Architecture

Teo

Buenos Aires is known for its architecture . . . or it must be. How else would my friend, Natalia, in Ukraine know about the Casa Rosada? Anyhow, the same was said by Teo. He also mentioned that Buenos Aires was a mix of Jewish, Italian, and Spanish culture. I can attest to that (in fact, we live in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood where people, of course, speak Spanish and pride themselves on homemade ravioli). Back to Teo . . .  well, he's not the poodle that lives down the hall from us, but a chap by the same name who was our tour guide last Saturday afternoon.

Yes, we broke down and decided to something touristy. It was actually kind of fun. There is a company (three guys who like to party, I imagine) who have advertised themselves online as giving "free" tours. They meet interested travelers at a designated meeting spot in the center of town and lead them through the city for about 2 1/2 hours, then you tip what you think you can afford. We ended up tipping around 12 bucks - I know, I'm generous. But it was somewhat entertaining.

Before the tour started, Joe and roamed around buying media lunas (kind of like croissants and integral to Porteño society), and watching parades. We hadn't realized it but it was Independence Day - Nueve de Julio - July 9.  So we enjoyed snapping some pictures of the gaucho-clad young men and other revelers - it was only 11 in the morning!

Avenide 9 de Julio

Teo arrived 25 minutes late looking like he just rolled out of bed. He apologized but also said he had been late for his last tour as well. We thought it was part of the shtick of acting the proverbial role of the Argentine who is never on time. Somewhat charming, I guess. He had great conversational English and imparted his uncensored opinion at each viewing point. This was a tour of the architecture of central Buenos Aires. I know if I hadn't taken the tour, I would never have stopped to look up and absorb the truly beautiful details of the buildings. It was really a good thing to do now that we've been here 5 months!

We started at the "Congreso" where the congress "works" - Teo had that 'two hooked fingers on both hands' gesture down pat . . . wink wink! The next building was "Confiteria del Molino" an old building with a windmill motif - in need of repair - apparently the city is forbidden from tearing it down because there is an ordinance protecting the homeless that are living there. It makes you wonder if it could be renovate it to make proper public housing as it is a beautiful building. We made our way down Avenida de Mayo with it's residence-turned-office buildings with one that is the original version of the building replicated in our Montevideo post. We made a stop at the Plaza de Mayo where the mothers and grandmothers still march in memory of "the disappeared" taken from them during the military dictatorship in the late 1970's and 80's. According to Teo, these "mothers and grandmothers" have recently been seduced by government monies to form a type of political party which has distanced them from some who used to support their cause.

Panorama including Confiteria del Molino

We also saw the Casa Rosada (The Pink House - doesn't have the same ring to it in English) where Evita used to wave from the balconies with the shaded windows. We took a few breaks and meandered toward the Obelisk where our tour ended. Teo was a likeable guy who has a strong passion for his country when it comes to football. When it comes to talking about politics or grafitti, he was apalled. However, he'd never want to live anywhere else and continues leading his "free tours" of BsAs.

Montevideo: South of Buenos Aires

Palacio Salvo

We just got back from a brief trip to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, where Jen did some training for a group of young American college graduates in Latin America working as teaching assistants. Montevideo lies directly across the Rio de La Plata from Buenos Aires and is actually slightly south of BA, a fact that might win you a bar bet someday. It's a three hour trip by boat, but on this occasion we took the thirty-minute flight on Uruguay's flagship carrier, Pluna. Leaving a chilly, but bright and sunny BA, we were greeted in Montevideo a half hour later by wet, stormy weather.

"What the hell?" I thought, realizing I had brought neither coat nor umbrella, and cursed the internet's predictions of steady sunshine. Driving along the coastal road into the city, it became clear that we had run into a pretty serious storm blowing in unexpectedly from Antarctica. "Southern winds" is how our driver put it. No kidding. The seafront, where the giant Rio de La Plata estuary meets the Atlantic Ocean, was being pounded by high tides and angry, choppy chocolate-brown waves. The wind was blowing a gale. Muy frio.

