I've developed the habit of walking around in grocery stores when I'm stressed. I don't necessarily even buy anything — usually just an apple and a Diet Coke, or a container of queso cremoso (a delicious processed spread that tastes like a cross between runny cream cheese and Laughing Cow cheese wedges). But it's just enough like home that it generally calms me down.
The bigger stores are set up like any grocery store in the United States, with produce, meat and dairy around the edges and processed food in aisles in the center. The food itself is different in tiny, telling ways that never cease to fascinate me. Fruit and vegetables tend to all be grown in Argentina, so there are a lot of apples and almost no berries. (It's the beginning of fall here.) It makes me realize how much I'm used to being able to get imported fruit in any season from anywhere. Also, even the tiniest stores almost always have an entire aisle devoted to yerba mate tea leaves in dozens of varieties and flavors, and at least 10 different brands of dulce de leche. Raisins are sold with the seeds still in them, and milk is sold unrefrigerated in boxes and bags. Also, no one refrigerates eggs.
And, right now, the meat aisles in every grocery store I've been to in the last week — somewhere around five — are completely out of meat. The refrigerated meat cases are all empty, usually with white sheets over them, like furniture in an abandoned house. Sometimes there's a package or two of week-old chicken or some sausages, but most often there's just nothing.
The reason for the lack of meat is that today is the 19th day of the paro del campo, which translates literally to "strike of the countryside." For the last two and a half weeks, Argentine farmers have stopped selling food to protest an increase in export taxes. (There is no real conceptual translation into English, because the idea that every farmer in the entire country would just stop producing food is pretty inconceivable in the United States.)
To be completely honest, I don't exactly understand what's going on. But the highways all over Argentina are blocked to keep any strike-breakers from transporting food secretly, and there are daily marches throughout the country — including on the street outside the residencia — complete with banners and people banging plastic drums. I think most producers of agricultural products are participating in the strike, and the meat is just the first to run out because it has such a short shelf life. I went to find milk yesterday and I couldn't, so that might be the next to go. The newspapers are filled with pictures of rotting piles of fruit and vegetables, and I've heard that flour and soy are also being blocked.
No one seems to know how long the strike is going to last. The president, Cristina, has made several public speeches announcing her refusal to negotiate with the striking farmers, which of course made them reiterate their determination to hold out for as long as it takes. In theory, I'm in support of the right to strike, but I hope this is over soon. For one thing, sources of protein are rapidly drying up. (Nicky, when you stop hating me, you can appreciate the severity of the impending crisis!) And more importantly, grocery stores are my therapy right now.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
UBA: The Beginning
Yesterday I got official approval for my course schedule from the Yale study abroad office. (Once again, fantastically unhelpful — the e-mail from my study abroad advisor said something like, “Yeah, I guess those classes look fine, or whatever.” I really hope the credits actually transfer.) Anyway, that means my classes are essentially set.
My schedule is split down the middle, with two easy and boring classes and two that are hard and interesting. The easy-boring ones are a Spanish-language speaking workshop and an Argentine literature course at FLACSO. (The literature class itself is actually pretty good, but it’s all CIEE kids. I’m not all that excited about going all the way to Argentina to take a class with Americans).
The hard-interesting ones are both at UBA, a massive jumble of a university that I am completely, stupidly in love with. One of the classes, Analisis de las practicas sociales genocidas, is in the social sciences school, and the other, Literatura Latinoamericana II, is at Filosofia y Letras (affectionately known as Filo y Letras), the school of humanities.
My UBA classes are in two different buildings with distinct personalities but a shared atmosphere of bohemian intellectualism. (UBA is scattered in different buildings all around the city — the social sciences school alone has four different facilities). The social sciences school, which is close to the residencia, is in a hot, crowded four-story building. Getting to class involves pushing through the students gathered around the front door smoking cigarettes, waving away the handfuls of fliers announcing protests for everything imaginable that get thrust at me when you walk into the entrance hall, and walking three stories up a staircase papered with handmade posters announcing more protests. The staircase gets so crowded with other students that the traffic sometimes stops dead.
