Happy New Year 2011

Estoy empezando a explorar la idea de hacer blogs multilingüe blog, pero no estoy seguro de la mejor manera de hacerlo. Me gusta este formato porque permite a la gente que está aprendiendo español para que sus cerca de contexto Inglés y español el uno al otro. La otra forma que pudiera hacer el post es para hacer todos los españoles y, a continuación Inglés todos. Como mi español mejora con el tiempo, probablemente se trasladará a ese formato. Pero por ahora, todo lo que hablantes nativos de español tendrá que soportar en movimiento más allá de la apartados Inglés. Pido disculpas de antemano por la inconveniene.

I am starting to explore the idea of doing multilingual blog posts but I am not sure the best way to do it.  I like this format because it enables the people who are learning Spanish to have their English and Spanish context close to each other.  The other way I could do the post is to do all Spanish and then all English.  As my Spanish improves over time I will probably move to that format.  But for now, all you native Spanish speakers will have to endure moving past the English paragraphs.  I apologize in advance for the inconveniene.

El año comenzó en Pasadena, California, se mudó a Nuevo México y terminé el año en Buenos Aires. El viaje a la Argentina se ha llenado de emoción y la volatilidad.  Yo nunca podría haber imaginado lo mucho que mi vida iba a cambiar en un corto de cinco meses, pero mi punto de vista sobre el mundo actual es muy diferente de lo que era hace poco en el verano caliente en Nuevo México.

The year started in Pasadena, California moved to New Mexico and I ended the year in Buenos Aires. The journey to Argentina has been filled with emotion and volatility.  I never could have imagined how much my life would change in a short five months, but my perspective on the world now is very different than it was a short while ago back in the hot summer in New Mexico.

El pueblo de la Argentina son hermosas. Ellos han tomado el cuidado de mí en cada uno y cada vuelta. De mis amigos en el trabajo para la gente que he estado viviendo con mis vecinos para locales y tenderos.   Nunca me hubiera imaginado en mis sueños más salvajes que me iba a pasar Navidad y Año Nuevo en América del Sur. Este lugar es ahora mi segundo hogar. Me encanta la lengua y la cultura y el modo de vida, aunque a veces puede muy difícil.

The people of Argentina are beautiful.  They have taken care of me at each and every turn.  From my friends at work to the people I have been living with to my local neighbors and shop keepers.  I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would be spending Christmas and New Years in South America.  This place is now my second home.  I love the language and the culture and the way of life, although at times it can very difficult.

Mi pasión por la vida en América del Sur comenzó antes de que yo tenía 30 años. Uno de mis compañeros de casa en Santa Fe fue pasando el tiempo en el Perú. Durante el próximo par de años en Santa Fe seguí para conocer gente que se va a Perú. No estoy seguro de qué se trataba el Perú, pero yo estaba con gente que iba allí. Empecé a querer ir a América del Sur también.

My passion for living in South America began before I was 30 years old.  One of my housemates in Santa Fe was spending time in Peru.  Over the next couple of years in Santa Fe I continued to meet people who were going to Peru.  I am not sure what it was about Peru, but I was meeting people who were going there.  I started to want to go to South America as well.

Michele y yo empezamos a viajar a México alrededor de 2005. Hemos hecho tres viajes a México en menos de tres años. Pasamos el tiempo siempre fuera de la ciudad de México alrededor de 4 o 5 horas. Nosotros siempre se mantuvo al norte de la Ciudad de México con el con el viaje a Guadalajara. Nuestros viajes a México llevó mi pasión aún más para explorar más al sur en el corazón del principio de los tiempos en las tierras nativas.

Michele and I started traveling to Mexico around 2005.  We made three trips to Mexico in less than three years.  We spent time always outside of Mexico City about 4 or 5 hours.  We always stayed to the north of Mexico City with with trip to Guadalajara.  Our trips to Mexico drove my passion even more to explore further south into the heart of the beginning of time in the native lands.

Pasamos tres meses viviendo en las tierras altas de los Andes del Ecuador y un par de semanas viviendo en la selva alta, en la frontera de Ecuador y Perú. La selva fue impresionante, y puedes ver fotos de nuestro tiempo en Zamora si hojear más detenidamente estas páginas. El viaje a Ecuador fue muy interesante y cuestiona la muy y muy hermosa en un solo aliento. Viajar con un amigo sin duda hizo que mi largo viaje primero a América Latina más aceptable.

