Hola!

Vote for Annise Parker! I did.

I love voting. Our friend Andres came over Thursday night so we could edit his presentation for his English class, and he made fun of me for being so excited about sending in my ballot. Whatever.  The other day I had to explain the Electoral College system to our Colombian friends. They said that that is a quilombo, which means "big ole mess." That was depressing.

Also, Friday morning we woke up, and it looked like this.

Its definitely supposed to be Spring now.  I'm really tired of snow.

Our friend Dayna came to visit this week. She's living in Rio de Janeiro right now with a grant to work with kids and teenagers in Favellas. It was very interesting to hear about. She also had some good craft ideas for me to use.

She got here on Friday wearing a tank top and sandals. Rio's weather is a little different then Bariloche's.

Saturday, we took the bus to El Bolson. The description from Lonely Planet:

It’s not hard to see why the hippies started flocking to El Bolsón back in the ’70s. It’s a mellow little village for most of the year, nestled in between two mountain ranges. When summer comes, it packs out with Argentine tourists who drop big wads of cash and disappear quietly to whence they came.
In the last 30 years El Bolsón has been declared both a non-nuclear zone and an ‘ecological municipality’ (are you getting the picture yet?). What’s indisputable is that just out of town are some excellent, easily accessible hikes that take in some of the country’s (if not the world’s) most gorgeous landscapes.

Anyway, on Saturdays they have a big hippy fair. But apparently hippies don't really like to come out in the rain, so it was smaller when we went. Still really fun though.

Weird gnome sculptures seemed to be a popular theme.  Dayna and I both bough earrings and I got some homemade jam. El Bolson is famed for its ability to grow soft fruits. It has a "microclimate," so its warmer then the surrounding area. I don't really know how that happens, but I'm glad it does.

 

And, Zig and I finally bought a mate! Nicolas said that if I was ever going to invite Argentinians over to our apartment I had to get one.  Now we can really try to fit in. Here's a link.

Nicolas taught Daphne and me how to serve and drink mate as part of class. I wouldn't dare do it for an Argentinean though. My skills are minimal.

I don't know how accurate the wikipedia article is. What I do know is that it seems like the "proper" way to drink mate is very controversial.  For example, when we first tried it, Nicolas let us put sugar in it because he said sometimes extranjeros hate bitter mate so much that they never drink it again. He said its better to ease into it.  I told Angel that we drank it with sugar, and he got upset. He shook his head with disappointment at me and said, "Mate es AMARGO." After I explained that Nicolas didn't drink it with sugar himself and that it was only for gringos, he seemed more at peace with the situation.

Nicolas said that depending on the region, people drink it hot, cold, with orange juice, or other herbs mixed in.  And that people have really strong feelings about which way is the right way. I read somewhere that Argentineans eat more sugary pastries per capita then any other people. Sol told me that Argentineans consume 50,000 alfajores per day. If thats true, maybe its to balance out how bitter the mate is.  I know I'm a newby, but I can't drink it without an alfajor-licious accompaniament.

When we talked about Mate in class, Nicolas gave us homework to talk in Spanish about a tradition from our country. Neither of us could think of one like mate. So Daphne told about Sinterklaas, which is a scary Dutch version of Santa who steals children and takes them away to Spain with the help of little boys in blackface. I talked about the Rodeo.

Ok, back to El Bolson. After we had perused the entire fair, we went to the tourist office and asked them what else we could do. They pointed us in the direction of the bird museum and a cerveceria.

The bird museum seemed to be located in someone's house and cost 5 pesos. We didn't want to pay to see stuffed birds. So I took pictures of Dayna and Zig pretending to be birds outside.

The cerveceria was much more successful. I think that makes my 6th brewery tour in the last 2 years. From now on I'm skipping the tour and going straight to the free samples.

Dayna and I were trying to figure out what makes some places have high concentrations of craft breweries. Bariloche has 4 or 5 I think, plus many more in the rest of Patagonia. Colorodo has a bazillion. I suggested that it might depend on the ability to grow hops, and she said that not everywhere that can grow hops does.  So we decided its not the ability thats important, but the WILL to produce tasty tasty beverages. Maybe thats why every highway in the Czech Republic is surrounded by huge fields of hops.  Why waste that space growing vegetables???