Most of the desks in my Genocidas classroom are broken, and the professor is fifteen minutes late without exception. The walls are covered in graffiti dominated by anarchy symbols, liberal political slogans, and stenciled rats whose significance I still haven’t figured out. There's a bathroom right outside, but there’s never any toilet paper, and three out of five of the stalls don’t have doors. Of the two that do, one of them doesn’t stay shut, so you have to get someone waiting in line to hold it for you.
The Filo y Letras building is similar, but bigger. It’s on the outskirts of the city, an hour-long subte ride from where I live. The walls have slightly less graffiti than at the social sciences building, but just as many posters and fliers. On the first floor a makeshift marketplace, where people sell cookies, coffee poured from thermoses, and books, lines the hallway outside the classrooms. I can’t tell if the vendors are regulated by the school or if they just show up and claim a spot. I’ve already learned to wear as few clothes as possible to class, since the combination of massive crowds and no air conditioning makes the classrooms feel like D.C. in August.
It sounds kind of awful. But somehow, even though it's totally overwhelming, I always leave UBA feeling excited and energized. The students are all really political and overtly intellectual. The dirty bathrooms and flaking plaster on the walls don’t feel gross — it’s just that no one has time to worry about mundane concerns like toilets and paint when they’re debating the possibility of representation through literature.
I haven’t even talked about the classes yet, partly because I haven’t been to enough to really get a handle on what they’re like. To be continued once I stop gaping at everything going on around me for long enough to actually pay attention.
My schedule is split down the middle, with two easy and boring classes and two that are hard and interesting. The easy-boring ones are a Spanish-language speaking workshop and an Argentine literature course at FLACSO. (The literature class itself is actually pretty good, but it’s all CIEE kids. I’m not all that excited about going all the way to Argentina to take a class with Americans).
The hard-interesting ones are both at UBA, a massive jumble of a university that I am completely, stupidly in love with. One of the classes, Analisis de las practicas sociales genocidas, is in the social sciences school, and the other, Literatura Latinoamericana II, is at Filosofia y Letras (affectionately known as Filo y Letras), the school of humanities.
My UBA classes are in two different buildings with distinct personalities but a shared atmosphere of bohemian intellectualism. (UBA is scattered in different buildings all around the city — the social sciences school alone has four different facilities). The social sciences school, which is close to the residencia, is in a hot, crowded four-story building. Getting to class involves pushing through the students gathered around the front door smoking cigarettes, waving away the handfuls of fliers announcing protests for everything imaginable that get thrust at me when you walk into the entrance hall, and walking three stories up a staircase papered with handmade posters announcing more protests. The staircase gets so crowded with other students that the traffic sometimes stops dead.
Most of the desks in my Genocidas classroom are broken, and the professor is fifteen minutes late without exception. The walls are covered in graffiti dominated by anarchy symbols, liberal political slogans, and stenciled rats whose significance I still haven’t figured out. There's a bathroom right outside, but there’s never any toilet paper, and three out of five of the stalls don’t have doors. Of the two that do, one of them doesn’t stay shut, so you have to get someone waiting in line to hold it for you.
The Filo y Letras building is similar, but bigger. It’s on the outskirts of the city, an hour-long subte ride from where I live. The walls have slightly less graffiti than at the social sciences building, but just as many posters and fliers. On the first floor a makeshift marketplace, where people sell cookies, coffee poured from thermoses, and books, lines the hallway outside the classrooms. I can’t tell if the vendors are regulated by the school or if they just show up and claim a spot. I’ve already learned to wear as few clothes as possible to class, since the combination of massive crowds and no air conditioning makes the classrooms feel like D.C. in August.
It sounds kind of awful. But somehow, even though it's totally overwhelming, I always leave UBA feeling excited and energized. The students are all really political and overtly intellectual. The dirty bathrooms and flaking plaster on the walls don’t feel gross — it’s just that no one has time to worry about mundane concerns like toilets and paint when they’re debating the possibility of representation through literature.
I haven’t even talked about the classes yet, partly because I haven’t been to enough to really get a handle on what they’re like. To be continued once I stop gaping at everything going on around me for long enough to actually pay attention.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Eating and Sleeping in Uruguay
Got back at around 8:30 this morning from a spring break trip to Uruguay. (Never mind that I’ve only been in school for two days.)
