Tigre and Easter Stories

First off, Happy Easter to everyone. I didn't do anything special for it, but I did walk past a church that was having mass outside, so I got my dose. The past 4 days have been holidays, so Kenj and I have just been hanging out and sight seeing. I thought I'd seen most of the noteworthy sights here already, but we walked around Recoleta today and it's amazingly posh and beautiful. I was looking into staying there for my time in BA, but now I'm glad I didn't because it's way too nice, I wouldn't feel right there! It's got vibes kind of similar to Park Avenue Manhattan... and nothing I can really think of in ATL, maybe the part of Buckhead by the Governor's Mansion. We've put in a lot of time at Piola, and I now know the owner of the entire company, he's this older Italian guy that lives here part of the year. They just opened one in Atlanta, in Midtown on 14th Street, so I guess I'll have to spend some time there when I get back. That place really is crazy, it's like a time warp back to the days that people greeted their neighbors, had milkmen, and kids played in the street, only set to the thumping beat of that type of electronic music they play in every swanky bar and restaurant. Haha that probably sounds weird, but it's just a place that isn't what it appears to be. Walking in, you expect a certain pretentious air, but it's not like that. I love it when things aren't what they appear.

Today is the first day it feels like Fall.. it's so crisp and chilly that now I actually have to buy a real jacket! Usually it has been warming up during the day, but now, no. I like this weather, but it's going to make it even nicer getting back home during the summer time. On that, I was looking at flights home the other day and it's several hundred dollars cheaper to fly out of Lima, Peru or other places further north. I did some number crunching and am now thinking about maybe hitting some combination of Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Bolivia on my way back. It would be nice, since I'm already on the continent, to see more before I leave. These places are so cheap to stay that, if I use the money I save by getting a cheaper flight from further away and spend it on the trip to get there, I almost break even. So I'll see about that, and hopefully have an awesome end of the trip. Since it's turning winter now, high tourist season is over and prices are going down, lucky us.

Kendra and I went to Tigre yesterday with Lorena, my awesome volunteer coordinator. Tigre is a northern suburb of BA that rests at the tip of a delta formed by the Rio Parana. We had lunch at this place Lorena knew - a huge plate dried meats and cheeses-I'm talking a bunch of different salamis, prosciutto, ham, and some other stuff I had no idea about... ahhh it was perfect! Kendra's a veggie so she had sundried tomatoes marinated in olive oil and herbs, que rico. The lunch was a fantastic homage to Argentina's Italian influence and I could have died. Lorena suggested splitting a beer, but with that kind of food, I couldn't, so I asked if we could get red wine. She kind of paused a second, looked me in the eye, and said she respected that. I still can't totally read people here, so I don't know if she thought I was being pretentious or a bitch or if she was surprised or what. Her background is half Italian too, and the other half is French, poor thing, so maybe we were on the same wave length. Then we took a boat ride around the canals that make the neighborhood what it is. Canals in Argentina, who woulda thought? I had no idea.

Alright, the other day Kendra told me a story and I was obsessed. Get ready to roll your eyes, some of you, because it's one of those metaphorical things that I freak out over, but I know it's kind of tacky. She was in a park somewhere on one of her trips, and was watching this guy, sitting on a bench, trying to feed a pigeon. He threw some crumbs in front of him, and the pigeon didn't notice. He threw some more, and to his great dismay, the pigeon still didn't acknowledge his act of generosity. He got up and walked away, looking bummed out by the pigeon's negligence. Maybe the pigeon wasn't hungry, or was scared to get close to him, or maybe it was just stupid. Meanwhile, Kendra was watching and realized that, between the bird and the man was a tuft of grass growing up through the sidewalk. It was low enough to the ground that it couldn't have occurred to the man that it would be an issue, but from Kendra's perspective, it was thick and tall enough to block the pigeon's view of the bread crumbs. She went, threw some crumbs on the other side of the grass, and the pigeon ate them up.

I liked this story, because it kind of goes along with a lot of what they tried to get across to us at Fordham, and a basic matter of life. you You have to be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes to an extent. No matter what you're trying to do, if you don't bend to understand where the other person is coming from, how can you expect them to understand you? The guy had what the pigeon wanted, but expected the pigeon to come to him just because of that. It took a 3rd party with the proper point of view to get the pigeon its food. I dunno, I could draw a lot of little things from the story. The pigeon is small, so a little bunch of grass was enough to impede its line of sight to the food it obviously wanted. The guy was disappointed that he didn't get to feed the bird, but if only he had realized that they were looking at the same exact thing, just with very different perspectives, and adjusted his approach accordingly, they could have both been satisfied.

OK story time is over, hope someone liked it! Happy Easter people.