We spent three months living in the highlands of the Andes of Ecuador and a couple of weeks living in the high jungle on the border of Ecuador and Peru.  The jungle was awesome, and you can see pictures of our time in Zamora if you peruse further throught these pages.  The trip to Ecuador was very interesting and very challening and very beautiful all in one breath.  Traveling with a friend certainly made my first long voyage to Latin America more palatable.

Volvimos a casa en la primavera de 2008 y yo estaba listo en mi mente volver. Pero me tomé un descanso durante dos años hasta que se levantó el coraje de hacer un segundo viaje, esta vez por mí mismo. Si alguna vez ha viajado en solitario por largos períodos de tiempo, usted sabe lo que es y la sensación de vivir en una tierra lejana no conocer a nadie. Es una manera de conocerse a sí mismo de una manera que no te puedes imaginar lo que va a aprender.

We returned home in the spring of 2008 and I was ready in my mind to return.  But I took a break for about two years until I got up the courage to do a second voyage, this time by myself.  If you have ever traveled by yourself for long periods of time, you know what it is like and the feeling of living in a far away land not knowing a soul.  It is a way to get to know yourself in a way that you can not imagine what you will learn.

100 Days In Argentina

The twist and fate of life never ceases to amaze, is it coincidence or is it the stars aligned in the sky, we will never know; but one thing I know for sure, we create our journey here and it is for us.  It is with that I decided to journey to a far away land in a far away language with people who I relate to very well.  I do not know many things in life, and the older I get the less I know, in a certain respect it is a well known fact that we have small brains and the universe is very large, so trying to understand is always a challenge that we face from day to day.  Fate is not part of our understanding, but it is part of our observation.

Birthdays in life are a strange coincidence, they happen whether we want them to happen or not.  We were born on a day and so that day arrives once a year.  The celebration varies from time to time, some years we have a big party, some years we are solitude, some years we go for a walk, other years we are with family, but each one is different, and each one presents to us a reflection we may prefer not to look at, but in any case the day comes and goes.

I am living in South America for many reasons, most of those reasons are not known to my conscious mind, I am just here.  I do know one of the reasons I believe I am here and that is to celebrate a mark in my life.  The mark of turning fifty years.   For quite a while I have been using the 50th birthday as a mark in my mind, in a subtle way to get to it.  To arrive in that time in my life, not only alive but fulfilled with a feeling of knowing.  Of knowing that, what I am doing here on Planet Earth is learning, living, loving, and finally leaving.


100 days

my birthday fell on the 100th day

in argentina

a twist of luck, suerte

50 years and counting

to be in a place

in a time

when as per usual

the planet is fine

the people

always in disarray

more or less, mas o menos

it has always been this way

and always will be this way

it is part of being a human

and observing the state

of the world at a scale we see

not at a quantum scale

not at a grande scale

but our scale

each one to her own

to love the opportunity

to live life to its fullest

each and every day

as we know best

Shooting the Dead

Maria Eva Duarte Peron, Evita, in Spanish meaning little Eva, was born May 7, 1919 and died July 26, 1952.  She was the second wife of President Juan Perón and served as the first lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death.

If you are not from Latin America, and from the United States, Evita is probably the most famous person you have ever heard of who you know for sure is from Argentina.  It is my guess that there is probably no one else famous you know from Argentina.  But this may not be true, because after writing this statement I checked a list of famous Argentinians and the list is very long, so depending on the field you are in, or your areas of interest you may know other famous Argentinians.

The only ones who come to my mind for me besides Evita is Ernesto Che Guevara born June 14, 1928 in Rosario and died October 9, 1967 and Jorge Luis Borges born August 24, 1899 in Buenos Aires and died June 14 1986.  

The cemetary also holds the remains of many illustrious military Generals, presidents, scientists, poets and other affluent Argentinians. There is a saying in Argentina that it costs more to die than it does to live.

I went to see Evita yesterday at her final resting place in the Recoleta Cemetary located in the northern part of barrio Recoleta.  We were alone together.  The most famous Argentinian of all time and I had a moment of silence together and then more people arrived to visit with her.

A friend of mine is a professional photographer, and so we shot the dead for hours on a beautiful Saturday morning in Buenos Aires.  It was an absolutely gorgeous splendid spring day.  The weather this time of year is superb, and I was happy to be hanging out in a cemetary walking around looking for cool shots and noticing famous people who I now know who are from Argentina.  Most of the famous people I ran into include people who have streets named after them and towns and neighborhoods in the local area.

