The New Student

Today I went to Punta Cuore for lunch. I keep getting the same waiter, who is not the one who was friendly the first time I went there, but another guy who has this sexy, raspy voice and was very cool to me at first, but has warmed up considerably. I have been doing my homework a lot there and he always comments on it.

Anyway, today I ordered the "menu ejucativo" - the executive menu. I felt like I deserved to treat myself after the ant invasion and the relapse of this damn cold. For seven dollars, I got a drink - wine, water or soda, a starter a main dish and coffee or tea. I had water without gas, a vegetable stir fry and what I thought was a shrimp salad.

The water was good.

The stir fry was not what I was hoping for - fresh crispy vegetables lightly stir fried with garlic and sesame seeds or something like that - it was a plate of very wilted looking vegetables in too much soy sauce. The vegetables were kind of shredded. It was a very sad plate.

The salad was some sort of fried seafood, I think it was octopus on a bed of rice with corn sprinkled over it, balls of mozzarella cheese and slices of some kind of cheese that were rolled up and had some corn sprinkled inside the cheese rolls. It was the most bizarre salad I've ever had. I should have taken a picture.

I ate the vegetable stir fry and most of the salad, though I left the rice. I have to say, Mexican food wins over Argentine by a landslide. I know in Mexico the rice would have been better, the shrimp would have been shrimp and if all else fails, I could have drowned the whole thing in salsa.

But anyway, as I was sitting there on a side of the restaurant I don't usually sit, I looked out the window and saw this building across the street that I had seen on Buenos Aires Daily, the photo blog I like so much. On BAD, she says it was inspired by the Spanish architect/artist Gaudi. It is a very wild looking building and I was thinking that I might be afraid to actually live there because it's kind of scary looking. The funny thing was that I've walked down this street so many times and never noticed that this building was right there. It's one of the things I am just loving about this trip. There is so much to see and if I had only come for a week or two, I would have missed so much. Even after 6 weeks, I can still look up and see something I've never seen before.

We got a new student in our class. His name is Daniel. He was moved up from the level 6 class because he already knew the grammar. He came yesterday and found out the class was going to a tango concert, to which he replied, "sweet!". Since I didn't go to the concert, I didn't really get to know him, even though I'd seen him around on the field trips.

Anyway, today we had class with Claudia, who I am just adoring. Her class isn't a whole lot more innovative than the other teachers' but she says things that I just love, like, "look at you", or "look at what an interesting question you asked", she is very Buenos Aires, and she cracks me up. She often has to ask me what's funny because I smile a lot in her class.

Well, anyway, today it was me and Nancy and then Daniel showed up. He's one of the kids and is here with the same ripoff program I signed up with. He's staying in the "residence", which I am so glad I'm not in - Nancy, unfortunately went with that deal and she hates it - it's like staying in a college dorm with college students! Nancy told me there is one girl in the residence who is 17 years old and started traveling on her own when she was 14! Nancy said you'd think she'd be mature but in fact she isn't. Her parents must be nuts sending her off like that.

Well, anyway, back to Daniel. He's young and cute and young, and he likes to talk even though he doesn't know what he's saying he just talks for the sake of talking. I didn't mind a whole lot but I noticed that my style of holding back and being aware of how much I talk in comparison to everyone else was completely overwhelmed by his style of "I have to talk!!!!!!" Claudia did a great job of making him give the rest of us an opportunity. I noticed it especially when we listened to a tango and were discussing the lyrics. Daniel kept talking and then Claudia would stop him and say, "let the others have a chance", or "I want to hear what the two of you think about what he's saying". At one point, she specifically called on me to comment on what Daniel had said.

The funny thing is that I had no idea what he was talking about. I don't know if it was because he wasn't making any sense, or for some other reason, I just wasn't able to follow the discussion. I thought about how some of my students must feel when one student is talking to me and they don't understand what is being said. I've experienced this phenom a lot in classes here, and it's really good for me to notice it.

We had these kind of mindless fill in the blank exercises for homework that was due today. I was proud that I did it all, but Nancy didn't finish hers. Woops! The very first one was an article by some intellectual that Claudia said she had as a teacher for literary criticism or something like that. Apparently this woman had criticised the sport of soccer and got lots of letters. This article was her counter-attack. It was easy to fill in the missing prepositions, but it was more difficult to understand the article. What I liked about it was that she made reference to the dictatorship and that gave us an opportunity to talk about it more in class.

