micheleandtom.com

Tonight we had our entire meal delivered.

First, we called a local hole-in-the-wall takeout joint called La Rotiseria. They brought us a rotisserie chicken with lemon wedges, mashed potatoes, mashed squash, and a salad (shredded carrots, lettuce, rice, thinly sliced onion and tomatoes). We put some of our homemade salad dressing on the latter and called it a night. Dinner!

For dessert, we dialed Persicco, which has the best dark chocolate gelato I have ever eaten in my life. They are arguably the most popular, and therefore one of the most expensive, of the heladerías here in Buenos Aires. Their fleet of delivery scooters, and it is a fleet, is quite impressive.

The store was so busy when we called, they couldn’t deliver our gelato for an hour (the nerve).

Pictured above is the kilo that we ordered, still rock hard (coffee, dark chocolate, and dulce de leche), which we had open on the table waiting for it to soften. (Persicco delivers it with chips of dry ice — amazing really.)

“So what was so hard about lifting up the phone to order our dinner and dessert?”

Well, Tom went down with a 50 peso note to pay for the 46 peso gelato, expecting to get two, 2-peso notes back in return. Instead, he got four single peso coins, which are like gold doubloons around here. (You know this if you have been following my obsession with the coin shortage.) He didn’t want to tip, he wanted to hoard his coins and run back upstairs, chortling over his ill-gotten gains.

But, being the big man that he is, Tom took a deep breath and did the right thing, returning two of the peso coins to the delivery driver. “That was hard,” he said to us when he returned to the bamboo decompression chamber. We observed a moment of silence for his strength.

We rubbed elbows with the elite and attended a polo match! Okay, we bought seats in the cheap, sun beaten bleachers, so I don’t know how much elbow rubbing we did…but we had fun!

The girls enjoyed it, but in truth, it was so hot, they spent most of their time playing under the bleachers in the shade.

As you can see from the photos, the juxtaposition of a polo field smack dab in the middle of the city is pretty striking.

A few fun facts:

• Polo is one of the oldest team sports; it was used for training cavalry.
• Alexander III, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire in 912-913, died of exhaustion after a polo match.
• The players are allowed to check (a la ice hockey) as long as they come in at less than a 45 degree angle. It’s something else to see this happen at top speed between two horses.
• They can really smack that ball, often sending it quite high into the air and nearly 3/4 the length of the field…I had no idea.
• The sport may not be gentle, but the crowd is. It is considered polite to applaud for a goal no matter which side scores. Apparently there are no polo hooligans.

Tom’s Spanish teacher, Lorena, described the Argentinian diet as consisting of the following four meals a day.

FIRST MEAL: Coffee (the most important component of the first meal) and some sort of sweet pastry.

SECOND MEAL: This would be analogous to our lunch and is generally empanadas (meat stuffed pastry dough) and/or pizza (bread and lots and lots of cheese). Possibly a sandwich could be substituted here.

THIRD MEAL: Third meal is taken at around 5:00 pm and consists of coffee (the only thing that gets you through until dinner) and a small cookie/pastry. If you are hungry, you might eat a tostada (bread, thin slice of cheese, thin slice of meat, toasted).

FOURTH MEAL: This is the big meal of the day and is generally some combination of meat and potatoes with whatever else you may choose to eat (perhaps a salad). This meal is eaten at 9:30 or 10:00 pm. Lorena said that people go to bed directly after eating dinner during the week. (Mind you, on the weekend, it is common to eat much later.)

Lorena asked Tom what our eating schedule was in the States. He told her, with kids, that we generally tended to eat at 6:30 pm or 7:00 pm and then we would go to bed around 10:30 pm to 11:00 pm. She couldn’t believe that there was such a big gap between when we ate dinner and when we went to bed, during which she claimed she would starve.

This knowledge led us to conclude that the big steak at the end of the day in Argentina is really just a time-saver because it acts as your undigested breakfast for the next morning!!

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When I worked for an aerospace corporation in Fort Walton Beach, FL, there were many transplants from the NE United States working there. Said transplants were constantly complaining about how long it took to get things done in NW Florida, which has much more in common with its Southern neighbors than with Miami. (Me, I didn’t complain at all. I was just happy that they gave me my first real job out of college and that I had my own office!)

My uptight co-workers estimated that it took 3 times longer to close out projects than they felt it should, and dubbed this delaying effect the “Florida Factor.”

Well, Tom and I are encountered the Florida Factor here in that it takes us about 3 times longer to complete any task than the amount of time we initially allot for that task. *Sigh*

For instance, we went out to find a temporary gym the other day, and were going to “grab” a bite at a cafe. The “grab” took nearly two hours, start to finish. I love that, as a people, the Argentines take the time to enjoy their dining experiences, whether they are taking a cup of coffee or a whole meal.

But, in this instance, it meant that we looked at one gym (the one by the cafe) and had to blow off the rest to go pick up Zelda!

Grocery shopping is another good example. The lines are horrendous, so if you shop at the wrong time and compound that error by picking the wrong line, which we have an uncanny knack for doing, it takes about 5 times longer to check out than it does to shop.

Suffice to say, we are not a well oiled machine at this point!! But, we bury our sorrows in massive amounts of gelato and move on…tomorrow is a new day.

Our experiences with store credit illustrate that context is king when it comes to language comprehension.

For instance, Tom and I were buying a USB cable for around $15-$20 US when the store clerks asked us something that I didn’t understand. After a big group discussion, with nearly everyone in the store participating, we finally realized that they were asking us if we wanted to use store credit to buy the cables on a payment plan.

