Los Chicos de Mi Barrio

I haven’t talked too much about my neighborhood, but I am in love with where I live. Aside from having a cool apartment owned by an amazing artist, I live in a neighborhood mixed with posh apartments, young families, singles, you name it. I love the diversity when I walk down the street… there are teenagers in their rumpled school uniforms shouting at the end of a busy day, backpack lazily slug over one shoulder. The tiny girls with their hair cascading down their backs, giggling groups of gawky, long-limbed budding teenagers, rambunctious boys yelling as they run down the broken sidewalks on a fall afternoon. Old ladies with canes, hunched over their packages and moving glacially across the street as the impatient cars wait for the light to change. Young mommies pushing strollers while lugging their groceries and talking on the phone in rapid fire Spanish, probably to their housekeepers And hunky boys in gym shorts flashing their over-muscled soccer legs, my favorite.

Another part of my neighborhood is the little shops that just become part of your life when you live somewhere. There’s a lovely verduria on the next block that I frequent. When you walk in most afternoons, beautiful melodies reminiscent of Frank Sinatra but in Italian or Spanish greet you. The owner, a shriveled and charming man with sparkling blue eyes is always there, handing out compliments as fresh as his beautiful spinach. Last week he told he how much he loved my accent in Spanish, this week he complimented my hat.

There’s also Raul, who greets everyone by name as he sells them sodas and cigarettes at the corner shop. He must work 17-hour days, but he always has a smile and a greeting for you. Last night, when I went to pay, I offered him monedas and said, when I have them, I give them. He smiled and when he gave me my change, he included a little chocolate treat with his customary smile.

It's just a reminder how attitudes about work here are different. In a country where unemployment has climbed over 20 percent, people are often grateful for work regardless of what the work actually is. While things are changing in the US because of the ever shrinking economy, when's the last time the guy at 7-11 smiled at you?

Meaty Culture

I was a vegetarian many moons ago, sometime in college when it was de riguer to do it. I eventually returned to my carnivorous ways, as my body never loved this state of being, always feeling deprived of something.

Thankfully I got over this before I came to Argentina. This is a place of meat, meat, and more meat. Ummm… Delicious meat. I have met some Argentine “vegetarians” who eat every type of flesh but actual red meat – this includes ham and chicken.

When you go to the carniceria (butcher), there must be more than two dozen cuts of beef to choose from, each with their own very Argentine names. Or when you go to a parilla for a diner with friends, there’s no less than 10 different types of meat to gobble down with your Malbec. I still don’t know what some of them are and I suspect if I knew, I still probably wouldn’t eat them.

For example, the other night I was at a small dinner party where the chef was a vegetarian and she cooked us a delicious Middle Eastern inspired dinner, with homemade hummus and falafel. While eating, we got into a discussion about meat and one of the guests (a dear friend), asked me about what cuts of meat I liked. Before too long, we had to pull out the Spanish-English dictionary to look up what we were talking about. Brains, livers, ever organ you could imagine was mentioned.

Nonetheless, the stuff I do eat is scrumptious! Some say it’s the grass feeding, others say it is the lack of hormones and medicines the cows are given here in Argentina. But it’s not important. It’s damn good, with a nice texture and gentler flavor than North American meat. But what do I know about meat anyway? I had seitan for lunch.

A Funny From My Day

Yesterday I had a crazy day, running from place to place… up early, to the gym, a little work, and then had to run off to a long meaty and winey goodbye lunch for a friend. I was running a little behind, so I hopped onto my bike to ride down to the restaurant. You may recall that my bike is kind of crappy and is now steadily declining into unsafe territory. The seat now is half broken, so when I ride it I have to focus on putting most of the weight on the right side so the whole thing does not snap off the stem. Arrgh! Not as much fun to ride, but still does the job.

Anyway, it was a beautiful fall day. A bit nippy as the sun cascaded through the trees as I plodded through Palermo for a bife with the gals. My scarf was fluttering in the wind and I had Yo La Tango on my Ipod as I felt the sun warm the top of my head. I turned onto José Cabrera and rode by a group of guys in pressed khakis on their way to lunch. One stuck out his thumb, grinning at me as he begged for a ride. I looked him right in the eye and said, “ I could, ya know” and kept pedaling, cackling all the way.