On Wednesday night, Reva, Rona, Melinda, Daniel, Ashley and I got to the bus station at 10:30 for an 11:30 bus. It was chaos — hot, confusing, and so crowded it was hard to walk from one end of the terminal to the other. Since yesterday was Easter, most Argentines get Thursday, Friday and today off work, and everyone travels.
But by about 12:30, it became clear that part of the reason for the chaos was that all the buses were late. Not only was there no sign of our bus, there was also no indication of when it would get there. The woman at the ticket counter couldn’t tell us which gate the bus would leave from or guess whether it would arrive at the station in half an hour or two hours.
When the bus finally came at around 2:30, I had half-convinced myself we would play cards on the floor of the bus station until the morning and then go home. The ride itself was uneventful, and I slept the whole way.
Thursday five of us stayed in Montevideo, while Ashley went to her father’s summer house in the town of Jauriguiberry. Ashley’s family is Uruguyan, and while she lives in Connecticut with her mom, her dad lives in Uruguay. On Friday we joined her.
Jauriguiberry is a tiny town on the Uruguayan coast with a beautiful white-sand beach, two almacenes, the “Yacht Club” (a dive-y bar with two pool tables and lots of whiskey), and not much else. Ashley’s father, his girlfriend and her daughter live in a one-story, six-bedroom house two minutes off the main road (dirt, like all of the roads there). Next to the house is an open-air kitchen and dining area.
Including us, there were 16 people — and three dogs — at lunch on the day we got there. Some of Ashley’s aunts and uncles had stopped by to visit, and her family also had guests spending the weekend. Ashley’s dad’s girlfriend cooked canelones, a traditional dish in Uruguay and Argentina made of some sort of stuffing (in this case, choclo and ham in a white sauce) rolled in a flour-and-egg wrapper. They’re something like a cross between Italian cannelloni and enchiladas. They were delicious.
Saturday we left Jauriguiberry and went to Punta del Este, where Ashley’s mom has a beach house. The city of Punta is the Uruguayan equivalent of a Florida resort town, with dozens of high-rises lining the beach and a main street crammed with casinos and shops selling bathing suits that cost more than our entire trip. Ashley’s house is about 20 minutes outside of the center of town, on a quiet street off the main highway.
That night we had an asado, or barbecue, with ribs, steak, chorizo, eggplant, onions, zucchini and red peppers stuffed with eggs, all grilled slowly over the coals of an outside asado. Ashley manned the grill for two solid hours. She might have looked funny (she’s a five-foot, hundred-pound girl with three tattoos, a nose ring and a brand-new lip piercing), but she did an amazing job.
All six of us ate, as Ashley said, until we felt sick, and then we ate some more. It was easily one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Partway through dinner, Ashley’s cousin came over with some of her friends. Even though we were so busy stuffing our faces we completely ignored all the guests, more people came, until there were probably about 20 or 30 people. The plan was to have drinks at Ashley’s house and then go out dancing, but somehow we never moved past the having drinks part. Other than one guy who tried to start a rigged game of strip poker and then gave up and stuck a banana down his pants (which someone subsequently ate for breakfast), everyone was really friendly, interesting and easy to talk to.
I went to bed at 6 and slept until noon. Yesterday, I ate ice cream for breakfast, went to the beach and fell asleep again on the sand. It was basically the perfect weekend.
On Wednesday night, Reva, Rona, Melinda, Daniel, Ashley and I got to the bus station at 10:30 for an 11:30 bus. It was chaos — hot, confusing, and so crowded it was hard to walk from one end of the terminal to the other. Since yesterday was Easter, most Argentines get Thursday, Friday and today off work, and everyone travels.
But by about 12:30, it became clear that part of the reason for the chaos was that all the buses were late. Not only was there no sign of our bus, there was also no indication of when it would get there. The woman at the ticket counter couldn’t tell us which gate the bus would leave from or guess whether it would arrive at the station in half an hour or two hours.
When the bus finally came at around 2:30, I had half-convinced myself we would play cards on the floor of the bus station until the morning and then go home. The ride itself was uneventful, and I slept the whole way.
