¡Hola!

Zig is sitting here, so I could get him to tell me how to make the computer do Spanish punctuation. ¡¡¡¡Muy bien!!!!

I am currently in a cerveceria. With wifi. Apparently, cervecerias, where they make cerveza artesanal, are very common in Patagonia. Lucky me. I am having the Kolsch, which is quite tasty. I will come back here often. For wifi of course.

I have learned several things while sitting here: #1, Apparently Argentineans who go to cervecerias like the Rolling Stones. In the last 20 minutes they have played Wild Horses, Ruby Tuesday, and currently, You Can't Always Get What You Want. #2, Apparently, Argentinean women in cervecerias do not drink cerveza. They drink daquiris. Or dakiris in Español.  #3, Argentians don't just eat mayonaiise. In the condiment selection, there is also Salsa Golf. Which is a mix of mayonnaise and ketchup.

Also, this place is my new favorite place because their paper place settings have a picture of my favorite beer. Shiner Bock. They don't actually serve Shiner here, but use it as an example of excellent Bock beer, comparing it to their own Doppelbock. I will have to try it. I'm sure it will come up lacking.

News in the triste column: Last night Zig left his computer sitting on top of our dinky orange television. Helga likes to jump on said television, and this morning knocked his computer to the floor. Its pretty much fine, but the cd drive now makes weird grinding noises and doesn't read cds. Muy triste.

Music update: Beast of Burden, Emotional Rescue, and Jumpin Jack Flash. Maybe its a greatest hits cd. Except songs by other bands play in between.

Repaso de la semana:

I have been taking Spanish classes. My teacher se llama Nicholas, y él es porteño. That means he is from Buenos Aires. My spanish is muy mejorada. My grammer is still really terrible. It makes Nicholas laugh.


I made friends at the Spanish school. They are named Serena and Steve.  Here they are.

The problem with making friends at a Spanish school for tourists is that they are only here for a couple of weeks. I guess that could also be positive, because then you get new friends every week. Whatever.

Steve left this weekend after being at the school 4 weeks, and Serena leaves next week after being at the school 10 weeks. Steve is from a town with 400 people in Indiana, and has been in South American for 7 months.  He was in Brazil for a while on a peanut farm, then his work visa got messed up and he went to Chile. Then a farm in Argentina, and then Bariloche. He said he was ready to go home and eat his mom's spaghetti.  Serena is from Zurich, Switzerland. I don't know how long she has been here, but she spent a month in Cuernavaca, Mexico and then came to Bariloche. She is also ready to go home.

We played Taboo in Español on Friday, and I definitely won. My grammer may be bad, but my vocabulario is excellent. Do you know how to say peacock in Español? Pavo real. Literally, royal turkey.

Steve and Serena rented a car on Thursday and Friday, so on Friday we did the Circuito Chico, which is a route along the highway that lets you see lots of Bariloche stuff. Like trees and waterfalls and rivers and mountains.  Also, the hotel Llao Llao and the Colonia Suiza.

Apparently, this very last Friday, there was a summit of 12 South American presidents at the Hotel Llao Llao! They were discussing U.S. interference in South America, specifically a military base in Colombia.  President Obama was supposed to come, but had to send a representative because of Edward Kennedy's funeral. Triste.

Zig said it was very interesting watching the news from a South American perspective. He said they said they did not want a military base in Colombia (shocking? I think not.). Also, they were discussing how some drug trafficking is done by U.S. military personnel through the military base. I had no idea, but I guess I'm not surprised.  There's a lot of money in drug trafficking.

Anyway, because of the conference, we could not see the Hotel Llao Llao up close, and couldn't take pictures from the highway either because the police wouldn't let us. I did get a picture of the police though.  Also, we saw a presidential motorcade, but didn't get a good enough look at the flags on the limo to figure out what country.

We ate lunch at the Colonia Suiza. Big hype, big let down. It was pretty boring and the food was not good. I took a picture, but I'm not even going to post it because it was so bad.

