What you might not see on your vacation

Those of you who have been to Buenos Aires might wonder at the things that I write because they do not equate with what you have seen.  If I had only been here a month or two weeks or ten days, and if I had not had a specific task to do, around which I could plan activities but which constrained what those activities could be, I might have written a very different accounting of my time.  For example, now looking back at what I wrote about Montevideo—at some time I'd like to amend my reflections because I was only in my first month of living around the Rio Plate.  And it hadn't yet been explained to me that fear will often keep people from trying to communicate with someone in a language not their own, even if theirs is dominant.  Fear of that which you don't know creates barriers.  I think I am motivated more by the fear of complacency.  And I believe that there are always alternatives.

Which is why when I reached a physical barrier the other day while walking, I assumed I could walk my way around it because I have a good mental picture of the map of relevant parts of barrios in my head.  Absolutely no sense of north, south, east or west unless I've learned which way the numbers go in any given place, but I always believe that I can follow the map.  Now in the first place I was walking from Plaza Italia to my part of Belgrano because I'm a walker and it seemed possible since I'd ridden the route by bus.  But I hadn't realized that at one point the street goes under a commuter train's tracks via a commuter unfriendly tunnel.  Kind of a strange neighborhood—I was following a main street full of shops and restaurants and everything else, and this was a bit empty.  I could have taken the subte that happened to be at the train tracks, but I really wanted to do this which was walk Santa Fe through its transformation to Cabildo.   So I walked parallel to the tracks, looking at every juncture whether or not the perpendicular street went through.  I went about a dozen blocks, dusk laying in, before I found a street that would take me in the right other direction.  I walked around an odd space that had concertina wire surrounding part of it, and had the sense of a residential institutional building.  Ahead of me was a young couple, the man carrying a child on his shoulders, and it comforted me to think that walking down these dark deserted streets was not totally idiotic.  What was, or is, or will continue to be is the fact that two of my three pieces of footwear have wooden bottoms…as in clogs, and even boots with clog bottoms.  I realized as I walked on the naturally uneven pavement, hearing nothing but my footsteps clip clopping, that I was in no position to run if I had to.  A young girl came by, walking even faster than I, and together we walked into the street to avoid a clotted group of four or five adolescent boys.   Eventually we all hit a main lighted street which I had never heard of and I was in a neighborhood I'd never seen except on a map (which, when I looked at it, provided the information that I had passed by a mental health institution).  I walked ten blocks, and crossed the tracks as a pedestrian.  There is a system, to slow you down maybe?, where you walk into a two turn maze of red and white striped metal.  Initially I followed the rules every time until the process seemed ridiculously easy to circumvent, without any reason not to.  Finally a few blocks after than I came to Cabildo because the line between it and Santa Fe had curved.  By the time I reached my new home I had been on the road for four hours.  Everyone—Else, Romi, Vicky and her fiancé Nacho, could not fathom why I would have wanted to walk in the first place, but that's not the only thing that makes them wonder.

In this place I've heard more about the robberies of locals.  The first, that Else had had two Rolexes stolen, says something about the state of things before the drop of the peso.  Both robberies were at knife point.  Vicky, who works, oddly to me, for Best Buy, GPS and mp3 player division (as in you call with questions and your US call is routed to her in Buenos Aires if you press the right buttons), was physically assaulted one night as she left work and entered the subte.  A man pinned her against the wall, took her purse, then punched her hard enough to break her nose, then threw the purse at her as she started to scream.  The ticket seller would not let her into her booth, and so she waited until the police arrived but Nacho got there first.  A second time she was talking on a cell phone and a woman came up to her with a piece of broken glass.  She told Vicky that she knew she could replace it so hand it over.  Vicky tells me that there is a documentary, showing some of the people who make their living robbing others, and in the interviews they complain about how the downturn in the economy has affected their livelihood.  Vicky is more than a little paranoid about walking alone in the dark and while it is justified, she is going to have to do it eventually since she will start a rotation as a resident next year.  I've put a lot into this paragraph, but I want the nature of desperation that affects some people to come out.  Yes I have met some tourists who have been robbed, but now I personally know three, and just the other day Nacho was assaulted (but managed to get away with only a button popping off of his shirt when the assailant held on to him hard).  It's just the way it is here and everywhere.  But you might not see this on your vacation, or think that it is only unsuspecting visitors who are targeted.  This is a way of life.  To me, alertness and not fear is the cloak to wear each day or night.  I had the thought that the reason that a few of my students at Los Pibes relieved me of small items was the same sense that I could afford to part with whatever.  And everything you have might be a target item for someone else so either be willing to part with it or don't have it.    

But on the brighter side and only something you would see if you were here now or four years from now or four years ago is the national fervor that accompanies Argentina's participation in the World Cup.  The Bicentenario was nothing—it was history.  This is NOW, futbol coached by Argentina's  Diego Maradona who is a paragon, who has songs written to him, for which a saying—'The hand of Maradona'—was coined.  Blue and white bunting is everywhere.  Argentinean flags fly, restaurants and stores all have some nod to the 'cup of the world'.  Dogs—because it is winter here (ahem) and they need protection from the elements—wear blue and white doggie sweaters.  Everyone I know is filling out a bracket with scores of each game.  A requirement of my class on Tuesday was that I (and her other private students) stay and watch the match between Argentina and Greece.  Frivolity because they were playing an inferior team turned to stunned silence as the first half ended in a tie.  Then taunting against the length of the Greek names, a nervous tension that perhaps something bad was going to happen and then GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!  

People hugged and kissed and all was again right with the world.  And when the second goal was scored, I felt as if I could walk out of the place without getting mobbed.  Even my teacher, at one point, had said that perhaps the reason Argentina had not scored was that *I* was there, the one and only suspect Greek.

Then for the entire rest of the day people whooped and yelled and honked their horns and everyone walked around jubilant.  We don't yet do such a thing in our country so it seems remarkable and almost patriotic.  The 'cup of the world' is the prize and everyone is behind the team and the coach and the country.  There is a pecking order of support in terms of other teams—the first line goes to other South American countries, especially Uruguay and Paraguay.  Brazil is very good, so no one gets that excited when they win, and Chile is controversial because they did not support Argentina during the Malvinian War.  And that same war is the reason that the Argentines would rather face the British than the US so that they can beat them soundly.  I will not write anything more about this War because I am certain to get this wrong and offend my new friends.

Things are a little unclear for me in terms of what I am going to do after next week.  I need to think about what has happened and why and then perhaps I will write about it.  In many ways this whatever class living is more difficult for me to assimilate than was the almost marginalized (but really not) neighborhoods I initially experienced.  I'll take pictures, and perhaps in so doing will figure it out.

For now—watch futbol—our team (as in US) while not spectacular has still won its bracket.  And anytime you see Argentina or Uruguay play, think of me.  Chau.

What I'm thinking now

13 June 2010

I don't know if anyone actually reads this…I make Fredd read it so I know he does.  I'm not being a good travelogue writer, but I will put up some more pictures—the contrast between San Telmo and Belgrano is great.  And this is such an interesting time to be here—not only did we have the Bicentenerio but now the Mundial de Futbol (which only happens every four years).  It is so cool that the whole country is behind a team.  I hope that the U.S. does well but I cannot imagine the same across-all-states fervor that is in the air here now.   