The Nobel Peace Prize in 1936

The one person who stood out in my mind that I ran into while crusing the tombs of the dead was Mr. Carlos Saavedra Lamas.

This tomb for some reason was one we stopped at and sat for awhile, we were shooting some other stuff around the tomb and upon closer evaluation and my reading the plaque in Spanish of course I started to notice that this was no ordinary person, general or rich guy from Buenos Aires, but this was a true worldly person.

He was in the company of Martin Luther King, Linus Pauling, Andrei Sakharov, Anwar Sadat, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Gorbachev and last but not least the Dalai Lama just to name a few from the last one hundred years or so.

So you may be wondering what did Mr Lamas do in his life to have the honor of being in the company of the above people.  To find out more about his life and the time in 1936 read the link above to discover the state of Argentina in 1936.

Upon further research I also realized that a total of four Latin American men including Mr. Lamas have been granted the Nobel peace and one woman Rigoberta Menchú.

They include:

• Óscar Arias Sánchez (born 1940), statesman, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1987).

• Alfonso García Robles (1911–1991), diplomat and politician, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1982).                                                                                                                                                
•   Rigoberta Menchú (born 1959), activist, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1992).

• Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (born 1931), activist, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1980).

If you are curious about any of these people feel free to learn more about them and their lives and how they participated in Latin American culture during their time.

I digress today for many reasons but mainly to note that the world is a very big place and if you include human history there is a lot of information to get to know.  The mind is small and the universe is vast.  I continue to appreciate the opportunity and grace for being able to spend part of my life in a land very far away from my home yet rich in culture and corazón.

Spring has Sprung

This weekend was simply beautiful and I wanted to post a blog Sunday evening but the day got away from me and here we are almost midway into the week.  The weekend was full of sun, it is officially spring time in the southern hemisphere and especially here in Argentina.  For a big city, it was a lovely weekend, with not a cloud in the sky and clear with blue sky.  Actually, Buenos Aires does actually have some really nice air some of the times and I think the past seven weeks have been especially nice.  Even though if you look at the charts BA gets quite a bit of rain, about four times more rain than Albuquerque mas or menos, it seems to come in buckets when it rains and I suppose it also happens at certain times of the year, I have not yet encountered that time of year.

I am into a groove down here now.  I am feeling good and feel just a bit more comfortable being here, especially knowing my way around a bit better.  I actually am starting to get a handle on where I am in the city and what direction I am headed.  If you look at a map of Buenos Aires its not a trivial city to navigate in your head.  The city is not layed out in any sort of direction.  In fact depending on where you are in the city the streets all tend to run in odd directions.  The city evolved over a long period of time, hundreds of years, and I think different parts of the city over the centuries were layed out differently and then it all sort of came together.  One marker in the city is the river, the Rio Plata to the east, or towards the Atlantic ocean.

Luckily, I can see the sun during the day and know which general direction I am headed off in.  My main map is the collectivo pocket guide, which divides the city up into these little planos or maps and they have like 25 pages of little maps of the city with all of the bus lines on them and subway lines and trains all mashed into a book that fits into your pocket.  So, I am constantly flipping through this teeny book trying to figure out what map I am on and how that fits into the bigger picture.  Not to mention the bus lines are listed in the book in squares and you have to literally follow the squares and figure out what direction the bus is going in.  All basically inside scoop for the porteños in the crowd.

Wikipedia article on Porteño

Its a pretty interesting story and the language is even more interesting.

Museo Benito Quinquela Martín

This has been a weekend of museums for me in Argentina.  Today a friend of mine and I went to one of the more famous neighborhoods in Argentina called La Boca.  We got off the subway at Catedral and walked through San Telmo on a cloudy and cool early Sunday morning.  After passing through Parque Lezama we got lost and did not know which way San Telmo was.  We finally stopped someone to ask them where is La Boca.

The Argentinians are very nice people.  This nice young man Javier who is studying at the University of Buenos Aires in Systems engineering decided to take us around Boca and be our tour guide.  He told us that he had some free time and it was a nice opportunity for him to practice his English.  He was pretty much fluent in English and so we had our own personal tour guide.

