B got a haircut today at a men’s barbershop. We can’t have the boys looking too sloppy especially since they often don’t bother to comb their hair in the morning.
The weather today is absolutely lovely. It was sunny and the high was 76 degrees. Walking to pick up the boys from school was a treat today. I’m still adjusting to the “commute.” One boy finishes at 4:00 and the other boy at 5:30 for 4 days of the week. The 1.5 hour difference in the end of the school day is inconvenient; it isn’t long enough to wait around at school or to eat a snack so we’ve been walking home and returning to school 30 minutes later. This means that I stop working at 3:30PM, and except for the 30 minute break, I am “commuting” between work-school-home until 6:00PM. I like the exercise and the time with the boys, but sometimes I would rather be hanging out at home or doing something else rather than walking back-and-forth. I didn’t feel that way today. It was a joy to be outside and be walking. Unfortunately, the weather report for tomorrow is that the temperature drops 20 degrees. Winter is returning. We have decided to adapt and change in response to our circumstances. At the boys’ school in Phoenix, We packed the boys lunch for their school in Phoenix and sent them only with healthy food (the school prohibited fruit juices, cookies, and other sweets or junk food). Here, we are paying a lot of money for the kids to receive lunch at school (neither John nor I want to prepare full meals for the boys’ lunches so we reluctantly pay more for their lunches than our own). For their snacks, we first tried sending them with fruit but when the fruit came home every afternoon we moved on to yoghurt (sweetened, of course) and granola bars. Now we have resorted to giving them each a full bag of cookies for their snack. We came to this decision after we learned that F was losing friends because he kept begging kids to share their cookies with him. Cookies are a standard snack that parents give to their kids. I will be extra vigilant about making sure that they boys eat vegetables for dinner. Today, they had sweet potatoes and potatoes. Tomorrow, they’ll have beets…
John spent the week in São Paulo for work – his company is allowing him to work from Buenos Aires and giving him some South American projects that entail travel to Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. We missed him during the week but especially on Saturday. B’s class-mate invited to spend Saturday afternoon at CUBA (Club Universitario de Buenos Aires). At CUBA, B played soccer and ate a popsicle. While eating his popsicle, he lost a tooth. Now he has 3 missing teeth. He looks a bit like a jack ‘o lantern, which is fitting because his birthday is November 2. Many upper-middle class porteños belong to clubs where they do athletics and socialize. While it would be nice to escape the urban streets by going to a club, the membership fee is high and truly prohibitive for just one year. Much of the city, and especially our neighborhood, is quite dead on the weekends but there are still things to do. While B was at CUBA with his friend’s family, F and I walked to the Museo Xul Solar (an Argentine artist) but unfortunately the museum was closed this weekend. F and I still enjoyed our walk and time together. John returned Saturday night. On Sunday, we had lunch at Siga la Vaca – an all-inclusive, all-you-can eat parrilla. Even the desert and drinks were included. After lunch, we walked to the Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur. Before the entrance, we rented bikes. There were tons of people but for the most part, I felt like Argentines rather than tourists surrounded us. In my opinion, the Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur is one of Buenos Aires’s hidden gems. It is a large expansive land filled with wild grass and it borders the Rio de la Plata. It is a great place to ride a bike, jog, or have a picnic. The Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur runs parallel to Puerto Madero – a big tourist attraction. The nice weather brought lots of people to the entire area in order to enjoy the day. As we were walking to the subway to go home, busloads of hinchas (fans) of River Plate soccer team drove past. Policemen stopped traffic for the buses – like they do for funeral processions – but of course the atmosphere was quite different. Young people (mostly male but there were a few females) hung out of the buses and sang team songs. Argentines are quite passionate about fútbol. B has decided that he is a River fan. Although Boca Junior is more famous among foreigners, River Plate also has a lot of fans. River has the reputation of being a team for the upper-middle class. After a big lunch, we ate leftovers for dinner. It was nice to have John at home again!
I packed a lot of paperback books, digital books, board games, card games and Legos to keep the kids entertained during our stay in Buenos Aires. Of course, John packed the Xbox and a computer. I’ve let the boys play more videogames than in the US, in large part because I know that going to a new school in Spanish is taxing. We are trying to strike a balance by making the boys “earn” videogame time by doing something else – reading, playing a game, drawing, constructing with Legos, etc. A major concern though has been what to do when their school friends come over to our house. Our apartment is very spacious compared to most of their classmates’ apartments; it is about 1,500 square feet. It has 2 bedrooms, a combined living room/dining room and an extra upstairs space with a roof deck. When kids come over, the boys play video games. I want them to do other things but found it challenging to think of what they could do. A board game would be great but the more complex and more fun games would be taxing to explain in Spanish and the boys can’t play on the roof deck. I have now found at least one other good option – table tennis (ping pong). All I needed to buy was 2 racquets, balls, and a net that we placed on a table in the extra upstairs space. It cost a total of 80 pesos (less than $6). We’ve all been having fun playing ping pong.