I have different days and nights now that I've moved to Belgrano but some of the same conversations and concerns.  First, I should say in case anyone has been to Belgrano and wonders what I'm talking about, Belgrano, like Palermo, is very spread out, not compact like San Telmo (which simply had amorphous boundaries).  Where I'm living is officially Belgrano, but it is the transitional Belgrano.  I'm surrounded by spaces left empty or under construction.  There is a block by block difference in era and feel.  The very first day I walked around the block and determined that one street might make me feel a little uncomfortable late at night because the only businesses were auto repair related and thus dark at night.  I did not then know that across the street from that spot is a secondary make up school by which I mean a place where people who did not graduate from secondary school can go and finish up.  During breaks small groups congregate—one in front of the darkened auto repair shop, the other directly in front of the school.  They drink out of liter bottles of beer, smoke cigarettes and pot, and cluster aside the wide sidewalk so that everyone else has to walk in the street.  So the street is not uncomfortable for the reason I had intuited, but merely inconvenient.

On my side of Belgrano, the outlook is still far different than what I have been exposed to thus far.  Things may be down, but this is still a middle to upper-middle class neighborhood.  On this side.  Yesterday I discovered  that seems like one of those remarkable things that a marrying couple should put on their wish list:  something that looks like half a square Victorian birdcage with the top lopped off, atop a pole that stops waist high.  And in it, householders can place their nightly bag of garbage.  That doesn’t mean that the contents won't be spilt on the street by the carteneros because they might, but at least there is a chance that the garbage will not hit the street.

I got a huge X drawn through a response I wrote for Spanish class.  I was supposed to respond, using pronouns, to the statement "something you take off at night." Or at least that is what I took from the 7 definitions of the verb.  And the something had to be singular feminine and after a lot of class I wrote 'la ropa' meaning the clothes.  But I'd misread the verb and the statement really was "something you take out at night."  I still didn't have an answer, and my frustrated teacher finally said:  "the garbage."  "But I don't take it out every night," I said.  "I take it out once a week.."  "What do you do with it in the meantime?"  "Put it in a garbage can."  "Huh…..?"  And so ensued a discussion, each of us not fully appreciating how strange it must seem, our method of doing things.  When I brought the homework here to Else, Romi, and Vicky's house, playing it for a laugh, I got the same confused looks.  Inconceivable that you would not have the garbage picked up every night.  It seems like a good idea if you separate out the recyclables so that no one has cause to open up the bags but it would take a much larger work force, I think, or maybe not since the bags are so small.

Anyway, there isn't the huge mess every night that there was in San Telmo because I think that the apartment buildings must only put out one bag or have another method of doing things.  Dog poop is less apparent on my side of Belgrano but it still bears an open eye.  As does the sidewalk, some of which rival those of San Telmo in their state of disrepair.

But today on a two hour walk I roamed around the other side of Belgrano where there were entire blocks of perfectly stable, no-tiles-missing sidewalks in front of very fancy apartment houses.  No sign of garbage, not even the wrought iron container things.  I had visions of one of the doormen running out with a can of garbage just before the garbage truck rolled down the street, late, and quiet.  And that someone had the job of scooping up the dog poop as soon as it hit the ground.  This is not the Buenos Aires I know, but it must be what people told me I'd see.  Much more personality than Puerto Madera, but no graffiti except on a few metal doors.  Either no one bothered, or it was painted over regularly.  My side of Belgrano does have some graffiti but it is all slogans…nothing colorful like San Telmo and La Boca.

My classes now are in a part of Palermo called Soho Palermo.  I think.  It's the same neighborhood where Natalie used to live and I think we decided it was within the boundaries of that part of the map.  My new teacher is named Ceci and she either meets me at a café called El Pinguino (as in Penguin) or her place.  I can either take the subte or colectivo to get there or, as I discovered on Wednesday, walk if I'm willing to take three hours (I might talk about that adventure later).  The sidewalks are about in the shape of Belgrano with the same thing being true in both places—the main commercial streets are in better shape than the side streets.  And I walk down a side street to get to either El Pinguino or Ceci's place.  And once again like an idiot I tripped and fell flat, somehow in between two cars as I went down at an angle.  Unlike the situation in San Cristobal where I had those three men helping me up, all the busy people walked by me but when I finally stood myself up a man came over to ask if I was okay.  But all these people had stopped and were looking at me—this part of the city is more city than neighborhood-y and it just had that feel that it would be very inconvenient to stop (and do anything but look).  This time, I just have to whine for a second because one of my knees is now really banged up from the second fall.  You never think that you might use your knees to get into bed at night but now I know.

I had another one of those misconceptions later transformed by going to Ceci's house.  From the front it appeared like most apartment buildings and I pushed the button 'F' for hers.  But when she opened that front door it wasn't to a hallway but a long concrete corridor open to the elements with, apparently, different residences along the sidewalk.  Hers was all the way to the end.  (Else told me that this is a very old style Italian house…members of a large family would have different rooms one after another, all on the same floor essentially, instead of building up.  So I followed Ceci into her place and I was taken aback by the relatively miniscule size of everything.  A cooking kitchen you could just barely turn around in, a living room with room enough for a sofa for a person and a half and a straight back chair, a table space area that could seat four—this was the class area and it also included a wall of books in several languages, floor to ceiling, a bedroom which actually could be huge but I don't know, and an odd bathroom with the universal silhouette of both a man and a woman on the door.  I used the bathroom and it was rather small but had the requisite bidet.  The toilet flushing lever, was high over the toilet, which is not unusual, but the plate that covered it was half off.  Which is better than the bathroom at El Pinguino where the plate is entirely off, the external lever is missing, and you have to use force to push down the exposed trip lever if you want to flush.  Ceci's lever was connected to the trip but the unfortunate thing was that when I flushed, water started seeping out from where the toilet met the floor and into a drain on the floor.  Such drains are very common, so I think something or other overflows regularly and it is just the way it is.  For example, in my little bathroom now, there is no differentiation between the floor and the shower...or apparently there is an imperceptible slope, but the design includes the fact that the water will just run all over the floor and eventually make its way into the drain or be absorbed by the bath mats or something.  It still seems wrong to leave the entire floor wet, and I'm glad I don't dry my hair.

At Ceci's—and this was my misconception—I had an idea that she might have fallen on bad times.  She alternates clothing like I do, but I'm living out of a suitcase.  And her teaching materials are old and a bit yellowed.  She does have a new kittie (which thrills me to no end because I miss the feeling of fur and I haven't had a furball to play with since January), so there is lots of good juju in the place.  Several pictures of Che, of course,  and always an offer of tea.  Still, I had this impression, the same way I have had with my new family and through all my interviews of people—not that I started out to interview people, but I guess what is happening is that we are all conversing about how much further apart the upper and lower classes became after the economic downturn, and how all levels of middle went lower.  So that's what I thought had happened with Ceci who also has a mysterious son who calls on the telephone but never appears and I'm not sure where he'd sleep.

Then on Thursday, during the conversational part of our lesson at El Pinguino, we started talking about reverse culture shock, something a friend had just suggested I might want to consider before my return to the U.S.  Ceci then told a story about taking a twelve day trip to Cuba, and how what she saw there compelled her to come back to Buenos Aires, quit her lucrative University position (as a professor professor), sell her house and most of her possessions, and live this life of teaching Spanish as a second language to foreigners, learning about their culture, living happily with her books, living happier now that she has far less than she did when she had much more.  She knew the exact turning point.  She was buying a book in a bookstore and in conversation the woman asked her if she was buying it for a class and Ceci said no, she was buying it because she wanted to.  And much as my conversation about bags of garbage went, each side thinking the other way alien, Ceci and this woman realized a difference—the ability to buy something for want of not just for need of.

