Funny how when you live someplace, you don´t do a lot of the things a place has to offer. No sense of urgency I guess. I´m pretty much on a fixed weekly schedule and don´t have a lot of interesting things to report. I live in a house in the middle of town with another American student, a local woman named Cristina, and one of her sons. Cristina has five kids in all - three daughters named Marie and two sons named Juan. Not surprisingly the kids go by their middle names. Pretty nice family, but not nearly as warm and helpful as the one I stayed with in Ecuador. The people in general in here are not what I would call friendly...a bit snobbish on the whole. Anyway, it´s not a bad living situation overall, but with no AC I´m probably going to hit the road as the weather gets hotter. I think I´ll be ready to leave after two months anyway.
I haven´t found the people here to be especially warm and engaging. I had lunch with a local girl who asked me how I like the people here. As I was attempting to explain that I like the people just fine she told me she can´t stand the people here. That was a bit surprising to hear, but then not really I guess. I guess the honesty was the surprising part. I´ve met plenty of good people in bars and other venues though. Speaking the language halfway-decently gets some appreciation from certain people...but then there are always those that will laugh at my fumbling attempts. Can´t let that bother you though or you´ll never make any progress.
Yeah, the Spanish...it seems to ebb and flow. I´ll have my days when I just can´t seem to do it, but then suddenly I´ll have a good day when I understand and speak pretty well. A lot depends on the person I´m talking to. If they´re willing to speak a little slower, forgo the slang and enunciate then we can communicate. At any rate, it´s always amusing try to communicate with people with my 4-year old´s vocabulary and grammatical skills. Now that I´m thinking a little bit in Spanish, rather than trying to think of something to say in English and then translating it to Spanish word for word, I find myself using much simpler phrases. For instance, when questioned by Cristina about a girl I was seeing I wouldn´t attempt to say this type of thing in Spanish ´´yeah she was okay but wasn´t that cute and anyway I met someone else that I like better and I really couldn´t understand the girl anyway because she speaks so damn fast never mind the fact that she didn´t thank me for the dinner I paid for and now she´s sending nasty text messages´´. Instead I just said ´´ella se volvió loca´´ (she went crazy), and that gets the point across. Of course, when you talk with catch phrases like that people shake their head and laugh...anyway, they seem as entertained by it as I am.
Found a really good Spanish tutor that I work with for about 5 hours a week and my volunteer job gives me the opportunity to speak quite a bit. I haven´t watched this much tv in years - it helps quite a bit with my Spanish. I prefer tv over reading books in Spanish as I need to work on my listening skills much more than my reading skills. The Simpsons is not the same in Spanish but it´s still entertaining. I watch the History Channel for probably 2 or 3 hours a day...all those visual cues make it easier to follow. Spanish with the people on the street is quite a bit different, but I can usually decipher one or two words in every sentence and with the context conjecture what the hell´s going on. I´d say the best resource for learning a language though has to be a girlfriend. I´m working on that one, but nothing of substance to report in that area.... I´ve laid some groundwork that I hope will bear fruit though.
I´m volunteering in a soup kitchen teaching computer classes. Pretty basic stuff, many of my students didn´t know how to turn on a computer when we began. My students are middle-aged women for the most part. I´ve enjoyed it but I´ve learned about all the new vocabulary I´m going to learn for computers so I´m ready to try something else. Sometimes I help out in the kitchen with the cooking and other odd jobs. I spend about 4 hours a day there. I´ve come to the conclusion that these soup kitchens are political centers as much as anything else. I helped translate some interviews of the workers the other day; you´d be amazed at the leftist claptrap that can come out of the mouth of a 3rd-grade educated potato peeler.
Went to a soccer game one weekend. I always regretted not going to a soccer game when I was over in London so made sure to do that. Shockingly, the game ended in a 1-1 tie. The fans are indeed enthusiastic about their futbol...so much so that the visiting team´s fans have their own portion of the stadium segregated from the home team fans in order to protect them. When the game was over we had to wait about 30 minutes before we could leave so the visiting team´s fans could get cleared of the area. A guy got beaten to death after one of the games earlier this year. This place probably could be a bit dangerous, but like most of places I´ve seen in Latin America security is all over the streets, day and night. The traffic is probably the most dangerous part. I read that 20 people die in vehicle accidents everyday in BA. The more places I visit worldwide the more appreciative I get of traffic law enforcement.
Looked in the mirror one day and realized the toothpicks hanging off my shoulders were actually my arms. Thus, I decided to join a gym. Tried a jiu-jitsu gym first. Brazilian jiu-jitsu brought back memories of my one year of high school wrestling...that familiar neckache after practice. It´s basically the same thing except you don´t try to pin the guy for a 3 count, but instead try to get him to submit with a choke or arm/leg lock of some sort. I took some beatings but I learned quite a bit in the 6 times or so that I went. I decided to quit when the owner decided I would have to pay 3 times as much as the locals since I´m an American. Our currency is worth three times theirs (the two were pegged equal until 2000 or so) so I reckon that was his justification. It still wasn´t that expensive but I´ve got my principles. I´m using a regular gym now, complete with forgotten ´80s American tunes blaring and the 2 or 3 guys that every gym seems to have that are always in there and think b-c they´re a little bit big they own the place. The difference here is the ´big´ guys aren´t really very big.
Haven´t actually travelled outside the city since I got here other than a weekend trip to Uruguay with my roommate and some others. Uruguay is only an hour across the river. Had a nice time in a little touristy town where we rented mini-dune buggies and took them onto the beach. Unfortunately, the only times we got stuck were when I wasn´t driving (coincidence? I think not!) so I spent a good deal of time pushing and digging. Took a 3 hour bus ride over to Montevideo that evening.
Montevideo, was a bit of a shithole...literally...I´ve never seen so much dog crap. Buenos Aires is like that too; people have no qualms about walking their dogs and letting them crap whereever, but at least in BA most of the shop owners hose off their sidewalks every morning. No such cleaning seems to happen in Montevideo. I wonder how much fecal matter you need in the streets to pose a health hazard...? I´d say the most interesting part of that weekend was the people I had dinner with in the hostel: a 36 year-old American traveling South America selling mp3 players (tech items tend to be expensive here), an Israeli in town for 3 days having flown in as a bone marrow courier (these jobs exist?), and a retired Norwegian engineer looking for real estate (real estate my ass, he seemed a little perverted...lol). I asked the American if he wanted to go out drinking and he responded by telling me he had no money...so much for that business model I guess.
My plan is to fly south in a few weeks down to the edge of the continent and then bus up the west coast to Peru. The Andes seem like a nice place to spend the summer.