Punta Carretas Fruit Market

Our seaside hotel was nice, but not exactly central. We checked in around noon and had the rest of the day free, so we decided to take a city bus to the Ciudad Vieja (Old Town). Piling on all the clothes we could find, we ended up wandering around downtown Montevideo on a Sunday afternoon, which was strange because the place was completely deserted, as in ghost town deserted (I don't think the weather helped). We soon got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel. [Once the weather calmed down a bit on the second day, we got a proper tour of the city center and some of its interesting architecture.] Nothing to do at that point but relax and think about dinner.
We did some internet research and found that there was a highly regarded restaurant just around the corner called La Perdiz (The Grouse). As it turned out, there was nothing to grouse about. The food, sevice, and ambience were all excellent, and we ended up eating there three times, including the full group scarf-a-thon prior to departure on our last day. This mid-day repast featured beef carpaccio, fried cheese, chorizo sausage, fried ravioli, potatoes w/ mushroom sauce, fried fish, topped off with a giant steak! Wimpily, we declined the dessert.
Montevideo looks like a pretty cool place - miles of seaside with palm trees and beaches (kinda California-ish), with a center city that is reminiscent of (small-scale) Buenos Aires. We'll have to go back during the warmer months to get a proper feel for the place, I think. That wind, direct from the South Pole, was really freakin' nippy!

The (Meat) Hangover



Asado!

Well, it's a muggy, lazy day here in Buenos Aires ("El dia del papa" according to Hallmark en espanol), and we are struggling to overcome the effects of a "meat hangover" brought about by our attendance at a friend's asado (barbecue) last night. In fine Argentine tradition, we were scarfing down steaks sometime after midnight, got to bed around 3 am, and have been moving at half speed all day. Anyway, we've now been in Argentina for almost five months, and I think it's a perfect time to make a few more observations about our surroundings:

• Argentines love scarves, especially women, but men as well - everyone wears them. At the first hint of autumn, the scarves come out in force, protecting sensitive necks from sub-70F degree temps. As the temperature approaches 60F, some locals take to wrapping their faces. It's part of an overall tendency to wear serious cold-weather gear in the "winter" months: long, heavy quilted coats, wool caps, gloves...I think mostly though, scarves just look fashionable!

La bufanda (the scarf)

• There are an incredible number of red-headed people in this city. We've been a lot of places, but nowhere can compare to BA for the number of ginger-tops. I have no idea why this might be the case, but I intend to make inquiries.
• Pigeons in Buenos Aires are the most raggedy, sickly, motley bunch of birds I've ever seen. Again, this is a mystery as the climate is benign, there is little air pollution, and there is a tremendous amount of bread lying about in the streets (there's a bakery on every block here). They should be thriving, but as a whole, they look like the victims of a mad scientist's experiment gone wrong.
• The best place to get a coffee (quality, price, serving size) is, unbelievably, Starbucks.
• Argentine politics are incredibly Byzantine. This is an election year and things are beginning to heat up - I just wish I could figure out what was going on. It seems that Cristina (the Prez) is due to cruise to an easy victory, but there are so many other political figures running for various positions in the city, the province, and nationally that it makes my head hurt.

"Gone to get the morning paper; back in 10 min."

• When we first got here, I saw several one-armed people around town. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of guys with one leg. Quien sabe?
• We had a garbage strike that lasted a few days. Stuff piles up pretty darn fast, I must say. Also, we have seen several abandoned toilets on sidewalks around our neighborhood. Seems odd.
• Homeless people often carry their mattresses around with them and set them up in high-traffic places. Also, much like everyone here, many enjoy reading the newspaper, and it's common to see a homeless guy stretched out on his public bed, deeply engrossed in current events.
• I just now went to the market, and two guys have installed a sidewalk mattress on our corner. As I passed, they were blissfully sawing logs. I'm tempted to say, "there goes the neighborhood!", but maybe they'll be off to greener pastures by morning.

