Ranch Dressing and Brett Farve

Today I watched Brett Farve break Dan Marino's record for most touchdown passes.

I was so happy i almost cried along with Brett.

In Argentina, I love things i don't look at twice in the states; like the Packers or ranch dressing. I miss ranch dressing.

Sitting and watching the Packers play while dipping some celery in some imported ranch dressing is the perfect Sunday for me here and something i would be bored out of my mind with in the states.

Partially it is that Argentina has made me appreciate what i have in the states more. Partially it is because i tie those boring home things to the people i love and miss.

Either way today's Packer game made me not only realize how much of a Packer-backer I am, but also how not-Argentine i am. And how much Buenos Aires will never be my home.

I don't think I will ever feel at home anywhere else other than sitting in Green Bay watching the ships roll in with my cheesehead on.

Loving the mistakes

Before I left for Argentina, I made myself a promise: no arrepentimientos. No regrets.

Before i boarded the plane at the Green Bay INTERNATIONAL airport, I threw all of my old regrets into the bay, let them wash away to Canada, and landed in Argentina with a clean regret-free spirit.

In Argentina, I walked out of the airport filled with expectation. I was going to experience everything, and all without the weight of fear or regret. I was going to live, as I promised, 6 months without regret.

But this promise I made to myself is harder to keep than it appears. Regret is a complicated concept.

In the states, I lived my life carefully. I didn't take risks and therefore my only regrets were of things i did not do, things i did not say.

But in Argentina, I take risks everyday because there is no other way to live. If i want to see the city i have to take risks. And with these risks come mistakes; mistakes i am not used to making; mistakes that are a complicated mixture of Adeline and panic.

After a mistake filled weekend though i realized all these mistakes i am making, these mistakes i have been calling regrets, are not regrets; they are experiences. They are not the experiences I planned to return with but they are not regrets I should dread carrying around with me.

I am still not a risk-taker, watching people gamble still freaks me out, but I am now a mistake-maker. And more than that, I am a happy mistake maker. Because I have learned mistake is just another word for experience.

Dipilacion

This week was a monton of firsts: first yoga class, first article in Spanish published and my first trip to dipilacion.

In Argentina, dipilacion (waxing) is more common than getting your mullet trimmed. On every block in Buenos Aires there is a large bright sign announcing DIPILACION: SOLO 5. This is a city where you can literally get everything from your forehead to your toes waxed all for under $5 USD.

Argentine women are hairy creatures trying desperately to appear to be hairless white Europeans. They go to dipilacion more than they go to church.

But for me, the blonde American, I thought those hairy Argentine women were crazy. In the states not only is waxing expensive, it is often seen as unnecessary when a razor is available.

But in anticipation of summer and buenas ondas, I decided to bite the bullet, endure the expected pain and laid my ghost-white fragile legs before the vat of red hot wax.

And it actually felt kind of nice.

Well i mean it stung a little and my legs looked like someone had whipped them repeatedly after it was done, but, all in al,l it kind of felt good, like a strong exfoliate.

So another first I went into with fear and came out of victorious.

Next up la pelvis. "No calvo por favor. NO CALVO!"

Flujo con las ancianas

I found my flow tonight in the incense-filled attic of an old house surrounded by 7 viejas.

I went to my first yoga class and was surprised to be greeted by 7 aging women. I guess i thought flexibility and flow was reserved for the young.

But throughout the hour long yoga session we did much less flexing and much more flowing. We let our arms flow, our legs flow and our breath flow until finally our thoughts flowed as well.

And i walked home smiling for the first time since I got here. It is not that i haven't been happy walking home here; it is just that the happiness didn't rise to my cheeks. it always stayed heavy in my heart; a good feeling of deep happiness.

But tonight the happiness was light and flowed throughout my entire body, lifting my cheeks in an irresistible smile.

Yoga class is like therapy with my grandma. And i will so be back next week.

Change of Plans

This week I was sent to cover my first "marcha"- demonstration.

