Saying 'Chau' to Vamos, Tango Concert & a Chorpian

In Argentina, they almost never say "Adios!", it is always "Chau!".  It's one of the main Italian-influenced words here, along with "buenissimo!" which is used basically like how we'd use "great!" in the US.  On Friday I had to say "Chau" to Vamos, where I have been taking lessons every weekday since I've arrived, except for my one week trip to Salta.  I am actually pretty sad about this as I've met nice people and learned a ton, and it's gotten me out of the apartment every morning.  I ended up with a B1 rating on the DELE scale.  DELE is basically the same sort of thing as TOEFL, but is an organization of the Spanish government.  They do regular standardized tests throughout the world to allow people to get certified at a specific level.  I haven't done the test, but in theory I should be able to pass B1 which means that I have "sufficient knowledge of the language to handle situations which require an elementary use of the language".  I think it's probably a fair assessment!  When I return from London in 10 days, I am going to start taking occasional lessons with a private tutor so that I can focus more on my conversational skills.

Sadly, the deficiencies in my Spanish knowledge were very apparent last night, when I went to a tango music concert with my friend Nina.  We didn't know that part of the concert was monologues about the history of women in tango - I picked out words, but really had no idea what the narrator was saying.  Luckily the music was really good and it was in a nice little cafe so we could have a glass of wine and some snacks during the show.  This was my first real cultural outing and I need to do some more for sure.  I will have to do a better job of being a tourist when I am back in town!

The weather here has been absolutely beautiful all week, so today I went off to the south of the city where there is an ecological reserve.  Apparently when they were building up the city, they would dump dirt and debris into the river which created a landfill that is now covered in grasslands.  Unfortunately I decided to walk there from the subte station, which took much longer than I expected, and I was so tired when I got there that I decided to just do a quick walk into the reserve rather than do the full trail.  The reserve is right next to Puerto Madero, which is the former port, and now the modern high-rise development of the city.  I think next time I will take the bus, then rent a bike for a better exploration!

Alongside the reserve is a wide street called the Costanera Sur.  This street is lined with a number of small grill stands selling sandwiches and I decided that I needed to finally try THE sandwich of Buenos Aires - the choripan.  A choripan is just a chorizo sausage (not as spicy as what you'd get in Spain), split lengthwise and grilled, then put on french bread (below photo via google).  Since basically every place offers the same menu I went with the most crowded, figuring that the natives knew best, and it was pretty delicious.  The stand had about 10 bowls of various sauces that you could use to your heart's content - I went with a red pepper one and a mix of tomato and green onions.  I skipped the onion mayo as it was about 80 degrees out and there was no sign of any refrigeration (I am not sure if the concept of health code violations exists here!).  They ask for your name and of course "Molly" caused a lot of confusion - when my order was ready the cashier just yelled "Che, Chica!"  (Hey, girl!).  I am thinking of going by Maria in the future...

Spanglish Take 2, a Bike Tour & the election

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to return to the Spanglish conversation exchange last weekend and see if I had improved since my last visit, during my first few days here.  And it turns out I have!  (Thank god, otherwise those 8 weeks of intensive Spanish would have been a waste!)  I didn't panic during any of my five-minutes in Spanish segments and understood about 80% of what my partner was saying.  My own speaking needs a lot of work, but I notice that I can also understand a lot more on TV and the news.  I have one more week of formal lessons, then it's off to London where hopefully it will all sink into my brain (rather than completely disappear!).  Then I need to figure out tactics when I am back here.

The weather here in BsAs has been warming up in the last two weeks - I went to school without a jacket for the first time on Wednesday.  Unfortunately the onset of spring does mean a bit more rain, but nothing too terrible so far.  Yesterday was a perfect day - blue skies and about 80 degrees - and luckily I got to spend the afternoon riding bikes around town.  There are two guys from San Diego who run a small bike tour company out of my Spanish school (they rent space for a desk and the bike storage) and yesterday was the perfect day to test it out.  We did only a half day tour, so it was about four hours long.  The bikes are nice, comfy cruiser types with cushy seats, which I love.  Most of the sites we went to I'd been to before, but it was really nice to just ride around the city in the beautiful weather.  In the last few years they have added a ton of bike paths, so you don't feel like your life is in danger from the city's crazy traffic.  Here is a photo of the rose garden and also one of huge steel flower sculpture which used to open and close but has been broken for a few years now (luckily it broke while open).

