micheleandtom.com

TGI Friday’s. Yes, there is a Friday’s here. Yes, I am ashamed to say that we have eaten there. (We happened upon it after a lot of walking, the kids were starving and began lobbying…well, you get the picture). It was packed with locals. And, for those of you wondering, the Friday’s food here is as bad as it is in the US, the waitstaff does wear crazy hats and buttons, and the music is too loud!

Cheerios. They have a 5 grain Cheerio here that I’m really digging because they are firmer and crunchier than our Cheerios–they don’t dissolve in the milk on the walk from your refrigerator to the table as they seem to in the United States.

Authorized Mac Dealer. Funny, the staff at the Mac dealer we visited here in Baires was about as helpful as the folks at The Mac Store in Portland (you know, the one in the Lloyd district)–in other words, not remotely helpful. The staff here announced that “nowhere in Argentina” could you find the cord we were looking for. Tom traipsed to another Mac dealer and bought it without difficulty. (I’ve never understood why the Apple Stores are so great and the staff so helpful but the authorized Mac/Apple dealers are always so damn snooty and difficult to deal with–hmmmm?)

Starbucks. They recently opened in Argentina and the store is apparently the cool hip place to be for young, upwardly mobile people. (I am happy to say that we haven’t been there!) At least their brand is doing well here; in the US they’ve become the dumpy coffee place in Safeway!

(This is one of those rare posts from Tom. Michele thought my Argentine man kissing story needed to be shared. )

A simple handshake doesn’t quite cut it in Argentina.

Greetings are a bit more complicated than that, since they’re all accompanied with a discrete air kiss on the right cheek. It’s not quite as tricky as the right-left cheek kiss of Spain, nor the right-left-right of France. But, the wrinkle here is that the ritual is universal: man greeting woman, woman greeting woman, man greeting man…it doesn’t matter. Every greeting is accompanied with the beso.

We’ve been working with the girls on handling this situation. With visions of Zelda lunging for the wrong cheek and accidentally breaking some new acquaintance’s nose, we’ve particularly stressed that “You always go to the left!” Zoe may be a touch on the shy side, while Zelda has been known to offer an enthusiastic hug and a kiss on the ear as well, but, all in all, the girls are getting the hang of it.

That just leaves me.

Now, I’m not particularly shy about the Argentinian man greeting, but there is a slight feeling of awkwardness that I imagine will only dissipate once I’ve got a few under my belt. My first opportunity came yesterday, but Ian’s friend felt sorry for the “inexperienced American” and let me off with a handshake.

Tonight, Ian and I went to go see an amazing percussion group called La Bomba de Tiempo, and as we’re standing in line for tickets, he introduces me to a couple who are friends of his. Lead to the left, kiss on the woman’s right cheek, smile and say hello…lead to the left, kiss on the man’s right cheek…

…and just like that, I’m one tiny step closer to becoming a true Porteño.

After doing a little more research, it appears that the minted coin to population ratio is not abnormally low in Argentina, so why the coin shortage?

(I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I’ll be looking into this more in the future!)

This bears repeating as I wasn’t sure I made it clear on my last post on the subject: “Why is the coin shortage such a big issue?” Because YOU CANNOT RIDE THE BUS WITHOUT COINS. Literally. Period. There is no way to use a bill to ride the bus. They will boot you off if you don’t have change.

As a result, we are often faced with a dilemma when we are with Ian because we either have too many people for a single cab ride (since only four can ride in a cab) or we don’t have enough change for all five of us to ride the bus!! (That would be 4.50 pesos total for all five of us to travel the equivalent of one zone.)

You probably wonder why they don’t institute some sort of bus pass system that would bypass change altogether (such as the money cards they have for the subway in Baires)? Well, here in Good Air, there are about a billion separate city bus lines that are privately owned (I believe they receive some sort of government subsidy), so instituting a centralized pass system is rather complicated–but I believe they are supposed to be working on it.

Yes, that means that our Gollum-like coin hoarding has begun in earnest, as we croon over our coins, “my precious!”

There is a shortage of coins in Baires, which can make life a bit difficult here since you can only use coins in the bus fare machines, and, coins are obviously needed for making change in general.