During this morning’s walk to the boys' school, a new political campaign poster caught my attention. The title translates to Land Roof & Work “Are SACRED rights.” Pope Francis. Pablo Mangano Conducción. The background of the poster is covered in the national colors of baby blue and white. On the left side of the poster is Pope Francis and on the right side are Evita and Juan Perón. I doubt Pope Francis gave his permission for such a political poster and I wonder what he would think of such a connection with Evita and Juan Perón.
We are now in our fourth week of school and research. Based on previous experience, this is about the time when the excitement of living somewhere new starts to wear off. Indeed, today, the thought “I wish I were home where I didn’t have to deal with this” quickly passed through my brain. I then immediately reminded myself that I chose to be here and that I have to accept the good and the bad of being here.
The event that sparked this thought was when I was riding the subway this afternoon from the archive to the boys’ school. It was around 3:40PM and I was tired and hungry. I hadn’t eaten anything since 7:15AM because I had had meetings at the boys’ school in the morning and when the meetings were finished I wanted to go straight to the archive to study some documents that I had found the previous day but had not had time to review before. I arrived at the archive around 10:30 and stayed until I had to leave to pick up the boys from school. When I got on the subway, there was an empty seat next to the door so I sat down, took out my phone, and started to catch up on Facebook posts since I’m not able to check Facebook while in the archive. I had just gotten comfortable and was reading a friend’s post about the pope’s upcoming visit to Philadelphia when a man came up to me from across the subway and quietly said (in Spanish), “Look out. Be careful when the (subway) doors open.” It was a good warning: I was holding my Samsung phone in my hand but someone could easily have yanked it away from me. When the man warned me to be cautious, I immediately put my phone into my backpack and held the backpack securely in front of me. The first thoughts were of gratitude to the man for warning me and also “I wish I were home where I didn’t have to deal with this.” A little later, not only did I think this was a good wake-up call to be more alert about what is going on around me for safety reasons but also it was a good reminder not to be overly connected to and consumed by the Internet and my smart phone. Life is short and I want to live in the moment. Hours later, I reflected that I had no reason to be annoyed by having to stop reading Facebook while riding public transportation; if I were commuting at home in Phoenix I would be driving and also would not be able to read Facebook. Now, as I am getting ready for bed, I want to remember the lovely sunrise that F pointed out to me this morning. Our excursion on Sunday was to barrio Chino (Chinatown). We discovered this neighborhood when we visited a couple years ago. It’s only a couple blocks but those few blocks are densely packed with Asian stores, supermarkets, restaurants, and fast food. It’s a great place to visit. We had a delicious lunch, bought some supplies at a supermarket, and purchased some sweets as we walked around. Now that we are pretty much settled in our apartment and are getting into the swing of things at school, I thought it would be good to get the kids involved in an extracurricular activity. The school provides sports until 5:30 twice a week and school gets out at 4:00pm every other day, so I don’t want them to do anything (except maybe play dates with classmates) during the week. One extracurricular activity on the weekend would also be good because most of the boys’ classmates leave the city during the weekend. My first thought was to continue with piano lessons or maybe start another instrument (the bandoneon???) but then we didn’t have the luggage space to bring our electronic keyboard from Phoenix. My next thought was to do something that is fairly unique to Buenos Aires and horseback-riding lessons quickly came to mind. There are various escuelas de equitación right in the center of Buenos Aires (about a 15 minute taxi ride from our house). On Saturday morning, the boys had a trial lesson at Hipcampo. The boys liked the idea of horseback riding lessons but they didn’t want to ride ponies and they didn’t want to be led around by the instructor. They were in luck. They rode horses and had a lot of independence on their horses. They loved it! Horseback riding lessons aren’t cheap but I don’t think they are cheap in the United States either. It will be a splurge for us but I think it is a great opportunity for them. They’ll be very lucky if they learn to ride by themselves during our stay in Argentina. I wish I’d had the opportunity to learn to ride a horse. In fact, I’m looking into the possibility of also taking lessons. Horseback riding is quite formal in Buenos Aires. We will need to buy boots, helmets, whip, and maybe breeches. The teacher told us that currently there aren’t any openings for Saturday or Sunday lessons but she hopes that maybe there will be an opening at the end of the month. We’re crossing our fingers!
