that's actually the name of a book i had as a kid, but it works.
here's the truth of the matter: living in a language you don't speak is just plain hard. and trying to do that when you're not well (i have a cold and mo has an upset tummy) is even harder. it started with the taxi ride last night -- well, that's if you don't count the fact that the ferry was running 90 minutes late, and the hotel had no hot water, and the restaurant where we ate lunch smelled like rot, and that i came back to a bad email from a friend. so far i've been all sardonic about our gaffes and our missteps, and it is funny that so far we've managed to order food without pumpkins or horses (which is what happens if you get the vowels in ceballo backwards) but today -- well, today i just wanted things to be easy.
probably not the best frame of mind in which to go to a spanish yoga class in a whole new tradition. the school was founded by maestro deRose, and seems to have as its founding principle, and explicitly as its mission statement, to make as many yoga teachers as possible, who are then instructed to go forth and fill the world with deRose's credo. what exactly that is, i'm not sure, but it seems to involve tantra, ecstasy and the good democratic belief that anyone can experience nirvana. new teachers are required to study for a minimum of four years before they take off with their own studio. it's sort of like slow food meets pyramid scheme: the world will be completely deRosean in, like, two thousand years.
anyway.
the pollyanna in me would say that taking a yoga class in a foreign language is a great way to learn The Parts of the Body. trouble is, you don't know whether "pecho" is going to be a workhorse word, the kind of thing you might use in conversation -- for instance, if someone steps on it in the subway -- or whether it's going to be all technical, like "anterior cruciate ligament." try using that at the bus stop.
the self-pitying part of me, which really had the upper hand today, has to wonder why on earth i let marcia talk me into this. the very first exercise we did had us hunched over jiggling our abdomens. can you imagine? i go to yoga figuring what the hell, surely my sanskrit will aid me where my spanish lets me down, and if all else fails i'll just follow the guy next to me, and the first thing we do is utterly invisible to the cheating, naked ojo. we're all bent at the waist, hands on our thighs, hauling our stomachs in and letting them fall out approximately 20 times a second. not only is this not the sort of thing you can see through the next guy's t-shirt, but it's also surprisingly difficult. so when the peppy little 21-year-old teacher teacher takes pity on me and comes over to demonstrate, with her taut little 21-year-old midriff, she has to say to me, roughly translated, "no, no, you have to pull your stomach in and then let it out!"
then there's the breathing. in the middle of the class -- yeah, the middle of the class, when we least suspect it -- she has us all lie down and breathe. for, like, half an hour. first we breathe with the lower part of our pechos. then we breathe with the middle part. by that point she realizes she's lost me, so comes over to demonstrate "media," which is insulting enough, who couldn't figure out what that means? but the worst part is that i'm utterly unable to express what i want to, which is, "no, no, actually, this is not a language problem. i just hate the frickin' breathing! just leave me alone to dog it in silence, and pick on that woman over there, the bitch with the perfect pedicure and the concave belly."
so that was yoga.
when i got home, mo informed me that the power in our apartment was off. "did you call someone?," i asked, snottily. of course she had. she had very industriously turned up the name and phone number of the building caretaker and dialed away. however, it turns out that in buenos aires, you can't call a cell phone from a land line. do you need me to repeat that? you can't call a cell phone from a land line. why this is so, heaven only knows (and it might be an issue of short-term rental apartments, or it might be that you need a calling card for any call to which charges accrue, or it might be that on mondays you can only make telephone calls with a calling card), but there it is. so we have to get a phone card to dial the caretaker. who, of course, speaks no english. and i, of course, make the mistake of starting the conversation in spanish. i can't help it, i'm canadian, we're polite that way.
anyway, my bad spanish ("no hay electricidad en el apartamento, qui est-ce a la fitz roy, veinte treinta" -- yeah, cynthia, it's that bad) elicits a flurry of something or other, which i interrupt by saying, icily, "i'm sorry, senor gustavo, but could you convey any of that in english?" which elicits another flurry of something or other, which is abruptly cut off. i'm standing in the apartment holding a dead phone line, wondering: is he coming over? did he tell me to call someone else? is there anyone else to call? did he use any swear words? i caught "cinco," but is that 5pm? five minutes? five apartments ahead of me? five reasons i can go screw myself? i have no idea.
i look at mo, mo looks at me, and we sit on the couch to wait and see what will happen.
