Dan's deep thoughts - March

Dan: One of the things I didn’t really picture over the past ten years or so, when I was dreaming about living in another land, was that the majority of people I’d meet and get to know very well in that foreign land would be other travelers. Through Spanish classes, teaching English and just running into fellow English speakers in public places, we’ve met a few extranjeros. They’ve all pretty much been from the States and Europe. But what we all have had in common was being in a place where we don’t know many people, and are still, to varying degrees, still learning the ropes.

A friend in Minnesota who came from out of state once commented on how by a certain age after high school or college, Minnesotans don’t really seem to want to make new friends. They’ve already got enough friends, no room for more. Whereas in a college town, or places like Colorado or San Francisco, where everybody seems to be from somewhere else, it’s relatively easy to find new people to hang out with. That may be the case here too, compounded of course with the obvious problem of a sizeable language barrier. So we’ve spent a good deal of time speaking English and bad Spanish with other travelers. Some of the people we’ve hung out with have traveled extensively, from tip to toe of South America, or around the world
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_McCormick ), while we’ve hardly left the Mendoza city limits. At times when I’m feeling that maybe things aren’t really working out here, I get antsy and start thinking about all the other places there are to see, and how maybe we could move to a country with more street food, one that recognizes the edibility of the chili pepper.

So those are some of the things going on in the brain of Dan these days. Hearing about what others are doing has, on the positive side, exposed us to other ideas of what we can do down here and made me more flexible on my vision this year.

Food

Lou: Since we aren´t doing much traveling we pass the time thinking about food. Here´s a round up of the food that we have in the house. Fresh fruits & veggies are usually bought & eaten the same day. (so not much around to take a picture of) Fresh bread is usually bought from the panaderia as needed, too. All so good!

I've been lazy about getting out & buying fruits now that I don't have classes in the mornings. Now I'm paying the price with a cold. Dan went right out & bought some oranges from across the street. Now we're on the right health track, again.

I need to remember my goal of eating as many avocados as I can and as many smoothies as possible. Well, the later will have to wait until I get a job & enough guita (money) to buy a blender. Simple goals! For now, more oranges, nectarines & bananas.

Even things that should be simple have a learning curve for us here. Tonight we had to ask the neighbor how to light the oven! I suppose we'll have her back over when it gets cold enough to have to turn on the gas heater, too!

Dan is watching Big Brother Argentina right now. It is BIG here. I think it may be on every night & all of the players are scantily clad model types.

Another long walk

Dan: This week somebody in our neighborhood got wi-fi, so we did as well. We were thinking about getting cable to have internet, but that sounded like a big investment, especially since we don’t know if we’ll stay in this apartment for very long. But now we have an intermittent connection. It goes from one bar to four bars and back, all day. Things load slowly, we can’t stream anything, and I think Skype would be a real pain. We basically have internet from 1998, but it saves us a few pesos and a few steps.

Yesterday we went looking for a market that may or may not exist. I wanted to find a place like the markets of Mexico and Central America where everything from pigs heads to power rangers backpacks are sold at very reasonable prices. I´m currently on the lookout for a cheap guitar. We were told that some sort of market or fair was between the bus station and the mall. We walked and walked. Whenever we asked someone on the way about the outdoor market, they either said that they hadn’t heard of such a thing, or said that it was still really far away, and that if we do get there we should be careful, due to the kind of people at such a market. Eventually we just ended up at the shopping mall. It was like walking into a little slice of Eden Prairie; shiny glass, movie theater, free bathrooms. We had some pasta and beer in the food court and found a bus to take back home. Big adventure. Tired legs.
Food: The other day we went to the pasta shop around the corner. They have fresh made or ready-to-eat food. We got some fresh raviolis (ricotta for lou, carne for me). They come in sheets, so you first cut them apart, then throw them in boiling water for 2 minutes and chow down. My raviolis were absolutely amazing little pillows of meat, cheese and spices. The texture was like no other ravioli I’ve had. The pasta part was thinner and whiter. In addition to various fresh pastas, the shop also sells take and bake pre-pizza crusts, sauces, and various doughy meat or veggie pies.

There was a little test for my Spanish and my willingness to make waves at the pasta shop. I didn’t realize until a few hours later, when the shop was closed, that I was given the wrong change. It was the equivalent of about $12, which is almost four trips to the pasta shop, so I had to come back the next day and explain what happened. They gave me quite a little lecture about always counting my change and paying attention, and that no one else would believe me but they would. I got my change back. I hope I can show my face in there again because I haven’t tried their gnocchi yet.

Lou and Dan join the 21st century

After successfully resisting attempts by Catherina Zeta Jones and the can-you-hear-me-now guy to get us into a phone plan, we have finally crumbled under the pressure.