Even at the pharmacy, if you pay for something with 100 pesos that costs say 90.10 pesos, they will spot you the ten centavos and give you 10 pesos back rather than make exact change because they want to avoid giving out 90 centavos in coins. (Cab drivers have done the same thing. We had a 6.50 peso cab ride last night and Tom gave him 10 pesos. The cab driver gave Tom back 4 pesos rather than break a bill and give him 3.50 pesos in exact change.)

Everyone in the city avoids using their coins and stores hate to give change out.

In doing a minuscule amount of reading, it seems the government needs to mint more coins, but they haven’t, so the shortage continues.

We feel like native Porteños in that we are mimicking this behavior on our own quest to acquire and hoard our own coins! (It’s like quarters for the laundromat when you were in college.)

The juxtaposition of experience after a long flight is always overwhelming. When I think back on today, many memories float across my consciousness:

• The Southerners at the Hot-lanta airport declaring, “Aahm goin’ to Argentina to hunt duuhhvs.”

• The Argentina city bus pulling away with the girls still hanging on in the open doorway while Tom and I stand, alarmed, behind them on the street.

• Not being able to sleep on the plane.

• Passing out in a bed with the roar of Buenos Aires as background noise.

• The deserted Portland Airport–we were there at both 7:00 am and 11:00 am and it was a ghost town–zero wait in security.

• A humongous city teeming with people where you can get gelato at midnight with your kids and no one bats an eye!

As near as we can tell, the Argentine people do not need to rest.

They seem to keep the same eating/socializing schedule you would find in Spain (dinner doesn’t start until 10 pm), and yet, they don’t appear to take the long mid-day break for a nap/rest. I don’t know how they get to work and school at 8:00 am, work through the day, and hang out until midnight or 1:00 am.

Our girls are not going to make it! Zoe and Zelda need a ton of sleep to be functional kids with reasonable mood modulation. *Sigh*

I think this means lots of cooking at home so we can get them to bed at a reasonable hour.

How do we handle music while we are gone? We’ve given it some thought and have a plan (of course).

We have our entire music collection ripped electronically and have transferred it to an iPod Classic (160 Gb).

The iPod will then be connected directly into a pair of small Audio Engine Speakers, which have their own power amplifier built in. Just plug and play. (We have been using these speakers with the Squeezebox at home for the last year and they have pretty damn good sound for such a small size.)

All very packable.

We have been pondering solutions for obtaining books during our travels. (I mean really, what are we to do now that we are leaving the best library system in the country?)

How do we combat reading withdrawal? Buy a Kindle!!!

We recently received the Amazon Kindle in the mail and it is pretty cool. I’ve finished reading a book on it already and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Shopping on Amazon and downloading books directly to the Kindle was very intuitive and incredibly fast.

We were able to download the new Neal Stephenson early (before it gets shipped to booksellers) for $10 less than list. Pretty cool.

The screen is interesting–it’s not back lit and uses an ink technology that rewrites every page, making it very easy on the eyes. I tried it out in full sun today and it was easier to read than a book in full sun.

The only knock is that it’s a bit heavy if you are going to be holding it the entire time.

But, that is more than compensated for by the fact that you can lay it down flat anywhere and read while still having the use of your hands (like reading while I dry my hair–hee hee).

Tom and I would like to become reasonably skilled at basic ballroom dancing. You know, the type of dancing where you can shuffle around competently at someone’s wedding. As it currently stands, we can sway to the music and that’s about it.

“Argentine Tango?” you ask. Well, we actually took Argentine Tango lessons in Seattle 12 or 13 years ago. We loved it, but Tom felt it was a dance best left for more advanced study.

So we are going to try and build up some experience in more structured dances where Tom can feel comfortable and then we may or may not move on to Tango.

Why save this for Argentina? Because we will have time to dance–we plan on taking lessons while the girls are in school. (We have a lot of plans for when the girls are in school!)

I’ve wanted to visit Argentina for years, but I can date the moment I truly became convinced it was the country for me to the moment I read the essay “Argentina On Two Steaks A Day”.

I love the entire piece (really, go read it now!), but I’ll limit myself to quoting just the opening paragraph to give you its flavor:

“The classic beginner’s mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it’s the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don’t forget to drink water).”

Grass-fed beef. World-class gelato. What else could I possible want?