Next we went back to the fair for some pie.  Then we saw a bridge.

Dayna recently got her face pierced in Rio. They are very popular in Brazil. BUT, they didn't give her a big enough stud to account for swelling, so we had to go to a piercing place to get it changed out. We thought the El Bolson hippies probably new a thing or two about that.  All the pictures of people's peircings gave me the willies.  I had a hard enough time getting my ears pierced. Aren't my parents lucky I'm too afraid of pain and cauliflower ear to get peircings?! Zig took this picture.

There was a church, and a store with a giant foam alfajor hanging outside. Then we went home.

Now, Dayna is mostly a vegetarian, which means that she used to be a vegetarian and doesn't cook meat at home but will eat it when people cook for her or for cultural experience purposes. Thus, she wanted to go to a parilla.  She looks frightened, doesn't she?

Sunday we hiked up half of Cerro Otto, but were stopped by the slushy melting snow. We got some good views though.

I showed Dayna around the Centro. We got a lady to take a good tourist picture of us with Abuela Goye, original Swiss Bariloche settler and current chocolate shop mascot.

Monday I went to play with the kids in the morning, and after we went to the Llao Llao hotel, which is a luxury resort. We wanted to have tea there, which is a recommended tourist activity, but the doorman wouldn't let us in and said we had to make reservations. Don't they KNOW who we ARE? Just kidding. We were def underdressed too, but it was raining.

That night we went to Angel and Valeria's for dinner because Dayna wanted meet our friends and to know what Argentineans like to cook at home. They made really tasty shish kabobs and mashed potatoes. I forgot my camera.

Tuesday Dayna went hiking a Lago Gutierrez because I had to go play with the niños.  That night, she cooked us some Brazillian food she had brought with her. And made caiparinhas, which are kind of like Brazillian margaritas. They were really tasty, and much more like margaritas then what they have at the Mexican food places here.  This food is called tapioca flour. She said it's really common in street food in Rio. She uses it to make sort of tacos.

Wednesday Dayna took a bus back to Buenos Aires where she'll be for a couple of days. She's probably still on that bus actually.

Saturday is Halloween and they don't celebrate it here and that makes me really sad. I may just dress up by myself and bake. We'll see.

Chau!

happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me.....

Hola!!!

Friday was my birthday, so I have been a bad blogger.

Thursday night, our friend Pierre (he's from France) invited Zig to play fútbol with this group he found out by the Centro Atomico. After, we went to his house to have dinner.  He was here for 5 weeks, so instead of staying in a hostel, he found a guy to stay with.  He's the one on the right sitting on that white thing. This guy was ridiculous.

He is from California, and left the US 6 years ago and has never returned. He "hates" the US and wants to get Argentinean citizenship. Except he seemed to be making no efforts to immerse himself in Argentinean culture at all. He spoke only English to all the Argentinean people at his house, and had a portable radio with a screen in it so he could watch movies while he was camping. How very authentically Argentinean of him. NOT.

Anyway, he was amazing dinner entertainment. He seemed to have smoked way too much Californian medicinal herbs. A few paraphrased quotes:

"DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could cross a mango and an avocado??? That would be the BEST SALSA EVER." (As dad pointed out, you can do that in a blender. No genetic modification required.)

"DUDE, we need furniture in our house (see above picture and note lack of furniture). I'm totally going to install a jacuzzi in our living room." "What about your landlord," asks his friend. "He won't notice. I'll pour the concrete on cardboard so its removable! And I can drill a hole through the wall so it drains to the outside. Its going to be awesome!"  So then I decided to try to be helpful, "Well you should find the studs in the wall so you don't have trouble drilling."  "Oh there aren't any studs. Its a brick wall."

THEN, he said "The only problem is how I'm going to heat the water." THAT'S the only problem with this plan?? Your going to try to drill a hole through a brick wall without damaging it. You own no power tools. Or regular tools for that matter.

We were watching one of his extreme snowboarding videos on his tiny radio screen.  "DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could jump out of a plane in one of those squirrel suits with skis and then land and ski down a mountain. Its never been done before, but its totally possible if you had those flexible skis. You could get up to like 250 miles per hour in one of those suits!!!"