The march was for Julio Lopez, a man who the dictatorship “disappeared” in the 80s because of his politics but who survived torture to testify against los jefes (the bosses) last year. After his testimony, which put some top jefes in jail, he disappeared again and has been officially “disappeared” for a year.

The marcha was demanding his return…alive. There were thousands of people there and close to 50 different groups; some with drums, some with large sticks and some Madres de la Plaza with white handkerchiefs on their heads. The group pulsed with energy, with that Argentine passion. And I ran around in between the energy looking like a bewildered American reporter.

And with this one explosion of political passion I decided I don't want to be a journalist.

OK parents, don't flip out. I don't to be a journalist in the traditional sense. I don't want to go to protests, or fires, or car crashes and run around like a boluda trying to get a good quote.

I want to listen to people’s stories and then tell them in a way that makes others want to hear them.

I want to sit down to merienda with Julio Lopez’s family and just hear about his life. Or sit down with one of the young protesters and talk to her about when at 17 she is here from a provincial to walk for a man she didn’t even know.

I guess it took me a continent and Argentine marcha to realize I don’t want to be a periodista; I want to be a storyteller.

Ya esta

Last night the director of our program gave us a nice little speech about how our study abroad experience was really just starting. He said we were done adjusting, done traveling and, with chuckles, done getting robbed.

Then today at 2:09 PM on bus 128 at about 1500 Billlinghurst I was robbed.

I guess i am just a step behind the adjustment/getting robbed process.

I wasn't really "robbed;" i was pick pocketed. And it kills me because i knew something wasn't right. A guy in a suit came and stood next to me on a bus when there were a few extra seats on the bus open. He bumped into me once and then got off the bus. I thought it was suspicious so i checked my purse and my wallet was gone. Not only did he open the zipper on my purse but also the zipper inside the purse and then reached in to get my wallet. He was good.

And I can't remember his face which bothers me for some reason. I feel like i should know the face of the man who now has my driver's license, my 20 pesos and the contact information of my therapist.

And yes I feel violated. I feel like some of my power has been taken. And the worse part is I can't seem to get pissed. I'm not really mad at this guy. I just feel little and defenseless in this big city I thought I was starting to conquer.

Life here is a roller coaster. Ups, downs, loops, fear, excitement and a slight nausea. I just hope I get to enjoy the ride before it ends.

P.S. Please do not send me any "advice" on how to not get pickpocket. I have already gotten an earful and I will never carry my money in a poach under my shirt like a tourist. But thanks for the suggestion.

P.P.S. Positive note: My friend and I have vowed to stop speaking English on the bus to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. Maybe i will actually begin to learn castellano now.

Flow Found

3 months ago, my fortune cookie told me "You are heading for a land of sunshine and relaxation." I stuck the fortune in my journal and forgot about it. Then when I opened up my journal the first night in Puerto Iguazu, the pueblito half an hour from the widest waterfalls in the world, the fortune fell to my feat.

Yes, I believe in the power of the fortune cookie, or more the power of chance; the power of happening to be in the exact right place at the exact right time; me ending up in Iguazu on one of the most beautiful days of the year looking at the most beautiful waterfalls in the world and finding the flow I had been searching for all those weeks in Buenos Aires.

In Buenos Aires, I was flowing against the city. I moving against myself, not allowing myself to flow or feel myself in the middle of the concrete jungle.

But in Iguazu, sitting in the quite leftovers of the day contemplating life, there I could feel the flow. There the beat of life slowed down, it quited down and i was able to find my own rhythm i had almost forgotten.

There the rhythm is steady and constant like the water crashing over the falls. The beat allows my brain to slow down, my heart to realize it is beating and my soul the time to shine in the sun. It is a beat i don't get lost in but a familiar beat, a beat i can remember myself in.

Remember who i am and what i want to do here.

Damn, all i needed was a vacation!

Going with the F%$#ing Flow

On Monday, I scampered around the bus terminal, zigzagging from one end of the building to the next looking for the best deal on bus tickets to Puerto Iguaçu only to find they all cost exactly the same price.