So she didn't end up with that leaky toilet after the crash—she chose it—and she advocated the same for me.  That if I've lived with less whatever in Buenos Aires, that I continue the life in the U.S.  I'm not buying a lot because of want right now just because that's how I'm living but the point is that I can.  I'm hoping that when I go home, I still mostly won't see the cause to.

overdue catchup

So many activities on the timeline that I'll list them in any old order.  Something has happened to my numbering but I'm going to wait to fix that for another time.

1.      1.  I gave my students a prepared speech, telling them that we could not continue to hold classes to teach me to speak better Spanish and that perhaps I'd failed them and did they want a different teacher.  The next session they brought Seven-Up and cookies for a farewell, and then begged me to stay.  My least improved student stood up proudly and said:  "Hello teacher.  I am Gloria.  How are you?"  And then…"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten."  And then, "I love you."  Well what can you do with that?  I'm still trying to figure out what to do now that I've moved many barrios away.

2.      Fredd came for a very short visit.  We transacted official business at the U.S. Embassy where I signed over power of attorney to sell the Gettysburg house.  We were in a very short line, actually first in the line.  On the other side of the room a long line snaked around as it had outside, with people wanting to get visas to come to the U.S.  Several people have told me that they have been denied visas, but I never understand the reason.  Often it has to do with a father in Miami.

3.     

2. 2.   2.  The very day that Fredd arrived, Los Pibes participated in a Marche (as opposed to, I learned a Desfile, which indicates some type of armed participants be they military or policia) for the Indigenous or Original People.  I had been told that several 'tribes' (best translation) would be walking from their respective parts of Argentina but I don't believe that it would have been possible in three days.  That would be North, West, and South Argentina and if you look at the map you can see that I'm missing some point.  But there were groups of people dressed in traditional clothing, most of them darker than the Buenos Aireans.  The march was for plurality and multiculturalism and it started on Corrientes and was to go to Cristina's house, or Plaza de Mayo which is in front of it, where a list of demands would be read..not that she would be out there to hear them, but symbolically the groups were united even as they spoke different tribal languages.  As with every Marche, every imaginable political group joined in, this being an opportunity to show solidarity and display your flag, and that is why I think Los Pibes participated with their banners and flags as they are a social and political group.  A few people told me that they were also marching for the original people as their relatives had come from the border along Bolivia.  I was invited, so Fredd, after an all night trip from Dulles, and I joined up with my students and the rest of the Los Pibes group.  We walked among the flags and banners, with the blue and white stripes billowing over our heads.  Now and then the whole Marche would stop as we rounded corners.  At one point, one of our group began an elaborate drumming to which people lent chants.  You'll see the pictures—I loved all the flags but I'm mostly going to show our group.  When we reached the Plaza it was a bit anticlimactic for us since the Los Pibes demands were not on par with the people speaking in different languages.  I wanted to get Fredd a cup of coffee, but my 'protectors' would not let us go alone…to the corner.  If only they'd seen Natalie and I dodging around during the last Marche we attended together.  Anyway, we were escorted to the corner, bought coffee, then rejoined the masses of flag bearers of ideologies or sociologies.  After much whispering, we were advised to leave before it turned dark.  Funny, since this is basically the middle of my extended neighborhood and while he was half asleep, I still had a man with me which seemed protection enough since I usually walk it alone.  But hey.

4.      3.  So it turns out that Fredd was here for the Bicentario as well.  There is some confusion as to which day was being celebrated—independence or coming together as a country, but it was a huge even nonetheless.  It began at Corrientes and extended south along both sides of Avenida 9 de Julio.  It seemed to creep further south each day (it ran about four or five) until one day there was actually a parade along Independencia which is the big street the next block up.  That parade was more disorganized than most…groups of people from various countries, horse soldiers (I know I should know that term) from various eras…standing around in clumps.  I'm sure they had somewhere to go but it wasn't apparent that they were going to be moving anytime in the future.  They did stop traffic on the street, making it even more difficult to travel east to west across the city. 

5.      We dropped in on one day of the event because I thought it would be interesting to try some 'traditional food'.  Whoever organized this part of the party had a strange idea.  Small enclosed booths lined narrow paths made it difficult to approach the small counters, each of which had a sign for a region of the country, but also for a mixed group of other countries (such as Chile, Cuba, the Ukraine).  It wasn't clear where you were supposed to eat…behind one row of booths, for example, were a few tables and chairs set upon what was once landscaped green space.  But there was only enough seating for about twenty people and I think this kept people from trying food…but didn't deter them from buying food.  Like French wine.  Or Italian sausage.  In front of the tables, whole large plants had been squashed as people made paths toward whatever seating they could find.  But more importantly, in strategic places were hot water dispensers for mate thermoses.

 

6.     4.   We met the wonderful mother and son who first greeted me to supposedly attend the reopening of the Teatro Colon, which is supposed to be one of the most acoustically superior opera houses in all the lands.  At first Fredd and I hung around in front of the café we had set as a meeting place.  It was the last accessible place on the street as the rest of it, leading up to the Teatro, was cordoned off.  By cordoned I mean that sections of metal resembling old fashioned bike racks were used for crowd control.  Sometimes cordoned means unrolling sections of chain link fence and standing it on end.  Here we had a metal railing to lean against as the crowd built.  Eventually we went inside because I had underdressed, forgetting that once the sun set it would get into the 40s.  Eventually Alicia and Ricardo joined us and Fredd and Ricardo delved so deeply into Argentine history (broken English on Ricardo's part, Fredd's drawing and about a dozen words of Spanish on the other) that we never made it to the extravaganza.  But then we had to make it to some form of public transportation.

7.      

      As you may have noticed in some of the pictures I've displayed, I'm relatively tall here.  And Fredd is nearly 6 feet so way in the upper range of height.  But Alicia and Ricardo must have come to our shoulders…okay not that short on his part, but I'm sure she was that small.  This is significant because once we left the café we were in the densely packed crowd.  I forget if that is one of the days a soccer match was being projected on a huge screen in the middle of the Avenida, but every day and every night during the celebration, people stood body to body and had to push through knots of others to move in a particular direction.  Our goal was to get Ricardo and Alicia to a subte—any subte.  It became apparent that we could easily lose them so I took one of each of their hand's in mine, or sometimes just kept a hand on a shoulder or head.  They were both a bit frightened, but I think comforted by Fredd's height.  Of course, Fredd didn't know where he was…only I did, but I couldn't see over the crowd because my height is only an illusion.  So I had to keep an eye on Fredd who was still trying to ask questions about the two sided peronista party, and keep physical contact with my small friends, and push them toward the street I wanted us to be on.  They actually did know where they wanted to be, but the landscape was alien…simply bodies in light blue and white tightly packed.  The worst times were when we were up against immovable objects—like a wall and a closed kiosk, with people pushing, trying to move, in both directions.  We were like a blocked artery, and something kept us pumping either way.  When we finally broke free we walked down the middle of the street, unable to even express our relief, but trying to find space wherever we could now that we were not crushed against strangers.  This was only the first of such experiences I had during the celebration.