Apparently, on Wednesday's and Saturday's there is a Feria Artensanal, which makes the whole trip worth while. We'll see.

Serena, being Swiss, kept making comments like, "Oh wow this is exactly like home." "Oh look at these authentic Swiss Patagonian wool handicrafts." "Oh look, authentic Swiss empanadas."  I think she may have been being sarcastic. Perhaps.

The one cool thing in the Colonia Suiza was this building. I liked it alot.

Here is the inside of our restaurant. Also, there were roosters.

Friday night, our friend Angel had a birthday party.  There was lots of food. We got there at 10pm (very early) and left at 3am (also, early).  "What, you're leaving??? We're just about to start another game!" Zig and I made guacamole. We made two batches, one with one jalapeño, no seeds, for the Argentineans, and one with two jalapeños plus seeds, for us.  Apparently, Argentineans do not eat spicy food. One of them ate part of a jalapeño and cried. We played pictionary, which was fun. I kept knowing what the answers were, but in English, not Spanish, which doesn't count.  Then I had to describe in broken Spanish what the answer was until someone guessed the real word. "Sleeping bag!!! Bolsa. Para camping. Para dormir." It worked out.  Also, Zig and I were on opposite teams, and were pitted against each other for the winning point. We had to be blindfolded.  The word: borracho. I won.

Saturday night, our previously mentioned friend Juan, who is from Colombia, came over for dinner.  He wants to learn how to cook, because, according to him, girls like guys who can cook. I taught him how to make spaghetti sauce. Onions, canned tomatoes, garlic, ground meat, basil. It was quite excellent.

Then, I tried to make chocolate cookies from scratch. Ok, so, items the grocery store does NOT have: vegetable shortening, chocolate chips, brown sugar. Substitutes: margarine (because its made out of vegetables and is sort of the same consistency, right?), chocolate bar broken into tiny pieces, and what I thought was brown sugar, but tasted a lot like molasses. Items kitchen does NOT have: temperature gauge on the oven. Substitute:  Mucho guessing.

Result:




Pretty close huh?  Kind of what cookies from scratch look like when I make them at home.

Pictures from walking around town:

Every town has to have one...

More churches: Two kinds of evangelical, and.... Methodist!! It's a 70's horror.




















Well thats about all. I think we will go skiing again next week. There was a lady signing up for Spanish lessons on Friday. She seemed nice. New friend!!

Hasta luego!!
Besitos, Austin


Update: The cerveceria is now playing Manu Chao. Muy bien!!

Update Dos: It has come to my attention that not only is my Spanish grammAR bad, but I also can't spell in English.

Rain rain, go away

It stopped raining today. I hope you are as excited as I am. It has been raining non-stop for days.

Here are some more pictures of food because dad likes them.





Dessert at El Boliche de Alberto. And Roquefort Empanadas. My favorite.














Here are some pictures I took the other night of the lake, the outside of the church, and the inside of the church.

















The End.

Yo caí. Mucho.

Hola chicos!

Lots have things have happened since my last post. None of them are mayonnaise related.

Primero, I found a Spanish school and started classes today. Muy bien. I will do that every morning for four weeks, and then they said if I spoke pretty well, they would help me find a place to volunteer. That's why I picked the school. Most of the volunteering is with kids who don't speak English, teaching them English and reading to them and stuff, so you have to know Spanish pretty well to do it. I'm working on it.

Segundo, this is the outside of our apartment. Here they use the word Departamento instead of Apartamento. Its very confusing because I keep thinking, "What department are they talking about? Like a department store? Like NORDSTROMS?!!" I miss nordstroms.

That top window is us. Its where we keep our rosemary plant. Romero en espanol. Helga likes to look out that window.


Watch out Czech lands, beer here is sold by the liter. I took the picture next to my computer for perspective.