Zig pointed out later that his story didn't make any sense because the maximum velocity of a human being falling out of an airplane couldn't be more then 150 miles per hour.  I pointed out that actually, his story didn't make any sense because you would definitely DIE if you slammed into a mountain at either 120 or 250 miles per hour. Aren't physicists cute.

"DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could attach jet engines to a bi-plane. Then it would be super powerful, but also INFINITELY slow!!"

What? Ok, moving on....

Anyway, Pierre made some really tasty empanadas filled with French style vegetables. They were like ratatouille empanadas. We have since recreated them in our house.  I like them better then the other kind we've been making because they don't only contain cheese. I do love cheese though.

At midnight, Zig wished me a happy birthday. All of California guy's friends heard and they sang to me!! It was really nice. Then they asked me how old I was and called me a nena (which means little baby girl) because apparently they were all 30. I'd rather be a nena then a 30 year old with no furniture in his house.

Friday was my birthday!!! Zig had to go to class in the morning, so I stayed in my pajamas until 3 in the afternoon, as I usually try to do on my birthday.  Then when Zig came back, we went to a chocolate shop to have lots of cake and use the internet, courtesy of Neil and Kris Thomas (thanks!). We had three kinds: apple tart, some flaky dulce de leche thing, and chocolate mousse.  And two hot chocolates. The waiter practically called us fat when we ordered. I forgot to take a picture until we'd eaten most of it already. Here's the aftermath:

That evening we went to one of the few non-parilla restaurants in town, also on Neil and Kris Thomas (thanks again!!). Its called Tinto Bistro and apparently Queen Maxima's brother works there (she's the Queen of the Netherlands who is from Argentina).  We ordered a kind of random assortment of things that we hadn't gotten to eat in a while. Its going to sound weird, but it was really tasty.

Appetizer: Calamari and shrimp with wasabi mayonnaise (can't make it through a meal without that mayonnaise).

Salad: I had carpaccio (mmm tasty raw meat) and Zig had ceviche.

Main course: I had seafood cazuela (like stew) and Zig had chicken curry. Random.

Look at that plating! I miss scallops.

We also had pink champagne, as is my birthday custom. At the end, they brought us dessert with a candle in it! They didn't sing though, for which I was glad.

Another example of some fancy plating.

They also provided crayons for coloring on the paper table cloth.  I drew a flower!

Saturday, we went to a party that had nothing to do with my birthday but Zig said we could pretend that it did. It was at a house near Lago Gutierrez, which is very pretty.

The party was a hamburger asado. Look at all those topping options!! Most of the sauces contained mayonnaise of course.

We discovered that you can also buy LARGE bags of mustard and ketchup at the average Bariloche grocery store.

Yes, that bag is in fact the same size as the brita filter behind it.

All of our friends from the Centro Atomico were having this party so they could do "Amigo Invisible" which is like Secret Santa but not at Christmas.  We were not involved in the present giving because we weren't here when they drew names. It was really fun though and a good way to practice my Spanish because they had to describe the person they were going to give the gift too and everyone had to guess.

After they gave all the presents, the manly men played fútbol. I was told it was boys only. I'm sure I was heart broken. Zig tried to get me to hold his beer though, so I drank it. I'm nobody's beer girl.

Sunday morning we finally made my birthday cake. Red Velvet, my favorite!  Nicholas helped me find where to get red food coloring.  It took two tries.

First Attempt: Epic Fail.

Our oven heats from a fire in the bottom and has no temperature gauge. Also, I didn't use enough food coloring and we only have a clear cake pan. We had to scrape off all the sides because they were so badly burnt.  Also, we have yet to find buttermilk in the grocery store, but Cooks Illustrated says you can use 3 parts plain yogurt and 1 part milk.  We also have yet to find plain yogurt except for Activia, and I didn't want laxative cake. So we used vanilla. That may have contributed to the problem.

 Yuck.

Second Attempt: SUCCESS!

Even with poor buttermilk substitution, this cake was a vast improvement! I used ALL the rest of the food coloring, so it came out quite red. Zig and I ate half of it by ourselves and then has some people over to eat the rest. I'm a bad sharer. Once in Prague, I hid an entire cake under my bed so I didn't have to share. It was the famous St. Mark's Methodist Church Mrs. Massey Valentine's Day Banquet Coconut Cake. Aunt Suzanne mailed it to me. They wouldn't have appreciated its significance anyway.