           

I t  5.  I took Fredd to Puerto Madera to get away from all the crowds but foolishly went south to north and ended up leaving at the same time that roads were being cordoned off  because of some kind of music and speech thing at Cristina's house.  I almost talked my way through a fence but another woman came up just as the policia was about to let me through so we retreated.  This time we were in a constant flow of people trying to find egress but being blocked in three directions, which was not apparent until you hit a barrier.  At one point we were in a tight but moving scrum, all of us thinking that we were far enough north that we could get across the Avenida…but we were wrong and people started turning around in an impossibly small space to try another street.  A whole bunch of people had the bright idea that we could get across Avenida de Mayo by going into the subte station and coming out the other entrance.  It should have worked…three or four entrances all meeting underground…but it wasn't happening.  We tried it twice, along with scores of other bewildered people, only trying to go south to their part of town.  We ended up going even further north and then very far west and only then could we head south…and into a barrio I would not generally walk at night.  But since we were part of a now thinner crowd I thought we could get to where we needed to go as long as we went back out into my comfort zone as soon as possible.  I feel as if those autopilot escapes were years ago, but it has really only been about ten days.  And the utter drain of using so much adrenaline to keep moving against human or metal barriers put me in a twilight state.  It was eerily nightmarishly on the precipice of a disaster.  They weren't exactly stampedes, but more like too many animals in a very long maze.

9.     

            6.   As my time in San Telmo drew to a close, and after a complicated miscommunication we took Julieta out for dinner very, very late.  We ended up at a place that is somewhat touristy during the 'season' but quieter now that it is winter.  The draw was not the food but rather the live music which happened to be Flamenco…and as it turns out, Julieta had studied Flamenco for a year which we saw demonstrated when a call was put out for any dancers on the floor.  It turns out that Flamenco with another person is called something else and this is what Julieta did up on the stage for two dances.  To see such a shy quiet woman stomping and turning and practically mating around a ponytailed man resembling Antonio Banderas was wild and unexpected. 

1    

      7.  I moved to Belgrano the day that Fredd left. 

11. 

            8. I finally tripped over open sidewalk and fell perfectly flat on the ground.  Within seconds three men had lifted me upright.  I didn't even have a moment to get over feeling stunned.  My professora was with me—we were meeting Fredd at Gardel's so that he could teach her how to write a check (which she'd never done…he was drawing pictures)—and she was overly concerned.  When we entered the restaurant she got some antiseptic from behind the bar and we commenced to descend the stairs to the bathroom.  The lights to the stairwell were out so I walked very gingerly because I was starting to feel some throbbing and stiffness.  At the bottom of the stairs we didn't fare much better—a single taper, set in wax on the bathroom counter, lit the entire bathroom…or not.  I couldn't see enough to make it worth my while to pull down my pants to check for injuries so I just poured whatever was in the bottle over the small gap between my finger an palm that that been the only visible injury (it's almost as if I had practiced falling as a stuntwoman).  As it turns out, I have huge bruises extending on both sides of both knee caps and when I forget and kneel it hurts like….but I truly feel lucky that I've only fallen that one time in the three months I've been here and that I only have bruises and a still open cut

      

      12.  We had a fiesta por la cumpleanos de Johan y Angel.  Or a joint birthday party.  All the students but Gloria came to my place and we had ice cream and cake and soda and balloons and champagne and two Peruvians danced to two Peruvian songs.  I have Spanish magnetic words to make sentences or poems on the refrigerator and each person left me with some kind of phrase.  Marcos, who isn't Marcos but Vagner (or did I already tell you that) gave me three 5 peso calling cards to call him once he reaches Peru so that we can continue our lessons.  He has already sent me an email to tell me that he has arrived safely.  It began:  "Teacher.  I am Peru…."  Before he left he came to me with a piece of paper upon which was written 'omen' and 'men'.  He wanted to know how the two words were related and did not buy my explanation that they were not.  We miss him in class.  In fact, class is slowly dissolving, but this party brought us all together again and while I'm not sure what I've done with my time, I know that at least two people feel as if it is possible to learn something new with what Gloria calls a 'hard' brain.

     13.  And as I said I moved, but I'm not going to write about that now.  I just want to say that instead of a five minute walk and ten minute bus ride, I have a fifteen minute walk and a 60 – 120 minute bus ride, both to my class and to La Boca.  So I think that this week is it.  We lost our 'space' weeks ago and have been sharing it with teenage girls doing homework and smoking and giggling, amidst the sounds of construction at the place we used to meet.  And without the ability to use multi-media (songs, you-tube, pictures, even 'voce alta' ) we've all come down a few notches.  It is really impossible to have a conversation so we decided to have one-on-one scheduled classes.  But now it appears that my commute might keep it from happening.  Today was probably my last day there (I have other volunteer plans), but I met with Gloria..who was eating her free meal of chicken and something.  We started the lesson with 'I am eating' and 'You are not eating'.  Soon after she finished her meal and cleaned up her plate, a group of people started to congregate for a meeting.  We started to go upstairs to anywhere else but the people wanted Gloria to stay so she became part of the motivational speech, organizing the next Marche (what else)?  As far as I could understand, the Marche was an integral part of Los Pibes getting another computer. People scribbled down dates and places to meet and I noticed that most all of them had jackets with Los Pibes written across the back.  I became fascinated by the number of cockroaches going in and out of a crack in the kitchen counter I had just been writing on…but maybe it was just the one making multiple trips.  When Lila came for her class and sat at the same counter to eat her chicken, I wanted to tell her, but I figured that this was her Comedor…that was her mother working in the kitchen…and old news was no news.

I'll write about my new barrio soon and why I'm here and why I'll learn more deeply what happened when the economy collapsed as a result of it.  But if I don't get this out…without proofing so I'm sorry about that…it will stay unposted and become stale.  And I'll not be picky about pictures either.  If anyone ever wants to see more than the scattered few, I'll post them elsewhere.  Chau!


(Click on Fredd to open the album with pictures of some of the things I've referenced.)

late photos

Current events leading up to many changes

So many things are about to change that I want to write about some of them while they are still interpreted absent my future knowledge.    

The first has to do with the state of the public transportation system here in Buenos Aires.  I've mentioned the colectivo and the need to hoard moneda (I had to pay someone two pesos in coins to make up a price the other day and they looked at me incredulously:  are you sure?  Do you want to come back?); and I've spoken about the subte—in particular the A line, which I took on my adventure to the Peruvian restaurant with Alejandro , which is pictured somewhere in the collection in this blog.  The lines are numbered A—E, with a little spur called H, and no F.  The location where two lines intersect is called a 'cambio' or exchange.  Sometimes the stations have the same name as is in the case of the station nearest me, Independencia.  Independencia is the C line where I catch it, but if I were either to walk across Avenida 9 de Julio or do a cambio underground I would pick up line E.  I do not like the cambios—you walk up stairs and down stairs all the while following signs for 'salida' or exit as well as the name of your line and its terminal point (so that you are headed in the right direction).  I've screwed up several times when the underground is crowded and people are pushing ahead so that I cannot even slow down to think.