South American Seder

I have had a friend in town, thus playing tour guide and venturing around my adopted country has taken priority for the last two weeks. I inadvertently ended up missing the first days of Passover and over the last couple of days have been thinking non-stop about my mother’s rock hard matzo balls (which we loving refer to as hockey pucks), my grandmother’s salty chicken soup, and the tender pot roast of Aprils past. Not that I am such a devout Jew, but who doesn’t love cultural Judaism?

Last night I decided to bring a dash of it to friends from Honduras by preparing matzo brei. I bought matzo (over 10 bucks for a kilo, ouch!) and headed to my South American style pseudo-seder.

After announcing that Elijah was at the door when I arrived (which no one but me understood), I told the goyim the story of Passover as I scrambled the eggs and soaked the matzo. I am a pancake style matzo brei girl, served with a little sugar. I explained to them the variety of ways to prepare and serve matzo brei (scrambled, with lox, with onions, with salt, with jam) and successfully flipped the giant matzo pancake without disaster. Phew.

They loved my concoction. When sampling the final product, they decided that we must have chicken with it. Chicken? For a moment, I was incredulous, thinking how in the world could I have chicken with matzo brei? They went even further, talking about bacon and pork rinds. Treyf! Treyf in matzo brei? It’s not chametz, but equally sacrilegious.

Thankfully there were no pork products in the house so I was spared such extreme levels of lawbreaking. But I did end up enjoying my first ever matzo brei with a side of tangy Central American chicken. Zissen Pesach!

Mis Piernas

I know you’ve had a lot of my men stories here in BA, but I had such an odd male encounter the other day that I just have to share it with you.

This past weekend, I ended up having a fun filled night with a new friend who was a hoot. So much of a hoot that the next day when I was going to meet her for a late lunch, I was a certified disaster. My muscles ached from laughing, my throat was sore from yelling and my head still throbbed from the wine, beer and lord knows what other concoctions I had ingested well into the morning.

A mess.

And of course, a kind of late to meet her mess. And of course not knowing where the hell I was going and of course not able to find two brain cells to rub together to actually look at a map kind of mess. So I grabbed a taxi and told the driver my destination in Spanish. He soon asked me where I am from, the usual banter I am forced to engage in with the taxistas of Buenos Aires.

But this one is different.

He starts pouring on the flirt with a heavy hand. I have been living here long enough that I am used to a charming Argentine man who hands out compliments like a man handing out dollar bills in Vegas. So I just play along as best I can, operating on whatever intellectual fumes I have left from the night before. It wasn’t easy, my Spanish sputtering like the Ladas I had seen in Cuba the week before.

He loved it.

Then he started talking to me about my legs. "Tus piernas!" he exclaimed. At every stoplight, he turned around and directed his comments about my body, my face, my everything to my legs. Now don’t get me wrong, I run, I bike and all that crap. I have nice legs. But talking to my legs? Over the top.

We arrive at my destination and as I am rummaging through my bag looking for my 20-peso note, he turns and asks me if I would have coffee with him. There is a pleading in his eyes that I am not sure I have ever seen in a man before.

Do you just shoot a wounded man or leave him dying?

If you’re Jill, you just let him die a slow death. I took his number.

Primer Mundo Blanca Chica

At the core of being a first world white girl is having freedom. The life I am living right now is the embodiment of this idea. I am free to live in another country, go wherever I want, talk to whoever I want, and say just about anything I want. I have all of these liberties because of where I was born as well as some other socio-economic things that stem from where I come from. I am not the only one lucky enough to have this… chances are if you are reading this you probably are too.

Part of my adventures has been traveling in Latin America, so I recently went on a trip to one of the only places in the world the US government forbids me to go (well not directly, but they cut off my ability to legally spend money there so that basically makes it very difficult), Cuba.

