The Blog of John Patrick Larson

As I do my programming kung fu while here in BA I am looking to get a second monitor.

Thanks in part to the miracle of Yahoo’s babel fish (http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt) I answered an ad in Craigslist for a used monitor.  Cutting and pasting to and fro to do translations (or, as it kinda felt like, encrypting and decrypting communications) made it a cinch!  (And fortunately my Spanish is good enough to catch whatever comically tragic mistranslations the machine spit out.)  (Um, I think).

In any case, communication worked well enough for us to arrange a time for me to pick up the monitor.  The plan was simply to take the subway out to Gabriel’s place and schlep a big ol’ monitor back to mine.  Thing is, the monitor, after Gabriel found and dug it out, didn’t work.  But it was cool: over the course of 15 minutes or so of him farting around trying to hook it up we started chatting.  Turns out we’re both web geeks.  His brother too.  So while I left their place without a monitor, I did leave with two new friends and the idea that yeah, we should go out for a beer sometime.

On my empty handed subway ride home I had a more lively spring in my step than usual (I’m still in that cute stage where a breakthrough in Spanish communication will do that).  I took to my subway seat in an admittedly flamboyant manner, and I reckon for it caught a smile from the cute gal sitting right across from me.  I smiled back and she asked “Where are you from?”.  I countered in the best Spanish I could with a comically defensive “How did you know I’m not from here?”  I sat beside her and we chatted the rest of the ride.  I basically shared with her everything about my trip that I knew how to say with my vocabulary.  As a professor who teaches Spanish as a second language, she was great about correcting my grammar, and took to pointing out cool things for me to do and see on my nice little touristy map.  Added bonus: because I know the magic vocab word “novia” (girlfriend), there was no concern of me being some random dude on the subway trying to pick her up.  And everyone thinks it’s way cute when I say my novia is coming to visit in a month.

Last night, carneceria man #1 (a.k.a. Roberto) and I were chatting about favorite recipes, and through much pantomime he gave me one for pork chops that involved apples and sugar.  I took to the challenge of making just that with my pork purchase.  (I’m now the proud owner of a kilo of sugar: it was smallest package I could find.  Mom, you wanna make cookies or something when you get down here?).  It turned out great, and to make the world a weirder place I made up a plate of the other pork chop, some asparagus, and a few strawberries, covered it in tin foil, and brought it back to Roberto with fork and knife.  He was dumbfounded at first but got a big kick out of it, and I met and chatted a while with his wife as he handled the early evening rush of customers.  As I left Roberto thanked me, and reiterated once more that if I ever have any problems, I should call him at the number on the cool little refrigerator magnet of his shop that he gave me.  I declared him and his wife my adopted Argentine papa and mama (actually at first I only declared Roberto papa, his wife chimed in to claim mama), and a good time was had by all.

Yay, Spanish!
John

Language is a funny thing.

The course of living here with the modest Spanish ability that I possess (which is a bit less in practice, relative to what 45 hours of audio lessons had led me to believe) has given me a profound appreciation for my fluency in English and the free flowing self expression that it affords.  So it made my day today when I chatted with the butcher at his counter in the fruitteria this morning for about 15 minutes during the course of ordering some bacon, 2 hamburguesa patties, and another delicious Argentinian steak.  We talked about learning languages, what I’m up to for my two months in Argentina, and some of the finer distinctions of why Argentinian beef is the best.  It was all in Spanish.

On a related note, I had my first Spanish lesson yesterday!  It appears to be working.  For me it is becoming clear that connecting with people is a huge part of why I’m here, and learning the language is the foundation for that.  So onward I am diving into a few hundreds pesos worth of lessons!  Money well spent, perhaps even more so than that great Argentinian beef.

I went with Liz to explore famed Ricoletta Cemetary.  Before getting there I wasn’t sure what could make it so noteworthy.  Then I got there and saw: it’s like a little spooky village of little/big tomb buildings on perfectly straight little streets.  The effect was amazing and I kept thinking how heavy the whole place must be, what with all those huge slabs of granite, stone and marble everywhere.  About 20 minutes through my wanderings of the aisles, my brain got the brilliant idea to play Micheal Jackson’s Thriller on a repeating loop.  I don’t think it stopped until we went for ice cream at a place right outside the cemetery, some 45 minutes later.  Rad.