Last Thursday, less than a week ago, I needed to go to Callao (pronounced Ca-sheu), on the D line.  I needed to take the C to Diagonal Norte and do a cambio up to 9 de Julio underground but about fifty steps above.  I knew from experience and conversation that the D line would be crowded during rush hour, which lasts from about 4 to 8.  And I was riding the subte at 6.  So I made it up to the correct side of D and saw people standing eight deep, all the way up to the edge of the platform.  It reminded me of the DC Metro during its early days when it snowed and everyone was let out at once.  The subte going in the other direction came at regular intervals.  On the other side, we waited and waited, crammed together, breathing fumes and the personal bouquest of the four or five people hemming us in.  Oddly, a man was holding a sheet cake pan in front of him, creating a bit of breathing room for himself.  When the first subte came, I saw that it would be a long time before I could get on one.  People were pushed up against the door, using their hands to stay upright while the train braked, squealing.    I don’t know how they managed to get out when so many people pushed forward to get inside but a dribble was released.  People surged as a group until the doors started to close.  And that was of course impossible, so some people who thought they'd made it pulled themselves back out.  We waited for a long time for the next train to come.  I watched a man jump down onto the tracks on the other side and walk to one of the ends where he clambered up and walked toward an exit.  When our next train arrived I really should not have gotten on it, but there was that surge and I ended up nearly inside when the doors began closing so I pushed a little harder and was part of this dense human clogged train.  I had hard sharp edges poking into my back (purses?  Belt buckles?) and an occasional heel ground into my foot.  But I didn't have to hold on to anything since there was nowhere to go.  Not being that familiar with the D line, and definitely not with my stop, I had no idea if the doors would open in my favor.  If they did not, I'd just wait until I could get off and loop back.  But I was lucky.  The doors opened at Callao….and people started to push their way in as a group of us pushed against them to get out.  I swear there was a sucking sound as we were let free. 

I do not think that I could do this every morning and night.  The D line, of course, runs through the most desirable neighborhoods hence all the well dressed, squashed passengers ( I just have to interject—many people translate 'guest' as in 'hotel guest' as passenger…so I am a 'hotel passenger'.  I just had to say…)  Anyway, whenever possible, I take a bus even if I’m in the same overcrowded condition because at least I can watch the graffiti as the buses jerk through many less fancy neighborhoods.  And even if the air is still diesel soaked, at least it is mixed with something atmospheric instead of whatever lies stagnant in the tunnels.

Another random occurrence that is part of the quilting here.  One of the women who cleans the Babel, A., from Paraguay, is in the hospital.  She bought a fancy new backpack and was walking through her own neighborhood when she was assaulted.  I guess it was high tech and desirable.  And as the assailant began to rip it off her, she fought back, not because she could not bear the loss of her backpack, but because she had paid (or so I'm told) 1800 pesos to renew what sounds to me like a work visa.  I don’t know because she's in the hospital, battered and bruised enough or maybe worse.  She hasn't been to work for over two weeks.  It's so sad.  That's a huge amount of money but more importantly, something she jumped through hoops to get from the immigration system…and because she had it in a desirable item, she risked her physical safety to try to keep it.  'They' try to tell us it is only the tourists who are targets so that we are not supposed to dress like we are not of this place.  But not only A. but Berta from La Boca—last Monday she was riding the colectivo and had her cell phone picked out of her pocket—are targets.  She's one of my protectors when I'm waiting for my own colectivo.  I do not believe that I dress as a porteño, but I think I look bitchy and I'm always talking to myself and I've been lucky.  I developed the private dialogue both as a ploy to look crazy and in this instance because I'm practicing my Spanish.   But all this news within one week makes me even more cautious.  Both of those assaults took place in non-touristy barrios.  Most thievery happens in the more chi-chi neighborhoods where tourists walk around with backpacks and loose purses or when someone takes a wrong turn and doesn’t think to go back to the last safe point.  I'll be moving to a residential, non-touristy neighborhood but it will be a few steps up the socio-economic ladder.   I might have to develop different personal safety tactics. 

I've mentioned before that many of my students are Peruvian.  Peruvians have darker skin than the porteños, many of whom are of Spanish or Italian or even Portuguese descent.  One guy, who up until today I believed was named Marcos, is probably the most dedicated of all my students.  He bought a huge hardback dictionary that provides in depth examples along with the traditional Spanish/English definitions.  He has been listening to English language CDs.  When I play my little you-tube songs with English and Spanish subtitles, he gets as close as he can to my two-bit netbook speakers so that he can hear how the words are enunciated.  He starts his homework, not necessarily finishing it, and he sends me text messages in English.  They are always a request for an additional class.  He is just inhaling every lesson and integrates more than I do of Spanish into the lesson that follows.  So, first about his name.  We all call him Marcos because that is how he was introduced.  But today at a café where we met we did an exercise.  I drew a star and into each piece of the pie we put a piece of information.  Our first names.  Our last names.  Our age.  Stuff like that.  When he wrote Marcos where I thought he should have written his last name, I figured I had translated the word incorrectly.  But then we drew pies for someone close to us.  He described his sister.  And she also had Marcos in the same slice.  It took us a long time to understand each other in Spanglish but it turns out that his name is Vagner Marcus.  Somehow, the first day he signed into Los Pibes, whoever took him around saw the Marcus, not the Vagner and he didn't care, so he began answering to that name.  It will take me a while to get used to this new development and by then he'll be gone.  Vagner and I met further up that street last Thursday at a place a bit more upscale.  Not really upscale because we were in a working neighborhood where people go about their business and few of them speak English.  And that's cool.  I was in that café, having a fancy-ish coffee and a postre (desert) recommended by the waiter as my lunch, waiting for Vagner (then Marcus).  He came in wearing the exact same clothes he'd worn for about two weeks.  He had a baseball cap on backwards, and that is unusual.  I've mostly seen that in La Boca.  His backpack is ratty.  But he sat down and I waved the waiter over and asked my student what he wanted, he responded, and the waiter took off.  We worked and worked and then I realized that the coffee had never arrived.  I looked back at the bakery case and saw five waiters lined up, joking around.  Now, I had ignored the eye tightening look my waiter had given Vagner Marcus but now when we locked eyes he looked away so I went up to him and asked for the coffee.  He stammered and said something useless and poured a cup, which he handed to someone else to follow me to the table.  I probably felt worse about it than VM.  Still.  But I know this is not something endemic to Buenos Aires, yet it p*** me off.  And then, near the end of our 'lesson', a woman with very long oxblood hair that flipped deliberately at the ends, and eyebrow covering bangs, interrupted our discussion of the next set of homework tasks to ask me if I was American.  She realized that she was being rude so I was cordial and told her I'd be with her after I was done. 

