mood: settled!
music: regina spektor - hotel song


prego! (yeah, i know, that´s italian, not spanish)

ok. there´s just so much to talk about - so many things to address and explain. i´m gonna do my best to break it down for you. here´s the list so far:

my home and family
food
daily life
tv and music
people
weather
language
fashion
odds & ends

we´ll see how many of these i can get through before i get caught in a wave of apathy and give up...

home and fam--

i´m just in love with my fmail - they´re so very nice. i live with my father, copete, an events planner and my mother, eugenia, who is a high school lit teacher. her daughter, sofi, also lives with us. she´s 23 and a psych student at the universidad de buenos aires. she´s pretty much the greatest. i fully intend on enlisting her as one of my partners in crime - as well as her boyfriend, matty, who´s pretty much a fixture here at the apartment. he´s 23, also a student, though i forget in what. he´s a good guy. terribly gorgeous. good sense of humor. and we bonded over liking a lot of the same music.

both copete and eugnia have 2 sons and 2 daughters each from previous marriages. copete´s daughter cecile is actually housing another one of the IES students. his other daughter, loli, was just in town (she actually lives in the southern part of the country - patagonia) for her brother´s (copete´s youngest son) wedding. she´s a total badass. i´m hoping to go down and visit her some weekend. sofi is eugenia´s daughter, but there is also her sister paz, who lives a few blocks from us with her beautiful husband, santiago (a lawyer who enjoys playing rugby in his free time), and their adorable children, flori, and alejandro. i haven´t met either of eugenia´s sons, but they look like wonderful people in the family photos.

then there is grace, our maid. she´s pretty much hilarious. everyone in the family speaks at least decent english. not so for grace. or so she says. i´m pretty sure she understands a very little bit. but she refuses to speak it with me. she insists that i practice with her. it´s very sink or swim. i love it. she´s just a great presence to have around. she has a way of organizing things that just boggles my mind. i keep my room very neat so as not seem rude, but every time she cleans it, it turns out looking at least 100 times more tidy...oh, she´s good.

food--

beef, beef, and more beef is the name of the game here. i kind of feel like i´m back in texas, only with superior steaks. i´m telling you, they´re out of this world. i don´t know what it is about the way they cook them - i think they must put crack in them or something. on the whole, the foods that they eat are not terribly different from things we have in the states...they just taste better here because they´re foreign. (the only odd thing is that nothing is really spicy at all, if you want something cooked picante, you have to specify.) some standard foods are empanadas (just like the ones in the states) with beef, ham & cheese, just cheese, or corn; milanesa, which is basically a very very very thin pork chop or chicken fried steak; dulce de leche (the real and so much better form of caramel); mate, a very potent herbal tea; and lots and lots and lots of very cheap, very delicious vino...oh yes, they´re winos. i fit in quite well.

breakfast is typically something small - cereal OR toast OR fruit, never all of it at the same time. no eggs whatsoever with breakfast. ever. in fact, they think our practice is strange, and the smell of fried eggs in the morning makes most argentines feel ill. lunch and dinner are pretty much the same type of dishes we have back home, only with eggs from time to time. they´re very into desserts and dessert coffees and typically have one after every single lunch and dinner. i do not fight it. so far the best thing i´ve had has been part of the wedding cake, which was basically a torte with dulce de leche layers and a confectioner´s sugar merengue for icing. yeah, i pretty much died a little inside when i ate that.

daily life--

really, it´s your basic big metropolitan area. living in rogers park was a total preparation for this. you´ve got overcrowded buses and trains which everyone takes to get everywhere, people all around, you have to watch your back for pick-pockets - especially once they hear you speaking english, buenos aires even has it´s own version of the granvillian. i feel right at home. i´d say the pace is a bit slower, especially when it rains. and the times they keep here are quite an adjustment. up at 8 or 9 for breakfast, lunch at 12 or 1, tea at 5 or 6, dinner at 9 or 10, pregaming at midnight, out to the bars/clubds at 1 or 2, home at 6 or 7. and repeat. as someone who requires between 8 and 9 hours of sleep to avoid killing innocent bystanders, i can´t quite keep up with them yet. but soon. very soon. i will master it. i haven´t hit the night life at all yet. but this weekend we´ve all already made plans to get quite rowdy...

tv and music--

yeah, they pretty much have a lot of the shows and channels we do. so far i´ve found: animal planet, vh1, mtv, cnn, bbc world, cartoon network, a&e, the discovery channel, my wife and kids, will and grace, next, south park, seinfeld, what about brian, law and order svu, csi, smallville, psych, monk, sex and the city, desperate houswives, heroes, everybody hates chris, mythbusters, dog the bounty hunter, that 70´s show, the queen, stranger than fiction, notes on a scandal -- and the best part of all ... scrubs and grey´s anatomy!! i´m in heaven.

i know, you´re asking why i would waste my time watching tv, esp american shows. it´s actually quite helpful. the spanish subtitles have helped me to recognize certain words and phrases. and in the mornings i watch the local news in spanish. so it´s not an entirely futile practice.

as for music, they listen to a lot of stuff from the states and england. british pop/rock is actually matty´s favorite genre. a lot of the stuff from the us is 80´s and 90´s, which i love, but they have newer stuff as well. the other night we listened to nora jone´s first cd during dinner. last night was shakira - whom matty and sofi have beef with. they think she was much better when she was singing in spanish. after hearing it, i have to agree.

