Saying goodbye to Palermo

I have a huge (seriously, huge) apartment in Palermo, about 2 minutes walking from the Embassy where I work. I live across the street from five or six embassy employees, and downstairs from a lovely couple. I don't always measure distances in number of cartwheels possible, but it is appropriate here. I have enough space to do six cartwheels from my fireplace to the dining room and could bowl in the hallway to my bedroom.

However, after seven weeks here, it still doesn't feel like home. This may be mostly due to the fact that I fall asleep on the sofa each night, and then have to do that painful half-asleep drag down my bowling alley hallway to my bedroom. At that point, I am awake and have lost any of the sleepiness I earned on the sofa. It annoys me. So I am moving to a smaller apartment in Belgrano, twenty minutes from the embassy, with old dumpy furniture. And I couldn't be happier. It finally feels like home.

El Caminante - Tango Singer in the Street

 

El Caminante is famous throughout Buenos Aires.  I took a tour of the city on bike (7 hours and I am still sore 24 hours later) and saw all the great sites.  A highlight of the tour was meeting El Caminante.  He is a tango singer, and has an incredibly rich voice.  He sang for our group as we rested underneath the largest rubber tree I have ever seen in the Plaza Francia in Recoleta.  It is across from La Biela, 
a cafe famous with race car enthusiasts.
Just another weekend in Buenos Aires.  I am ever the tourist.  I can't wait to show the city off.

New Years 2012 - The Fireworks Show

 

Argentines celebrate Christmas and New Years with a late dinner and then fireworks at midnight.  Then the kids in the family will go out all night.  Apparently it gets very rowdy-  I was even carefully advised by an Argentine friend not to go out as Christmas is one of the most "dangerous" nights to be on the town.  Too bad, I love my 3 am martini to celebrate Christmas tradition I had planned to start.  

I think it can also be dangerous because a few people fire guns into the air to celebrate, but I am hoping that doesn't happen in downtown Palermo where I currently live (sort of the Le Marais of Paris or Central Park in New York).  

So for New Years, since it is the bigger show, my friend Jason had a party and we went to the top of his building (only open on New Years and Christmas to the residents) and watched the show from the 36th floor or so.  It really isn't a place to hang out - we were walking around vents and broken tiles, and of course, no real fence around the roof - but whatever.  The view was INCREDIBLE.  I even set it to one of my favorite songs.  Enjoy the show!

President's Guard at the Gran Pellegrini

The Gran Pellegrini is the biggest horse race in South America.  To cut to the chase, Expressive Halo won. 

How did I end up there?  Well, I attended a reception at the Ambassador's Residence (actually had to fill in as the host temporarily) for the Harvard Club in honor of the 375th anniversary of Harvard University.  One of the guests, Alberto Stein, owns a farm called La Leyenda, and he invited me and a friend to lunch at the Jockey Club at the San Isidro Race Track (about 30 minutes outside of the city of Buenos Aires).  The Hippodromo San Isidro hosts the Gran Pellegrini every year.  We were there by 1:30, had a nice lunch and then watched 15 races throughout the afternoon, building to the Pellegrini.  It was very exciting  - you can see the race if you watch this.

The best part was all of the people that were there, and getting to go out on the track to the winner's circle.  We even saw the gold colored chair where they weigh the jockeys before the race. I was surrounded by people who LIVE and breathe horses, so I had the chance to learn from insiders about the sport. It was one of those "the Foreign Service isn't so bad moments."  Definitely perks in my job. 

The Two Lesson Tango

My friend from Kabul, Gene, visited and together, we took two tango lessons.   This is the result.  My teacher is Christian. He is a poet, a tap dancer, an all around nice guy and a REALLY GOOD LEAD.  I only did two lessons and I am still sore two days later, so I don't know how those celebrities do it on TV.  Hope everyone has a Happy New Year.

PS Bonus if you can figure out what the song is that was "tango-ized" - they do that to a lot of popular songs for use in the milongas.

Things I saw on the way to work yesterday.

 Outside my house yesterday a man was driving his carriage toward the zoo (which is only a few blocks from my house).   It was a charming reminder that I am in a wonderful, vibrant city and just have to keep my eyes open to it all.  Then walking to work I saw a dog hanging out the window of a restaurant/tango studio.  He wasn't thrilled to have his picture taken but I couldn't resist. 

I am slowly getting adjusted to Argentina. I started buying groceries, cooked at home a few times, walked around my neighborhood and found a nice vegetable shop, butcher, and even a McDonalds (and no, I did not eat there - but I could).  I have visitors coming every month through May and am very excited to have friends here with me to explore the city.  It will continue to feel more like home, even though I definitely have a home I left behind.   