La Boca is well known for its colorful buildings.  In fact, if you have ever been to Guayaquil, Ecuador, you would see similar architecture and colors.  The neighborhood or barrio is at the mouth of the Riachuelo.  It also home to one of Argentina´s most famous soccer clubs.  Javier was proud to take us to the stadium to show us where La Boca plays their games.

One of Argentina´s most famous painters was born in La Boca.  Benito Quinquela Martín paints the common person in port scenes that mainly take place in La Boca.  I would consider him similar to Diego Rivera in the fact that Diego also painted the common people in murals.  Since he lived in La Boca, we went to his museum and also his home for many years.  The house and museum over look the port of Buenos Aires and the city in the background.  Inside the museum there are some other painters as well.  Some nice paintings from other artists in Argentina that painted around the same time as Benito.  We walked to the fourth floor of the museum and then outside on to the terrace.  There is a lovely terrace over looking the whole city of Buenos Aires in all directions.  It was a cool cloudy day, unlike yesterday which was sunny and warm and last Sunday in Parque Lezama when the spring sun in Buenos Aires was in full force.

This painting by Benito is housed in a very prominent place in the museum.  There is a small cord in front of the painting denoting its importance and also there are are chairs where one can sit down and admire this lovely work of art depicting life in Buenos Aires at the turn of the century when the port city was very popular.  It was soon afterwards that the Panama Canal would open and many ships at that time no longer had to sail around the horn.  This, as emphasized in earlier posts was the turning point for Argentina.  At the time, it was one of the most prosperous countries in the world and the city of Buenos Aires was as rich and advanced as New York City.  That is why so many immigrants moved to Argentina at the same time they were moving to the United States.  Both countries at the time were the places to be, clearly at the hands of the people depicted in the paintings of Benito.

One of my favorite paintings at the museum was a painting by another artist called.

Amanecer en Cordoba
by Guillermo Fray Butler

Amanecer is a very lovely word and one that I rather like.  It means daybreak or dawn, which is one of my favorite times of day.  I love rising early and catching the first light of day.  Especially in the summer time when the mornings are cool and the light is just beginning to come up over the mountains.

Here is a nice description of the painting.

Solitario en el cual

no se observa la presencia humana

en primer plano se observa

una casa humilde con techo de paja

junto a un árbol sin follaje,

en segundo plano

otra casa similar y en

tercer plano montañas.

Paleta alta y cálida trabajado

en tonos ocres, rojizos; cielo amarillo

Alone in which there is no human presence 
the observed foreground 
a humble house with thatched roof
next to a leafless tree,
 
In the background 
another similar house 

At the third level there are mountains.
High and warm palette worked
in shades of ocher, red, with a yellow sky.

Museo de Arte Tigre

Spring is in the air in Buenos Aires.  Since this is my first time here, I do not know about the weather, but looking at the ten day forecast and having witnessed a gorgeous week of weather, it appears that the first or second week in September is the beginning of spring.  In other words its about a week or two earlier than the official launch of spring.

Today was my first day riding the trains in Argentina.  I have ridden the subway several times, but I have never been on the train.  There are trains that run all over BA, and I cross the tracks and see the trains go by all the time but I had not yet ventured on to them.  Today was the day.  Actually, doing anything down here new takes some preparing for.  Since I don´t speak the language, actually I am starting to feel more comfortable with the language, when you get on the train you want to be pretty sure you know what the heck is going on.  Like where to pay, how much to pay, where to get on, where to get off, how often the trains run etc.  All things that are good to know before you get on the train.

Well I am happy to learn that the train and the subway are the same price.  Its about US 25 cents to take the train or in Argentina one peso.  One peso is about 25 cents at this time.  The exchange rate has been changing the past year, and at the beginning of last year it was about three pesos to the dollar and now its about four pesos to the dollar. For years, the peso was pegged to the dollar, and so prior to 2002 it was one to one.  But after the big economic crisis of 2001 in Argentina, the peso has slowly been inching up, and/or to put it another way there has been inflation in Argentina relative to the dollar.

I took a train ride to the end of the line.  I love going to ends of lines and the end of the line I went on today was absolutely gorgeous.  At the end of the line is a part of Buenos Aires called Tigre.  Actually, today was my first time outside of Capital Federal.  Capital Federal is the part of Buenos Aires province that is the capital of Argentina.  I guess, someone please correct me if you know, that Capital Federal is like Washington DC.  Capital Federal, which is the heart of the city of BA is in the province of Buenos Aires.  Buenos Aires is actually quite a big province in Argentina.  Most people outside of Argentina probably think BA is the big city in Argentina.  And actually that is not correct, I didn´t know this myself until I arrived here.  Buenos Aires is a large province in Argentina and Capital Federal is the heart of the province of BA.  The outlying areas of Capital Federal are actually in the province of BA.