Perhaps it was our incredibly busy social lives.

Maybe it was our increase in business transactions.

Or it could have been the influence of the slick Movistar spokesman, Gerardo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBoMvJM2tIY

2007 shall be known as the year that we finally got mobile phones.

Louann poses with phone.

Dan poses with phone.

Mountains & grape vines. Que bonita!














Our postcard picture of the gates of Park San Martin at night. (click for a bigger picture)

right: ahh nature! (hummer)

The IN list from the OUTsiders

Lou: Here’s my attempt to make a “what’s in/ & what’s out” list for Mendoza:

IN: tight jeans/ OUT: long or loose shirts-- IN: jean skirts/ OUT: shorts—IN: carrying around little puppies/ OUT: leashes for dogs (they just seem to know how to follow their owner & how to cross the street)-- IN: walking/ OUT: strollers for toddlers that can walk—IN: newborn babies/ OUT: maternity clothing--IN: sandals/ OUT: tennis shoes (unless stylish ones)—IN: mullets/ OUT: spiked hair

it´s all coming together

Dan: Even though I was only scheduled to teach for 3 hours last week, every time I went to the school, I was asked to cover another class. So my evenings were busy this week. I’ll give a sample of the type of people I’m teaching, at least last week; Federico, an import/export logistics guy from a huge holdings company with branches in 70 countries, Julio and Silvia, two accountants, Cristina, an Italian woman who needs to improve her English for her interview in Belgium next month for an EU scholarship to an international relations masters program, and Augusto, a general manager for a hydroelectric power company that builds 4 hydro stations around the world each year. Yesterday I felt like finally my studies in international relations were being put to use when I was making up interview questions for Cristina. Those incredibly boring macro and international econ courses that I barely passed 15 years ago provided me with just enough knowledge to keep up with Julio and Silvia’s business English curriculum. It’s all coming together. They* laughed when I said I wanted to study International Relations in Minnesota. Well who is laughing now? My life’s accumulation of knowledge has finally panned out, and allowed its application in a 12-peso per hour job.

*The people at Scott Hansen’s Comedy Gallery, the night my friends and I from St. Cloud sat in the front row and got singled out by the comedian onstage, Frank from Mystery Science Theater 3000, in 1994. His comment was something like, “St. Cloud, a real hotbed of international activity!”

Food: Pizza here is quite common, and a nice cheap thing for two people to split. I don’t know how many mozzarella pizzas we have split, for the lack of better options. There are usually only two varieties available anyway, the other one having ham on it. The mozzarella pizza varies in quality but always has a lot of cheese, is usually quite greasy, always includes green olives (with pits), and sometimes red pepper slices. The degree of extra herbs added for flavor has ranged from yummy to none at all. And as I think we mentioned before, sometimes you get some hardboiled egg on top. Some are baked on stones, some in plain old ovens, and one I’m sure was baked over fire. Tomato sauce is almost non-existent.

Drink: Fernet. I had heard a little about it, so I picked up a bottle. It comes in regular and mint. It’s a 90 proof alcohol. The old folks drink some after meals, I guess with water or soda, as a digestive. The young folks mix it with coke. Lou was told that a party without fernet is a failure. The flavor is similar to cloraseptic throat spray.

Spanglish

Lou: It’s Friday. My brain hurts, my body hurts. This was my last week of “full time” classes. Next week I switch from 20 hours a week(plus free extra activities) to 4. It’s as if some kind of extraterrestrial creature from a sci-fi movie is (slowly, very slowly) taking over my brain. Am I talking/ thinking in English/ Spanish? I don’t know anymore. There are times I can understand very well in Spanish & times I understand nothing. Usually I form sentences very slowly & incorrectly. Sometimes well enough to get my point across, though. Iforget words in English, I forget words in Spanish…

My teacher told me that there are about 14 verb tenses in Spanish, I’ve become acquainted with about ½ of them. How many do we have in English? Past, present, future and maybe a couple more? For this reason I get so hung up on I/he/you/they did something and in what point in time that that they will do it (or did it, or maybe will do/did) that I don’t get past the verb when I try to respond to someone. Which in Spanish happens to be the first part of the sentence. So you can see why one person calls me “muda”: mute.

So is the way of language learning when one isn’t a kid, I guess. Dan always amazes me with how many random vocabulary words he knows. I think the biggest help for him has been free classes that the institute offers in which you can ask to work on whatever Spanish problems you have. There have been so few people that we can get good individual help from the teacher.

