Timetables, Obligations, and Jibber-Jabber

I was supposed to go to my first day of actual work at La Juanita today, but turns out I will start tomorrow. Wednesday is a national holiday in rememberance of the atrocities of the last dictatorship, so I won`t work then either. I didn`t go today because Lorena, my point-woman, was out of town and I didn`t want to try the complicated trip there by myself. Partly out of laziness, to be fair. Also though, it`s a bad place to be lost in, and she told me to make sure that if I go, not to get lost. So here I am. Argentina seems to be full of obligations, but even more full of excuses to break them, haha. Lorena said there are two rules of the program: Go with the flow, and don`t complain. She said Americans are funny because we always need things but they are things that we don`t actually need, but rather that we like. For instance, schedules. We like them, and so do most Europeans (Scandinavians at least) because they allow us to plan things, which gives us a sense of stability. There are no schedules here. There aren`t even bus stops here. You can recognize that a bus stops at a certain spot by the metal post that clearly used to have a sign attached to it, but you have to ask around to make sure your bus stops there. Then, once your bus comes, if it stops, you have to make sure with the driver that it is stopping at your destination. Wild. A lesson in letting go and letting god (thanks Denae for that beautiful phrase, haha)

I just got back from Palermo, the really nice part of the city, meeting up with a girl I met the other night. She`s from Brooklyn and does kind of the same things in NY as I have been doing-working with non profits for environmental things. We know some of the same organizations and people, so it`s cool, and we`re both doing similar projects here. Funny that the two of us met in Buenos Aires, completely randomly, and have these things in common. I met her at La Bomba last monday, which is a weekly Brazilian drum fest at an outdoor venue and is amazing. It starts early and ends early, so in a Carnaval-esque style, you follow the guys with drums to the next party. I was with my Scandinavian friends, and this girl, Sarit, got lost with another friend. I heard them speaking English so I told them they could stay around with us. Mostly because I wanted to talk to her friend, haha, but bam, there ya go. But anyway, she`s cool, and I had to spend the afternoon out because I literally have nothing to do if my work gets cancelled!

Yesterday it rained all day, it was awful. I hate rain, first of all, but it was raining especially hard, alllllll day. So I decided I would suck it up and go see a movie. I decided to see El Secreto de Sus Ojos because it won some awards, and I figured I`d be able to understand it decently. I didn`t understand anything! It was insane. Oh well, I`m trying. I know the movie must have been good, and there was this crazy plot twist at the end, so I want to see it with subtitles some day.

The weather here is perfect lately, besides yesterday. It`s decently dry, and totally sunny, but the temperature is at that perfect level where you don`t sweat with jeans and a t shirt, but you`re not cold. Beautiful. This kind of weather does something to me mentally/emotionally, it`s my favorite feeling. Thanks to that, Sarit and I sat outside a cafe in Palermo and had a beer while we discussed what we had picked up so far about the crazy history/current events of this country. People are sufficiently hushed about what happened in the late 70s, early 80s, but the lingering effects weigh heavily enough that you can still get a sense of the gravity of what went down. Arguably millions of people disappeared (a real body count can only be speculated, but somewhere between 100s of 1000s and a million is conceded) and the way of life was completely overturned for a decade or so (I`m shit with dates) and it only ended in the 80s, so plenty of people are still around who lived through all that. Lorena`s family had to move to Mendoza because her dad and grandpa worked for the former gov`t as doctors, so the military regime blacklisted them as enemies of the state, so they basically had to flee. Every Thursday, mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared march around the Plaza de Mayo, carrying on a tradition that was started during the dictatorship, reminding everyone of the wounds that are still open, decades later. While these little demonstrations happen, no one really ever brings it up. You recognize it but don`t talk about it. Then of course there was the economic crash in ´01 but that`s a different beast. Money`s money, it comes and it goes, society may upheave itself, but what people went through with the government, that`s something i`m not at all familiar with. It`s only something I ever heard about in history classes, and only related to communism, which made me wonder why, if we studied the soviet revolution, did we never hear about this mess in Argentina, which was a much more current issue, making it relevant, and just as brutal?

Anyway, it`s not all bad. At least in BA there is a pretty liberal attitude of be-who-you-are and everyone lives and lets live. Apparently things have changed a LOT in the past few decades and there is a lot of freedom, and lack of behavioral regulation. That is one thing about South America (hell, just about the entire rest of the world) I know I will miss so much when I get home. The police wouldn`t bother someone for something like jay-walking or riding their bike or skateboarding in the wrong place, or playing music too loud. I can`t say that cops are there for protection, I`m not a fool, but they are not there to tell you how to behave. The whole legal system in general is decently relaxed in that manner though. There are plenty of real, practical laws. Whether they are upheld isn`t the issue I`m arguing, but there aren`t laws regulating so many of the silly shit things that we have in the US-there aren`t many laws trying to protect you from yourself. That`s your job, and if you lack the sense to be able to protect yourself, that`s your problem. All of that rant isn`t to say, but doesn`t exclude the fact that, if this logic was followed in my hometown, I wouldn`t have a warrant for my arrest right now.. I would be in trouble, but not incarceration-worthy trouble. You go to jail for dealing drugs, and killing people, and stealing things. Anyway, no need to get all controversial about anything, there are plenty of bad things that such regulation prevents. For me personally, I prefer to be able to make my own decisions. As Bernie Mac may have once said, I`m a grown ass man and I can do what I want. If I want a beer in the street, damn it, I`m gonna drink my beer in the street. Without a shirt on! That`s a little bit of Georgia coming out.

So anyway, I`ll go buy some more red meat for dinner, and wish I had some fish. I can`t find fish anywhere, and I`ve never wanted seafood so badly. I`m sure it`s out there, but it`s hard to buy. I might be getting a little fatter right now-eating here is cheaper than in NY so I can afford to feed myself properly. Meaning, I haven`t eaten rice and beans since I`ve been in Argentina because, to me, that`s food of necessity, and I`ve had meat with almost every meal. To the point that I don`t even care about meat any more. It is really good here, even the crap meat you buy at the grocery store. It`s not packaged, you have to tell the butcher guy what you want, and he hacks it off from a big hunk of carnal delight. Then, BA isn`t the most diverse city in the world, but all the grocery stores around me are owned by Chinese ladies, and they always yell at me! So here, you have to pay a deposit when you buy the big beers in the glass bottles (there aren`t many 6 packs here) and the first time I was informed of this, I didn`t quite understand, so I told the lady so. She looked at me and sneared, and told me that yes, I did understand, and she`s sorry for her accent. I was like WOA lady, I`m the one with the language problem here, I`m not even going there! So I hit her with a little mira!mira! and set her straight. I don`t want her thinking I`m a punk.