Thursday five of us stayed in Montevideo, while Ashley went to her father’s summer house in the town of Jauriguiberry. Ashley’s family is Uruguyan, and while she lives in Connecticut with her mom, her dad lives in Uruguay. On Friday we joined her.
Jauriguiberry is a tiny town on the Uruguayan coast with a beautiful white-sand beach, two almacenes, the “Yacht Club” (a dive-y bar with two pool tables and lots of whiskey), and not much else. Ashley’s father, his girlfriend and her daughter live in a one-story, six-bedroom house two minutes off the main road (dirt, like all of the roads there). Next to the house is an open-air kitchen and dining area.
Including us, there were 16 people — and three dogs — at lunch on the day we got there. Some of Ashley’s aunts and uncles had stopped by to visit, and her family also had guests spending the weekend. Ashley’s dad’s girlfriend cooked canelones, a traditional dish in Uruguay and Argentina made of some sort of stuffing (in this case, choclo and ham in a white sauce) rolled in a flour-and-egg wrapper. They’re something like a cross between Italian cannelloni and enchiladas. They were delicious.
Saturday we left Jauriguiberry and went to Punta del Este, where Ashley’s mom has a beach house. The city of Punta is the Uruguayan equivalent of a Florida resort town, with dozens of high-rises lining the beach and a main street crammed with casinos and shops selling bathing suits that cost more than our entire trip. Ashley’s house is about 20 minutes outside of the center of town, on a quiet street off the main highway.
That night we had an asado, or barbecue, with ribs, steak, chorizo, eggplant, onions, zucchini and red peppers stuffed with eggs, all grilled slowly over the coals of an outside asado. Ashley manned the grill for two solid hours. She might have looked funny (she’s a five-foot, hundred-pound girl with three tattoos, a nose ring and a brand-new lip piercing), but she did an amazing job.
All six of us ate, as Ashley said, until we felt sick, and then we ate some more. It was easily one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Partway through dinner, Ashley’s cousin came over with some of her friends. Even though we were so busy stuffing our faces we completely ignored all the guests, more people came, until there were probably about 20 or 30 people. The plan was to have drinks at Ashley’s house and then go out dancing, but somehow we never moved past the having drinks part. Other than one guy who tried to start a rigged game of strip poker and then gave up and stuck a banana down his pants (which someone subsequently ate for breakfast), everyone was really friendly, interesting and easy to talk to.
I went to bed at 6 and slept until noon. Yesterday, I ate ice cream for breakfast, went to the beach and fell asleep again on the sand. It was basically the perfect weekend.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Shock Cultural
Before I came to Argentina, I got advice on what to expect from a million sources, and most of it was the same. From the guidebooks: Be prepared to eat lots of red meat. Expect piropos. Dinner doesn't start until 9 pm at the earliest. From former study-abroad students: UBA is a glorious, disorganized mess. Everyone has a mullet. Argentine women are skinny as hell.
All of these things have proven to be true. But in addition, I've run into other things that no one mentioned, little quirks of Argentine culture that people take for granted here. Here they are, before I forget that they're not what I think of as normal.
Coins — A national change shortage has led everyone to hoard coins. The bondis, or buses, only accept coins, so people need them to get around, but there just aren't enough. (Daniel said he read in the Economist that the bus company is actually manufacturing the shortage so they can resell coins to shop owners at a markup.) At stores, cashiers will ask you for exact change, and when you don't have it they give you a dirty look before handing over the 50 precious centavos they owe you from your 2 peso note.
Air Conditioners — Most people have external air conditioning units on the fronts of their apartments. They drip onto the sidewalk, so for the first week or so I was here I thought it was constantly raining. Then Molly told me that the dogs in her host family pee off the balcony. Now I'm never sure if it's condensation from the air conditioning or dog urine dripping constantly in my hair.
Beer — Beer is served almost exclusively in one-liter bottles. It's possible to get it in a 330 ccl-size, but when you order it, the waiter always looks at you like you're a hopeless lightweight.