I don't know why I am so fascinated by this dictatorship - that and the peso crash of 2001, are both such recent history and yet there is this totally mysterious, almost mythical air surrounding both for me. I keep asking, "How could that happen?"

So, the interesting thing about the discussion today was that Claudia said a lot of people didn't know what was happening. A lot of it had to do with the fact that the media was not reporting what was happening and families who had people who were disappeared were not getting any information about the disappearances. If you heard that someone had disappeared, it was always shrouded in mysterious circumstances, such as there had been some sort of confrontation or the person was criminal or something like that.

The article made mention of this because in 1978 when Argentina won the World Cup, which was hosted here, the dictatorship and disappearances were in full motion and the world was aware of what was happening, yet they looked the other way and ignored it, hosting the World Cup here. I think that is when the Madres' bravery became so apparent, and in spite of threats from the government, they continued to march in the Plaza de Mayo and be interviewed by foreign journalists (but I have to research that, it is all speculation by me at this point).

Anyway, it was fun discussion and because Daniel was too young to know anything about any of this (I think he was born after the dictatorship had collapsed), he kept quiet.

After class, I walked over to Santa Fe. It was a little warmer today than the past week, and it was nice to walk again. When I walk, I get to continually look up and discover these magnificent old buildings. I really like walking after class because rush hour is just beginning and the sun is setting and there is this wonderful energy in the air as people are rushing to pick their kids up from school, go to the supermarket or go home.

I stopped at Volta and had a pot of tea and a little cake before walking down Santa Fe.

I keep looking for something to buy and even though I like the clothes in the windows and some of the shoes I've seen, I just have not been inspired by anything enough to whip out the plastic for it. I went into one store to look at shoes they had in the window. The sales people can be kind of aggressive sometimes, which can be kind of fun because I get to speak Spanish (I always tell my students to go shopping if they can't find anyone else to practice their English with), but in this particular store, they just ignored me. It was odd and I wondered if it was because this store was some fancy designer or something. But anyway, I went in, looked at the shoes and decided not to buy them and the only one who acknowledged me was the security guard.

I walked past a CD shop which is always playing great tango and decided to stop in and look. It's kind of a kiosk and is open to the street - they sell candy and stuff like that, but have CDs and DVDs lining one wall. I first looked at some Karaoke they had. I'm looking for some of the songs I like to sing in Spanish, but then I saw a Tango Instructional DVD. I had seen one in a CD shop on Florida Street and was planning on buying one. There is an all-tango TV station that I like to watch when it's on, and it really helps me to see steps explained and broken down. Well, as I was fishing in my bag for my glasses so I could read this DVD case, the sales clerk came up and asked me if I was looking for a good tango instructional DVD. I said I was and he took me to the back of the store and went behind the counter and showed me one. It was a two DVD set and sold for about 20 bucks. I know that the Metronome in San Francisco, where I take dance classes, has advertised a DVD set that is much more expensive. And hey, this is from the birthplace of tango (I think).

Then I saw that there was a Carlos Gardel CD on the counter and picked that up to look at it. The clerk showed me another one that he said was better. I am listening to it now. It's really great. It is definitely music from another time. Anyway, then he asked me if I liked Electronic Tango, and I said I did, and he showed me a 2 CD set. He put one of the discs on and it was really great. The set is an anthology of electronic tango and I thought would be a great way to listen and find some groups that I really like. But, I decided to be cautious and first go with the DVD and the Gardel CD. I probably will go back and get this electronic tango set.

The ant invasion continues but it has been reduced significantly. Nancy said orange oil works well. So I peeled an orange and tried to squeeze the oil out of the rind in strategic places where the ants seem to be coming in from. It's true, they don't like it and avoid it. They also don't like the black pepper. I'm glad, because I don't like flushing them down the shower drain.

Hernan is coming over later this evening. His cousin is visiting him from Corrientes, another province that is somewhere up North or West or Northwest. He thinks she is in town for plastic surgery and also has a boyfriend here. She sounds like a trip. He sent me a text that said, "my place is a disaster with these women", so I guess maybe there is more than one person staying with him. He then asked if he could come by around 10 p.m., which makes me think he wants to stay here to escape a little bit.

Well, folks, I think I have managed to include just about everything I've done today. I was trying to keep my blog entries focused on a specific subject and keep them short, but it's really hard to do that when every day is filled with so many normally mundane things that here take on a new life - eating lunch, buying tea, etc.

Stay tuned as the thrilling adventures continue. Tomorrow I'm going to the drugstore to buy Q-tips!