I left Capital Federal for the first time and ventured out into the province of BA to an area called Tigre.  Buenos Aires is on a major river in South America and the delta north of town is really big.  Tigre is the first town north of BA that sits on the Parana River which is the river that connects with the Uruguay river which acts as the border of Uruguay and Argentina.  The Parana River heads up to Rosario and another town past Rosario called Santa Fe.

Tigre has a beautiful river walk that goes on for quite a distance.  At the end of the river walk a mile or two up the river is the Museo de Arte Tigre.  This was my second museum I have been in here, actually sort of my first that I actually walked around and looked at the paintings.  No offense, but in general museums in Latin America are not really that good compared to world class museums, but the paintings I saw today were nice enough.  I happened upon some Art opening or celebration at the museum and enjoyed a reception that they were having.  The second floor of the museum has a very large terrace that extends a long way over looking the river.  So I got to stand in the sun for about one hour, watch the boats go by, and talk with some local people about what is going on in Tigre.  Actually, I mainly listened and they talked, but this is good experience for me to listen to what people are saying.  I got a tiny bit of their conversation.  Its actually quite difficult to listen to a conversation and understand what they are talking about because you don´t have any context.  The day was spectacular, and I had a very nice sunny time.

atardecer 

Argentina tren 

se inclina 

abunda la belleza 

una chica joven embarazada 

abrazaba a su novio 

el tren se detiene

un hombre sentado 

a mi lado se levanta

la chica embarazada

disminuye el asiento

un joven frente a mí

tiene a su madre

a su vez a las casas vuelte

de los edificios grande 

una anciana vende chicles

con sabor a café

me quede dormido 

en el confort

con el pueblo

sentado a mi lado.

late afternoon

argentina train

sways and clacks

beauty abounds

a young girl pregnant

holds her boyfriend

the train stops

a man sitting

next to me rises

the pregnant girl

declines the seat

a young boy

across from me

holds his mother

houses turn to bigger buildings

an old woman sells chicklets

coffee flavored

I doze off in comfort

with the people

sitting next to me.

Parque Lezama cerca de San Telmo

One of the main reasons I am in Buenos Aires is because in the spring time a friend of mine did a tour of South America and he and his girl friend Susannah ended their trip in Buenos Aires and they stayed here ten days before returning to Estados Unidos.  Two or three days after returning home, I called him on the phone to check in with him and see how his trip went and debrief him on his journey.  He was kind enough to call me back almost immediately because he knew the trip was so fresh in his mind that I would get the full story while it was still fresh in his mind and he was still pretty much in the dream of being in South America.  We had a very long conversation, probably close to two hours but when he hung there were two things he said that really rang out in my mind.  One was that Salta, Argentina was a very nice town.  And two was that Buenos Aires was the coolest most livable big city he had ever been in, and he has done a lot of traveling in his day.  So, it was with that information that I started doing my research, and in the end settled on moving and living in Buenos Aires.  I want to publicly thank my friend for him getting me down here, and also say that in life, you never know who you are going to influence when you tell them something that rings in their ear.

Today I took my same friends advice and visited the area of San Telmo on a Sunday afternoon.  I continue to be amazed by this country, place and people and today was clearly no exception.  If and when you ever have the opportunity to visit this lovely city, be sure and ir a San Telmo a Domingo.  You won´t be sorry.

Besides the beauty of the oldest neighborhood in Buenos Aires, it is here that you get a sense for the history of this city more than any place else I have visited so far on my journey in Argentina.  Currently, I live in Belgrano which is a more trendy, upscale, newer part of town.  When I say newer, I mean the last 100 years.  San Telmo, dates back to the 17th century and you can sense and feel an air of the past and what it was like to live here before this became the Paris of South America in the early part of the twentieth century when Buenos Aires was on par with New York City as far as economic growth and prosperity.

Wikipedia San Telmo
Pictures of San Telmo

It really wasn´t until about 1910, just after the Panama Canal was completed that Buenos Aires began to lose its status on the world stage.  I would argue that today, at the beginning of the twenty first century that Latin America as a whole is regaining its luster, and that especially Brazil and the European countries south of Brazil that are really making a nice come back in many different ways.  This is a positive note on what is happening both politically, culturally and economically in Latin America today.  Even recently, I read an article where Cuba is considering adding incentives for people to move there from around the world.