Coffee — There's no such thing as coffee on the run here. Everyone drinks it, all the time, but it's treated as a sit-down mini-meal, usually in the late afternoon, to tide you over to dinner at 9. Cafe, the standard drink, is actually what we think of as espresso. It comes in a doll-sized cup, always with a shot glass of seltzer water and some tiny cookies or a piece of a pastry. The few occasions I've managed to find that sell coffee in paper cups to go (at McDonald's and a few other chains), it's served on a tray, and you're clearly expected to drink it at the restaurant anyway.
Cell Phones — While it's possible here to get monthly or yearly plans like people have in the United States, another popular option is to just buy a cell phone and pay for minutes with prepaid phone cards in units of 10, 15, and 20 pesos. Since you can't get a monthly contract that lasts less than a year, I'm using the prepaid option. Phone calls are incredibly expensive — I don't know how expensive, exactly, but it's easy to run through a 20 peso card in three or four conversations — so everyone communicates by text messages. I sometimes send and recieve 20 or more text messages in a day. I have to really like someone (or really need to talk to them) before I actually call.
Kioscos — A kiosco is kind of like a cross between a 7-11, a CVS, and that car in the second Harry Potter book that's enchanted so that it can comfortably fit about 20 people and all their luggage. From the outside, they look like glorified vending machines, with a window facing the street where you can order a soda or buy a candy bar from the ones on display. (Some of the bigger ones also have a section inside with computers connected to the internet or a place to make photocopies.) But the person in the window has a magical ability to produce almost anything you ask for, from a $2 bottle of wine to toilet paper to prepaid cell phone cards to coffee. A friend told me about how she asked a man at a kiosco where she should go to buy blank CDs, only to have him pull one out from behind the counter.
There are a million other strange little things that I'm just beginning to accept as mundane, but these are the ones that came to mind. In a few hours, I'm getting on the bus to Uruguay, which doubtless will have even more unexpected customs to confound me.
All of these things have proven to be true. But in addition, I've run into other things that no one mentioned, little quirks of Argentine culture that people take for granted here. Here they are, before I forget that they're not what I think of as normal.
Coins — A national change shortage has led everyone to hoard coins. The bondis, or buses, only accept coins, so people need them to get around, but there just aren't enough. (Daniel said he read in the Economist that the bus company is actually manufacturing the shortage so they can resell coins to shop owners at a markup.) At stores, cashiers will ask you for exact change, and when you don't have it they give you a dirty look before handing over the 50 precious centavos they owe you from your 2 peso note.
Air Conditioners — Most people have external air conditioning units on the fronts of their apartments. They drip onto the sidewalk, so for the first week or so I was here I thought it was constantly raining. Then Molly told me that the dogs in her host family pee off the balcony. Now I'm never sure if it's condensation from the air conditioning or dog urine dripping constantly in my hair.
Beer — Beer is served almost exclusively in one-liter bottles. It's possible to get it in a 330 ccl-size, but when you order it, the waiter always looks at you like you're a hopeless lightweight.
Coffee — There's no such thing as coffee on the run here. Everyone drinks it, all the time, but it's treated as a sit-down mini-meal, usually in the late afternoon, to tide you over to dinner at 9. Cafe, the standard drink, is actually what we think of as espresso. It comes in a doll-sized cup, always with a shot glass of seltzer water and some tiny cookies or a piece of a pastry. The few occasions I've managed to find that sell coffee in paper cups to go (at McDonald's and a few other chains), it's served on a tray, and you're clearly expected to drink it at the restaurant anyway.
Cell Phones — While it's possible here to get monthly or yearly plans like people have in the United States, another popular option is to just buy a cell phone and pay for minutes with prepaid phone cards in units of 10, 15, and 20 pesos. Since you can't get a monthly contract that lasts less than a year, I'm using the prepaid option. Phone calls are incredibly expensive — I don't know how expensive, exactly, but it's easy to run through a 20 peso card in three or four conversations — so everyone communicates by text messages. I sometimes send and recieve 20 or more text messages in a day. I have to really like someone (or really need to talk to them) before I actually call.
