Today I finally feel like I am on the road back to perfect health...or my normal state of health, which is not exactly perfect, but is functional.
I had a good sleep and spent a nice morning waking up with tea and fooling around on the computer. I put some finishing touches on my lesson for Friday and responded to a few e-mails. Then I walked to school, but because we were meeting at a Korean restaurant, I was able to leave later and stopped at a cafe on the way for a coffee and to do some homework.
I went to a cafe that Larry recommended. He said it is the best coffee in Buenos Aires. It was. The coffee here is unusually bad. I'm not really a coffee drinker, but I can tell the difference between a good cup of coffee and a bad one. When I have to put sugar in coffee to drink it, it is bad. Anyway, this cafe is nice and I had a great cup of cafe con leche and two delicious medialunas while I listened to jazz. After I got tired of that, I headed towards the Korean restaurant, but still had time to kill, so I decided to explore the neighborhood a little. I was a few blocks from school but there were some streets I have never walked down. So, I walked.
Suddenly, I came across a street that was blocked off to traffic and there were people in the middle of the street with large movie cameras. I thought they were filming a movie and I would stumble across Brad Pitt or something like that. Instead, it was a commemoration of the 13th anniversary of the bombing of an Israeli organization where 85 people were killed. They had a huge facade on the building that stands now where this cultural center used to stand. The facade was a photograph of the building that used to be there. It was quite haunting. They also had a huge banner with the names of all of those who were killed. I snapped a few photos and then went on and walked through Once, the neighborhood where my school is located and where there are lots of shops selling cheap trinkets, jewels, costumes, fabric, etc.
Lunch was good and it was fun having class in a restaurant. Claudia tried to make it a real class, but with us, it is impossible. She gave each one of us instructions. Mine said that I should try to initiate a conversation and engage in conversation with a balance of listening and speaking. It then told me that my role was to try to relate everything that was said to the issue of money and capitalism. I also had to guess what instructions, if any, my classmates had. It sounded like it would be fun.
Our homework was to read about paranormal ocurrances, and that was what Claudia wanted us to discuss. I had no idea how to relate that to capitalism. Somehow we got on the subject of quantum physics, Cynthia spoke about China (of course) and I don't think anyone accomplished what was written on their little piece of paper.
After the restaurant we went back to the cafe where I had been before lunch. Needless to say, I was buzzing after that.
When we left the cafe, it was a beautiful springlike day. The sun was shining brightly but at an angle as it was heading towards the horizon. This shed a beautiful bright golden light on everything and by the time I had gotten to Santa Fe, I decided I was going to walk to the museum, even though I wasn't sure where it was.
It was beautiful walking through the Recoleta with this golden afternoon sunlight. I took lots of pictures and found myself at the Recoleta cemetary. I went in because I thought it was feeding time for the hundreds of cats who lived there and wanted a photo of them, but there were just a few hanging around and not hoards like when someone comes and feeds them. I walked around the cemetary which also had this beautiful light and great shadows and took lots of pictures. I found Evita's tomb again and thought I'd get a better picture than when I went there with our school group, but there was a big crowd around it and it was impossible to get close.
After leaving the cemetary I walked over to the Museum of Belles Artes - the Fine Art Museum. They had a nice collection of Western art and some interesting Argentine stuff. It was a small museum and it was crowded, but I didn't stay long because it was such a beautiful day outside and I also wanted to get to the museum of modern art - MALBA. It was a nice walk through Palermo to get to the MALBA and it was a very nice, modern museum in a beautiful building. The sun had just about set and you could see the beautiful twilit sky through the many windows in the museum. Again, I rushed through the museum because it was so nice outside. I liked the art and the museum, but it was crowded (because today was a free day), and after I was told I couldn't take pictures, I saw no reason to linger.
I went down to the cafe and went outside and found a table overlooking the park. But when I looked at the menu and saw the prices, I decided I didn't want to hang out there and got up and walked a little more. I came to the next street which was Salguero, and I remembered it from the confusing episode with Hernan. So I knew where I was and walked up Salguero towards where Hernan almost didn't meet a few weeks ago.
As I found Persicco which is the same as Volta and then passed Nucha, which is the name of a cafe and not a street, I had to smile at the confusion over the text messages and lack of cell phone credits. I texted Hernan, simply saying "Nucha", and thinking that he would say, "What?", and I would say, "What's the matter, can't you read text messages?"
But instead I didn't hear right back from him, so I kept walking to see if I would end up on Santa Fe. I walked through some interesting neighborhoods and by now it was dark, so I put my camera away and stopped taking photos. As I got close to Puerreydon and Santa Fe where I knew there was a pizzeria that probably served empanadas, Hernan called me. I spoke to him in Spanish and he said, "I'm in public, do you mind if we speak in English?" - I don't really know what that was about, but we spoke in English. He told me he just finished exercising and asked if I wanted to meet for dinner. He said he'd be home in about an hour.