around 5:15, senor gustavo shows up. he asks all sorts of questions we can't answer, partly because we don't understand the language and partly because you just never understand questions asked by roofers, plumbers, or appliance installers. did we plug the fridge in? or, is the fridge plugged in? who in the twenty-first century would have to ask? finally he says one thing we understand, "no tocar nada!" he leaves the apartment. five minutes later, the lights are on. he's saying something about "cortado cortado cortado," which means something's been cut, but i have no idea whether he's referring to the phone call or the electricity. but who cares: now that we have internet back, we can look it up. you know, along with other handy travellers' phrases like "the man is taking his duck for a walk" and "say, isn't that the sears tower?"
sometimes, it's just hard. i'm not quite ready to say that my next vacation will be a cruise, but i can say that i understand the attraction. you know, they teach yoga on cruises. in english.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Colonia
for someone like me, trained as a postcolonialist in the english tradition, colonia is an uncanny place. it reminds me of english colonies like fort edmonton, or fort louisburg in nova scotia (okay, french and english traditions) but colonia, caught between the spanish and the portuguese, is all catholic all the time. it's also really pretty. i've loaded pix here.
we met up with my cousin bevan, his wife kirsty and their two children, findlay (10) and janine (8). bevan's in uruguay doing a forestry project and kirsty teaches ESL. they were the consummate hosts, so generous we'll never be able to repay their hospitality. as you know from an earlier post, kirsty planned a marvelous weekend for us, and bevan drove tirelessly. we like them because they're curious about the world around them, easy-going, smart and fun. if you are reading this, thank you again, so much, for everything.
our time in colonia was mostly about sight-seeing and getting to know each other a little more. to give you a sense of why we like these guys so much, let me tell you about eating lunch at a little restaurant called lobo. kirsty and janine ordered pasta, mo (of course) ordered beef, bevan and i had lamb with fried cornbread in a tannat (wine) sauce -- i know, i know, poor little lambs -- and findlay ordered a hamburger. when it came, it seemed to be a breaded patty prettily arranged next to a mass of mashed potatoes. "oh!," he said. "so that's a hamburger."
sometimes you just gotta take it as it comes.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Rant: taxi queue
portenos queue for the bus. a BA queue makes an english one look unkempt. woe betide the unsuspecting tourist who fails to notice the neat line of people waiting to board, since you will be shamed right off the bus.
given this, i naturally assumed that a taxi queue would work the same way. there's a sign outside the ferry terminal reading TAXIS. next to it is a long line of people -- a little more scraggly than they would be for the bus, but after all they're dragging suitcases and moving about in groups of three or four, so scraggliness is to be expected.
mo and i join the back of the queue and wait for a cab. and wait and wait and wait. taxis arrive at the ferry terminal, but the police officers shoo them away. i don't know why. illegal taxis are cruising the line and looking for business. i've taken dodgy cabs in new york and belfast but feel nervous not knowing the language well enough. then again, what's the worst that could happen: i pay more than three dollars for the ride up to palermo viejo? still, i reason, best not to chance it. there are people behind us in the taxi line, so we won't be left alone. they'll have to send some more cabs soon.
they do. a virtual fleet of cabs pulls up to the taxi rank. whereupon the system breaks down utterly. actually, i take that back: there is no system. cabs pull up to the queue and snag whichever party they feel like. it's hard to feel indignant when it's a family with a young baby that gets the first cab -- maybe the driver is a father himself, i think indulgently, and 1 AM really is late for an infant to be out in the world, let alone her parents -- but before i've finished thinking that, three more cabs have pulled up ahead of us in line, a handful behind us, and everybody's piling into their rides. suddenly, mo and i are all alone in the disappeared queue, the middle of the pack apparently just where you don't want to be.
what is that about? what kind of a city actively tricks people into believing that courtesy will be paid, that there's method to the madness, and then coldly betrays it? in new york, you'd get rolled for this kind of anti-social behavior. in belfast -- well, the less said about belfast in the 90s, the better.
let me just say that it makes it much easier to imagine not tipping the cabbies.
of course, there's much to say about uruguay, and i will try to give it some shape tomorrow. meanwhile, now that i have that rant out of my system, i'm hoping i can get to sleep.
given this, i naturally assumed that a taxi queue would work the same way. there's a sign outside the ferry terminal reading TAXIS. next to it is a long line of people -- a little more scraggly than they would be for the bus, but after all they're dragging suitcases and moving about in groups of three or four, so scraggliness is to be expected.
