lot to be had! Just first, let me do a quick, perfunctory run-down of the logistics that have led me to the hotel bed I currently sit typing this on.

After leaving the house just before 3 am yesterday, I flew to New York, had a six-hour layover, and then flew on an overnight flight to arrive in BsAs around 10 am this morning. I’m finally feeling the exhaustion, at nearly 11 pm local time, but that’s a pretty amazing statement—shouldn’t I have been a pool of non-functioning jelly at least twelve hours ago? The thing is, I think I’ve finally learned the secret of air travel, which was never a secret to anyone with an ounce of common sense: if you actually make an effort to sleep on flights (that is, actively lean against the window with your eye-mask on for as many hours as you can stand it, eventually drifting in and out of consciousness), rather than binging on the enticing new-release movies available on your personal screen, you’re actually well-rested when you arrive at your destination. I know, crazy, right? Right.

So, I got in to BsAs feeling, in all honesty, refreshed. And I’m going to skip ahead and not go into all the details of getting through customs or taking the shuttle from the airport, because that would be way too boring for me to type out (and you to read). But here I am now, at the Liberty Hotel, with about twenty-five other Fulbrighters, most of whom are ETAs (English-teaching) like me, and a few of whom are doing research (including two doctoral candidates). It’s a really quality group of people.

The main thing we did today was have a three-hour bus tour of BsAs. Before I talk about what I saw and give some of my general impressions of BsAs so far, I need to include a caveat: as you see from the little disclaimer on the side of this blog, as a Fulbright program grantee I have certain restrictions that I didn’t have when, for example, I was studying abroad in college. Not that these have been explicitly spelled out to me (yet?), but I have a good sense of what they might be, having read about a billion Peace Corps blogs. Basically, I’m taking it as best practice to be sensitive in how I talk about political and other controversial topics here. Which translates as I’m just going to censure anything that could possibly be construed as questionable. Just keep that in mind. I bring this up here, because one thing we passed today in the bus, for instance, was a collection of Malvinas signs in the Plaza de Mayo (“Las Malvinas eran, son y siempre serán Argentinas”). I’m not going to comment on that. Nor on some other things. I’d like to, but you’ve read the disclaimer; now we’re on the same page about this.  

Back to the tour, our guide was wonderful! Muchas gracias, Germán. It was a great idea to have a bus tour, given BsAs is so enormous and sprawling, and having just gotten in from long traveling, a walking tour probably would have been pretty taxing. Over three hours we saw so much that I’m sure I can’t remember it all here, but here’s a partial list, at least:

--Avenida 9 de julio: It’s the widest street in the world, something like more than twenty lanes across, with a large island for buses and several greenbelts in the middle. The imposing obelisk at its heart should make for a good landmark, but it doesn’t, really, given the skyscrapers that flank it and effectively shade it out.

--la Plaza de Mayo, la catedral, la Casa Rosada: We got off at the Plaza de Mayo for a short walking portion of the tour. The Plaza de Mayo itself doesn’t have much in the way of design, just a statue in the middle, but it’s famous for being the plaza where people congregate when protesting political issues. (And yes, Argentines protest a lot. We’ve been repeatedly told that having the buses delayed because of protests is a basic fact of BsAs life.) Most interestingly for me, there’s also a black metal fence running the length of the plaza, dividing it off from the Casa Rosada that faces it. I wondered what the point of it was, considering there were wide gaps for walking through. It turns out the fence was only installed in the pretty recent past (now I’m blanking on the decade, was it the 2000’s or ‘10’s?), when an economic crash drove a huge protest to the plaza, closing in on the Casa Rosada, and the president was only able to escape via the roof’s helicopter pad. From then on, the fence went up (and one was built around the Casa Rosada as well), and police stand by at the ready to close the fence’s gaps and seal it off as a barricade at any time. The Casa Rosada is the office of the president—note, not his residence. Two Argentine flags, one bigger and one smaller below, were flying from its flagpole while we were there—apparently the smaller is only raised when the president himself is physically in the building! Across the plaza is the cathedral, made more interesting to me by the fact that it was this that then-Bishop Bergoglio presided over before he became Pope. 