Last Saturday I think I OD’d on empanadas: if 1 is a tasty power up, 4 is a belly ache.  For it I wussed out on going to a tango milonga starting around 11pm with the gang, so no tales of tango to speak of yet.  In an effort to get myself back into the Argentinian social rhythm (this whole being tired around 10pm just isn’t cutting it) I slept until about noon today.  I actually woke up at 7:30am, and then decided to make use of these wicked sweet wooden slats that serve as industrial grade blackout curtains and are ubiquitous here in BA: our mini-blinds in the states seem paltry and weak by comparison.  Instant cave effect in my humble abode.  My body is a bit banged up from the Aikido lesson last night (I learned technique for a graceful rolling way to take a fall–not yet mastered), so sleep came easily.

On firm recommendation I found a place to watch the soccer (or futbol, as it’s known in these parts) match between Boca and River, the two teams of Buenos Aires and one of the great rivalry games to experience.  I wandered far down Avenida Corrientes in search of a pub packed with rowdy Argentinians watching the game: but in fairness I hardly know how to find such a thing back in the US, so I shouldn’t feel surprised that I utterly failed to find one here.  I settled on a nice restaurant/bar with about 20 people seated and staring at the flat screen above with the game on.  I was pleased to see that River was up 1-0 when I first started watching (having learned that that is the team I’m supposed to root for), and I don’t mind confessing that I didn’t know which team was which until a goal was scored by one of the guys in black, and the score turned 1-1.  By then I was settled in with beer (served with a try of 3 salty items–good move, Cafe de la Ciudat) and empanadas, so it was starting to get good.  By the end I had enjoyed 1.5 liters of beer, and those who know of my comically low tolerance will tell you that that has me fairly giggly and tipsy.  Soccer seemed like the best damn thing in the world, and I was bummed to see the game end.  That, and Spanish seemed much easier to speak. :)

What adventure is next for me?  I’ll let you know what has transpired in a few days!
John

Dear All,

Greetings from the southern hemisphere!  (Or, as I like to think of it, Spring ’09: version 2.0!)  Now that the duration of my trip is quickly encroaching upon the 1-week mark, I feel it about time to let you all know that I DIDN’T perish in a plane wreck in the Andes, but rather instead made it here in a safe and relatively uneventful fashion.

After about 26 hours in transit in some form or another (it’s cool: several of those hours I was just sitting around eating a big sandwich or the like), I stepped out of the Buenos Aires airport where, like magic, the cold rain of Chicago had been replaced by the sunny warmth of oncoming spring.  A quick bus and a shuttle ride later and I was dropped right in front of the building of Liz and Ana, my fab hostesses with the mostesses (thanks Liz for setting up and orienting me so well, and thanks Ana for letting a complete stranger couch surf at your place for a few days!).

The social life got off to a kickin’ start: the first night (with benefit of a nap and a meal beforehand), I joined Liz and Ana to Kabuki Studio (a place which holds lessons of dance AND martial arts, a rad combination if ever I heard of one) for a little swing dance party, complete with a midnight ordering of about 20 empanadas enjoyed by the gang.  (Empanadas are these little hot pastries with things like meat & cheese in them that cost around 2 and a half pesos–$0.65 US–and are available like everywhere.  If “John in Buenos Aires” were a Nintendo game, empandas would most certainly be a power up item in it.)

The second night, after going to a street fair with some folks (complete with a little dancing to a band that played a bumpin’ rendition of some Sinatra tune whose name I forget), 5 of us threw an impromptu dinner party.  We hit a grocery store, collected items that at least one of us knew how to cook, and made a fab 4-course meal that was ready to serve around midnight.  I never thought that Argentinian tradition of doing dinner super late would ever agree with my always-hungry metabolism, but it turns out it does  The meal included butternut squash soup, pasta with marinara made from scratch, garlic bread and steak.  If it could be said that I had a 5-quetzal-a-day coconut habit in Guatemala (and it could), it could also be said that I have a 5-peso-a-day steak habit here.  Jury’s still out about which one is ultimately better for me.

I got a place 2 days ago after some relatively minimal googling about for “buenos aires furnished apartments”: it’s a little (yet fantastically sufficient!) studio and you can see pictures of it here: http://www.apartmentsbaires.com.ar/BN01in.htm.  There was something quite satisfying about getting the keys to a place to call my own in another country (even if for a meager 45 day lease), and I suspect it shown in my step as I made the rounds to the gather goodies at the nearest super market, bakery and fruit stand.  Ah, to delight in the little things!

More tales to share, but I’ll cut off now before long turns into obnoxious.  As I go through my Argentine adventure during the coming 2 months I’ll send the occasional update like this (not unlike Eurotrip ’04, see http://www.pohlman.us/john/ for complete details), but I don’t wanna spam none of y’all.  So if you’d like to be on the distribution list for such missives, you MUST shoot me a quick reply to let me know–I would love to hear from you AND it would be a delight to have some communications in English coming my way for a change of pace!

Best,
John