Without the context of knowing that a payment plan was available for such a small purchase, it made it hard to understand what they were proposing!

Shortly after the USB cable incident, we were at the Disco buying groceries, obviously not that many because we have to carry them, and the check out guy asked, “Un pago?” I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about…it turns out that you can buy your groceries on a payment plan. Who knew?

I’ve got to get the hang of this store credit thing!!! I figure that the next time I buy empanadas on the street, they’ll ask if I want them on a payment plan and I’ll be as unprepared as ever. *sigh*

Trying to obtain a cell phone here as a foreigner without a DNI (national ID number) is a bit farcical. (As you read this, remember, I was figuring all of this out with my imperfect Spanish.)

“Sin abono” is the crux phrase. That means, “without a plan.” If you do not have a DNI, you must purchase a pay-as-you-go cell phone. This also translates to, “you pay a fortune for your telephone calls.”

We were okay with that, we figured we wouldn’t be making that many calls anyway.

Now, many people who go sin abono buy an unlocked phone, in other words, a phone that can be used with any of the three cell phone carriers in Buenos Aires. Translation: you not only pay a fortune for your calls, but you get the additional pleasure of paying a fortune for the telephone itself.

(There is a thriving grey market where unlocked telephones — probably stolen — are sold at a discount price.)

Anyway, we didn’t feel like paying a fortune for a cell phone, so we bought a subsidized telephone, sin abono, which means that we are locked into one carrier from which we must purchase our telephone cards to recharge our telephone account. It also means that we have the cheapest phone ever (pictured above).

We thought obtaining our phones would be the hard part, but we still had a few lessons remaining.

It turns out, in Baires, it is the initiator of the call who pays. And, if you call from a cell phone to a land line, that call is billed at an astronomical charge…I used up about $7.50 US making three telephone calls to land lines in the space of 15 or 20 minutes. (Oopsy!)

I am now going native and use text whenever possible (much cheaper), happily answer my phone (no charge) and am loathe to call people back!

And, don’t think that we’re totally home free. Tom needs to overcome his language barrier and set up his phone (he has a totally disco ring tone that had Ian and I on the floor laughing). And, Tom’s voice mail doesn’t work either. We’ve been depending upon the big guns (that would be Ian’s Spanish) to try and correct the problem…to no avail thus far.

One easy step to help Americans lose weight — don’t take the car to the grocery store. (Or, if you live in the country, park 1/4 to 1/2 mile away from the grocery store.)

I’ve been thinking about why I always seem to lose weight when I live overseas, and I have come up with two main reasons: 1) I walk more; and 2) I can only buy as much from the grocery store as I can comfortably carry over a distance of about 1/4 to a 1/2 mile.

Because we can’t carry very much, we have to shop every day, which means we get at least a mile of walking in on a daily basis just through the act of buying food!! On top of that, we are very picky about what we actually purchase because we have to carry it, so lunch food for the girls and dinner fixings take precedence.

Bottom line, there’s just a lot less food in the house.

Now, I’m heading to the table to eat some Oreos (I never said I was a saint)!!!

Big surprise, Zelda broke her glasses about a week ago. (She went to bed with them on…’nuff said.)

Anyhow, Tom and I would carry them around with us, ready to dash into an eye glass store whenever we happened upon one. A few days ago, we spotted a store, did the dash, but the very nice gentleman wasn’t really able to fix them. *double sigh*

Then, on Halloween, with blonde Zelda dressed up as a devil (wearing a red covering over her head with black horns sprouting out), we moseyed into the eyeglass store near her school. Needless to say, the American family walking in with their daughter dressed as a devil really caused an uproar. After several devil jokes, they took her glasses into the back for a technician to fix.

By the time we left, we had a pair of beautifully repaired glasses (free of charge), and a host of technicians and sales people gathered together waving a fond farewell to us as we strode out the door.

Buenos Aires is one of the friendliest big cities I have ever had the pleasure of visiting!

This will make me horribly unpopular in Portland, but I’ve grown to dislike many of Bridge City’s dog denizens (and their owners).

Why? Well, my daughters have been bitten by dogs, blind-sided, knocked over and tackled by dogs (especially scary when my girls were first learning how to walk), they have had their toys and balls stolen and destroyed by dogs while at various parks, I’ve watched dog owners let their pets trample through newly planted beds in my front yard with nary a word…I could go on and on. Anyway, in every case, the dog owner couldn’t have cared less. If I had let my kids run amok in the same way, they would be in child protective services instead of Argentina right now!!

Needless to say, our experiences in Portland have made me grow to dislike the city dog immensely. Until Buenos Aires, that is.

There are a zillion dog walkers trolling around the city, each holding 8 to 16 dogs at a time. The dogs don’t bark. The dogs don’t pull on their leashes. The dogs don’t run after kids, cars, or cats. The dogs don’t fight with each other. They are a rather happy, well-behaved lot.

Tom and I agree with this Atlantic Monthly article — in-breeding and puppy mills are producing genetically screwed up dogs with myriad problems, and Americans are obsessed with them. I’ve got to tell you, the gorgeous, and often mixed-breed, canines around here have really restored my faith in the city dog. (I grew up with mutt dogs in the country — which colors my perceptions.)

And, a last comment on the ubiquitous dog poop in the street. I have, gasp, seen some dog owners picking up (which is unheard of here), and, at the very least, they try to doody out of the way along the edges of the sidewalk!

Photo by Flickr user vtveen used under a Creative Commons license.