--el barrio de La Boca: famous for tango, its colorfully-painted buildings, and as the site of the stadium of the Boca Juniors (“Boca”), one of BsAs’s two main soccer teams (the other being River Plate, or “River”). Boca insignia, colors (blue and yellow, after the Swedish flag—there’s a story there that I don’t remember), and celebratory murals are everywhere. The tango-dedicated sections of the barrio feel far less genuine; they’re purely for the tourists. La Boca is actually one of the poorest barrios; just a street over from the tourist crawl of tango street performers (since all they seemed to do was stand still to try to get people to take their picture, they were more like “posers”—haha, good pun, Rhiannon) was shantytown—impassable roads of gaping ditches and potholes, everything muddy, sheets of tin patching up sides of houses. La Boca was once wealthy, back in the late 1800’s, as the site of the city’s port. We stood and looked out from the dock. A strong smell of sulfur was rising off the water. The water immediately below us, extending about twenty feet out, was clogged with a thick bloom of some kind of water plant, lots of trash caught between the lily-pad-like leaves. There was also a large turtle in there! He stayed so still, I would have thought someone threw out a piece of tortoise-shell-shaped plastic, had it not been for his head and very living nostrils poking up too. Our guide explained the water plant and the smell were new phenomena of only the last few years, due to polluted water coming in from Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. Well anyway, La Boca thrived for something like seventy years as the keeper of the port, and then, around the turn of the century, the port was moved to…. (next bullet point, please)

--Puerto Madero: Although el Río de la Plata is the widest river in the world, it’s extremely shallow, never deeper than five meters (about 16 feet). Puerto Madero, which was built as a canal, wound up being a total failure as a result, as its design made it even shallower than the water around it, and ships rapidly starting being built larger and larger around the same time. Puerto Madero only lasted twenty years as a port, but it’s certainly doing well for itself now. It’s one of the richest barrios in the city, very upscale and posh. Our guide told us that the cost per square meter of housing in La Boca is about 1000 pesos (~$68), and in Puerto Madero it’s $5,000-10,000 USD.

--La Recoleta: Recoleta (along with Palermo and Puerto Madero) is one of the city’s nicest barrios. Recoleta in particular is known for its large, open parks and green spaces. We passed one such place, where at the center there’s a giant sculpture of a flower (“Flor genérica,” although everyone just calls it “la flor,” means “Generic Flower,” which I enjoy) plated in a very shiny metal. The flower is lovely in and of itself, but the really cool thing about it is its petals actually open and close over the course of the day, charting sunlight just like real flowers do. The petals never get more than half-open, however, except on holidays, when they open entirely. At night the flower’s center glows with a colored light, and there are also colored lights in the grass, and there’s a reflecting pool at the base, all combining to make for a very beautiful effect. Can’t wait to see it for myself!

The real highlight of Recoleta, though, is its Cementerio. Definitely far and away the most beautiful cemetery I’ve ever seen. It’s set up as a “city,” with broad boulevards and smaller side streets and alleys which cross in diagonals and meet in miniature plazas. The main avenue is lined with the largest cypresses I’ve ever seen. There was a perfect, old little kitty in the shade of one of these. A cat in a cemetery is a beautiful thing. The mausoleums themselves are just incredible, each unique and special and carved from gorgeous stone (generally either white or black marble). Most of the tombs were well-kempt, and ninety of them are maintained by the city as historical sites. Some of those that aren’t, however, have fallen into varying states of disrepair: delicate cobwebs in the windows of some (you’d think they had been painted on, they’re just so perfect); smashed glass and plaster coating the insides of others (in one of these the only visible thing out of the thick white dust was a Jesus on the Cross, broken in half at the legs—adding insult to already-significant injury). Eva Perón is the luminary who draws the most tourists to her tomb, but the actual stone is not much to see, just a black slab with “Familia Duarte” stenciled in and a small collection of flowers lain in the niche below. All in all, the cementerio was definitely my highlight for our whirlwind city tour.

There are I think forty-eight barrios in BsAs, aka a ton, and obviously I don’t know anything about their delineations. But common to all of the ones I’ve seen thus far, by which I mean  central characteristics of BsAs as a whole, are all the trees and gorgeously-lush parks. The trees are huge, vibrant, and many are even flowering right now. They really give the city a feeling of life. As my parents pointed out, since they’re all the same size, they must have all been planted around the same time, which means someday they’re all going to die at the same time…and then what? Well, at least we can enjoy them right now!

One thing I’ve loved seeing in the course of walking around is just how many bookstores there are. It feels like every other shop is one. I haven’t been to the most famous of these, Librería el Ateneo, which is a converted historical theater, yet, but I’ll get there.

Nuestro propio presidente, Señor Obama, is actually coming to BsAs in a week and a half! Talk about timing: he was slated to be in the city on the 25^th….which will actually be the fortieth anniversary of the start of the “última dictadura,” Argentina’s last dictatorship which was most notably marked by brutal state terrorism. Considering the U.S.'s damning complicity in this era, Obama's timing is, well, atrocious. After a hurried schedule rearrangement, Obama will now be down in Patagonia on the 25^th…golfing. Yep.

On the subject of the memorial day, it’s going to be a big event in the city. I’m curious to see the commemorations, but there's no way I could get back to La Plata afterwards if I came to the city; none of the buses would be running.

There’s more to say—there always is, when it’s me who’s typing—but geez, that is more than suficiente. I’m having a great time here, and I hope you all are, too, wherever you are.

Love to all.