i haven´t heard too much spanish pop music, but i really like it so far. i can´t wait for the day when i understand what it is i´m listening to. at the end of the month i´m going to an alejandro sanz (la tortura with shakira) concert. should be a rockin good time.

people --

most people are overwhelmingly beautiful here. all the of the women are very very small. it´s mind boggling, considering how much they eat. apparently, there is a problem with the emulation of models and eating disorders, but i know the women in my family can put away some serious amounts of food and none of them could possibly weigh over 130-140 lbs. it´s just not fair.

as for the guys, the majority of them are at least decently good looking. but there is an unusually large percentage of devastatingly beautiful men. it´s so terribly distracting. for example, the sidewalks here are often more pothole than walkway and i tripped in one and almost totally KO´d the other day because i was distracted by this guy that was passing. it was mortifying at best.

people are generally very nice. i try to throw some broken spanish at them once in a while and they seem to find it more charming than obnoxious. they even humor me from time to time and pretend to understand what i´m saying. they do tend to stare a lot and catcalls are not exactly rare. we all know why that is. they´re very intrigued by the whole black girl thing. everyone thinks i´m brazillian and a few people have seen my passing as an excellent òpportunity to practice their portugese. they are quickly disappointed.

weather--

well, it´s a far cry from chicago. it´s been in the 80´s since i got here. lots and lots of sun. the humidity takes no prisoners. it´s crazy, but not quite as crazy as new orleans. i´ll take it. however, yesterday and today were a change of pace as yesterday evening we very suddenly entered monsoon season. i knew it was the rainy season coming into this, but everyone neglected to mention that there is no such thing as a ¨shower¨ here. only torrential downpours. super torrential downpours. and not quite torrential downpours. i got caught without my umbrella yesterday while i was walking home from shopping with my amigas...it was awful. i didn´t so much mind being completely soaked, seeing as how it was warm rain. it was just that i was unwittingly forced into a wet t-shirt contest by virtue of the fact that my polo was completely drenched and drawing lots and lots of unnecessary attention to my chest. also, i was wearing a very light colored, very thin skirt. yeah, the local men took notice. they were harmless, but it was just quite an experience to have after being here for 4 days.

the good thing about the rain is that it cools things down quite a bit. fall is on the way, so i look forward to this as a continuing trend. people keep telling me that it gets cold here and they hope i brought winter clothing. cold is a high in the 50´s or 60´s with a low in the 40´s. mostly i laugh and explain how it was snowing when i got on the plane in chicago and for a 2 week span in feb it never got about 10 degrees and was frequently 1 or 2 degrees for the high. they look at me as if to ask, ¨how can one live in such a godless tundra?¨

language--

i´m picking it up quickly. all of my years of french are very helpful, although it is hard to rewire my automatic pronunciation tendencies sometimes. we have these orientation classes that are supposed to teach us basic survival terms, but since it´s not technically a spanish class, we´re not learning verbs and the like. so i´m building up vocabulary without any clue as to how to use it. awesome. orientation is quite the waste of time and most of us have started skipping our sessions...i doubt anyone will be going to anything by the end of next week...

the thing about argentinian spanish is that it is catezano, which means that some of the sounds they use are very very different from most of the rest of the spanish-speaking world. for example, the ¨ll¨ is usually pronounced as the american ¨y¨ but here, is pronounced ¨zsch¨ so when i get back, everyone will wonder what the devil i´m saying and immediately know that i learned to speak spanish in argentina. yes, i will have a superiority complex.

fashion--

not too much to report here. they are very very ecclectic. pretty much no matter what you wear, you´ll fit in. just no sweats. they find those to be tacky. and i haven´t seen too many women wearing heels, since they walk so much. they make all of the flats very cute and versatile. this is exciting, considering i brought like 8 pairs of heel and am terrified of wearing them out. there´s no way my feet would survive. yes, i knew this coming in. yes i am an idiot for packing them and will be sending them home in a couple of weeks.

odds and ends--

i went to the supermarket for the first time the other day. that was quite interesting. the one by my loft is two-stories, so there´s a moving ramp to go between levels. it´s nice and easy if the wheels on your cart catch the right mechanism that holds it in place while you´re in motion. unfortunately, mine did not. in retrospect, i´m sure i looked very funny. they also have no problem making you wait long periods of time to check out. about 3/4 of the checkout lines were open and there were at least 6 people with full carts waiting in each of them at any given time. i was in a particularly good humor at the time, and so didn´t mind too much. but most americans would have had a complete temper tantrum.

also, argentine children are terribly exhausting. at the market they were literally running around everywhere as their poor mothers tried desperately to keep an eye on them while trying to decide between coke zero or 7-up free. in the checkout line there was a lady with a little boy and little girl. the little girl only took marginal interest in me and instead invested herself in trying to pull down every cookie and chip display she could. the little boy, however, found my groceries to be terribly fascinating, and spent a total of at least 10-15 just holding onto the end of my cart, assessing it´s contents and judging the quality of my selections. i have no idea whether he approved or not, but i know he gave it a great deal of consideration. i was more or less too tired and sweaty to be annoyed with him. in fact, he was kind of adorable...


so that´s about it for now. i´m getting along very well. i´m just trying to keep a sense of humor about everything. it makes it so much easier. at first i didn´t think i could pull off four months of this, but now...i´m thinking i could get used to it...

besos.