Kioscos — A kiosco is kind of like a cross between a 7-11, a CVS, and that car in the second Harry Potter book that's enchanted so that it can comfortably fit about 20 people and all their luggage. From the outside, they look like glorified vending machines, with a window facing the street where you can order a soda or buy a candy bar from the ones on display. (Some of the bigger ones also have a section inside with computers connected to the internet or a place to make photocopies.) But the person in the window has a magical ability to produce almost anything you ask for, from a $2 bottle of wine to toilet paper to prepaid cell phone cards to coffee. A friend told me about how she asked a man at a kiosco where she should go to buy blank CDs, only to have him pull one out from behind the counter.
There are a million other strange little things that I'm just beginning to accept as mundane, but these are the ones that came to mind. In a few hours, I'm getting on the bus to Uruguay, which doubtless will have even more unexpected customs to confound me.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
My Argentine Nights
Dad sent me a link this morning to the New York Times article on how cool Buenos Aires nightlife is. It was well-timed. Last night I went out clubbing with Daniel, Molly, and Karen, and didn't get back until 6 am. (Actually, I think it was 5 am, because clocks moved back an hour, but even so, it was a lifetime record.) When I don't eat until 11:30 and hit my first bar at 2, it's easy to look at my watch in the middle of dancing and realize that, if I were in San Francisco, I would be waking up pretty soon.
Nightclubs here, called boliches, are inexpensive, lavish and enormous, but somehow less intimidating than the handful I've been to in the United States. Nothing really gets started until after 1 or 2 am, and things reach their peak at 4 or 5 in the morning. Most of them have entrance fees around 30 pesos, or 10 USD, but if you get on the lista (a process that I don't really understand involving submitting your e-mail address via the club's website) then you can get in for free before 2.
The club I went to last night, called Amerika, is either a gay-friendly straight establishment or a straight-friendly gay establishment, depending on who you ask. It cost 40 pesos to get in, but there was a canilla libre, or open bar, with all the cheap, grenadine-spiked champagne you could drink. And, even more exciting, free bottles of water. (Again, Dad, this might not be a Grandma entry.)
Before we went to Amerika, we met one of Daniel's friends at a gay bar, where Molly, Karen, and I probably made up half the women in the crowded room and the ladies' room was deserted. Amerika was a far more diverse crowd — maybe about 50-50 gay-straight. (I could be totally off, since I generally have a terrible gaydar in the US, and it's way worse here.) There was also a solid showing of drag queens in various stages of hormone therapy.
The dance floor is in the center of the ground floor of the club, with a table in the middle and giant screens all around. The screens alternated between flashing the name of the DJ, the words "Desperate Houselovers," and a movie of a bodybuilder flexing. Nicky would have been thoroughly alarmed. I loved it — mostly because I kept imagining his reaction.
To either side of the biggest screen, two minimally-clad dancers wriggled around on little balconies. Women in bikinis on the left, and men in thongs on the right. The club also had a second floor made up of interlocking balconies, with another dance floor, a lounge area with couches, and — my personal favorite — a long, dark passageway where people go to hook up. (Don't worry, Mom and Dad. I walked through that area quickly.)
The cumulative effect was one of an exuberant bacchanalia, but the fun thing about Argentine boliches is that you can control your level of engagement pretty easily. I spent a fair amount of time sitting on a couch on the balcony and people-watching. I danced a little with Molly and Karen, but by the time we left the dance floor was just really getting going.
I woke up this morning far too early with a sore throat from talking over the music and the uncomfortable feeling that I was going deaf in one ear. The club scene is a little too intense for me to partake in all that often. (Although, come to think about it, I was out until 4 on Thursday.) But I think I can say with some authority that (to quote the Times) the "behemoth gay discos" really do keep people up till sunrise.
Nightclubs here, called boliches, are inexpensive, lavish and enormous, but somehow less intimidating than the handful I've been to in the United States. Nothing really gets started until after 1 or 2 am, and things reach their peak at 4 or 5 in the morning. Most of them have entrance fees around 30 pesos, or 10 USD, but if you get on the lista (a process that I don't really understand involving submitting your e-mail address via the club's website) then you can get in for free before 2.