mo and i join the back of the queue and wait for a cab. and wait and wait and wait. taxis arrive at the ferry terminal, but the police officers shoo them away. i don't know why. illegal taxis are cruising the line and looking for business. i've taken dodgy cabs in new york and belfast but feel nervous not knowing the language well enough. then again, what's the worst that could happen: i pay more than three dollars for the ride up to palermo viejo? still, i reason, best not to chance it. there are people behind us in the taxi line, so we won't be left alone. they'll have to send some more cabs soon.
they do. a virtual fleet of cabs pulls up to the taxi rank. whereupon the system breaks down utterly. actually, i take that back: there is no system. cabs pull up to the queue and snag whichever party they feel like. it's hard to feel indignant when it's a family with a young baby that gets the first cab -- maybe the driver is a father himself, i think indulgently, and 1 AM really is late for an infant to be out in the world, let alone her parents -- but before i've finished thinking that, three more cabs have pulled up ahead of us in line, a handful behind us, and everybody's piling into their rides. suddenly, mo and i are all alone in the disappeared queue, the middle of the pack apparently just where you don't want to be.
what is that about? what kind of a city actively tricks people into believing that courtesy will be paid, that there's method to the madness, and then coldly betrays it? in new york, you'd get rolled for this kind of anti-social behavior. in belfast -- well, the less said about belfast in the 90s, the better.
let me just say that it makes it much easier to imagine not tipping the cabbies.
of course, there's much to say about uruguay, and i will try to give it some shape tomorrow. meanwhile, now that i have that rant out of my system, i'm hoping i can get to sleep.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Happy may day
-- which is, of course, a national holiday here. sigh.
just a quick note to say that the blog is going into hiatus for a couple of days as we pack up for a long weekend in uruguay. a cousin of mine lives there with his family. here, from kirsty her lovely self, is the plan:
We thought we would pick you up in Colonia and spend the afternoon there and come to our home in Durazno to stay the night (3 hour drive) then we’d take a quick tour of our town – not a whole lot to see – and head to an “estancia” (Uy farm – basically the heart and sole of Uy) where we could ride horses, have Uy style BBQ (are you vegetarian?) and spend the night. On Sat we could head cross country on dirt road through somewhat repetitive yet typical Uy country (could take 5 hours or so) to the SE part of Uy and down to the coast at the famous beach resort city of Punta del Este. It may not be warm enough for the beach but if you like cities most people tend to love this one. We can stay there the night and on Sunday head to MVD (2 hours) to see some of the sites there.
i said that sounded just fine.
just a quick note to say that the blog is going into hiatus for a couple of days as we pack up for a long weekend in uruguay. a cousin of mine lives there with his family. here, from kirsty her lovely self, is the plan:
We thought we would pick you up in Colonia and spend the afternoon there and come to our home in Durazno to stay the night (3 hour drive) then we’d take a quick tour of our town – not a whole lot to see – and head to an “estancia” (Uy farm – basically the heart and sole of Uy) where we could ride horses, have Uy style BBQ (are you vegetarian?) and spend the night. On Sat we could head cross country on dirt road through somewhat repetitive yet typical Uy country (could take 5 hours or so) to the SE part of Uy and down to the coast at the famous beach resort city of Punta del Este. It may not be warm enough for the beach but if you like cities most people tend to love this one. We can stay there the night and on Sunday head to MVD (2 hours) to see some of the sites there.
i said that sounded just fine.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Perception shifts
i'm fascinated by how we look.
the day we arrived, i can confess now, my heart sank. the neighbourhood did not appear to be the chic palermo hollywood of boutiques, lofts and design that the guide books described but, rather, a wanna-be (or, actually, a used-to-be) neighbourhood struggling to re/gain a certain social elevation. i couldn't see what there was to see. i wondered what happened to derail the gentrification i'd read so much about, and i wondered whether there were groceries within walking distance. i worried about where we'd get a cup of coffee in the morning.
partly it's a function of the construction, which is ubiquitous, small-scale and primitive. you see plenty of two-men teams working over a driveway using shovels and wheelbarrows. that is, they break up and shovel away the concrete or stone or clay-tiled sidewalks by hand. they hack out trees using hatchets and axes. they mix concrete in a 5-gallon bucket and spread it over a 15 x 15 foot area by hand, like they would if they were replacing part of your sidewalk. unfinished work is blocked off at the end of the day by arcing and then wedging a 1 x 4 board between the storefront and a still-standing tree. these small construction zones are taped off with simple plastic rope, and everybody is used to detouring into the street at least a few times every block.