The other day I went walking around and found lots of churches. The catholic one is pretty obvious, but I also found the Mormons and the Lutherans! I like that the Lutherans put a churchy looking facade on a regular house. Oh yeah, I found the Unitarians too, but there was a guy standing in front with pamphlets so I felt weird taking a picture. No Methodists yet. I’m shocked. Not really.



This weekend we went skiing. It was a disaster. Now I think of myself as a pretty reasonable skier, especially given that I’m from Texas. Well, apparently not.

On Saturday there was a white out. I couldn’t see a thing. I think I fell more than I’ve fallen in my life. I hurt my rear end. We got up at 7 to catch the bus. We did one run, and then I realized my boots were to big and my feet were sliding around. So I bought another pair of socks. Then we did another run. I fell a lot. So I decided that Zig could go ski by himself and I would take a break. I fell asleep on a table at the mid-mountain restaurant. Then I made Zig buy me hot chocolate because I was having trouble walking. THEN, we did another run. I fell catastrophically. My skis were up the hill and my backpack hit me in the face. People laughed at me from the chair lift. And then I decided to be done. Zig skied some more and we went home.

This guy dealt well with the white out. He brought his own mini bar. See his little bottle?? Later, he was dancing.







Sunday I couldn’t get up in the morning. My body hurt. So we went at 11 instead. It was a beautiful day!! I missed so much during the white out. I didn’t see the view. Nor did I notice that the slopes Zig picked were Reds. In Argentina, the slopes are labeled Green, Blue, Red, and Black, corresponding to the American Green, Blue, Black, and Double Black. Apparently we had been skiing Reds (aka Blacks) the entire day the day before. Que?? The previous day, Zig kept asking, “why are you falling so much?” Not all of us are from ski towns, lets remember. Also, some of us have tiny leg muscles and poor cardiovascular fitness.

So then I made him take me to Blues, but my legs hurt so much I had to go sit in the lodge. I went out for one more run, but the big lift closed, so all the other lift lines were really long. We went home early because I was dying, and Zig didn’t want to wait in line.

I learned how to say chair lift in Spanish today en clase. Aerosilla.

After the first day of skiing, we decided to go to our first Parilla. All the guidebooks recommend El Boliche de Alberto, and its down the street so we went there. It was so fantastic we went on Sunday too. They recognized us, it was kind of embarrassing. Whatever. Saturday we had lamb, Sunday we had asado (ribs). It was muy muy tasty. And muy muy cheap. Like 30 bucks for a giant pile of meat, vegetables, wine, and dessert. We will go there often. That guy in the orange sweater is Alberto.

Well, thats all. Necisito ir al departamento.

Besitos! Austin

A few notes

Moe followed us around again today. It makes me sad. He's such a good dog! Must not bring home dog, must not bring home dog....

Helga has singed whiskers from sitting too close to the heater.

Also, I think I really under-emphasized something in my last post. Did you SEE ALL THAT MAYONNAISE?!!! That picture, of the grocery store... its 6 shelves of bagged mayonnaise. They put it on everything. Its disgusting. I hate mayonnaise. Here, I made the picture bigger so you can really appreciate it. Also, this isn't the largest selection of mayonnaise I've seen. We went to the Carrefour (Argentinean Target) and it was literally half a grocery store row of mayonnaise. They had as much mayonnaise as they did cooking oil. I might go back to take a picture. Who eats that much mayonnaise?? Even if you like mayonnaise, how would this store ever possibly sell ALL of that mayonnaise. My mind is boggled.

Semana 1

First and foremost, Roquefort cheese empanadas. Best. Food. Ever.

I’ve been here one whole week. Now I can recap.

When Zig got here, he moved into a house owned by a family friend. The day after I got here, we moved into a permanent apartment. Well, kind of permanent. We signed a lease for 5 months. The landlord, Alfredo, said we can stay for five months for sure, but if he finds tourists ($$$$) to move in after that then we have to find somewhere else. That’s ok though because this place is a lot closer to town than the other place.