Enough rambling about history and economics, let us get back to the beauty of the city.

For the past couple of days it has rained here.  In fact, the winter weather has been very nice since I arrived except for the first couple of days that were cold and windy.  After that, the weather has been sunny, rather temperate for this part of the world and mostly sunny.  This was our first storm since I arrived and for a time there it was raining really hard and there was some flooding in the lower lying delta areas of the Rio Plata.  In another post I will talk about the river and its influence on the area as one of the largest port cities in South America.

Today was a simply lovely day.  Yesterday afternoon the weather broke and the sun came out and I walked over to China town which is about a 10 minute walk from where I live.  Its actually nice to have access to some pretty good Asian grocery stores and restaurants close by.  Its almost like being back in southern California on a very, very small scale.

Today I ventured out around mid day and took the subway downtown.  Its about a 20 minute ride into the heart of the city from where I live.  All transit points end downtown where the big ports are as well.  I live at the end of the D line, and one good thing about living at the end of the line is you can almost go to sleep on the ride home and not worry about missing your stop.  I was thinking about that today as I was dozing off on the subway while reading my book and watching all of the activity around me.  The same was true when I lived in LA.  I always rode the Gold Line home, I loved riding the Gold line and I lived at the next to the last stop on the Gold Line called Allen.  Here in Buenos Aires I live at the next to the last stop on the Green D line at a stop called Juramento.  This is all probably much more detailed information than any one cares about, but another one of my friends said she wanted details, so I am sparing the rest of you with too many details.

The Parque Lezama was lovely.  Its on the southern edge of San Telmo and houses the Museo Histórico Nacional.  The park is well known for its Sunday flea market, and its there that I bought some pretty nifty items that I needed.  As I mentioned in another post, if you are going to buy stuff in Latin America, it certainly makes more sense to buy stuff directly from the people instead of stores where you are going to pay more of a full price.  So, I have been making a habit of buying most of the stuff I need on the street if I can find it, and you get slightly better prices.  The markets in Buenos Aires are in the parks.  The Parque Lezama flea market is known for its clothes.

I spent hours hanging out in the park today.  Its not a really large park, but its big enough so that you feel like you have a bit of space and with the sun blasting down on my face on this late winter day in Argentina I was very happy.  I got to talk a bit to the local folks and mostly observe the people and the flea market vendors as well.  I was once a flea market vendor at my local flea market in Placitas, New Mexico so I know what its like to hang out all day and sell stuff.  This was a good flea market.  For those of you who attended the Santa Fe flea market back in the late 70´s and early 80´s it is probably more like that, at least that is what I heard.

As the sun started to set and the afternoon began to wane I realized I had not eaten any food for hours.  So I stopped by a local panaderia for a sandwich and a cookie.  As I sat outside, eating my cookie and sandwich, I began to contemplate mi vida and the corazón y el alma of what its all about to experience the richness of being on Mother Earth, and the opportunity we have to embrace our lives with the utmost appreciation y pasión.

Parque Lezama

three young girls

laughing next to me

sunny park bench 

happy puppy

happy people

selling their wares and tools

sunshine abounds

san telmo edge

He comprado un 

cordón del zapato y

libros de Sherlock Holmes

después de tres días de lluvia

un muy linda dia 

me gusta buenos aires

My First Argentinian Asado

I have been in Argentina two weeks and already I want to start writing my blogs in Spanish, but I will hold off in fear of possibly alienating everyone who doesn´t read Spanish.  However, stay tuned for my poetry to now be written in both Spanish and English.  That will happen on my poetry blog which I will let you know about in another couple of posts or so.

The Argentinians are beautiful people and I am also starting to meet people from the neighboring countries of Paraguay and Bolivia.  The warm heartedness of the people are expressed in many different ways including men greeting men with a hello kiss, including the police officers on the street.  Imagine in Estados Unidos seeing a policeman in New York, Chicago, or LA kissing another man on the street to greet him hello.  Its just one of many parts of the culture here that is unfamiliar to myself. But I am starting to understand how it all works, and becoming more familiar with the customs in my new life.