there is some large-scale construction, some of it consuming entire blocks of the city. somehow, though, it's less obtrusive. i'm not sure whether that's because your eye just glides smoothly over the billboarded walls or because it's so tidy. i suspect the latter. which makes me realize how tidy edmonton (and, indeed, most cdn/US cities i'm familiar with) is.
add to the ubiquitous construction a fair bit of trash blowing around the streets. then mix in the size of the retail establishments: small. there's a terrific leather jacket store right around the corner from us that is the size of my study at home. gorgeous stuff, all in a place so small you could walk by it without noticing -- that is, a place so small i did walk by it without noticing, quite a few times. ditto the bakery on the other corner. and the fancy kids' clothing store, and the furniture shop. yeah, the furniture shop! just think about that: a shop selling furniture that could fit inside an ikea "storage solution."
well, i'm not saying anything new here: norteamericanos are space pigs. let me be the first to admit that in this respect, i am at one with my people.
what's really fascinating is how my perception has changed over the few days we've been here. i now find our neighbourhood so cool, so full of unexpected little treats of hipness and style, that it's hard to remember the dismay i felt on saturday, and impossible to relive it. now that i know what a mercado looks like, they are everywhere. now that i know how to navigate the sidewalks, they don't unnerve me. now that i have a feel for the traffic (it's beautiful, socialism in action, everybody driving with a sense of the greater good) it's not so bewildering. as for finding coffee: even though it's not particularly a coffee town, you couldn't stretch out your arms without slugging a barista.
the change has come over me so gradually that the new shock is how we are seen -- how we look to others. we don't even have to say "hola" before they're handing us the english menu. among latin american countries, argentina is one of the whitest (something about the "complex" legacy of WWII, ahem) -- so it's not that, at least not simply. it's a white enough country that i don't see myself as being different from them. to me, i'm white, portenos are white, we're all white: i don't really make fine distinctions within the category, since other things (e.g., straightness/queerness, accented/unaccented speech, gender relations between strangers, age differences, and individuals' style, always) interest me more.
but here's something to learn, again: how i see myself and how i am seen are remarkably different! you know that truism that gendering happens as soon as the viewer notes, subconsciously, three markers of femininity? it's like that. blue eyes + short hair + giant stature + glasses = inglesa. oh, the glasses?: both mo and i noticed around three days into the trip that no one in palermo wears glasses, unless you count the occasional gay american. (see? glasses + gay = american.)
is it a cultural thing? a regional thing? a physical thing? a straight thing? all of these? none? even if my spanish were better, i'm sure no one would violate the rules of etiquette and tell me. that, i'm pretty sure, is a cultural thing.
the day we arrived, i can confess now, my heart sank. the neighbourhood did not appear to be the chic palermo hollywood of boutiques, lofts and design that the guide books described but, rather, a wanna-be (or, actually, a used-to-be) neighbourhood struggling to re/gain a certain social elevation. i couldn't see what there was to see. i wondered what happened to derail the gentrification i'd read so much about, and i wondered whether there were groceries within walking distance. i worried about where we'd get a cup of coffee in the morning.
partly it's a function of the construction, which is ubiquitous, small-scale and primitive. you see plenty of two-men teams working over a driveway using shovels and wheelbarrows. that is, they break up and shovel away the concrete or stone or clay-tiled sidewalks by hand. they hack out trees using hatchets and axes. they mix concrete in a 5-gallon bucket and spread it over a 15 x 15 foot area by hand, like they would if they were replacing part of your sidewalk. unfinished work is blocked off at the end of the day by arcing and then wedging a 1 x 4 board between the storefront and a still-standing tree. these small construction zones are taped off with simple plastic rope, and everybody is used to detouring into the street at least a few times every block.
there is some large-scale construction, some of it consuming entire blocks of the city. somehow, though, it's less obtrusive. i'm not sure whether that's because your eye just glides smoothly over the billboarded walls or because it's so tidy. i suspect the latter. which makes me realize how tidy edmonton (and, indeed, most cdn/US cities i'm familiar with) is.
