micheleandtom.com

Wednesday was a hyper-errand day which required an exhausting amount of both Spanish and Mandarin! (Yes, from the kids’ perspective, it was another death march day.)

We picked up the girls at 12:15 from school and proceeded to eat lunch, buy birthday presents for Zelda’s upcoming parties, and visit Barrio Chino (Chinatown) to find Yugioh cards, visit the Chinese Cultural Center to inquire about lessons for the girls, and dip in for a little Chinatown grocery store action to snag some spices/oils/vinegars. Next, we went to a pharmacy and then headed back up to Cabildo, where we bought white tennis shoes for the girls’ field day uniforms and visited the shoe store where we purchased the girls’ brown school shoes for an exchange because Zoe’s shoe sole was coming unlaminated on only her third day of classes. We wrapped up our errand day with a trip to the art supply store for the weird random stuff we need to begin Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain, as a part of home school.

If I hadn’t taxed my Mandarin enough on our Yugioh/Chinese Cultural Center treasure hunt, I got a reprise when I went to pick up our laundered clothes from the lavandería around the corner, which is staffed by a Chinese woman from the Fujian province. She said, “your Mandarin in pretty good, but one time a gentleman came in from India, and his was even better than yours!”

I’m now motivated to retrieve more of my waning Mandarin so that I can compare favorably to the mystery man from India floating around Buenos Aires speaking perfect Mandarin.

On Sunday, in a Jumbo-induced shopping haze (similar to an Ikea-induced shopping haze), Tom purchased the pepper (pimienta) pictured here. (Pepper is not a commonly-used spice in Argentina. We generally buy it in containers, such as this, that have their own little grinder on the top.)

Yesterday, we made pork chops with home made apple sauce for dinner (yummy). Naturally, we salted and peppered the chops before throwing them in the pan for some searing. When everything was cooked to perfection, I sat down and almost immediately brought the chop to my mouth for a big chomp. I stopped in mid-bite though because I caught the whiff of a strange odor that I don’t normally associate with pork. I moved my nose nearer to the slab of cerdo, attempting to place the strange bouquet… . “Cloves?” I said to Tom. His chop rapidly greeted his nostrils and after an assessing sniff, he agreed with me.

Digging into a bit o’ research, we have discovered that “Pimienta de Jamaica” is not pepper, but rather allspice, cleverly disguised as “Pimienta Negra” in a pepper grinding jar waiting to trap a hapless male shopper at the Jumbo. I have never seen allspice in its whole berry form and have since learned that it is in the same family as cloves (Myrtaceae), but possesses a more mild flavor with cinnamon and nutmeg overtones as well.

Who knew? (I’ve been saying that a lot lately!)

We learned a very important hailing lesson yesterday.

But first, I must provide a bit of back story. We’ve posted about the crazy spider web of a bus network here…tentacled routes all over the city. Because of this network, it is common for nearly every street to have many bus stops, often with multiple lines sharing a stop. That means it is necessary to hail your bus. No matter how many people are at a stop, the bus will not halt to pick up passengers without a hail.

This I knew. What I didn’t realize is that there is different form for a bus hail than for a taxi hail!

The arm raised straight up is apparently, “Mr. Bus Driver, stop here (and please don’t run me over).” The arm raised outward from the body, but not above the shoulder, means “please Mr. Taxi Driver, come to a screeching halt and pick me up!”

The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t hail a cab with the arm overhead if you are standing at a bus stop (nearly every street) because the taxi may pass you by.

Now that our family unit is back in BA, I thought I would share some of the challenges we have been facing living la vida expat with kids, as well as some of our crazy plans to address those challenges!