Buenos Aires is very urban and it reminds me a lot of New York City and European cities (not that I’ve seen many European cities). It has a great public transportation system (subways, buses, and taxis) and a wide array of museums and cultural activities. There are tons of great restaurants and cafes and there’s always something interesting to do or see. I love it! There are drawbacks though. One of the things that has struck me most are the numbers of people living on the streets. When walking around the city during the day, we almost always see people sleeping on the sidewalk with blankets completely covering them. Sometimes we see children too. Often, women who are begging have children with them. It makes me so sad. It is quite cold outside. I’ve drawn F & B’s attention to the people sleeping on the street and to the children who are selling something or are with women who are begging. The boys have commented on the homeless people. They’ve asked why doesn’t the city just move them to the countryside (B actually said that the government should give them land in someplace like Canada – I guess he hasn’t studied his geography very well). It is a complicated problem with no easy solution. I want my kids to learn gratitude for what they have and to feel an obligation to try to help those who are less fortunate than they are. Given that both the economic and political situations are quite polarized, Argentina suffers from serious economic problems, and presidential elections are in October, there are a number of protests. There always seem to be people protesting at Plaza de Mayo in front of Casa Rosada (the presidential building). Often, groups have protest signs and semi-permanent camps. I’ve also seen a couple of marches in the center. There are also lots of postings on buildings and street corners. The many small but graphic pieces of paper advertising sex shops have most attracted the boys’ attention. There are also postings about political campaigns and cultural events. John and I first lived in Buenos Aires 10 years ago, when F was born. I see changes in the city. I am especially impressed with the center. The streets are narrow and there used to be a lot of traffic. It was noisy and stressful to try to avoid all of the cars, motorcycles and buses. Now the traffic has been reduced dramatically. Much of downtown has been turned in to pedestrian streets. To make these streets seem wider and to facilitate walking, the sidewalks have been removed; it makes a big difference. Some of the streets have bike lanes. Also, the center seems a lot cleaner to me. I’m surprised that these changes have been made while Argentina suffers from tough economic problems. One of the benefits of repeatedly returning to Buenos Aires is that I am familiar with the city. I know many of the neighborhoods and generally know how things work in the city, or if not, I generally know how to find out. I also already know various hidden gems in the city. The drawback is that so much is familiar. Still, things are sufficiently different from Phoenix to make living here exciting. One morning, John and I went to the center to get information from the Casa de Ushuaia (the tourism office for the Province of Ushuaia) for our winter vacation. Each province has a “casa” in Buenos Aires where they promote tourism. They are sources of helpful information. We want to visit the glacier Perito Moreno in the Province of Santa Cruz during summer vacation in December or January.
Just as I’d hoped, we are building a sense of community at Colegio del Salvador. For the second time, a group of mothers invited us to their home after school. The boys ate snacks and played video games, hide and seek, and some other games while the mothers visited. This time, the purpose was to drink yerba mate (and of course, get to know each other). It was two mothers who drink yerba mate, one who does not, and myself. Not all of the parents drink yerba mate. In Buenos Aires, a good number of people prefer coffee. The two women taught me how they prepare yerba mate. One of the most interesting things was the electric kettle that heats the water to the perfect temperature. It has a thermometer so you can program it to heat the water to an exact temperature. They said 80 is perfect. I’m hoping that I can bring one of these electric kettles back to the United States for use in my office at work. The complicating factor is the different electrical voltage in the United States. The women said that the electric kettle is much better than a regular kettle that you put on the stove because it is critical that you don’t let the water boil because boiling water burns the yerba mate. Interestingly, Angelina told me that in Paraguay they do use boiling water and do not believe that boiling water burns the yerba. After discussing yerba mate, the women wanted to know why we would choose to live in Buenos Aires for a year. As I’ve mentioned, life in Buenos Aires is complicated with high inflation, the double exchange rates, and other economic problems. I told them that not only my research requires me to spend time in South America, but also that I find many aspects of Buenos Aires attractive. They then wanted to know why we chose to live in central Buenos Aires and not Zona Norte. Zona Norte is where most of the most prestigious and elite bilingual and foreign schools are located, and further out, where most middle-upper class people have country homes for the weekends. I told them that we live in the suburbs like Zona Norte in Phoenix so here we want to have an urban experience.
Soon, I plan to invite mothers and kids to our house for mate or coffee/tea. We have a decent place to entertain, with the drawback that the television and Internet is in the living room/dining room. Ideally the kids could play upstairs while the adults hang out on the roof deck or in the living room/dining room. John plans to bring back a router when he returns to the US in October so that we can hopefully have Internet all over the house. Maybe we can move the TV upstairs too??? I haven’t yet figured out how to invite people over for dinner. Argentines eat late. We are accustomed to eating earlier and to having the boys go to bed earlier too. I guess we could have people over for dinner by letting the kids stay up late to watch a movie. |