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In our neighborhood, we sometimes see an old, open-air truck filled to the top with meat parts driving by the local butcher shops. (The transport in question is very similar to the truck pictured here, but without the canvas top.)

Generally, there are two guys standing in the back of the truck amongst the pile of meat, hacking away with cleavers, even while the vehicle is moving. As Tom likes to say, driving at 30 or 40 miles per hour over bumpy roads shouldn’t stop you from working with a sharp, heavy knife!

We’re hoping this truck is for scraps, and not deliveries.

As my dearest husband commented today…”there goes a truck full of chorizo ingredients.” Not a pretty picture he cemented in my head. Thank you so much dear.

UPDATE: Futbol has challenged me to get an actual shot of the Meat Lorry — I have picked up the gauntlet, and come hell or high water, will get a damn photo!

Immediately after we returned to Buenos Aires in August, there was a track and field competition at Zoe’s school amongst 4th and 5th graders to qualify for a country-wide International School athletic competition in Mar del Plata.

Zoe was among the top performers, so off she went to the popular coastal resort this last Thursday and Friday. She wanted to go on her own, in other words, sin familia, because it was a big-girl, overnight trip. So, although we were willing to attend and be her track and field groupies, Zoe was not having any of that. *sigh* Such independence!

She returned late last night with puffy eyes, a serious case of exhaustion (late to bed, early to rise), a slight sunburn on her face, and a gold medal for the throwing competition! She was the only kid from our school, boy or girl, to bring back a medal.

When Zoe disembarked from the bus after midnight outside the school, a cheer went up for her amongst the parents. Zoe was surprised and shyly ducked her head while mumbling a few “thank you”s — that girl does love the limelight. *smile*

We’re glad she’s home. Well, Tom and I are…I believe Zelda may really have enjoyed being an only child!

Zelda’s birthday is coming up, which leads to a serious social obligation here in Argentina! In grade school, you pretty much are required to invite all of your classmates to an elaborate party with hired entertainment…something we had hoped to avoid. (Birthdays are big business here.)

Luckily, with the help of Florencia, we are going to be able to cheat! Zoe’s classmate, Sofia, has a birthday on the same day as Zelda, so we are going to throw a co-birthday party, which saves me from having to figure out all of the ins and outs of these complicated celebrations on my own.

We met with Flor yesterday, filled out invitations, and split up all remaining work. (Since she already has completed nearly everything, we are getting off light). Thus, we have been put in charge of herding together a second gift bag (separated for boys and girls) and picking up the food for adults.

I think we can handle that.

Anyhow, as were were sitting around her kitchen working on our plans during merienda (tea time), we got on the subject of children’s bedtimes. We told her that in the US, the Zs used to have to be in their room by 7:30 pm, perhaps 8:00 pm at the latest, on weeknights. Upon reflection, we added that their bedtime was really almost more for us than for them, since we can’t comprehend how Argentinian parents manage to maintain a relationship without some time alone!

She said she feels as if she is always swimming upstream because Sofia comes home and complains that all of her friends go to bed at 10:00 or 10:30 pm (this is second grade, mind you).

In order to have alone-time in this country, parents have to stay up quite late, leading me to believe that Argentina is really a giant study in sleep deprivation — and it starts from a very young age. It will be interesting to see if there are long-term detriments to maintaining late night hours while eliminating the 3 hour siesta in the middle of the day that makes it all possible!

I’ve been meaning to post about this for ages!

While we are snug in our beds at night, we are supposed to rest easy knowing that the locks protecting our doors are the type pictured here that open with an old fashioned skeleton key (representing the latest in security technology)!

This gem of a lock features a keyhole though which you can see. If you are lucky, you have a little flap that can be moved to cover the hole, as we have in this apartment, shown above. Our last house, with a front door that opened directly onto the street, had no cover for the keyhole — you could bend down while on the sidewalk and peer into our kitchen and entry way without visual obstruction.

Lovely.

One last thought on locks. Everything in Buenos Aires is keyed from within and from without, which means you are locked into your apartment, and your building, unless you have a key to depart. (And if one spouse leaves the home with another spouse’s keys, then the keyless spouse will be unable to leave said home…)

We are presently utilizing the coping mechanism of denial to deal with our fear of being trapped in a BA building during a fire!

What is up with the refrigerators in Argentina? They go through various freezing and thawing cycles that ruin all of our food by either a) freezing it; or b) dripping on it while the refrigerator defrosts.

The refrigerator isn’t even supposed to get icy — it’s not the freezer! *sigh*

We have lived in 4 apartments, and each has had the same issue with what appears to be fairly new refrigerators. They freeze up on the back, near the top shelf of the refrigerator (as you can see in this photo), and then they self defrost, which causes a flood of water rivulets to course down the back of the fridge, pooling on anything they can while they take their one-way trip to the produce drawer.

We’ve tried setting the thermostat (steady-state) at every level, and we have attempted to dial in the temperature depending on how full the icebox is. Unfortunately, nothing seems to make a difference.

Now, we keep the vast majority of our produce out of this vegetable and fruit killing box that resides in our kitchen. (Multiple freeze and thaw cycles wreak havoc on strawberries!) For the most part, it has become a “meat and milk box!” Oh well.