Pictures: Old apartment, new apartment, view from new apartment window.


























Helga enjoys the view. And the heater.



















On Friday, I went with Zig to his work at the Centro Atomico to use the internet and hang out. Apparently they aren’t too concerned about security there, because I just waltzed right in. It snowed a lot that day. My feet got wet. My shoes were unsatisfactory, but since I have purchase bright yellow rainboots. We ate lunch with Zig’s friends Andres and Juan. They are “paisanos,” which means they are from a specific region in Colombia, but I forget where. They are studying for their masters at the Centro Atomico. They came over for dinner and Andres cooked. Beef of course. It was very tasty.

























On Sunday night we ate at a Mexican food restaurant down the street. My burrito was like a really big empanada, and the margarita was really frozen lemonade. Sad. There's one more Mexican place we're going to try, so we haven't given up hope. Then we went to this bar with our friends Angel and Valeria for a birthday party. I was very tired, and apparently in Argentina, 3 am is an early night. Monday was a national holiday.









The rest of the time we walked around Bariloche looking for stuff for the apartment. Like laundry baskets, which apparently don’t exist in this country. I guess everyone just throws their clothes on the floor. I'll fit right in.


Two views from the street, and the cathedral. We thought about going to church on Sunday but it was snowing that morning. Maybe next week.












Observations:
We haven't been out to eat at a parilla yet, but Argentineans and Colombians have shown us how they cook beef here. Its all super well done. I’m shocked. And disappointed. I like my steak just shy of living. Well, really pink anyway.

Grocery store- I’ve never seen so much mayonnaise in my life. Also, they don’t use canola oil here, they use sunflower seed oil. Which is very smoky and doesn't keep food from sticking to the pan. Olive oil is American priced, which is pretty expensive for here. It only comes in tiny bottles. (I see a birthday present opportunity here, Mom!!) Also, yogurt and milk come in bags., which is very awkward in the refrigerator.



Dogs- Zig and I were followed around by the same three dogs for 2 days. I’m not joking. When we went into a store, they would sit outside the door and wait for us. We didn’t feed them or anything. One of them tried to follow us into an electronics store but was stifled by the automatic door. We lost them at the end of the first day when we stopped to eat, but they found us the next morning. I named them Larry, Curly, and Moe.









This is Moe.













Hopefully soon we will get internet at our apartment. I'm currently sitting at the internet kiosco around the corner, with some extremely foul mouthed 13 year olds playing first person shooter video games. Super fun.

Thats all. Hasta luego!!

Austin arrives... eventually

Hola!

I'm starting my blog today because I came with Zig to work to use the internet. Shout out to Nick and Jordan for thinking of two excellent names. So excellent that I had to use both.

Note: I can't remember how to type accents and upside down punctuation and don't have time to figure it out right now. If you read this Nancy, I apologize to you and Spanish teachers everywhere.

Note #2: My Spanish grammar es muy terible. Lo siento mucho. Corrections are always appreciated. How else will I learn?!!!

Dia 1 (Tuesday): La busqueda grande por la gatita

Zig and I decided long ago that we were bringing Helga the cat with us to Argentina. It would've been very mean to leave her for a year at my parent's house. She won't leave my bedroom there and would've weighed a lot more than 10lbs by the time we got back. She's already obese. Andy's black cat would've loved the chance to kill her though.

So Helga had her first transcontinental flight. Our plane arrived at 9:30am in Buenos Aires, and because I had to switch airports for my flight to Bariloche, I had to collect Helga. My Bariloche flight was at 4:15 pm, so I had plenty of time. Simple, I thought. How naive I was.