 Zig got me candles and sang happy birthday!

Also, we lined the pan with tin foil so it only almost burned on the bottom. I outsmarted the oven.

Here’s a picture of Helga being weird.

 

 

Monday, after our major cake baking success, we decided to make banana bread. It didn’t even take two tries! Mmm tasty.

Monday afternoon, I went with Graciela to visit the community center where I will volunteer every Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon while I’m here. My first day was Tuesday, so I brought crepe paper flowers to make. There are four kids ages 9, 11, 13, and 13. We decorated the classroom!!
 

Apparently, crepe paper flowers do not take long enough to make.  When we ran out of activities, the 9-year old girl started giving me a hard time. For example, “Where do babies come from???” Ask your mother. “How old are you?” 23. “Jovencita!!” Your 9 years old!! Ridiculous.  Then she started calling the 11-year old girl a nena. She also figured out that if she talked fast enough, I had no idea what she was saying.  She’s quite the character.

If anyone knows of any crafts that will entertain 9-year old little girls for a full hour and a half, please let me know.

Last night, Zig and I decided to do some food related research for when my parents come.  As food related research can be a little expensive, I charged it. They had salmon which is my favorite food and I haven’t had it in ages and I got spoiled with good food on my birthday and you always want pictures of food and Zig made me do it!! Thanks mom and dad!

We had venison carpaccio, which was... gamey. Venison is a Lake District specialty apparently.

 

It actually wasn’t fantastic. The salmon was kind of weird. The restaurant wins though for looking like a hobbit hole.  I think I have a picture of the outside up on one of my earlier posts. Here’s the inside:

Dessert was pretty awesome though. Mmm chocolate.

Tomorrow our friend Dayna from Rice is coming to stay with us. She’s been living in Rio. We have an excuse to do some touristy things!! We’re going to a hippy market on Saturday and probably hiking some places the rest of the week.  We’ll see. I’ll take plenty of pictures.


Chau!

"That is SO not what an omellete is."

Yesterday we went to breakfast and ordered omelettes. This is what they gave us.

If you think that looks like a giant pile of french fries covered in greasy ham, you would be correct.

I quote Lisa in my title.

I have discovered that at least in Bariloche, restaurants have a real knack for negating any relatively healthy qualities of a food. A sandwich?? Lets use crustless white bread and cover it in mayonnaise. Better yet, lets put chicken fried steak in it!  Orange juice? Whatever, we have Tang. Pasta? If its not drowned bechemel sauce then its not worth having. No vegetables allowed.  My arteries are crying.  I just don't understand how all these people are so skinny.

Buenos Aires, Part Three: Return to Buenos Aires

We stayed in Palermo for the last three nights of our trip. The hostel was REALLY weird. Our room was through a hole in the ceiling and was giant. It had a really good view.

That night we had sushi. One of my favorite foods. A food not available in Bariloche. Bariloche has steak. We had sushi three more times. It was really good.

Friday morning we walked around Palermo and saw the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, or the MALBA. It was my favorite thing we saw in Buenos Aires. I snuck pictures of some art. There weren’t any signs that said I couldn’t.

We also encountered a phenomenon Lonely Planet says is common in Palermo, the paseoperros, or professional dog walker. We saw two of them.

 

That's a lot of dog poop.

Friday afternoon Zig had a meeting with the Fulbright Commission, Argentina branch. I took a nap in the waiting room.  Zig said the meeting was really funny because the lady seemed to have no idea how long he has been here, what his project is, or even that they had already sent him money.

Friday night, our Italian friend Davide arrived at the hostel. He had one night in Buenos Aires on his way back to Italy. He was counting down the hours so he could fit in as much partying as possible. Someone invited us to a party. It started at 1am, the usual start time for Argentinean parties.  Zig really thought we were going to go until about 11pm when he got tired.  I suspected that would happen.

Saturday morning we got on the bus to La Boca. Everyone warned us that it would be super dangerous, and that you can’t leave the tourist street, Caminito. We got all prepared to be instantly mugged when exiting the bus. While it certainly wasn’t safe, the tourist street is REALLY touristy. When we arrived and saw five giant tour buses pulling up, we knew there was nothing to be worried about.