So I went to this restaurant on the corner of Puerreydon and Santa Fe and had two meat empanadas and a glass of wine while I tried to figure out this homework for Martin for tomorrow. He sang two songs for us on Tuesday, which were actually very nice, and were related to this theme of popular saints (not recognized by the Vatican, but venerated the same as those who are) and folk religion. These two songs were related to that theme.
I first took out my highlighter and highlighted every word I didn't understand because I know that if the percentage of unknown words in a text is high, then the text is too difficult to comprehend - this seemed the case with this song and I was very pissed off that we had to answer these questions about a song that was beyond the level of our comprehension. But once I highlighted these words, I figured, since I had time to kill, I would look them up in the dictionary. I have a Spanish-Spanish dictionary, and it is interesting to look up words and see if I understand the definitions.
Anyway, this became an interesting process for me, and even though I was still pissed at Martin for giving us this homework, I felt myself beginning to understand the song bit by bit.
Hernan texted me and said he was at home and I paid my bill and packed up and went to his place.
I decided to stop at his chino and get a bottle of wine and also stopped at a little shop across the street from his building that sells Middle Eastern and Armenian food to go. They had hummus, dolmas, roasted eggplant, dolmas, baklava and other yummy stuff. I got a package of dolmas and some baklava.
Hernan helped me with my homework and when we were finished I understood the song better, but Hernan didn't understand the instructions we had for homework, so I ditched it. I don't really care any more about this homework stuff - it is so frustrating and if I try to tell Martin why it was difficult for me he won't hear me and will rationalize why he gave us the assignment, so I'm just not going to bother anymore.
Then Hernan took me to Palermo Hollywood to Green Bamboo, a Vietnamese restaurant. I was expecting a nice place because when we tried to go there before, he couldn't even get a reservation, but I was also expecting a nice Vietnamese restaurant like I know Vietnamese restaurants - you know, something evocative of Indochine with bamboo, wicker, ceiling fans, and Vietnamese women dressed in traditional outfits. I forgot that this is Buenos Aires and Hernan is really a hip guy.
Green Bamboo was not like any Vietnamese Restaurant I've ever been to. There were no Vietnamese people there. It was in an old building and was fairly dimly lit with a large bar and a small room off to the side of the main room. There was a large painting of Ho Chi Minh, which you would never see in a Vietnamese restaurant in the states. When we got there, someone had to open the door for us and told us we'd have a short wait (someone also opened the door for us at Te Matare Ramirez - I guess these restaurants want to appear exclusive). We sat at the bar and had a frozen mojito, which was really yummy, but after the wine at Hernan's, I was starting to get a little drunk. The smells of the food made me really hungry.
While we were at the bar, Hernan read me the menu, which was bilingual. Even though I could understand most of the Spanish, the English translations helped. I didn't bring my glasses with me. But unlike at Te Matare Ramirez, this time I was able to hear him and understand what was on the menu.
After waiting a bit and soaking up the hip atmosphere (if you check the website via the link about you'll see what I mean by the atmosphere), we were escorted to our table.
A young couple sat next to us and lots of hip, young people were eating and sitting at the bar. I was probably the oldest person in there. The music was hip and the little dolls with bobble heads on the bar were hip, the paintings on the wall, which were not the usual paintings of Vietnam I'm used to seeing in Vietnamese restaurants, were hip. It was a great experience and I knew I wasn't in for meat and potatoes. Even though I don't consider myself particularly hip, and was dressed in my dirty jeans, sneakers and t-shirt that I had been wearing all day, I felt very comfortable there. Again, I wonder why I feel comfortable in hip joints here, and not in the US.
We started with calamari and shrimp. The calamari were fried and breaded and came with three sauces - a hot sauce that was not very hot, a lime sauce that was very limey and a sweet and sour sauce that was not that good. The dish was ok, but not great, but it was not meat and potatoes. The shrimp were deep fried with a coating of sesame seeds, and I don't know how they were able to do that. They were covered with sesame seeds. They came with the same mediocre sweet and sour sauce.
Hernan ordered seafood coconut curry for both of us. We both got coconuts filled to the brim with seafood curry in coconut sauce. It was almost pure seafood - fish, shrimp, scallops and mussles. It was very rich, and quite good. There was some rice in the bottom of the coconut, which reminded me of rice pudding by the time I got there because it was soaked in coconut milk. It wasn't spicy, but had flavors of lemon grass, coriander and ginger.
From there we walked back to Hernan's place through Palermo Hollywood, Palermo Viejo until we got to Palermo Soho, where he lives. It was a beautiful night and I needed to walk off that dinner.
We had a few bites of the baklava I bought at the place across the street, which was very rich and very sweet, before I hopped in a cab to come home.
It was a very full day and I can honestly say I don't feel sick anymore.
Tomorrow I have a tango class and then class with Martin in which I haven't finished the homework for and am resenting being put in the position where I had homework I didn't understand. I'm not sure how that will all work out, but I guess it's time for bed.
I'll post some of the photos I took today on my photo blog when I have time tomorrow or later this weekend.
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