I´m sore because I decided to try a class of Copoeira. A classmate from the states was taking it, and I decided to give it a try. From what I remember from a live show I saw way back when at SCSU, it was a dance created by Brazilian slaves—and it was actually a martial art hidden within the dance. The kicks are not so foreign to my body, but the other moves & handstands are not something that I am used to. Well, really, I’m not so used to any of it! For this reason, I hope my body can somewhat recover before the next class Tuesday!

La parilla!

Dan: Two times now we’ve been to the city of Godoy Cruz, to the Nicotra house for meals. Luciano and Lidia Nicotra are the parents of my former students, Stella and Monica, back in Minnesota. We’ve had some traditional family meals over there, and their overwhelming hospitality has been nothing less than embarrassing to us. It was a little weird, I have to admit, to have people be so attentive. “Do you want more coke?” “Water?” “Is the chicken good?” “Is that meat cooked enough for you?” “Here have some more salad and bread and potatoes…” ¨Do you want to take a nap?¨Due to a misinterpretation of the word vegetarian, in addition to the traditional grilled beef, a chicken was also grilled for Louann, who politely ate some of it, under the watchful eyes of our hosts. This Sunday we were there for many hours. It was exhausting participating in Spanish conversation for such a long time. Louann mostly just tuned it out entirely until Luciano directly asked her something. The result of this was Luciano believing that she didn’t understand anything. So every once in awhile he made a big point of ‘teaching’ her vocabulary. “Esto es agua. Aaaaaguaaaaa.” He would talk a mile a minute for a half hour straight, then turn to Lou and slowly repeat the name of a fruit 3 or 4 times so she would understand. Lidia would be like, “Honey, she gets it.” I, on the other hand, just kept eating everything that was offered and tried to keep up with the conversations. This Sunday we had chicken, steak and ribs. This picture is of Luciano proudly showing one rack that is almost ready to eat. He is standing in front of his parilla. Every house seems to have one. Apartment buildings have one on the roof that the tenants take turns using. I think grilling might be the national pastime. They cook with wood, so one must be patient waiting for it turn into coals. We tried our own BBQ at the apart/hotel on Saturday. We met a Brit bloke named Ben and a Czech chick named Petra and decided to do our own little cookout with these folks who’ve been traveling South America for 9 months already. Though I initially made the fire at around 7:30, we probably didn’t start eating our steaks until around 11:00 pm, two liters of beer and two bottles of wine later.

Home and work

Dan: Sometimes wishes do come true. I would like to announce to our readership that I am now gainfully employed in South America. Employed if you consider having one student, three hours a week to be gainful, also considering that transportation to and from the lessons equals roughly three hours a week itself. But I know I have to start somewhere. So far, the Highlands Institute is the only place that has called me, so I’ll take whatever they offer me. I know that word of my wicked teaching skills will soon travel throughout the land and I will have more work than I want. Thus far it feels pretty good to be back in my element, where for the most part, I know what I’m doing.

In the meantime, our efforts to find a cheaper, more permanent place to live have paid off. We hope we have obatined the six keys to our happiness. Last night was our first night in our new, one-bedroom apartment. Louann still can’t sleep past 6AM, but I for one, was happy to at last sleep in, on a firm mattress with soft pillows. The place is furnished (dishes and all) and quite clean. We have our own little courtyard for putting out laundry to dry. If we were one floor higher and on the opposite side of the building, we would have a mountain view. The rooms in this building that I suspect do have more scenic views are dentist offices. There are three apartments and three dentists in this building. So far all I hear is footsteps and dropping of tools from upstairs. No soothing sounds of drills yet.

My discovery of the day was at one of the hundreds of internet places in Mendoza. Some are simply places to use the web or print things, others are fully equipped for network gaming, with headphones, mics and video cameras for video chatting. I was killing time between my Spanish class and my English lesson, and quite bored, when I realized that X# of pesos per hour for internet could also mean X# of pesos to play video games. I checked the program list and there were tons of games for me to wile away the time with. Anyway, the time flew by quickly and I learned the Spanish word for machine gun.

busy times

Dan: I don't know exactly what we've been busy with, but apparently we aren't finding much time to devote to our faithful readers. I suppose apartment search, job search and spanish classes for both of us have been a bit time-consuming. though i believe that soon we'll be without an in-house internet connection, i hope we'll be able to keep the blog going. I remember hearing something like half of all blogs are abandoned in the first six months. (see http://danjapan.blogspot.com/)

Hopefully my next entry will be a report on my first gainful employment in a foreign land, and an invitation to our housewarming party.