The club I went to last night, called Amerika, is either a gay-friendly straight establishment or a straight-friendly gay establishment, depending on who you ask. It cost 40 pesos to get in, but there was a canilla libre, or open bar, with all the cheap, grenadine-spiked champagne you could drink. And, even more exciting, free bottles of water. (Again, Dad, this might not be a Grandma entry.)
Before we went to Amerika, we met one of Daniel's friends at a gay bar, where Molly, Karen, and I probably made up half the women in the crowded room and the ladies' room was deserted. Amerika was a far more diverse crowd — maybe about 50-50 gay-straight. (I could be totally off, since I generally have a terrible gaydar in the US, and it's way worse here.) There was also a solid showing of drag queens in various stages of hormone therapy.
The dance floor is in the center of the ground floor of the club, with a table in the middle and giant screens all around. The screens alternated between flashing the name of the DJ, the words "Desperate Houselovers," and a movie of a bodybuilder flexing. Nicky would have been thoroughly alarmed. I loved it — mostly because I kept imagining his reaction.
To either side of the biggest screen, two minimally-clad dancers wriggled around on little balconies. Women in bikinis on the left, and men in thongs on the right. The club also had a second floor made up of interlocking balconies, with another dance floor, a lounge area with couches, and — my personal favorite — a long, dark passageway where people go to hook up. (Don't worry, Mom and Dad. I walked through that area quickly.)
The cumulative effect was one of an exuberant bacchanalia, but the fun thing about Argentine boliches is that you can control your level of engagement pretty easily. I spent a fair amount of time sitting on a couch on the balcony and people-watching. I danced a little with Molly and Karen, but by the time we left the dance floor was just really getting going.
I woke up this morning far too early with a sore throat from talking over the music and the uncomfortable feeling that I was going deaf in one ear. The club scene is a little too intense for me to partake in all that often. (Although, come to think about it, I was out until 4 on Thursday.) But I think I can say with some authority that (to quote the Times) the "behemoth gay discos" really do keep people up till sunrise.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Kosher McNificas and Water Chicken
I didn't have any classes to fall asleep in yesterday, so I went to the Recoleta Cemetery with Molly, Daniel, and Michael (3/4 of the group I went to Rosario with).
The cemetery is like a mini-city enclosed in a walled-off block in the ritzy neighborhood of Recoleta. It's filled with hundreds of stone and marble masoleums arranged in rows, with passages through them like roads. The main areas are clogged with tourists, but things get deserted pretty quickly. Since the recession a lot of once-wealthy families have lost all their money, and while some of the masoleums are still kept up, others look like they haven't been touched in years. The glass in the windows is broken, layers of spiderwebs cover the locks, and plaster flakes from the ceiling inside. The effect is excellently creepy.
After the cemetery Molly and I went to the Abasto shopping (the Argentine word for mall) to eat at the Kosher McDonald's there. We met Karen there, the other 1/4 of the Rosario group. All three of us are extremely Gentile.
One of no less than seven McDonald's in the mall, the Kosher McDonald's is also the only kosher one outside of Israel. No cheeseburgers, obviously, and presumably the fries aren't fried in weird beef fat like the ones at a regular McDonald's. Other than that, and the profusion of yarmulkes, it seemed pretty standard.
(That's right, Nicky. I ate at a McDonald's. It's okay, though. I felt appropriately guilty.)
Last night I went over to Molly's cousin's house, where I ate some more. Sometimes I think all I do here is eat and sleep. Not that I'm complaining.
Dinner started off with wine and a plate of cheese, olives and sausage. Then it continued with more wine, grilled chorizo, plantains, salad with cheese and avocado, rice, chimichurri, zucchini salsa, and water chicken, a recipe that Molly's cousin proudly told us involves putting a chicken in a dish with water and cooking it until you remember that it's in the oven. It was slightly more complicated than that, since he also cut up an apple and an onion and put them around the chicken, and covered everything with honey and soy sauce. It's something I definitely have to try myself when I get back to a kitchen. Molly and I volunteered to help in the cooking and apparently destroyed the plantains by flattening them before we fried them, but they tasted fine to me. I ate two helpings of everything.