On Tuesday, I waited for an hour for my teacher to show up to give us our mid-term only to be sent home because she literally “just forgot.”

On Wednesday, I got up at 5:30 AM to get to the migration office by 7 AM only to wait 3 hours to be told there was a mistake and we would have to return next week to get our student visas.

Today I slept until 11 while rain fell on the tin roof outside my window and I pretended all the inefficiency and red tape of Buenos Aires was just a bad pesadilla.

By Wednesday, I was really genuinely pissed at Buenos Aires and its complete and utter lack of ability to do anything efficiently without 3 lines and a 10 hour wait. Riding home on the subte, (which thank god was working after a week of on-and-off service) I gritted my teeth and muttered swear words under my breath. Then a friend suggested I “just go with the flow,” to which I responded “I am going with the f@#$ing flow.”

At this point I realized I was indeed not going with the flow, whether it f@#$ing sucked or not. Genuinely in life I do not do much flowing. I make lists and spread sheets and freak out without my agenda. That is who I am. And in America I can get away with it because I am usually surrounded by at least 5 other people who are just as anal.

But my lists and agendas don’t jive with the Argentine world. In Argentine I get “why is this blonde girl freakin’ out” looks and I am beginning to ask myself the same thing: “Why can’t this uptight blond girl just flow.”

So in the spirit of coming to a cultural compromise with Argentina I am taking a yoga class, lighting some incense and doing some deep breathing. And I am learning to flow.

But I’m keeping the agenda book- whether it flows or not.

Living in a hyporcrital world and realizing you are part it

Things that made me cringe today
1. 7 year old dirty little boy on subway selling pens for a peso who sat down next to a 20-something guy reading a comic so he could look over the guy's shoulder and read about Superman, at least until his 12 year old sister came along to hurry him up.
2. knowing it's not the people you miss but the way they made you feel
3. hearing "hola gata rubia" from a police officer at 10 pm
4. realizing you are not as good of a person as you thought or hoped you were
5. seeing graffiti that read CHINA PUTA in all caps as if it needed more emphasis

Things that made me smile today
1. my host dad calling me niña de fuego because i like spicy food
2. the botería guy thinking i was from Canadian because obviously Wisconsin is a province of Canada- well close enough
3. congregating a verb correctly
4. Watching Maite make ñoquis with her dad
5. giving up my seat for a vieja and then having a caballero give up his seat for me

I am often infuriated with the hypocritical nature of Argentina; it is a country with so much wealth and so much poverty, so many good intentions and so many failed dreams, so much passionate talking and so little intent listening.

But today I felt just a bit too much of my own hypocritical nature; today I felt very much a part of this flawed world I live in but am often too busy analyzing to realize I am a part of.

Things i learned at 5 am at a salsa club in Almagro

1. I can learn to follow. In fact, i can even enjoy following-even if i am following a 65-year-old man.
2. My first impressions are usually wrong just as people's first impression of me are usually incorrect- i am not as heinous as i first appear.
3. Burritos and tequila are great no matter what continent you are on.
4. Sweating is gross but also great.
5. The steps of salsa matter less than the rhythm and flow of the dance. Forgetting the steps allows you to dance. The same can be said for living life in Argentina. The steps, the cultural rules, are written out, but only once you ignore them are you truly living in Buenos Aires.
6. Screw learning anything about myself or learning to speak Spanish fluently- I just wanna dance!

OH the places you will go

“It's not where we are but who we are." Maggie Zimmermann

I remember spending many evenings the summer before freshman year of college sitting in Maggie's neon green room, candles lit, tea slowly losing its heat, talking about what the next year would hold for us.

I thought college would change me completely. I remember thinking my life would be like a WB series. I would magically transform from the chubby school newspaper editor to the gorgeous girl of every man's dream. I thought college had the power to change in me what i could not change within myself.