Food: Whereas the coffee I had in Chile was instant Nescafe everywhere we went, the coffee over here in Argentina is a marked improvement. Real coffee. Espresso actually. But grabbing a cup of coffee isn’t like at Starbucks back home, or filling up one’s 32 oz travel mug at the gas station. One generally sits down in a café and orders a single or double café espres, with or without milk, and sits down and drinks it. For some reason coffee is always served with an equally short glass of soda water, and maybe a cookie. Any time of day you can see people hanging out at sidewalk tables in small groups, chatting and drinking their tiny coffees. Probably more Italian influence and reflects another difference between our go go, hurry up culture and the slower, more relaxed culture that naps every afternoon. On a related note, talking on a cell phone while driving, even with a hands-free phone, is illegal in Argentina.

Vendimia

Dan: I think the Vendimia (wine festival) is winding down. We went to the parade on Friday night. It consisted of each queen (17 or so) being pulled on a tractor trailer bed, elaborately decorated in harvest themes. She was usually accompanied by 6 to 12 lesser royals. We got there an hour early and got a decent place to stand behind a fence. Then as the parade got started, we watched as thousands lined the road on the inside of that fence, scarcely leaving room for the trucks to come by. They needed to be close to gain better access to the loot being tossed by the floatriders. When I say loot, I should really say fruit; a lot of grapes, some apples, some pears and the royal court of the region famous for its cantaloupes threw melons into the crowd. Most of them threw like girls, so very little fruit made it to our outpost. It was no Raspberry Festival, probably because I didn’t get a sunburn, it being at night. The next morning, however, there was a repeat of the whole thing, in scorching hot sun. This time the parade went in the opposite direction and included bands and dance troupes between the queens. Once we got the gist of it, we decided that it could be enjoyed just as well on TV in our room.

I think the main deal for which people come to the Mendoza Vendimia is the big show at the park. There is a Greek amphitheater at the big Parque San Martin. For three nights they but on a big time stage show, celebrating what else, but the grape harvest. Something like 20,000 people watch in the theater and on the hill behind it. We watched on TV. It’s a pretty elaborate, allegorical, cirque de soleil without the cirque, cast of hundreds, costumed dance production with fireworks and an angel brought in on a crane. Sometime after midnight, just when we thought it was over, they dragged all the queens back onstage. We were pretty sick of hearing about these gals by this time, but still there was an American Idol-like need to see who would win. So for another half hour or so we watched as each individual vote was announced by the MCs until they finally crowned the weeping, exhausted sovereign from Guaymallen.

say cheese

Apartment Search

Dan: I’m tired. I’ve been walking around all morning. I made up some more resumes and went to make the rounds again. I suppose I should be patient. In the long run, a 2 week job hunt really isn’t that long, but it’s frustrating not having anything to do. It’s also frustrating trying to find the institutes I left my resumes at before. When we walk together, Louann has usually been the navigator. I just keep getting lost when I go by myself, even with a map. I’m going to need a new pair of shoes soon or someone to show me how the buses work.

Louann is taking Spanish classes in the morning. I went to look at another apartment. Finding a place, as a foreigner, has proved to be a bit problematic. People generally sign a 2-year contract and to sign that contract they need to have a guaranteer, usually the company for which one works, co-sign on the contract. As foreigners, we have no such possibility. Luckily we’ve recently found the part of the classifieds that lists people with furnished apartments who rent daily, weekly or monthly to tourists and foreigners without the garantia. Of course it is more expensive than the other ads for regular apartments, but for us it’s a difference of paying $4-500 a month as compared to $2-300. Anyway, the place I looked at today had one bedroom, a kitchen, a balcony and two hungover, 20-something, Israeli tourists. The place was nice but after their 2-week stay, it smelled strongly of cigarettes, beer and youth.

Food: Hot dogs, arguably the lowest form of fast food, are quite popular in the two countries we’ve visited in South America. In both Chile and Argentina they are generally served with ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise in three long stripes. Quite a mess to eat. In Chile this is called a completo, or ‘complete’ hot dog. I had one called the Aleman, or German, which included sauerkraut in addition to the aforementioned condiments. Here in Mendoza the red, yellow and white topped dog is called a Pancho, maybe named for Pancho Villa for some reason. One generally gets two of them, end to end, in a long hot dog bun. Not that we’ve been looking too hard, but we haven’t seen much fast food. Usually if you sit down to eat anywhere, you can count on being there for an hour. The other night I didn’t want to commit that much time, so I stopped by Mr. Dog, a place that always seems to have a line out the door. They had a selection of panchos. One was pancho with a poncho (normal condiments plus ham and cheese). I got the Super Mr. Dog (hold the mayo), which included the normal stuff plus two footlongs in one bun with lettuce, tomato and cheese. And for a change, hot sauce was available. Please don’t tell Dr. Wahlstrom what I’m doing to myself.

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