The cemetery is like a mini-city enclosed in a walled-off block in the ritzy neighborhood of Recoleta. It's filled with hundreds of stone and marble masoleums arranged in rows, with passages through them like roads. The main areas are clogged with tourists, but things get deserted pretty quickly. Since the recession a lot of once-wealthy families have lost all their money, and while some of the masoleums are still kept up, others look like they haven't been touched in years. The glass in the windows is broken, layers of spiderwebs cover the locks, and plaster flakes from the ceiling inside. The effect is excellently creepy.After the cemetery Molly and I went to the Abasto shopping (the Argentine word for mall) to eat at the Kosher McDonald's there. We met Karen there, the other 1/4 of the Rosario group. All three of us are extremely Gentile.
One of no less than seven McDonald's in the mall, the Kosher McDonald's is also the only kosher one outside of Israel. No cheeseburgers, obviously, and presumably the fries aren't fried in weird beef fat like the ones at a regular McDonald's. Other than that, and the profusion of yarmulkes, it seemed pretty standard.
(That's right, Nicky. I ate at a McDonald's. It's okay, though. I felt appropriately guilty.)
Last night I went over to Molly's cousin's house, where I ate some more. Sometimes I think all I do here is eat and sleep. Not that I'm complaining.
Dinner started off with wine and a plate of cheese, olives and sausage. Then it continued with more wine, grilled chorizo, plantains, salad with cheese and avocado, rice, chimichurri, zucchini salsa, and water chicken, a recipe that Molly's cousin proudly told us involves putting a chicken in a dish with water and cooking it until you remember that it's in the oven. It was slightly more complicated than that, since he also cut up an apple and an onion and put them around the chicken, and covered everything with honey and soy sauce. It's something I definitely have to try myself when I get back to a kitchen. Molly and I volunteered to help in the cooking and apparently destroyed the plantains by flattening them before we fried them, but they tasted fine to me. I ate two helpings of everything.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
No, Konex isn´t a Tampon Brand
Woke up way too early today for my first class (Argentine Literature) at la UCA, the private Catholic University in Buenos Aires. When my alarm went off at 6.30 it was still pitch-black outside, thanks to the accidental daylight-savings time being observed in Argentina this year. (I totally don´t understand that. How can an entire country accidentally decide to set its clocks forward an hour? I think I´m probably missing something.)
Anyway, I´m not going to be taking the class. I wanted to study Argentine literature while I was in Argentina, but I started falling asleep after fifteen minutes. The next hour and a quarter was pretty much torture. I´m not usually a sleeper, especially on the first day of class, but I definitely woke myself up more than once when my head jerked down.
The boringness is actually kind of a good thing. I really didn´t want an early class on Tuesday mornings after last night. I went to a drum concert at Konex, a cultural center in the Almagro neighborhood, which happens every Monday night. I plan to become a regular.
Melissa, a girl at the residencia, needed someone to go with her to the concert. She was meeting a guy whose number she had gotten at a club over the weekend, along with a few kids from FLACSO. I agreed to go with her for lack of anything better to do. It was a good decision. We got there at around 7.30 last night to find hundreds of Argentine twenty-somethings in skinny jeans an mullets hanging out in the street outside. No one seemed like they were in any rush to go in. Michelle and I bought a liter of Quilmes for a dollar and drank it on the street while we waited for the FLACSO people and watched the crowd. Most people were sitting on the sidewalk, talking and smoking cigarettes. The women were all impossibly thin, with sideswept bangs and torn leather sandals. The men had long hair and day-old beards, and looked like they probably kept a copy of Marx on them at all times.
Eventually, we went inside. The cultural center is in a converted factory. For the concert, everyone stood in packed courtyard surrounded by old industrial warehouses, listening to about 10 drummers on an elevated stage in the center. The atmosphere was relaxed and mellow, and it reeked of pot. After about an hour, a trumpet joined in the music, but mostly it was just the drums.The concert cheered me up about Buenos Aires in general, which I needed. I found out yesterday morning that I can´t go to Patagonia if I want to take Filosofia y Letras classes at la UBA. BUt things look better this morning. I just hope my second class of the day, Contemporary Spanish Literature, is more interesting than the first.
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