The big news this weekend is that tomorrow is election day!  There are a ton of parties here, so I would estimate that about eight people are running for president.  However, it is generally accepted that the incumbent, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, will win tomorrow.  To win, she needs to get either 45% of the vote or 40% and 10% more than the nearest rival.  Otherwise, there will be a run-off in November with the top two candidates.  Argentina has mandatory voting for everyone from 18 to 70 and if you aren't going to be in the country you need to get a release form in advance.  If you are sick or in the hospital you can also apply for a release after the fact.  Otherwise you are fined (not sure how much) and, according to my teacher, it can make it hard to get loans or buy property in the future.  It's an interesting concept, and I wonder what would happen if something like that was in place in the US.  At the same time, since the government wants everyone in their right mind when they are voting, alcohol sales are completely banned from 6pm tonight until midnight tomorrow.  It's probably not the favorite day of bar and club owners!

El Shopping & Sarkis

There are a number of English words that have been incorporated in Argentinian speech that crack me up.  Jeans (pronounced like "sheens") for example and shopping ("showpeeng").  I spent Monday (a holiday here) doing el shopping and also discovered that stores in the mall love to use English in their signs and promotions.  It's Mother's Day here on Sunday and therefore many stores had window decals saying things like "Think of Mother!" and "Mama means Love!" - in addition, there were seasonal ones like "Jump into Summer!".  I wouldn't say that a ton of people speak English here, so it seems kind of odd that stores would use it so much, but I guess it's good for everyone's bilingual learning.

Anyways, I went to the big mall in BsAs called Abasto, about a 40 minute walk from my place.  Abasto used to be the central fruit and vegetable market for the city so the architecture is pretty cool, with an incredibly high ceiling.  In fact, the ceiling is so high that they have a mini amusement park on the top floor with a ferris wheel inside!!  My goal was a dress for Katie Myler's wedding, but, since a Nordstrom or BCBG did not magically appear in the mall, I think I am going to use my back-up dress.

Also at this mall...the only Kosher McDonalds outside Israel.  Very exciting!  My visit to the food court was a bit of a disaster though.  I decided against Kosher & Regular McDs and tried the local burger place, Mostaza.  Once, I read that you should never worry about ordering beef in Argentina because everyone is so proud of the beef in this country that they would never serve you terrible meat.  This did not hold true for Mostaza - one bite and I pitched my hamberguesa con queso.  Therefore I had to supplement my french fries with a desert course from Freddo ice cream shop.  One of my favorite things here is that even if you get the smallest cup or cone, you can select two flavors - chocolate and mint chip for me!

I mad up for my terrible lunch with my favorite dinner so far in BsAs at a place called Sarkis.  I went with my most common hanging out friends Karl & Guro (a couple from Sweden & Norway, respectively) and Nina (a college professor from LA originally, but moving to Boston in January).  All three are here as long as I am, which is good because many of the people I meet, especially at school, are only here for a few weeks.  Sarkis was a great break from the pasta and ham & cheese sanwiches that are on practically every menu.  Excellent hummus and falafel and a really nice fresh greek salad (I picked around the olives!).  It is really popular - we had to wait about 45 mintues to sit and when we left at 11.30 pm there were still about 40 or 50 people waiting to be seated.  I want to go back there just to buy hummus to go and some pitas.

Tomorrow I am going back to Spanglish conversation exchange, which I did my first week here.  I am hoping it will be MUCH more successful, since I know about 1000% more Spanish.  Wish me luck!

Salta la Linda

Whenever you mention Salta here everyone immediately says, "ooooh, Salta la linda!!" (Salta the beautiful!!).  And it was a really nice city with great surroundings.  Although if you can't make it to Salta, going to Arizona might be close enough (similar mountains, desert, cactuses, adobe houses and churches started by Spanish priests!).

I stayed at a hostel called Las Rejas but I had my own little room and bathroom, which was nice.  It had been a long time since I'd stayed in a hostel and I'd forgotten that $25 a night doesn't get you much!  I had a really skinny bed, with a foam mattress and the saddest single pillow ever.  But it was clean and I got a lot of reading done without a TV to distract me.  The only bad thing was that the place was really empty.  I'd purposely chosen a hostel over a hotel in hopes that there would be other solo travelers, but there were only one or two people that I ever saw, mostly older couples.  So I did spend a bit of time feeling sorry for myself, while eating sandwiches alone at cafes!