 

The Caminito was really pretty. Sol (my other Spanish teacher) said the buildings are painted pretty colors because they used the leftovers from boats painted in the adjacent harbor.  It used to be a slum for Italian immigrants. Now it’s a prime tourist attraction and place to hawk Argentinean souvenirs.

Traveling trick:  Find someone with larger camera than yours to take your picture.  Then they won't steal your dinky one.

Caminito was the home of Benito Quinquela Martin, a famous Argentinean artist who painted scenes of La Boca’s port. The museum was closed, but someone had recreated some of his works on the walls of the Caminito.

Look! It’s Evita and Che Guevera at the same time! Amazing.

This type of house is called a Conventillo. At first, they were houses for the original porteños (the word for people from Buenos Aires). Then those people got rich and moved onto bigger and fancier things, leaving the houses to be divided up into as many rooms as possible for immigrants.

Conventillo is a Lunfardo word. Lunfardo is a type of slang in Buenos Aires. From what I gather, Lunfardo is to Spanish as Ebonics is to English in the sense that just because you speak Spanish doesn’t mean you understand Lunfardo, but you might be able to figure it out. Or like whatever it is they speak in Boston. 

Mafalda was there....

This is the best picture I could get of La Bonbonera out of the bus window (see the blue and yellow thing in the distance?). It’s where the world famous Boca Juniors play. I tried to get Zig to go to a fútbol game (they have tours where they safely shuffle gringos in and out, keeping them away from the violent soccer hooligans), but he was too scared. He said in Mexico they pee in bottles and throw them at you when they get excited, and he didn’t want to have that happen. Wuss.

  

 

For lunch we went to a Hare Krishna restaurant in Palermo. The second one I’ve been too (the first was in Prague), and just as tasty.  I loved the koolaid... just kidding.
 

Next we went to Recoleta. We saw the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which was a really nice museum except that the whole first floor was full of European Art, which was not really what I wanted to see. The second floor was much better and had only Argentinean art.

Behind the museum they have a giant flower... A humongous flower... A gargantuan flower.  It’s really flippin big.

Apparently, it opens and shuts with the sun, and rotates to face the sun depending on the season. It was constructed by Lockheed Martin. That’s pretty sweet.

We saw the Escuela de Derecho, or Law school. Also really big. You can see the flower dwarfed behind it.  They must do some serious stuff in there.

The thing everyone says you’re supposed to do is see Recoleta Cemetary, but by the time we got there we were really tired and didn’t feel like it. So I took I picture through a gate and another of what we could see over the wall. It looked a lot like Pere Lachaise in Paris. Sorry Argentina. Next time. They aren’t going anywhere.

After that we went back to Palermo. It was 8pm. Too early for dinner, so I decided to get my haircut, since obviously haircutting places stay open until 9pm. They put me in one of those dryer things. I don’t know why. Zig thought it was really funny. It was all going really well until the end when the guy started using a strange downward chopping motion with his scissors on sections of my hair. I decided to go with the flow and see what would happen. Nothing good. Now parts of my hair are a lot shorter than the other parts, and not in a cute, layered way. In a weird, a 5 year old cut my hair while I was asleep kind of way. Or like I tried to cut my own hair. It’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not good.  At least I can count on my trusted stylist Robert to fix it when I return to Houston. And I have 8 months to grow it out. I need to start taking vitamins.

  

 

Sunday was our last day. Our bus left at 4:30, so we spent the morning in San Telmo. They have a giant antiques market on Sundays. There was lots of cool stuff, but seeing as I don’t have a house to put it in, I refrained.

Look! Mafalda was here too!!!! She gets around.

San Telmo is the original Buenos Aires, so everything looks real old.  It was built for rich people, but they moved out (I think to Recoleta) because the close quarters were causing disease. So then less rich people moved in.  It’s supposed to be the birthplace of tango as well.

We got home on Monday night and went to get the wee Helguita from Angel and Valeria’s. They made us pizza. It was good.

Also, I discovered that if you click on the pictures on my blog they get a LOT bigger. Sweet.

The End.