First off, Cuba is beautiful. The weather is fantastic, the beaches are stunning and the people are incredibly friendly. I met tons of Cubans who opened their hearts and homes to me, fed me and plied me with beer while they told me about their lives and their dreams. For many of them, they feel trapped. Trapped on a beautiful island in the middle of the sea, left to only dream about the places they see in movies.

Juan, a taxi driver I met, asked me, “Is New York City like the movies or better?” “Oh Juan,” I responded, “Even better.” I explained to him about the rhythm of the people, the giant buildings everywhere, the smells of the food in the streets, the sounds of the cars and the voices and the never-ending streets of stores with anything and everything you could dream of. It made me miss New York, to miss America, and to feel bad that this 35 year-old man did not have the choice to go and see with his own eyes the myths and realities of a piece of my home.

Juan wasn’t the only one. I met a group of Cuban guys who wanted to take me out to lunch and when we tried, we were turned away at a restaurant in La Habana Vieja. The owner of the place yelled at my newfound friend, “No, I won’t have a foreigner in here… I don’t want trouble from the police.”

So we ended up in the countryside, taking an old dusty enclosed pickup truck with the rest of the locals to a relaxed place away from the prying eyes of the police. Giovanni, Jose and Yohan all told me about their lives, about how they dreamed and hoped for a better life. I tried to explain to them, just as I had tried to explain to Victoria in Peru about the price you pay for the other life. “Yes,” Giovanni responded, “But at least you have the choice.”

He was right on that one.

As sad as I am about their lack of freedom, there is something to appreciate about their lives. The people stop and chat, they have the time to hear your story, to ask questions about where you have been, to stop and talk to a neighbor. Life is about the most basic of elements, since there is not really anything else. I can’t really make a judgment though, since I am free to choose my life and most Cubans are not.

Not everyone in Cuba was critical of life under the regime. Many supported the Revolution and the Castros. I spent one afternoon talking to a beautifully talented musician, Julian, who say it best, “En tu mente eres libre” … in your mind you are free.

Being A Foreigner

The other day I went to look at an apartment (my roommate is moving South, which sadly means that I have to move too). Before I went to look, I emailed and spoke with a guy about the place. All of our interactions were in Spanish and when we met, he asked, "Where are you from? I can tell you are a foreigner because of your accent."

That comment about my damn accent (which I am told is cute, although I don’t believe it all) reminded me how obvious it is to others that I am a foreigner.

I know it. Looking at that apartment, there was just something I could not fully understand about the situation, the place, the people. Conversation would not bring me answers. I decided I couldn’t take the place because I couldn’t get the situation or the people… it was like trying to read a book in Russian to me.

This happens when you are a foreigner. Things and cues that may be obvious in your home country are just not available to you when you are in the middle of something. Sometimes its the language sometimes its the onda. Look, there is an entire tense in Spanish to talk about things you want but may never get and this impacts how people interrelate.

At the end of the day, soy una extranjera.

With this label comes the ignorance of not always realizing how deaf, dumb and blind I am to local customs and sometimes utterly failing to know when I have contorted them to their outermost limits and offended someone. If you know me and know even a morsel about Latin America, you know I have done this.

For example, there is my brazen indifference to my femaleness that is a regular feature of my blog and my life in Latin America. Here’s another example of it: I have a friend, a Brazilian woman. She is in her late 20’s and still lives with her parents and she is deathly terrified of walking to and from the gym at night alone in her neighborhood. Mind you, she is not living in the Buenos Aires equivalent of the Bronx, it’s probably closer to Long Island City.

I, of course, find this completely nuts. Is this because I have no idea really how safe or unsafe it is? Or is this because my definition of sketchy is worlds apart from a Brazilian one? Or maybe it is because I wouldn’t even know Latin American sketchy til’ it stabbed my gringa ass?

I’ll take option number three.

The good thing about being a foreigner is that people will just forgive and forget most of your transgressions. Aside from my femaleness, my other issues seem to be my punctuality (although I am learning how to be a half hour late to EVERYTHING, it’s great), my inability to stay up until 5 am and live on four hours of sleep and my severe resistance to underwear that is the size of an eye patch.

At least I have that accent to charm them, right?