Salt Shakers. At a restaurant yesterday, I created the Iguazu of salt while seasoning some chicken because I forgot that Argentine shakers are very porous and make for the easy distribution of sodium chloride, unlike American shakers that require vigorous pumping up and down to earn a mere few granules.

Piano. One of our neighbors, who is learning to play the piano, is still working on the same song that they were 4 weeks ago (and the 4 weeks before that, to be honest). Sadly, not a whole lot of improvement.

Solo Dining. We love Campo Bravo because it is a yummy parilla within walking distance of our house that is open all day, which means we can get a meal at 6:00 p.m. Of course, it does require that we dine completely alone while staff sets up for dinner — we had forgotten about our eating dinner when the rest of the country is enjoying merienda (tea time)!

Winter. It is always disconcerting to climb aboard a slim metal tube during a Hotlanta summer, and then emerge 10 hours later in winter. Although, I really enjoy the winter here — very fresca — which is normally a good thing, but yesterday it was perhaps a little too fresca. The girls had the first half of their tennis lesson in the wind and the rain, with one Z dancing around, hands in pockets, while the other Z took their turn with Cesar. We called it a day after 30 minutes.

Tranquilo. Getting off the American “go go go” track is very tangible. For instance, we flew in on Saturday, still owing rent for the 2nd half of our stay in our apartment. La dueña of our home didn’t sweat it though, she waited until Wednesday to collect. In fact, we were the ones trying to track her down so that we could pay!

Listerine. When we first moved here, we noticed that the Listerine tasted different than its counterpart in the US. However, we must have gotten used to it, because when we went home, we hated the taste of the mouthwash in the US. Nothing like a good swish of citrus Argentine Listerine to let us know that we’re home!

Roasting marshmallows, making smores, catching frogs and salamanders in the pond, walking in the creek (“It’s a good way to get your feet clean, Mom!”), playing stick ball on the lawn, helping abuelo with “the pit,” shoveling gravel, burning brush, pulling stumps, stacking firewood (they are too young to split wood, but give it time…), playing in the sprinkler, helping to wash the car, going to the dump (always exciting), baking bread, making hot dog buns from scratch, borrowing DVDs from the library (“Escape from Witch Mountain is awesome, Mom.”), picking blueberries, picking raspberries, getting grass stains on every article of clothing, smashing abuela’s flowers with the soccer ball, walking to the beach…every kid should have a wonderful place to escape with their grandparents, who believe that hot chocolate with marshmallows is an appropriate way to greet each and every morning (at least when you’re under 12).

Going to the lavandería (laundry service), provided us with yet another situation that perfectly illustrates how important context and culture can be when trying to understand a foreign language.

The first time we went to pick up our clean clothes at our new local washing place, we found it to be manned by a second-generation Chinese-Argentinian who wasn’t really thrilled about the weird American chick trying to chat in Mandarin! On top of it, she managed to stump us with her seemingly simple question in Spanish, “Querés perfume?” This was one of those cases where we understood all of the words, but for the life of me, we couldn’t figure out what she was talking about.

As Tom and I tried to parse her question, everything began moving in slow motion. Our clueless expressions were interpreted as a green light, and she grabbed her generic bottle filled with a blue, Windex-like substance and, with the practiced ease of a gunslinger, started pulling the trigger and spritzing all of our clean laundry with “perfume.” (I use the term very lightly here.)

Needless to say it is the most foul smelling substance you can imagine, its strength would put Drakkar Noir to shame. Tom and I watched in horror, frozen and unable to speak.

Finally, we snapped out of it and started yelling, yapping over one another, “No perfume no perfume!” Yes, we are doing our part to cement the image of Americans as goofballs.

We love DaVe. He gave us our Daily Show back!!

You see, the evil folks at Comedy Central decided to cut off foreign access to the Daily Show — I ask you, what is your thinking American expat to do? (Besides freak out, of course.)

Being the crybaby that I am, after the plug was pulled, I wailed about the loss on Twitter. Thankfully, a fellow American living in Argentina heard my cries of distress and came to my rescue like a knight in shining armor…carrying a remote…for a Slingbox… . Okay, maybe that doesn’t make sense, so I shall explain further!

DaVe has a house in Vermont with a television that has a DVR. Connected to said digital recording device is a Slingbox, which allows you to access any of the shows on your DVR via the Internet.

So now, thanks to the fabulous and wonderful DaVe (really, there aren’t enough superlatives), I satisfy my Jon Stewart jones by flipping on Dave’s TV in Vermont from my laptop — I love it!

We could have done a better job of preparing Zoe for the aftermath of four weeks in a cast above her elbow.

In her typical optimistic fashion, she thought she would be waving her injured arm around as if nothing had happened after the white plaster was removed. (As you can see in the photos below, we had to reinforce the yeso with duct tape by the end because it was beginning to crumble around the hand and wear through at the elbow.)

The transition to a splint on her left limb resulted in her arm feeling much more exposed and uncomfortable than she anticipated. And her wrist still hurt like hell! (It apparently has a bone chip in it that will resolve with time, but will cause pain if she tries to move it.)

Zoe’s marching orders are to begin working on elbow mobility, and continue with that for the next two weeks. Then she is to start manipulating her wrist through various ranges of motion.

Of course, being an uber-healing kid, the difference between today and yesterday is pretty profound.

Now we just gotta get all of that dead skin sloughed off! (Ewww, gross.)