When I finally sat at her table, I saw more closely that she was probably in her mid to late sixties or at least her face was lined as if she had lived longer than her lack of gray would suggest.  By the way,  long hair is de rigueur.  I am the only person I know with short hair.  That is probably the most touristy thing about me.  Anyway, her color was actually closer to one you might see in nature than many other shades of red walking down the street, almost oxblood.  This was just what I took in before we began speaking.  She told me she'd been out of work for eight years (the magic or infamous number) and that she couldn't help but wonder how I found my students and how much I charged them an hour.  I wanted to say a lot of things, but when I told her that they found me and I volunteered to teach them she was flabbergasted.  I gave her some ideas about how she might be able to find students, and that she should focus on teaching Spanish instead of English even if she loved it dearly.  And then she told me a sweet little story.  When she was 17 she responded to a pen pal ad in a movie magazine from a 14 year old from Waukesha Wisconsin.  They were both die-hard fans of Elvis and from this shared crush (?) a friendship grew.  They wrote each other at least once every month.  They knew intimate facts about each other, their families, their secrets.  We're talking about over 40 years if I gauged her age correctly.  And so, it turns out that the one and only place this woman has ever been in the US is Madison Wisconsin, where her friend settled and still lives.  She'd been there about 10 years before I landed, but we still knew common landmarks.  So, Memphis Tennessee and Elvis, and Madison Wisconsin and her pen pal:  this is her mental picture of the US.  Skewed enough that when I mentioned that my husband was from Tennessee, she asked the inevitable question—had he met Elvis? 

My last story for the night.  Another one of my students has been asking me for private lessons so we agreed to meet at my 'departmento' on Sunday at 5 p.m.  I prepared a set of worksheets for her level…and then was a little taken aback when she had her 14 year old niece and 12 year old nephew with her.  Soooooo.  The boy was easier to deal with—I just threw pages of a source book at him and he plowed through them.  But the girl was a different matter.  She wasn't interested in doing the exercises I gave her.  She wanted to rifle through my catch-all basket and ask me what various items were.  She became intimate with my pens (I mean she held them like she was inching them toward lap and out of view).  And then she asked about the bathroom.  I inexplicably have two but there was no need to tell anyone that.  So, I directed here around the corner…and she went in, spent about 30 seconds….and came back.  I have no medicine chest in either bathroom, and in that one, I only have a toothbrush and toothpaste.  Nothing worth fooling around with.  I hate to tell you why I think I know what she was doing in the bathroom so I will leave it up to your imagination and only add that it was a phase.  Then it was time for them to go.  I started to shoo them out.  But there was apparently one very important thing they wanted to ask as a group.  My student's three year old son was crazy about Chucky.  As in the evil doll.  The niece needed to write it down for me to understand what they were all saying.  And, they could not find a Chucky doll in Buenos Aires and the young boy needed to have one because his little girl friend had one.  I took the initiative to look online as they were telling me this story and aside from e-bay, I found one at a Wal-mart like place.  BUT what they wanted was for my 'esposo' to bring a Chucky doll from the US.  Since he was coming anyway.  There was a relentless campaign for this to happen for a good five minutes while I manufactured a percentage of the cost that would have to be paid to the country of Argentina in import taxes and that alone made it a bad idea.  Taking one of my pens out of the nieces hand one last time, I led them out the door.  But I didn't lock it because I was just escorting them down to the lobby.  And the niece said to her aunt, in Spanish, 'did you see that she didn't lock it'?  People think I can only comprehend the language at the level at which I speak, but I reassured her that no one would be able to get in through my door without first going through the door person and that person would never let anyone up unannounced so not to worry. 

So, now I know why most of the private teachers I interviewed, met me at neutral places (like a café). 

Well, my little class is going to break up anyway.  It turns out that Vagner Marcus is going to Peru for the first time in eight years, taking a three day bus trip, leaving on the 25^th.  And the student who came with her niece and nephew?  I believe that I will not see her again.  I'm only in teaching mode for another month anyway—my own class starts on July 5^th—so I might start doing something else. 

I'm leaving San Telmo on the 26^th and moving to Belgrano (where the class will be held) on May 31^st.  I don’t know if I can live with three women (one my age, her daughters in their 20s) but I'm going to try.  I THINK I can do anything for two months.  Tomorrow morning Fredd will be here and he will stay until the 31^st.  Starting on Friday, the 21^st, Argentina will begin celebrating its bicentennial, culminating in ceremonies and celebrations on the 25^th, the actual day.  But tomorrow the 20^th, in advance of the celebration, there is a parade of indigenous people that I've been invited to participate in.  All I know is that three groups of indigenous people began walking from the northeast, the northwest, and the south to join together at the Plaza de Mayo to march toward the Congressional building (it's always one way or another), for multicultural, pluralistic, linguistic, other -istic rights.  I'll know more after I've participated. 

And, I did take a trip to Colonia to renew my visa, but since that story comes with pictures, it will have to wait.  All I'll tell you is that it was chilly and I had to buy a sweater.  Fall is nearly over…we'll see what winter brings.  It also means that I have been in Buenos Aires for three months, and away from the US for four.  Two more to go…

For now, un beso, Zoë 

later, but hey

I haven't written for awhile because there have been massive changes in my back-home life so I have been coordinating things from afar.  Not a mystery—if all goes as planned I will be moving to Baltimore, or rather Fredd, Echo and Izzy will be moving and I will see where they live when I return.  That will be 31 July because I've extended my stay for two weeks for reasons I will get to in my always long winded narrative.

But I want to start with today.  I had a 'reunion' or meeting with the people at Voluntario Global after my Spanish class.  Several things are worth remarking about.  The first time I went there for a reunion was only days after I arrived and it was then that I saw my first 'desfile' or march.  As I approached the building, I could hear some drum beating in the background and noticed that the street—Avenida de Mayo—was devoid of traffic.  The first time I visited VG it was traffic on Avenida 9 de Julio that had ceased to move.  I'm used to this by now—the random collections of people with banners and flags and slogans and some way to make noise, disrupting traffic and time in the city.  Except for that one time, I have never been sure whether the marching is for or against something.  This time, as in others, I never actually SAW anyone marching.  But I heard the drums, I heard something that sounded like cannons (interrupting our reunion so much so that they shuttered the windows against the noise).  And when I finally emerged onto the street, it was strewn with 4x8 pieces of paper that were mysteriously all face down.  The only other thing I saw that might be related were clumps of people on either side of Avenida 9 de Julio wearing apron-like things with names of different towns and a word I thought meant garbage.  Maybe they were there, on both sides of the Avenida, waiting to pick up the papers after the traffic died down, identified so just maybe someone wouldn’t run them over with their car?

And those are the two relatively unimportant things I want to talk about:  cars and garbage.  The cars today were impatient and insistent.  Traffic had been stopped, and now masses of cars were heading toward their destination.  In addition, a lane on each side of the Avenida was blocked off, an overhead sign declaring that it would remain closed until 26 de Mayo.  Almost every intersection I crossed was gridlocked and the fumes from the leaded and diesel fuel made my eyes water.  I zigzagged down streets, which because of the time, were packed with people.  The sidewalks in the older parts of town are very narrow.  They would fit 1.5 people, if that were possible, but instead people do a half-turn and slide by or edge onto the street.  Where there are lines of people waiting for a colectivo it becomes more difficult because, just in terms of physics, one person must yield because now there are 3 in half the space.  I don’t mind walking in the gutter or else I don’t exactly understand the protocol.  I definitely don't understand the lines waiting for the buses.  There is never only one bus that stops at a particular location, but everyone is in one line.  Then when the bus arrives, all the people for that bus try to enter the door at once.  I think that there is a theme here. 

The situation with the traffic is made worse by the odd stop and go light system.  Green means go.  Claro.  Yellow means….ready to turn red OR ready to turn green.  So, I see motorized vehicles (colectivos, coches, y motorcycles) moving forward on a yellow/red.  The message seems to be:  start going forward because your green light is coming, while on the perpendicular the message is hurry across because your stop light is imminent.  Therefore, often, no one moves because the intersection is blocked.  And crazy pedestrians, myself included, slide through the gaps because at this point the walk or don't walk signs are meaningless.