add to the ubiquitous construction a fair bit of trash blowing around the streets. then mix in the size of the retail establishments: small. there's a terrific leather jacket store right around the corner from us that is the size of my study at home. gorgeous stuff, all in a place so small you could walk by it without noticing -- that is, a place so small i did walk by it without noticing, quite a few times. ditto the bakery on the other corner. and the fancy kids' clothing store, and the furniture shop. yeah, the furniture shop! just think about that: a shop selling furniture that could fit inside an ikea "storage solution."
well, i'm not saying anything new here: norteamericanos are space pigs. let me be the first to admit that in this respect, i am at one with my people.
what's really fascinating is how my perception has changed over the few days we've been here. i now find our neighbourhood so cool, so full of unexpected little treats of hipness and style, that it's hard to remember the dismay i felt on saturday, and impossible to relive it. now that i know what a mercado looks like, they are everywhere. now that i know how to navigate the sidewalks, they don't unnerve me. now that i have a feel for the traffic (it's beautiful, socialism in action, everybody driving with a sense of the greater good) it's not so bewildering. as for finding coffee: even though it's not particularly a coffee town, you couldn't stretch out your arms without slugging a barista.
the change has come over me so gradually that the new shock is how we are seen -- how we look to others. we don't even have to say "hola" before they're handing us the english menu. among latin american countries, argentina is one of the whitest (something about the "complex" legacy of WWII, ahem) -- so it's not that, at least not simply. it's a white enough country that i don't see myself as being different from them. to me, i'm white, portenos are white, we're all white: i don't really make fine distinctions within the category, since other things (e.g., straightness/queerness, accented/unaccented speech, gender relations between strangers, age differences, and individuals' style, always) interest me more.
but here's something to learn, again: how i see myself and how i am seen are remarkably different! you know that truism that gendering happens as soon as the viewer notes, subconsciously, three markers of femininity? it's like that. blue eyes + short hair + giant stature + glasses = inglesa. oh, the glasses?: both mo and i noticed around three days into the trip that no one in palermo wears glasses, unless you count the occasional gay american. (see? glasses + gay = american.)
is it a cultural thing? a regional thing? a physical thing? a straight thing? all of these? none? even if my spanish were better, i'm sure no one would violate the rules of etiquette and tell me. that, i'm pretty sure, is a cultural thing.
Beautiful object
argentina is famous for its silver. here is what i have bought in silver so far:
admittedly, this is not the kind of silver argentinians are famous for, but i love my little cheese grater. it makes me happy every time i look at it, with its perfect cylinder of shiny brightness. it cost two pesos (about 66 cents) in the dollar store at the end of our street. oh, the red backdrop? that's our kitchen countertop. i so love this little apartment i might never come home.
admittedly, this is not the kind of silver argentinians are famous for, but i love my little cheese grater. it makes me happy every time i look at it, with its perfect cylinder of shiny brightness. it cost two pesos (about 66 cents) in the dollar store at the end of our street. oh, the red backdrop? that's our kitchen countertop. i so love this little apartment i might never come home.
Please, take me for an american
if the best thing that can happen is to be taken for a local, every canadian knows that the very worst is to be taken for an american. soy canadiensa!
however, i am breaking rank, and i think you'll thank me for it. consider the following:
however, i am breaking rank, and i think you'll thank me for it. consider the following:
- i am in a store with handmade leather jackets, gorgeous ones, with funky colors and inventive designs. even when it's clear that not even the XL jackets are going to fit, i try them all on anyway.
- mo and i order lunch at our local restaurant. she's been practicing "sin ceballo" so that she can avoid the onions. our server seems puzzled, asks a lot of questions which turns into a longish discussion over the pronunciation of the word. we've been told to say "se-ba-jo" (that double l = j thing so hard to get used to: pollo = pojo, llama = jama), but our server has us practice "ca-ba-ja". when our salads come, hers is without the roasted pumpkin (calabaza). the really embarassing part: it's a roasted pumpkin salad.
- picture me, if you will, along avenida bullrich, the grand boulevard that runs past a Jumbo Easy supermarket and an understated mosque. actually, just picture that for a second. now add me. i am wearing blue shorts and a bright orange t-shirt. in my left hand is a white gym towel. in my right, a yellow water bottle. i am doing my trainer-mandated accelerating sprints.
- portenos are super polite. if you say "gracias" at a restaurant, chances are the server will say, 'no, please, thank you.' nobody moves without saying "con permiso" (literally, 'with your permission': excuse me). nobody, that is, but me. i spend a day in this ultra-polite city elbowing my way past people saying "sin permiso," "sin permiso," "sin permiso."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