The nice thing about my hostel was that it was really close to the city center, Plaza 9 de Julio (July 9 is Independence Day).  Most of the key tourist sites in the city are surrounding the Plaza.  There is a massive, ornate cathedral and a history museum housed in the old Spanish colonial city hall.  There is also a small but interesting museum called Museo de Arquiologica de Alta Montana, which houses the mummies of some Incan children that were sacrificed about 500 years ago, buried on top of a nearby volcano and found by archaeologists in the 90s.  They only display one mummy at a time, but it is amazing how well-preserved they are - they actually look more like wax figures than 500 year old humans.

On my second day I booked a tour to some of the main sites in Salta & Jujuy (the next province north, bordering Bolivia).  Again I'd hoped to meet some other travelers, but instead ended up with 20 Argentinians, only one of whom (plus the tour guide) spoke English!  Everyone was really nice, and it was good practice for my Spanish, but after 15 hours my brain was seriously tired!  We traveled in a converted truck, which had panels in the roof that opened up so we could stand on the seats and take pictures while they drove.  There was even a tiny bathroom on the bus, but through careful planning and a minor level of self-dehydration I managed to avoid it!  :)

The trip started by working our way over a mountain range to the high desert that borders Chile.  There is a lot of mining in this area, including the largest production of lithium, so many high-tech companies have a presence in the area.  We stopped in a tiny mining town and I noticed that the sign for the church was sponsored by Siemens!  While driving through the desert we saw llamas (very cute!), vicunas (similar to a llama, but much rarer and with wool that is meant to be the best in the world), ostriches and wild donkeys.  The area is very remote and the little farm where we had lunch was the only sign of civilization that you could see in any direction (and you could see really far as it was completely flat and treeless!).  Lunch was interesting.  It started with empanadas and quinoa soup (both good) and finished with llama meatballs (ok, but I couldn't get over eating the cute animals) and some sort of dessert which was basically corn kernels soaked in sugar water (pretty terrible).

After lunch we drove another hour to the salt flats, which were very cool.  I was very grateful for my sunglasses because with a white surface and not a cloud in the sky, the brightness is almost overwhelming.  The ground was completely made up of salt - you could scrape a bit off with your shoe and it looked just like sea salt in your hand.  The last main stop was a little town called Pumamarca where there was a market for souvenirs and we dropped off a few fellow passengers who were going to stay overnight.  Overall, a good but very long day!

Back in Salta, the next day, I took the cable car to the top of one of the main hills around the city.  It was a little vertigo inducing, but a funny old lady from Uruguay that I shared the car with kept saying "Tenemos fe!" (We have faith!) and we made it!  At the top is a park with a nice man-made waterfall structure and great lookout points over the city.  I also did a mountain bike tour that took us a little bit outside the city to a provincial park.  It was myself and a guy from Switzerland who had just come from travelling down the Amazon in a ferry - which sounded like something I am nowhere near adventurous enough to do!  It was a great ride, but unfortunately it was 95 degrees and I was practically dead by the end of it.

One of the main things I noticed on this trip was the extreme levels of poverty and it was a reminder that outside of BA, Argentina is still a developing country.  Most of the houses we passed while on the tour had outhouses and an oven outside.  They were adobe or cinder-block and only one or two rooms, with a few chickens or sheep in the back.  We also saw people riding donkeys or using small donkey carts to carry items along the road.  The people in this region are also much more likely to be native South Americans and they look very different from people in the south of the country.  In BA I do not stick out as a foreigner at all, but in  Salta I was definitely a lot taller and paler than most of the population!

Salta and surrounds also were very Catholic.  Every tiny village had a chapel and the rural bus stops would have a message painted on them saying "the Virgin protects you".  I went into the cathedral in the city and people were lined up for confession during their lunch break.  Even after sixteen years of Catholic school, I don't think I know anyone who just pops into church for confession on a random Thursday!  The airport is teeny tiny, with three gates, but there is a chapel and before the flight a number of my fellow passengers went in to pray and light a candle in front of Mary (and we had a great flight!  Maybe I should pray more before boarding?).

All in all a good trip, but I was very glad to get back to my (temporary) home in BA and especially my nice, comfortable bed!