Besides cars I need to dodge the missing sidewalk tiles, and the dog poop, and the garbage.  I've written about the other two but I discovered something about the last one recently.  One day I decided to look at an apartment (departmento) on the other side of Independencia.  It was advertised as being in San Telmo, but so are places way in the south, way in the  west, wherever.  The name of the barrio is relative to the purpose it is serving at the time.  I looked at this newly renovated (I have to think of what they use for this term) departmento and it was stunning inside.  I asked the couple showing me it about where to put the garbage…I don’t know, just one of those questions on my list.  He said, let me ask her.  She said, after seven.  I said, where.  They said, on the sidewalk.  So that's the story.  Every night, after seven, you can put your little bag of garbage on the sidewalk near the edge, and if it looks promising cabeneros will open it, go through the contents looking for items that garner pesos, and leave the rest right beside the bag for the rest of us to see.  All I know is that they must not use disposable diapers here.

Looking at that apartment, I told the man and woman that I'd have to return after dark before I made a decision.  The block, two north of Independencia which seems to be the boundary of San Telmo, seemed to be mostly abandoned buildings, a stand up while eating restaurant, a bar that seemed to have a theme that I could not ascertain, an electronics store that was closed when I first got there at 2, huge locked gates behind which were any manner of vehicle (and I wondered if once before in that spot a building stood), and an set back spot.  The buildings I thought were abandoned must have squatters because when I returned that night, and the one after, I saw little mounds of garbage on the sidewalk outside their doors—a foam pillow missing a corner and spilling the rest of its contents, wet grimy things like rags—and I can't imagine someone walking to a spot when all spots are garbage zones.  And why I thought they were abandoned in the first place is just something I've taken to be a sign:  when trees with leaves turning an autumnal yellow are growing out of the corners of the building, when the shutters are askew with panes missing and the windows themselves absent or broken…if they are not abandoned they are at least not loved.  And when I returned that first night—a Monday—I was the only one walking down the block.  Several men were in the stand-up restaurant, and they looked out at me wondering if I was someone they knew.  The specialty bar  was being prepared for the night.  And, it being eight, the set back spot was lined with a half dozen people going through garbage bags, making piles to the left and to the right depending upon the haul.  It wasn't pretty, but I didn't feel threatened.  I returned the next night at a later time, nearly eleven I think, and there was much more activity.  The cabeneros were gone.  The bar had a few people sitting at tables, and the men in the stand-up restaurant had more to preoccupy themselves than guessing my identity.  I ended up deciding not to take the apartment not only because the street felt hollow, but because I looked at the key hole on the building I was thinking about occupying and saw that inserting the key would take more hand eye coordination than I possessed, especially in the dark.

Which is all for the best since I'm going to move to another part of town altogether for two months to take a course but I'm not going to write about that now.

Instead, teaching solo has gotten easier but we all miss Natalie.  She spent her last two nights with me after touring a bit of the south and then a bit of the north of Argentina.  Our last full day we were on a mission to find a polo hat for her mother (a VERY long story) having only the names of the stores and cross streets.    In the beginning, when I was in Montevideo, I found the way of giving an address to be charming and useful.  But as I recall I was also given a building number.  Here, that doesn't seem to be the case.  For example, I live at Piedras y Estados Unidos.  I don’t live at the corner of those two streets but it is the address I give to taxi drivers and other people who ask.  Do I know the number above the door?  I'm not even sure there is one.  And that is the type of address we had for the stores we were going to, to find a polo hat for her mother who had taken up the sport again and thought they might be less expensive here in Argentina.  We got to the corners we had been given by phone earlier in the day.  The logic is that there are four blocks to walk down to find the place but that it would most likely be nearer the starting point than the next block.  We ended up walking the four legs all the way to the following streets without finding a store selling polo equipment.  But, we had the phone number in my cell because Natalie had used it to call the place during lunch.  She had apparently called the main store and we were looking for one of the sub-stores.  But did the guy know at exactly which street and what number we could find his other store?  Did he even know the number of the store at which he was now speaking to us on the phone?  In that case the answer was yes and so we took off in another direction.  We found it, the polo hats were all ugly, and we ended up not buying a thing.  Inexactitude seems to be the hallmark of most things and it fits nicely with the loose or non-existent schedules, the unexplained parades with undefined purposes, the garbage that lines the sidewalks but is gone by sun up.  It's the connection between those things that makes this place unique.  And not that there is anything charming in the dog poop on the sidewalks, but I've come to marvel at the various colors and how they change as they decompose as I walk to avoid them without walking into the person coming my direction, with the same purpose in mind.  

changes

It's autumn now, temperatures like our October, only somewhat warmer.  People wear coats--some down, many quilted, even leather.  It doesn't feel that cold to me and besides, I didn't bring a coat so I'm saving my almost-a-sweatshirt for winter.  But while the air doesn't seem as cold as what the garments people on the street would suggest, I'm ready to retire my sandals and shorts.


But I couldn't last week.  I've been interviewing potential new Spanish teachers and walking great distances to do so for the exercise.  On Monday it took me almost 60 minutes to get to, and 45 minutes to return from a teacher in Congresso.  I would have liked her just fine except that she kept glancing at her computer screen for emails and twice answered a text while we were talking. Since I was paying her for the privilege of this interview/lesson I was more than a little annoyed.  But I did get to see another non-touristy part of town...lots of butcher shops and rolls-of-fabric stores.   


During both ends of the walking I was moving very quickly because I did not know where I was going (and overshot the place getting there hence the extra minutes).  But walking fast is not unusual for me and I was wearing my puma sneaker like things, which do not stand out as would my usual sneakers.  Anyway, I woke up the next morning unable to put any pressure on my right foot.  This happened to me once before, last year, when I walked several hours in my flip flops.  I had to hop down the stairs (my space is a very small loft) and wait until Candida brought me breakfast and then pantomimed what was wrong with my foot/ankle.  I kept saying that my 'foot was sick' in Spanish but she seemed to get the point because then Carlos came up to ask if I needed something that I could not understand but he pantomimed a bandage and I said 'elastico' and off he went.  I was afraid he'd come back with gauze but I think between the three of us he bought the right thing.  I wrapped my foot and ankle so that I could at least locomote without cringing and texted Berta to ask if I could hold class on the 0 floor next to the kitchen so that I wouldn't have to hop up the stairs two more flights.  I took a cab, hopped in, and held a class in the noisiest part of the building.  It was a very sad class.  Only two of my regular students were there, and two others--a man in his 40s with very long and wavy hair, wearing a soccer shirt, and a young boy about twelve. The two newcomers knew a bit of English, longhair from having attended four previous sessions with other volunteers and young boy because he was studying it in school.  This made it very difficult for Gloria who is really struggling with the simplest of things but is very motivated to learn.  And she and Johan and I were missing Natalie because with the two of us, one could work directly with the student(s) not getting it, while the other could move things ahead.  


