Update from a locutorio

HI.
Sorry I haven´t been writing, but...it physically pains me to say this... my computer crashed! Oh, it was horrible. The day before my first final was due. Luckily most things that I need(ed) are saved on my flash drive, so don´t worry. It´s just incredibly inconvenient. Until yesterday, I think the last time I´d written a paper by hand, without a computer nearby, was roughly 5th grade. Awful.
I actually don´t have much to report, it´s finals season so I´ve pretty much been studying and writing papers with most of my time. I saw a few dance performances, ate good food, was sick, got better, finished The Source, and made plans for two more vacations (one this weekend to eastern Patagonia and one in a few weeks to ski in western Patagonia.)
Today I ate a BigMac in kosher McDonalds, after waiting on a twenty-minute line filled with religious Jews. By the time I got to the front, there was no lettuce left. (Who even knew there was lettuce on a BigMac?)

Anyway, I´ll update next time I have something real to say... for now I´m just using the internet once or twice a day in locutorios - internet cafes.
Enjoy summer! It´s cold(ish) here!

Study break

Some more updates:
I have never felt uncool about not being a smoker until I started my UBA class. Being the youngest, shortest, and stupidest (ha... with this material at least,) I already leave the classroom feeling pretty awful about myself. But halfway through each class we are allowed a five minute cigarette break. Imagine how awkward I am: everyone grabs their cigarettes and lighters (fuego) and stands chatting in the hallway in a circle, professor included. Meanwhile, I stay in the classroom alone and read my nerdy little book and hydrate with my Nalgene. I guess it's a little less awkward than me joining their circle twiddling my thumbs, but...come on now. (I will admit to laughing out loud about how pathetic I am/sound while typing this just now.)

I can't believe I haven't written yet about my painting class. I'm taking it at a local community center, and we meet every Thursday to learn oil painting together. Everyone does their artwork at home so that we don't waste any class time with actual painting. Instead, while we critique and discuss everyone's work, we (me, two 25-year old Argentines, and eleven middle-aged locals of all backgrounds - rich art collectors getting in tune with their craft, an accountant, a doctor, etc,) sit around a big table and chat while enjoying 5 or so bottles of wine, cheese, bread, sandwiches, chips, and whatever other treats people decide to bring that particular week. But there is always plenty of wine. Last week the teacher asked me, "is this how American painting workshops function?"... I have a feeling it's not.
Aside from being the only member of the class that doesn't paint exclusively abstract pieces, I'm doing a pretty good job fitting in (as opposed to my UBA nonsmoking, see above,) and participating in some really great conversations about life in Argentina.

chauchau

Jargon jargon

Now that I only have about a month and a half left, I have started to think "back" on my experience here, and (re)evaluate how things have played out. One component of my time here that is constantly on my mind is, most obviously, language, and the frequency with which I think and speak in Spanish. (Actually, here, porteños don't actually consider their language 'Spanish,' but rather Castellano, and it's impossible to convince them that these languages are, in fundamentals, the very same language with differences only in slang, pronunciations, and various dialectical discrepancies.) Anyway, on our program we were instructed to only speak in Spanish while here. And while of course that "rule" is followed in class, in our homestays, and on the streets, I have found it plain old silly (if not impossible) to only speak in Spanish with other American students, especially those that I have only recently met and am still getting to know.
Even if we speak Spanish at a uniform level, there are some barriers that completely obstruct full understanding between two people speaking their common second language. Except for cases of full fluidity, which I think I could maybe acquire after living here for five years, it's unfeasible to express myself and be comfortable in all of my syntax and connotational choices. The ability to intuit and express connotation naturally is automatic in English for me (and I think for everyone,) but this key to communication is lost in translation, and difficult to acquire. Talking with Argentines is different, and communication with them in Spanish is much more successful than with other Americans. Since we both need to speak Spanish to interact, I find I can convey my message more effectively with them. Maybe I'm trying harder to relay the information, or maybe it's just the fact that we don't both know in the back of our minds that speaking in English would just be less inhibiting, but in speaking Spanish with native Latin Americans I rarely feel as frustratingly stuck as I do when I am speaking in Spanish with other Americans.

One other thing:
I was in a dietetica the other day...the health food craze hasn't yet hit this country, so to buy anything mildly healthy - wheat bread, brown sugar, oatmeal cookies, crackers made without beef fat - I have to go to these tiny stores that boast walls lined with jars of dried herbs and teas, sacks of various flours and beans, and freshly dried fruits... Anyway, as I was paying for my dried figs and apricots, the storekeeper asked me, "who is going to win, Obama or McCain?" I replied, "Obama, I hope." His aghast eyes widened. "REALLY?! You're going to vote for a black person?!" I wasn't sure what to say. "Yeah, definitely. He has some good ideas, and he is very intelligent," was all I could muster. "I would never vote for a negro!" (The Spanish word for black person.)
So I left with my fruit and my open mind.

I wanted to find a picture of a dietetica, but all I could find was this photo of a combination dietetica/santeria. In English: health food store/saintery, aka a store where they sell sculptures and images of saints. What a gem.

1.5 months till the end

I took a six-hour overnight bus on Sunday to Tandil, a small town in the Southern Sierras - the oldest mountains in the Pampas. I spent all day hiking, walking, meandering, drinking tea, and reading (The Source, still.) I really like this town. It's small but not tiny (100,000 people) and feels really neighborhoody. Only 7 or 8 high-rises in the whole place. The general aura really reminded me of Jackson Hole. While it's built around tourism (mostly porteños taking weekend trips to escape the city,) it remains completely open all four seasons, so it seems much more down-to-earth, and well, real. Also, it's famous for its cheese, so I am automatically in love. I hiked in a nature reserve that was filled with llamas, horses, deer, and an unidentified deer-like creature that prances like Mandy. Then, on one end of the town is a peak that has been turned into the religious portion of the city. I went all out and took the 1km "walk of Jesus" to the top where I strolled through a lovely pine forest, passing mediocre cement sculptures of Jesus carrying his cross on the way up. At the top is, I kid you not, a 30 foot crucifix that looks over the town - you can see it from almost every street. Overall, this is a definite recommended weekend trip, and relatively close to the city.
Sadly my batteries were mysteriously uncharged I have no pictorial evidence of my time there. No evidence besides my bus ticket and my brain.

The weather here, as I said earlier, is getting colder. I'm wearing my fall clothes, but the second it hit 60 degrees (F,) the porteños all started wearing their fluffiest winter coats, gloves, and hats. I feel silly walking outside in my tshirt amongst all these bundled up psychos with grossly distorted tactile sensory capacities.

I went last week to La Rural, a huge convention center in a trendy part of the city. It was holding the annual event ArteBA, which celebrates all of the up-and-coming Argentinian contemporary visual artists (all medium.) I really enjoyed a lot of work and derived particular pleasure from the pieces that only Argentines (and me!) could understand. For example, poor children often go through subway cars passing out sheets of glitter stickers, hoping that someone will buy them for $1 peso each (about 30 cents USD.) Somehow all of these kids offer the same stickers - Barbie, Little Mermaid, Looney Tunes, etc. One artist at the contemporary art fair made designs using only these stickers as a medium. Ordinarily I wouldn't give these pieces a second glance ("how dumb, a tree made out of Barbie's face,") but after living here I can understand how important the process was of the artist's collecting her materials, etc. Anyway, the art show was awesome. I think I spent three or four hours walking around and only got to see like 2/3 of the exhibit work.