The Continental guy told me to go to the Edificio Corporativo to pay taxes and get my cat. Easy. So I pushed my cart with over 140 lbs of baggage across the airport, and did it. But where was my cat? Not here, says the lady. You have to go to the DAP office. Ok, say I. So, I push baggage all the way across the airport again. Literally across the entire airport. Two terminals and a bunch of other buildings. I think the entire carts worth weighed more than me. Some guys helped me get my bags over the curbs. I arrive at the security check at the DAP office, which is apparently in the cargo area of the airport. My cat is apparently being safely held in the place where they put dangerous chemicals, weapons, and body parts. Security officer says, "you can't bring your luggage here. Go leave it in Terminal A at the bag check." Except in Spanish. Ok say I. Return to Terminal A (only half way across the airport). Ask information lady where is bag check. Bag check is no more says lady, because we are renovating. But I have to get my cat, say I. Well, at the other airport they have baggage check, you should go there and come back and get your cat. Take the bus she says. So I go to the window where you buy a bus ticket. Explain to new lady my situation. Lady says, if your flight is at 4:15, you don't have time to take the bus there, leave your baggage, come back, get your cat, and then return to the other airport. The bus ride alone takes an hour and a half. It was 11:00.

So I go stand in a corner. Hmmm think I. Actually, what I was thinking contained expletives not appropriate for family reading. Do I cancel my flight and get a hotel room so I can retrieve my cat? Will the hotel let me bring in a cat? Bad plan. Resourcefullness kicks in. Taxi! So I go to the taxi stand, where five people are sitting. None of them speak English. So it takes all five people to try to understand my bad Spanish. "Necesito obtener mi gato.", "Carta? No tenemos cartas." "No, gato, meow meow." "OHHH gatito!" I explained that I needed to hire a taxi to put my luggage in and to wait for me while I obtenered my gato and then take me to the other airport. And after 10 minutes, THEY UNDERSTOOD ME!!!!!!

So by 11:30 my English speaking taxi driver had taken me back across the airport to the cargo area (I figured if I had to hire a taxi I might as well make him drive me around the airport). He spoke to all the people in Spanish and found the DAP office. Yay!! But apparently that was not where I was supposed to be. The DAP lady wrote down a list of 3 places I had to go. 1) SENASA (Argentinean USDA). 2) Hacer solicitudos particulares. 3) back to DAP.

So I spent the next 2 1/2 hours wandering around the cargo area showing random people my list so that they could tell me where to go. I have to say this, Argenteneans are very nice. Several people walked me to the place they thought I had to go. Often it was not the right place, but someone else helped me. I got my exercise for the week thats for sure.

At 2:00pm, I walked back to the DAP office (after returning there 3 times previously, only to be told that I had not completed all the steps). The lady there, who by then recognized me, says, "Lista??". I AM ready, say I. The 3 people in the office check my papers. Then they want to know if we have natural disasters in Houston. "Ummmm, hurricanes", say I. "Hurricanes?" "Huricans." "Como un tornado?" "Si, pero del mar." "OHH, como un tsunami." Well, no think I, but say "Mas o menos." "Ahhh," says she.

Then I round the corner, and there is a very angry Helga!!!!!!! And the two guys who had previously helped my get my bags over the curb. They say something about being ready for my cat. YES say I.

Grab cat. Find taxi driver, who miraculously is still waiting for me and hasn't stolen all my stuff!!!!! Then I took the most expensive taxi ride of my life across Buenos Aires to the airport.

What I saw of Buenos Aires was the highway. The only think worth mentioning was the Holy Land theme park, complete with Golgotha hill and 3 crosses. I will have to go back. Muy interesante.

Got to other airport. Checked in my bags and my cat. Apparently went through security, but I didn't realize I had because they barely checked my stuff. I had a phone in my pocket and didn't set of the alarm. Whatever. Arrived in Bariloche. Apparently at this airport, they just throw your cat on the baggage conveyor belt and hope it works out. It did. I made Zig push the baggage cart.

Ok, my time is up. Necesito ir a lunch. I will finish explaining this week soon, but possibly not today.

Hasta luego!!!