By Thursday I was able to put pressure on my foot for short periods of time but I still wore the compression bandage, meaning I needed to wear my sandals and that's when I really looked out of place, with everyone bundled in jackets. Not that my toes didn't get cold when the sun went down, but it was in the 50s for criminy's sake.  That class went much better.  We were back up on the third floor (meaning 4th) and I had my five most faithful students with me.  I tried another tactic.  Fredd gave me a day-by-day calendar with sayings in Spanish and English, and I brought in a handful and we went through them to see if the translations made sense.  It really entertained everyone when they were senseless.  And I corrected homework--some of it seemed to be from about three or four weeks ago, but who cares.  But for most of the time we watched music videos with lyrics.  All Beatles, all the time.  First I'd play the song with Spanish subtitles.  I know this is against all rules of second language acquisition, but I was teaching to the needs of the class.  Second I played the videos with English subtitles.  Then finally with none.  Then we talked about them.  Lila said she always thought she hated music in English but she realized that it was because she didn't understand what was being said.  Marcos put his ear up against the tinny speaker because he wanted to hear the pronunciation (eech, British!) Gloria kept speaking about her love of John Lennon, Johan focused very closely on the English words to Imagine...and everyone sang All Together Now in English through all three takes.  We could have kept going--we actually got kicked out of the space because it was needed by others.  Before we ended, I asked them to write me the words to the title of Spanish songs they liked so I could find them with English subtitles.  I must have said the wrong thing because I got lyrics instead of titles.  And none of the ones that I could suss out had English subtitles.  Instead, I found that Bon Jovi had recorded many of their hits in Spanish...I found live and studio versions...so I may use them instead.  Anyway, I don't care if I'm violating standards of teaching ESL.  I know that I could not keep a class coming back if I only spoke English.  So while my Spanish is laden with mistakes, if I need to explain something, like 'I, Me, Mine' in Spanish (Berta said "You know this sentence doesn't make sense in Spanish) then I'm going to go right ahead and do it.  


I've become aware of how much I'm flaunting the rules because I've been looking into getting a certificate in TESL.  I'm interviewing for the possibility of doing so this week, so I should have more to say on this subject next time.


Now, as to what I really want to write today--it has to do with Natalie's last day, but after the time of the pictures I posted last week.  After she left my apartment (after cutting off the party-part of my mullet), I checked my email and found that I could meet another potential teacher in Palermo.  I tried calling Natalie so she could wait for me at the subte.  No answer.  I figured I would just go by myself.  While I was standing amidst a huge crowd on the platform she texted me back and said she was on the train but would wait for me at Plaza de Mayo.  By the time my train came, the platform was so thick with people I was sure someone would get pushed on to the tracks.  Instead we surged into the train without an inch to move one direction or another.  Plaza de Mayo was two stops ahead and I realized it was a stupid place for us to meet because we'd have to get back on the train to the combinacion stop of Diagonal Norte / Av 9 Julio.  Nevertheless we found each other amidst total chaos.  The doors kept opening and closing (good thing too because first I jumped off, then I thought she said she was on the train, jumped back on, saw her outside my car, jumped back out).  The reason this was happening was that there were marchers with flags and poles keeping the doors open.  Remember we had to have the going away party early because Los Pibes was going to march?  Well it was that march that these people were going to and they were making the trains even more crowded than usual because of the banners and such.  We never figured out why they were messing with the doors...but we decided to go above ground to catch a bus or cab since it was overly crowded down below and there is something about being in a tunnel or train in a crowd that creates a sense of never being able to move again.  We went above ground where things were even more chaotic.  People with banners and poles.  Families and children sitting on the curb eating sandwiches.  Traffic nearly at a standstill.  We walked toward where we might catch one of several buses to Palermo Soho, but they didn't seem to be moving either and even had they been, they were as crowded as the trains.  And of course just finding one isn't enough--you have to be at the exact stop or the bus won't stop.  Or if it is stopped, it won't open the doors.  So we wended across Av 9 Julio, made easier because most of the traffic was at a standstill because of the marchers.  We kept heading toward where we might be able to find a bus.  The march was not very organized--small pockets of this group or that, but no long sustained this side or that side.  Perhaps that came later.  These marches are frequent and disruptive, and on this day, frenetic.  I could not tell what was being protested...everyone had argentine blue and white.  We found the right street and headed down it after ascertaining where the stop was from a shopkeeper who was looking out at the gridlock with amusement.  It's like the leader never showed up but the little groups were going to march anyway, in whatever direction they happened to be headed.


As we passed back over the corner we'd just come from, I saw something that has haunted me all week.  A woman, a carbonera (sp?), was sitting on the corner going through garbage bags looking for her cardboard, glass, and plastic.  Right next to her were two boxes, which I assumed were for her collection.  Then out of one of the boxes popped an adorable dark haired, dark eyed, dirt smeared boy of about three, laughing and laughing because he was certain that he'd scared me.  He ducked back down again and repeated his game with the next person walking by.  So I peeked into the other box where a much younger child, equally dirty but swathed in blankets, lay sleeping.  This is where mama kept the kids while she worked.  Perhaps someone with a cart would come by later to pick them up.  I don't know.  But it would be nearly impossible to carry the two boxes of living children and a bag of 'gold'--the garbage that could be traded for pesos alone.  


I started thinking about the conversation I'd had with A. weeks earlier about how presumptuous it was of me to think that the cartoneros were not happy.  How I was imposing my own (capitalist) standards of happiness upon others.  Now, that's easy for him to say too since he's also obviously lived a life of 'have' instead of 'have-not'.  But, this little boy seemed happier than many petulant kids I know who have to have the latest greatest thing they just saw on television.  And this mother was able to carry her kids to work.  On the other hand, I thought about arguments I'd heard justifying slavery in our own country--hear them singing in the fields and all that.  


I'm definitely troubled by the caboneros.  I have difficulty thinking about them riding a special train with no windows, coming from the outlying villas into town so that they can do the work of picking through garbage.  Marginalized but sanctioned, I guess?  Happy?  Those kids I saw weeks ago in the cardboard little enclave were just being kids---can my buddy come out to play--?  This is the life they know.  What's wrong with being happy with it?


But then I think about justifications made in history about other groups, marginalized, enslaved, banished.  Look at the children, they look happy.  Listen to the people, they're singing in harmony.  What's different?  I agree that I should not impose my idea of happiness upon others, but it makes it difficult to know when to stop and help.  Was Gloria any less happy because she had not been to a restaurant until Natalie's going away party?  Definitely not.  What about the family I saw this morning as I crossed Av 9 de Julio, encamped on one of the wide islands in between the two sets of four lanes.  They had a huge cardboard box, bottom up, a ratty mattress, socks laid out on the grass.  Two kids were playing with sticks, maybe light sabers, maybe swords, maybe just sticks, as the man and woman examined items from huge plastic bags.  I read that the cabaneros are territorial and perhaps it is sometimes necessary to take in a promising haul without sorting through it first.  I don't know.  The thing the man was inspecting looked like a metal piece from the inside of a vehicle.  The woman was focused on separating her glass bottles from plastic.  But the kids--playing with nothing but their imagination and props...they were squealing and falling down laughing just like I remember doing when playing make believe.  


Maybe it is the seeming lack of possibility that bothers me.  But is that because of my misguided belief in a world where anything is possible?  It's my teaching guide, but I don't want set up a world of wanting in people happy with what already is.  It's not the mark I want to leave--longing for something that may never be in reach.     


This week has already begun so I'll stop for now.  I'm walking a new working people neighborhood so I'll write about that next time.


Chau.