CHALLENGES

1. School hours are long. We appreciate that the Zs don’t have as much homework as they had in the US. But, they attend school from 8 am to 5 pm, which we are finding is just too long. By the time we pick them up, get home, cook dinner, eat, and clean up, it’s time for bed. It leaves little time for them to have any extracurricular activities or hang out with their parents and still get to bed at a reasonable hour.
2. The English half of the school day is underutilized time. We thought that sending them to a Spanish/English bilingual school might be a good idea so they could have some time in English to balance out having to learn Spanish from scratch. In truth, the English level of their peers is well below a native-speaker’s level, so the class time is less than engaging.
3. The Zs are losing some of their Mandarin. We try to speak Chinese as much as possible (it’s our secret language when we’re out and about in the city), but there’s little we can do for their writing since I can only reproduce a few characters. And, with their current school schedule, it’s hard to find time for additional tutoring.
4. We are always working against the Argentine schedule. I call the kids here “Coca-Cola Powered” because it’s gotta be the caffeine that keeps ’em going. Wee Argentinians are up about three hours later than my kids but seem very perky in the morning. Unfortunately, my stodgy American kids need a lot of sleep to feel decent and not be growley all day long. It’s tough to maintain a reasonable sleeping schedule when you are fighting an entire nation’s predilection to stay up late. (Yes, there is a theme here — getting our kids to bed at a decent hour is nigh on impossible.)
5. Healthy eating is a struggle. Argentina does wine, ice cream, and beef really really well, but fruits and vegetables…not so much. Of course, we are incredibly spoiled coming from the Pacific Northwest. It’s hard to adjust to having only two types of apples available (Granny Smith and Red Delicious), no heirloom tomatoes, no multiple varieties of locally-grown cherries, no amazing berries, no farmer’s markets… . But aside from lamenting the loss of PNW produce, the lack of produce variety as well as the poor quality makes it very hard to feed our children in a matter that we consider to be healthy, even when we are doing our own cooking. (Luckily, the girls are able to choke down less-than-tasty produce because they understand the importance of eating fruits and vegetables, even if they don’t taste as good as they did back home.) This was not a challenge we anticipated before moving here.

CRAZY (and mundane) SOLUTIONS

1. We are going to begin “Worldschooling” (a phrase coined by my friend Mel and also by some other traveling home schoolers). We approached the Z’s academic institution to ask them if they would allow us to enroll the girls in the school for only the morning portion of the day (which is Spanish) and one afternoon a week (which is field day). For four afternoons a week, we want to bring them home for some learnin’, Michele and Tom style. (Yes, I know…never say never!) To make a long story even longer, we met with the various functionaries at the primary and administrative levels yesterday (biting our nails) and they gave us the green light! (All the while stressing that this has never been done before and that they are only approving it on a provisional basis which will not be extended to any other families.) So the great experiment begins.

   We want to use the afternoons for private Chinese tutoring (the girls and I will take classes together); English, math, and geography homeschooling; and, extracurricular sporting activities (we may take up some family horseback riding lessons and family time at a tennis center). Crap, writing this makes me realize how much freaking work we have to do!

2. Try alternative produce options. Please see my thread on BA Expats about possible produce procurement options. A lot of contributors had great ideas and we will be trying some of these. Also, we are going to attempt to integrate food shopping into school pick up time in Belgrano, since it will be in the middle of the day, and incorporate meal planning and prep into the home school curricula.

Being a party of five, we have to take two cabs everywhere we go because, in Buenos Aires, the insurance companies will not pay on any accidents if the cab driver has more than four passengers in his/her car. (They will not cheat, we have tried.)

A few days ago, we were catching said cabs outside of our door. The first cab was piloted by a woman who did not know the Las Cañitas area where we were headed. The second cab driver (male) did know the area in question, so we thought it would be fine if the female driver followed our male driver.

Instead, what ensued was machismo in action. The millisecond Tom and I were ensconced in our ego-driven car, the cab driver loudly declared that women taxistas were useless and proceeded to break the land-speed record to our destination. It would not have been possible for Mario Andretti to follow the dolt driving our carro.

Since there was no reeling in this guy, we sighed, pulled out the Guia T, and talked to Ian on his cell with directions so that we could all successfully meet at Persicco, our favorite heladería in Buenos Aires.

Unbelievable.

1. Chewing on glacier ice can bust out a loose tooth.
2. The tooth fairy is intrepid; she can find you even when onboard a boat in the Patagonian fjords.
3. How to read the airplane safety information card. (Zelda was the airline safety police, making Tom turn off his Kindle during take off and landing.)
4. Little girls can go to sleep even if they are sharing a big room with four other people.
5. How to hang out in a cafe for 7 hours. (If we had a particularly long layover in a city, we would inevitably find a cafe with WiFi and really sprawl. Zoe would be at her own table reading. Zelda might recline on a bench seat. Ian and I would set up at a table near an electrical outlet for our computers. Tom would be at the “food” table, where we would munch throughout the day!)
6. How to recognize oxidization in wine corks (they really keep an eye out for it now).
7. A ten mile hike is just a bit too long for them.
8. How to sing “Burn One Down” by Ben Harper. (Thanks a lot, Ian.)

…Four More to Go.

Tom loved to say that we had five storage spaces while we were out enjoying our summer sojourn:

1. Two storage spaces in the US (I like to think of it as 1 1/2)
2. One storage space rented in Buenos Aires.
3. Suitcases stashed at Jermey’s apartment.
4. Computer backup at Guada and Dani’s place here in Baires.