300

Group work

Hey ho! Maybe you remember this title from a Gerard Butler movie about a Greek battle. Joe tells me 300 Spartans held off the Persian Army. In my recent experience the number more refers to the number of participants that I "held off" or, better, kept engaged at my last big presentation venue. 400 participants signed up for my last workshop.  The ones that attended cordially worked "with" me! I have been marketing my workshops with the ministry and binational centers since my arrival, and I have struck paydirt! There is a list-serv that the ministry runs that reaches over 8000 teachers throughout the country. As soon as my presentation on Lesson-planning was advertised people were filling out the online google doc (I had no idea that google docs could handle registration info and put it in a tidy excel document for you!).

We capped the registration at 400 which meant around 50% were predicted to show. It seems as though the best of intentions cause people to eagerly fill out registration forms, but often at the last minute something comes up. Well . . . 300 showed up. You can tell from the pictures that the participants were "golden"! They worked in groups and pairs  . . . it was magical (and exhausting!). However, once you manage this kind of group in an interactive plenary . . . you can do anything, right?

All ages event!

We advertised the same presentation again, and in 24 hours over 200 had registered! Amazing. We capped that one right away and will see if the audience that shows up next Thursday is, in fact, more manageable. Ahhh, how to deal with success?? A dilemma that I welcome :) In the meantime, I made a quick trip to Rosario, a city about 3-4 hours northeast by car. The audience there consisted of 20 language school directors. . . so intimate! Afterwards, I was able to run around the city pedestrian mall taking quick pictures before the sun went completely down. I was even able to capture a short video of a young accordian player being intently watched by an older gentleman (maybe a fellow player?).

Pair work with a smaller audience in Rosario

Anyhow, things are picking up . . . which is exciting. My biggest challenge is to take presentations that I am accustomed to delivering to 20-30 participants and make them more user-friendly to a large audience. I have already started moving them to a PowerPoint format, making pair and group work more explicit, asking for microphones for both me and audience member comments, and posting handouts online for participants to print ahead of time and bring with them to the venue. Coming soon to an auditorium near you! Check your local listings

Lights, Camera, Hablá!

There is a big film industry in Buenos Aires. You may have seen some of the films made here . . . you can even see actors out and about in the streets. In fact, today on my way through the building to meet with our Academic Director, I crossed paths with a famous 60-something gentleman-actor of soap and film star fame. I have yet to find out his name, but I was told that he is a well-known personality in Argentina. That being said, I'm not going to talk about film acting . . . but voice acting.

Joe, Jen, and Claudio

Every year the Ministry of Education develops language tests for the entire city of Buenos Aires. Over the last 3 months, I have worked with a team to review, revise, and edit listening and reading passages and test items to be used to assess the English language levels of elementary and high school kids. Well, Saturday was the big day of recording the listening segments. We arrived at Julian's sound studio early enough to catch my co-workers buying some "facturas" (Argentine pastries) to give us energy for the recording session. The Ministry had recruited Susan from New Zealand, Emily from Tennessee, Jacqui from Indiana, Jen from Texas, Joe from Oklahoma, and Claudio from Argentina (who can affect a perfectly British accent).

Susan, Claudio, Jacqui, Emily, and Carla

We all took our turns in the sound-proof room reading our scripts . . . scripts that included fairy tales, interviews, news broadcasts, conversations, teachers conducting class, phone messages, and commercials. I got to do a commercial, be a teacher, and read an NPR-type news story. Joe was a hen-pecked husband, a newscaster, and a teenaged boy (one of those three was type-casting . . . ). It was really a fun experience! I had marked the scripts for stress as part of the tedious editing process, and I was pleasantly surprised at how authentic everything sounded. Julian will later insert the clapping, ding dongs, beeps, doors opening and closing, and background music. How cool will that be? I can't wait to hear the final product.

I hope the kids of Buenos Aires enjoy taking their next standardized English language test. Having played many-a-language-tape and CD in class, I have to say that our new-found enthusiasm for acting certainly came through in our voices.

Carlitos: El Sabor de Peru



Pollada con ensalada y papas fritas

Buenos Aires, while a great eating town, is not the place you come to indulge in a wide variety of "ethnic" cuisines. Although a tremendous number of different ethnicities are represented in the cultural make-up of the city, when it comes to the restaurant scene, Argentine restaurants, with their emphasis on meat and pasta (and, of course, pizza) dominate. There are a number of Chinese places in Belgrano's Barrio Chino, a smattering of Middle-Eastern joints in Palermo, and a few expensive Japanese and "Southeast-Asian fusion" restaurants in Palermo Hollywood. However, since our guiding philosophy most of the time is "cheap, delicious, and close to home", we end up going to our favorite Peruvian restaurant, Carlitos, probably twice a week.