Further to the bathmat...

So I have been here almost three weeks.  Still using the welcome kit, still waiting for my UAB shipment which is 250 pounds of stuff you want to come immediately - sheets, towels, stuff like that but enjoying the city more. My UAB should have arrived in the first week but 20 days and counting. 

Anyway, in the interim, I got around to doing the laundry.  Towels, sheets, socks all into the machine. Overseas I find all of the appliances to work very differently.   My dryer doesn't say time and temperature, it asks me if I want my clothes to be ready-to-iron, cupboard dry, or ready-to-wear.   I am treating it like a mini-research project, keeping track of how my clothes feel when they are cupboard-dry.  Washing machine is also a mystery involving converting Celsius to Fahrenheit, separating by fabric type and if I am doing a daily wash, sport (?) or something else.   This is really just a crap shoot.   

So problem is the sheets I washed are green. So now my towels (formerly white) are green too.  As is the bathmat.  Let's see what else I can do to screw up the Welcome kit. 

I had to dry myself with a bathmat...

I thought this would be a great little note for Face book, but I realized that then people would think I had just picked the bathmat up off the floor after a quick shower for no reason.  Not true.
See, when you start at a new post, they give you a Welcome Kit.  This kit takes various forms - it can be nice dishes and silverware and towels and a bathmat and an iron and microwave.  Sometimes it seems to be all the items found at an estate sale in Boca Raton, but you never know.  My kit here is pretty good - new dishes and glasses, and fresh towels. But I also have one of those old style mashed potato mashers and an old egg beater (god knows why - like I will arrive somewhere and need to beat some eggs or make mashed potatoes).   But everyone needs different things.    Anyway, long story short, I am not quite adjusted to being here yet.  The washing machine is unfamiliar, I don't want to do laundry, I don't have a linen closet full of towels, and I think my pile of dirty clothes got away from me.  So I took a shower, got out, only thing left in the towel pile from the kit was an extra bath mat.  It dries.  I didn't have to be "cupboard dry" (one of the selections on my washing machine) so I just went with it. 

They said Argentina would be full of new experiences.  Well, they were right.

Preparing for Buenos Aires

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

- Zora Neale Hurston, There Eyes Were Watching God

And so it begins...again. This is not my first time living abroad.  Depending on how you count, it is my fourth or fifth overseas tour with the Foreign Service.  I previously served in Bolivia, India, Georgia, and Afghanistan.
 
And this is not my first blog - you can see that at http://weebleskabulbuttheydontfalldown.blogspot.com. 

But what this blog will be is my way of staying connected - sharing my life and experiences with my friends far and close.  It will not be my first attempt to organize my life in a way that helps me truly appreciate the richness of my community - one I have worked to sustain and grow during ten years in this career. There have been lists made, classes taken, long conversations had, and a few too many sleepless nights or anxious mornings.  But is has all been in preparation to allow me to go on this latest adventure to Argentina.

I will be living in Buenos Aires and working as the Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in one of the world's greatest cultural capitals.  Great gig, right?  I will also be far from home in a totally new environment where I will be challenged in a million ways.  This is alternately exhilarating and terrifying.  While it seems like a dream life to some, there are many questions we face along the way, and this is only amplified more when you are doing it in a foreign language with all new people.   

I want this blog to be a place to share my experiences in Buenos Aires and to show what I see and discover through my travels, conversations, mistakes and more. Over time, I hope it will help me see where I want to go and enable me to stay close to those who put up with me while I try and grow in that general direction.    

So to kick off the latest phase of my journey, below is the simplest, briefest guide to life I found when I googled "Guide to Life." I hope it will serve as a touchstone and reminder when I lose sight of what is important to me. It comes from http://zenhabits.net/start/.  The comments are my own take on how difficult this may be.

The Brief Guide to Life

Less TV, more reading  (blogs don't count) 
Less shopping, more outdoors (reading blogs on my deck doesn't count)
Less clutter, more space (space = place for more stuff)
Less rush, more slowness
Less consuming, more creating (and not just creating space for more clutter) 
Less junk, more real food (I really wish Coke was real) 
Less busywork, more impact (though I enjoy a little busywork from time to time)
Less driving, more walking  (unless driving is quicker) 
Less noise, more solitude
Less focus on the future, more on the present (enjoying the present is hard when the future is so uncertain)
Less work, more play
Less worry, more smiles
B-R-E-A-T-H-E.