We have managed to clear out our Baires storage space (we used Deposito Belgrano — they were great). In the next few days, we should have our precious items from Dani, Guada and Jeremy, which will leave us back to a paltry 1 1/2 (or 2) storage spaces. (Containing all of the stuff that we couldn’t possibly live without.)

Why do all young children’s finger painting efforts end up as black sludge? Because they enjoy the process of creation and don’t give a rat’s ass about the end product.

Traveling with the girls has been interesting because they embrace this philosophy throughout their lives. We view an overnight bus trip as something to be endured until we get to our destination…they view the same trip as a cornucopia of delights to be experienced: lay the seat down, open the blankets, watch the movies, check out other passengers, eat snacks, plug in headphones… .

The Zs love the docks, the bus stations, the cab rides without seat belts, the airports, sitting at the bar on the boat, going through security, donning life jackets, the airplanes…

I know there is a lesson in there somewhere, and when we get settled in Buenos Aires once again, I’ll try to figure out what it is! (Random vistas from the fjords pictured here.)

Most people visit the beautiful lake district of Argentina for, well, the lakes and the mountains and all of that jazz.

Tom and I wonder why tourists focus on that nature stuff when they can go to the local casino and play craps? Below, please find our report for those of you wishing to travel to Bariloche to shoot some dice.

Table Security Sucks. The stickman moves the dice out to the shooter and leaves them there the entire time that the dealers are paying bets, making it easy to switch dice if one was so inclined. They pay items out of order so that you can past post (put money down after the roll) very easily since the dealer is looking in the wrong direction. There is no boxman or floorman to supervise the action (they do have two cameras on the table though).

Single Odds Only. Don’t stack your money on the pass line or in the come — they only allow single odds. Needless to say, we caused a huge table-wide discussion amongst the dealers when we took odds on a come bet. They couldn’t figure out how to set up the bet.

You Need to Speak Spanish. I hadn’t really thought about it before we went, but craps, if you play it right, is a very verbal game that involves giving the dealer mucho information about what you want done with your bets and your money during a roll. The language barrier made it harder for Tom — too bad we hadn’t thought to have a little craps Spanish class prior to our outing! (Now there’s some niche Spanish.)

Lower Payoff on the 6 and 8. Normally, $12 wins you $14 if you make a place bet on the six or eight. In Bariloche, you needed to make a $10 bet to win $11. Not sure why they did this, but I suspect it was to make it easier for the dealers and players because it keeps everything in units of five. But, the odds are worse than they should be, making it a bad bet.

Two posts in a row from Tom. Must be some kind of record!

It’s no secret that we love the Kindle. We’re carrying two of them on our travels, and they’re almost always in use. And while the battery life of a Kindle is quite impressive, it unfortunately does need to be charged on occasion.

That’s no problem when you have a charger. But, in the interest of saving space in our luggage, we decided to bring just one Kindle charger.

And then, we broke it.

So, here we are, in a small town in Patagonia, with another month of traveling ahead of us where we will only be venturing to even smaller and more remote towns in Patagonia, facing the prospect of watching our Kindles slowly fade to black, with no way to revive them until we return to Buenos Aires.

Unless we can find a replacement charger.

I began the search by sending an email to Amazon’s customer service with a plea for help. Amazon’s customer service is rightfully held in high regard, and I’ve always had good experiences with them, but in this case, they just fell down on the job. Their email reply was short and to the point; We can’t send a charger outside of the US. We can’t recommend any charger other than the two available in the the Kindle Accessories store, but one is out of stock, and we probably wouldn’t send the other overseas anyway.

But, the accessories store wasn’t a complete dead end. It contained a clue. The third-party Kindle charger they offered was the iGo charging system, which has a “power tip” that works for the Kindle. And, from reading the iGo Web site, I learned that that very same power tip is also compatible with a long list of cellphones.

Which meant that all I needed to do was find a charger for one of those cellphones and our Kindles would be back in business.

So, armed with the printout of compatible devices, we visited the cell phone shops of Bariloche and started rooting through their replacement chargers. Soon enough, we found the cargador viajero from Tecnocel. This quality piece of Chinese engineering has now recharged our Kindles successfully several times, and has thereby saved our vacation. Or, at least the parts with the really long bus rides.

Hopefully, any other Kindle users who are stranded outside of the US without a working charger will find this information useful. It sure would have been nice if Amazon’s customer service had spelled out this possibility in their original email response.