Phases

As a group, we´re all experiancing the begining of the end of the initial euphoria. This place is still amazing, but its still takes an hour to get to school, and yeah, it´s really cold for us Arizonans. However, this place must be phenomenal in the spring. A lot of us are getting sore throats, sneezing, and coughing a lot from a combination of the cold, the wine and beer, and the pervasive smoke indoors. For me, I´m still very frustrated with my spanish class. Its very difficult to stay optimistic and focus on how far I have come, when I feel so totally lost at every class. I know already how to conjugate Quiero in the present imperfect ¨yo quiero, tu quieres, etc.¨but I´m just not ready for the se habia caminado which is ¨when I was walking¨and all the crazy tenses. There´s 14 total tense forms for spanish verbs, and the teachers seem hell bent on teaching all of them. Some days are better, but today was just really frustratingly difficult. I cant understand what shes saying, so I dont know what shes trying to teach us.

Sunday, I took a break from everyone. It was another gorgeous day, so I set out early in the morning and walked to the park areas. Theres a zoo, a huge botanical garden overrun by cats, a japanese garden, and a rose garden, all within a huge sprawing area of trees, paths, and benches. Did I mention how amorous these Portenos are? Almost everywhere I go, I see couples arm in arm and making out on park benches. It´s worse than Venice over here. Anyway, everyone was out again that morning, rollerblading, selling stuff on the street, bicycling, walking, and of course, playing soccer.

Jamie arrived monday afternoon. I took the time to do my laundy that day too. Cost about the same as in the states laundromats, around $2 per load to wash and dry. Aldo´s washing his clothes at the washer in the apartment (which takes an 90 minutes) and then he has to hang dry them in the tiny washer-maids closet- attached to the kitchen which takes a day as well.
Jamie flew in from Barcelona where she was interning at EMBT, the firm of Enric Miralles. She came by Barcelona-Atlanta-Santiago-Buenos Aires so she was extremely releaved when Aldo answered the door buzzer downstairs.

That night, we celebrated her arrival by inviting all the undergrads to a dinner party at our apartment. As a graduate of the Larry Perkins School of Culinary Arts I whipped up a batch of spagetti. What a sauce! I started with sauteing some garlic, added two packages of ground beef, and cooked it all togather. WHen it was done, I dumped it all in a massive cookpan, and added an entire green pepper, a whole package of mushrooms, an ample amount of old malbec wine, and a ton of ¨pizza spices¨, and let the whole thing simmer. Served piping hot on the spagetti (a bit overcooked, but oh well) and topped with grated cheese. What a great dinner party, we had bread, tons of wine and beer, a cheese and salami plate, and aldo make a huge mixed salad. The only thing was that we can only seat 6 people at the table and had 12 people there, so a few people sat on the floor and ate on the coffee table. Still, it was great, and I really enjoyed having everyone over there.

Yesterday, Aldo, Jamie, and I walked through the park again, depsite the cool and cloudy afternoon. We walked far enough to the coast that I decided to check out the fishermans club, which seemed kind of interesting as it jutted out into the bay. The place was creepy. It reminded me of something out of an edgar allen poe story, an old building with a tower, at the end of a high wooden pier. The site is bad too. It was at the edge of the local airport, so there was a busy freeway, the airport, and the empty sidewalk, and the sea. Nobody out there. It was low tide so it was all trash filled mud flat around the place, and it was freezing with a wind. That it was dusk didnt add to the charm. You leave the walls of the city behind you, and walk across space over the mudflat to this creepy empty old building. The place was definately eerie. I´m glad I went, but it was just a bad place when we were there. All we did was look at the mud, look at the building, walk back across the pier and hail a cab.

Buenos Aires is a bit like the city in Dark City, its so inwardly focused, theres no real edge to it at all. Theres the airport and stone embankment above the bay on one side, the shipping port, and the botanical garden on the sea side. On the other sides, the city melts into impovershed slums the farther away one gets from the polished and urban city center. A canadian student I met in a bar told me that Buenos Aires was a fiction. It´s a lot more true than she realized. This really isn´t Europe, despite what the portenos will have you believe.

I hope that I don´t sound negative in this lengthy missive- I really do love living down here, and its so complex, I dont even know where to begin unravling this city. There are entire malls and I´ve even seen bars and clubs devoted to design. It´s good that I´m here.

I really do miss people though. I´m goign to try and see what an international calling card costs, although I´ll have to see if I can get to Abu Dhabi. Other than that, I´ll drink a cafe con leche (mini cappuchino) to you and order another round of medialunas.