Tonight was a very special experience.   I was invited into the home of some friends who had made a barbecue on their terrace and when I arrived they had meat all over the grill, including chorizo, blood sausage, and several different cuts of beef.  Clearly, I was not familiar with what I saw, but I knew that coming hungry tonight was a good idea.   In fact my eating habits have changed and are now more in line with the way people eat down here, especially the times that they eat.  So, I have been eating breakfast at a regular hour, and then a very tiny lunch, and then a dinner later than I would normally have eaten back home.

The traditional asado has very healthy meat.  In fact, I know the beef and the meat I ate was very good because after eating a lot of meat, I didn´t feel full, and I didn´t have that strange feeling after having eaten meat back home.  It must be the way the cows are fed here, grass fed, and it must be just the over all quality of the meat.  I felt really good after eating and did not have a meat hang over.  The past couple of years back home I have dramatically reduced my meat intake and was mostly a vegetarian except for a very rare occurence when I would have meat.

The way it works here in Argentina is that the meat courses role out in an specified order.  Basically, it goes from the lower grades of meat to the higher grades of meat as the evening progresses and the wine continues to be poured and the plates are made of wood.  The plates are these flat round pieces of wood, with a groove and the edge where the juice from the meat goes, and the plates are wood which allows for easy cutting.  So, everyone pretty much has their own cutting board with their own deal in which to savor your meal and use your utensils accordingly.

At this particular barbecue or asado in español, we started out with an appetizer of chorizo and empanadas.  Empanadas are served everywhere in Buenos Aires.  You find every Tom, Dick, and Sally sell empanadas.  Literally every single block in Buenos Aires you can find a restaurant and also a place to buy empanadas.  They come in all flavors and sizes, including carne, vegetables, queso, y papas with spinach.  I love the empanadas.  In the states you can think of them as kind of mini calzones, but the empanadas don´t really have cheese in them, unless you ask for the cheese, and the dough is much cakier than the pizza type dough of calzones at home.

So the empanadas and the chorizo was the first course.  This was the part to whet your appetite and get you ready for the meal.  The main meal included a nice cabbage salad with tomatoes.  The cabbage is a nice way to have a salad, but the cabbage wasn´t as heavy as a normal cabbage, and I almost thought it was lettuce until the host told me it was col, or cabbage in ingles.  There was a nice vinaigrette with a bit of oil as well mixed into the salad.  So here you have this rather small round wooden place with your meat and your salad and your meat sauce which was kind of hot sauce with some other cilantro mixed into the home made sauce for the meat.  As the cuts of beef rolled off the asado, each one a bit finer than the next, and the typical Argentinian rolls which are long round rolls, that I have actually never seen before.  In Argentina, they do not sell loaves of bread anywhere in the panaderias, but rather rolls of different sizes and shapes and pretty much the same consistency.

It was a lovely meal, and it lasted for many hours.  The course of the dinner went from about 7pm till midnight.  The conversation was mainly in Spanish the whole night with some English mixed in to appease the English speakers in the room which included myself and another woman also from Estados Unidos.  I was able to catch bits and pieces of the conversation as the evening wore on, and it will be nice in the future when I can actually understand what people were saying, but I am able to get by and get general glimpses of what is being said, and I enjoy the challenge and appreciate the light.

The final course of the meal was the dessert.  It was a traditional pastry that you find here in Buenos Aires, along with strawberries, and a new dish that I haven´t seen before.  You find it in many of the stores here, but I don´t even know the name of it yet, but will update you in a future post on the exact name of this delicious desert, its kind of like a pudding or jello all combined into a new consistency of something else served with a nice soft cheese that I have already bought once at the market that I am pretty much addicted too.  Its kind of like a cheese with more of a cream cheese texture but heavier than that.  So it is very tasty.

The evening included someone from Montevideo, Uruguay.  Montevideo is about three hours by boat from here, but if you try and drive its a long way because of the Rio Plata which goes many miles up into Argentina.  So, you have to cross the river by boat, and then get in a bus to keep moving along.  One of these days I will visit Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, and Bolivia, all neighboring countries of Argentina.

A nice night was had by all, and I was extremely happy to have the opportunity to participate in this new experience of the asado.  If you ever get a chance to come to Argentina, I know you will experience the beautiful Argentinian people and their way of entertaining with a beautiful creation of epicurean delight.  Stay tuned for more food adventures along with other experiences I continue to have in my new place of life and living.  I am very fortunate to continue to have these opportunities in my life and I am happy to share these experiences with you.