Of course my life didn't play out like a WB series- thank god or i would have been cancelled by sophomore year. It twisted and turned; I changed partially due to where I was and partially due to who i was. And then I ended up in Argentina.

And without realizing it, I made Argentina my freshman year of college. I envisioned the stereotypical American abroad in a foreign land scenario, full of dark handsome men, exciting exotic places and of course dramatic changes physically and personally. I imagined i would become the person i have always wanted to be in Argentina.

But again, I gave the where too much power. The things I really want to change in myself, Argentina does not have the power to change. Only i have that power.

So now i ponder the same question i pondered 3 years ago. Is it where we are or who we are?

It is both. Where I am will surely shape and mold me into the person i will be but not in the way i expect or want it to. And who i am...well I am not a WB series.

Sh-o (or as the rest of the world says yo)

Today, when i was picking up my laundry from the lavaropa down the street, i had a nice little conversation with the ladies there about what i was doing in Buenos Aires.

Then they started laughing at me.

"Pareces como una portena. Dices "sho" no yo."

Apparently i have picked up the- what i always thought was terribly annoying- porteno way of saying the letters y and ll.

shaves instead of llaves. shuvia instead of lluvia. masho instead of mayo.

And sho instead of yo.

And for some reason it made me smile the whole way home.

It's not that i think i appear porteno to portenos or even to the ladies at the dry cleaners. It is just that i finally feel like Buenos Aires is starting to have an effect on me; like it is actually starting to change me.

Honestly, I didn't come here to learn Spanish, although that would be a plus. I came here to experience another country or really i came to experience myself in another country. I came here to touch another culture and let it touch me. I came hoping to be changed, hoping to be a different person after 6 months, a person who has lived a little more. I came hoping to leave a mark on a city and now realize although my mark here will fade the mark of Buenos Aires on me will be forever; even if it is the terribly annoying sho.

La Bomba del Tiempo

Last night I listened to a conversation without words; a conversation between two drums; a conversation I could feel more than hear.

The conversation started out with more or less 15 drummers; really 15 strangers who came together on a Monday night at 7 pm to play to a standing crowd of people who ranged from their proud moms taking pictures to stonners getting high behind the curtains.

One drummer took the conductor position and tried, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, to create a unified band. Often I could see the brilliant idea the conductor had and then I could see the brilliance fade because of a lack of effective communication. Sometimes he brought in a drummer too soon out of enthusiasm or forgot completely to include another drum.

How often do I feel like this conductor. How often do my castellano words fail to convey the idea in my head. How often do I say catedrales (cathedrals) when I mean to say cataracas (waterfalls).

But yet as long as I keep going like this conductor, as long as I keep the beat, the audience will dance. As long as a feel the beat more than hear it, I will dance my way through Argentina.

Side note: Anyone who is going to be in Argentina for the month of September needs to go to the Konex Center (Sarmiento 3131) on Monday nights at 7 pm to see “La Bomba del Tiempo.” It is well worth the 7 pesos and the smell of pot on your clothes at the end of the night.

Lessons Learned Round 2

Tonight I learned nice boys do exist in Argentina and they dance like fools.

Tonight I learned I dance like a fool and I really don't care who is watching.

Tonight I learned just how right doctor Seuss is:
"And when things start to happen, don't worry. Don't stew. Just go right along. You'll start happening too."

Things I learned about myself at 5 AM at a gay club in Flores

1. Argentine gay men and I are the only ones who know all the words to "backstreets back" and will sing them loudly and proudly
2. Sometimes I want to be a gay man because they are just so hot. (No Laura it has nothing to do with Freud or me wanting a penis- I just want to be hot.)
3. I like to dance like no one is watching but it is even better when no one really is watching because they are too busy making out with their boyfriends. Dancing is always better without an audience.
4. I will not be fluent in Spanish in 3 months, I may never be fluent, and that is probably good because i don't really want to know everything that is said at me on the street. Sometimes, in my world, ignorance is not bliss but can be mildly comforting.
5. Vomit is universally gross (OK that one wasn't about me but the poor guy outside the club)