Finally: photographs and a video

Buenos Aires

When the fatso with the ill-fitting jeans ushered me toward his unmarked black car the back-right corner of which was smashed up and patched with duct tape that maybe he imagined to look like metal, I considered resisting – considered finding a cab without major damage to a quarter of its surface area – but didn’t.

I got in.

Sierras

I’m on a plane. It’s being flown by “Captain Savage,” and this is his last commercial flight – really. I’ve never been told something so ominous in my entire life.

Anyway:

My five o’clock-in-the-Monday-afternoon bus out of Cordoba — that town chock-full of lesbians, stray dogs, and blind people — traced the route along which I had walked every day to work, and so I was permitted to relive in reverse, as we drove toward the hostel before exiting the city, my memories from each of the haunts along the trek, a sentimental goodbye said silently from my gliding interurban bus-seat throne, a goodbye which was to be thoroughly spoiled when I came back to the hostel on Friday for the purpose of saying goodbye but instead bummed around for a few unromantic hours.

A few scenes

I finished the “internship” last week (eight days ago) and gave a short presentation at our weekly meeting of all the “trainees” doing education-related work. Conrado will continue on with Elizabeth, an arrival from Mexico. Not having anything to do, and having pretty well explored the downtown, I’m finally feeling restless to go home.

This is the first time I’ve written at night. I’m among vociferous old men who are watching fútbol on a flatscreen. The hostel has swelled to unmanageable numbers – hordes of yelping Brazilians roam the hallways – and fortunately for my psychic well-being I’m heading out on my own this week to visit the Sierras, to the north. After a month of sunny cloudless blue skies, they’ve turned gray, coinciding with my mood. I don’t know the causality perfectly.

Fourth and fifth weeks

If you want to walk and listen to music in a Latin American city, do so during a soccer match, preferably a COPA America championship which your country has a chance of winning. The streets are empty; ambient noise is at a minimum. I discovered this last night. It was a bit eerie. (If you’re a criminal, look for foreigners walking and listening to music during soccer matches; there are no witnesses around.) It got dark, and I got lost, to the point of asking a police officer for directions.

Brought to you by caffeine

I’m taking Spanish classes, and I’ve had two so far (Thursday/Tuesday), and the teacher is very nice and helpful. Point is: Today she forgot a key so we went to … a public library! “Biblioteca Mayor” – it’s a few blocks from the hostel. I’ve been looking for one for weeks but didn’t ask around. It’s old and cavernous and a nice size. Up a flight of stairs at the back of a historic courtyard. Huzzah! (<— a word whose origin is unknown)

Second, third weeks

Days are starting to blur dangerously, and I’m counting on this writing to help pin them down. The challenge is to catch you up on the last two weeks without going on forever. I don’t want this to be confused for the new papal encyclical.

A few recollections, roughly ordered by chronology: I walked with Paige, a girl from Wisconsin, to Capuchinos Cathedral (its full name is longer and less alliterative), to whose upstairs chapel I would later return alone to read. That morning, Paige and I had found a vegetarian restaurant — a thrilling discovery after a first week during which, no matter what I ordered, I was served dry beef with ham on top. Later that week: a few volunteers spent a weekday morning at Museo de la Memoria, a small building where 30 or so young people were tortured and killed under military rule… I had a three-hour conversation over dinner with Victoria Marks, a freshman in Davenport at Yale whom I did not know before, and who is also working here, but with a different organization… I accompanied 10 hostel-mates to Alta Gracia, a nearby town with a Che Guevara museum, a Jesuit compound, and weirdly invigorating air — Che’s family moved there to help him recover from respiratory problems.  I’ve begun to spend more time on my own since growing somewhat exhausted with Spanish-speaking and with the Spanish-speakers with whom I live.

First week

I am sitting in a very dirty cafe. Ten seconds ago, I found a used floss pick under my leg. Today is Sunday, June 6. I arrived in Argentina on Sunday, May 31. It has been, as we say back in America, a week.

My pre-departure leafing-through of a guidebook lead me to believe that (1) Córdoba was “the spiritual home of the empanada” and that (2) its inhabitants were “renowned for their distinctive accents and sophisticated (sometimes surreal) sense of humor.” Within an hour of landing I was apportioning scoops of meat in a college student’s apartment, having been conscripted into the empanada-production service. So, the empanada thing checks out. I’m assuming the second claim is true, too – though I wouldn’t know, since some combination of the two factors (accent and sophisticated surrealism) conspire to ensure that I understand virtually nothing that is said to me. I spent the flight from Santiago to Córdoba desperately listening to a podcast called “Learn Argentinian Spanish,” but half an hour of half-listening did not induce fluency.