As I mentioned before, we technically live in the "ritzy" neighborhood of Recoleta, final resting place of Evita Peron and home to a lot of BA's "old money". However, we live on the southern edge of Recoleta, a mere one block from the distinctly downmarket neighborhood of Abasto, spiritual home of the tango and Argentine icon Carlos Gardel [note: a series on the different barrios of Buenos Aires is upcoming]. Abasto is also the home to many of BA's Peruvian immigrants, of which there are probably a couple of hundred thousand. Peruvian food culture is highly developed and centers around three things: potatoes, seafood, and chicken. They are experts in preparing the abovementioned items (and, unlike the Argentines, like some picante in their food).There are bunches of Peruvian restaurants within walking distance of our place, but we've made hole -in-the-wall Carlitos our go-to spot.

Carlitos has an extensive menu, and we've tried a few different things: papas huancaina (potatoes in a creamy sauce), cabrito con porotos ("mountain goat w/ beans" according to the menu), jalea mixta (a mountain of fried fish, shrimp, octopus, squid and mussels w/ lemony onions), not to mention chicken prepared a half-dozen ways. Lately though, we've been obsessed with the pollada con ensalada y papas fritas (fried chicken w/ salad and "friendo" potatoes) accompanied by a side of creamy white beans. Delicious! And cheap. The above (easily big enough for two people), along with a liter of ice-cold Heineken, costs around thirteen bucks. We're hooked. There are actually two branches within a couple of blocks of each other - the original funky one and a newer flashier one - we prefer the funky one (see photos). It's always packed w/ Peruvian families demolishing huge platters of food while drinking candy-colored soft drinks. It's loud, friendly, and fun...and the food - riquissimo!

Slanted, But Not Enchanted: The Sidewalks of Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is a big city - thirteen million people big. They say it is the fourth noisiest city in the world (pero, quien sabe?). There are a ton of cars and trucks jamming the streets, a million taxis, hordes of buses. All the wheeled traffic notwithstanding, most portenos spend a good deal of their time walking. Since we are now cast as portenos, we too spend a lot of time walking - from our four-mile speedwalk through Recoleta every morning, to my daily peregrinations around our neighborhood, to Jen's negotiation of the narrow passages of Microcentro where she has her office. Entonces, it's high time that I address the condition of the sidewalks here in BA. They are, in a word, deplorable.

The sidewalks in this city, from the nicest neighborhoods to the humblest, from city center to far suburban barrio, are totally thrashed. Broken, battered, shattered, scattered, crumbling, stumbling, unstable, uneven, undermined, missing entirely - to walk in Buenos Aires is to run a never-ending obstacle course. The slightest inattention can cost you dearly. We have learned to cope. Jen has already mentioned my pavement-scanning method:
1) always look down
2) keep your eyes on the pavement out to about 15 feet
3) avoid all piles, mounds, chunks, logs, and smears
4) be suspicious of pieces of wood or carpet where there should be sidewalk
5) call out all hazards to your partner
[At this time I hereby inform the reader that I will NOT, in this entry, directly address the issue of dog waste, the "800 lb. gorilla" of BA sidewalk controversies. I am currently writing a BOOK on BA's dogsh*t problem.]
This method keeps us pretty trouble-free. It also helps that we are fairly athletic when we need to be. Some people aren't so lucky.

We've been here less than four months and between the two of us have witnessed a half-dozen sidewalk mishaps, from semi-comical to downright gruesome, usually involving some poor little old lady pitching headfirst onto the filthy pavement. After living here their whole lives, they still can't avoid being victimized by wobbly tiles, missing pavers, random tree roots, and ankle-snapping holes in the middle of the sidewalk. Dear City Fathers of Buenos Aires: get it together, hombres! This is a wonderful city - and those sweet little old ladies deserve much better.