la vista para calle 25 de mayo

The view from the

13th floor on the

 street 25 de mayo.

What i will or can never get used to is the street people. While this city and it's people are kind and passionate, the other side to the adventure is seeing people, families, living out in the open.

Clustered under the more optimum spots, they live a precarious existence from day to day.

One evening as i was heading to the subway after my last class, i walked passed a young guy snuggling up on his mattress with a blanket. He smiled and said 'hola', i smiled back and said 'buenos noche' and he says 'es un poco frio', it is a little cold'. What do you say to that? I smiled and said a 'si' in agreement.

While i am by no means rich, by comparison i am a millionaire.

In some plazas whole families camp out. They have everything for living daily lives, but totally exposed to the pedestrian eye. A mother nursing her child, two guys playing cards, a young couple sleeping under a plastic sheet. Perhaps in the night they will be one of the hundreds of cartoneros who walk the streets pulling their two wheeled carts heavy with the collection of cardboard and recyclable materials.

25 centavos per kilo of cardboard.

Sometimes he has a friend over for a visit. They tuck themselves in under his blanket. The brown dog is stretched out on the mattress beside them, it is fast asleep, twitching, dreaming of trees and chasing rabbits, or maybe even cats.

Their home is on the shady side of the street.

I have, on a few sunny occasions, seen him and the dog on the opposite side. Basking in the hesitant spring sun.

He lives, they live, on Avenida Cordoba 682.

Tucked in on a small unused doorway. One step. It is their spot.

One day I walked passed and they were both fast asleep. He covered from head to toe with his blanket, the dog outside, curled up beside him with his muzzle resting on his owners leg.

Mans best friend.

Two take-away containers on the footpath beside them. One filled with water, the other with dog biscuits.

She has two large white bags with Garabino written large in bold red letters.

It is a store that sells everything you could ever dream of for your home.

I see her in the mornings, as I exit the subway.

She is usually packed up, ready to go.

Her face is deeply lined with age and experience, and is the colour of walnuts.

She sips her coffee from a white polystyrene cup.

In the evenings, after my last lot of students, she is back there on the steps.

San Martin 27.

I have seen her wipe down the half a dozen steps she calls home.

She is always on her own. But, lots of people stop and talk to her. I have seen a woman stride over and pass her a peso note.

As I walk to and fro past her home, like a friendly neighbour, I smile and say hello. She smiles and replies in kind.

They are a family group of five or six. One double bed and three singles. A pile of blankets and quilts, some pillows. Two old sofas and an armchair between the double bed and the others serves as the lounge room.

A kitchen table and half a dozen miss matched chairs.

They have salt and some other unremarkable condiments in the middle of the table.

It looks neat and tidy.

There are advertising billboards on the wall behind them. Advertising a local bank and all the opportunities it can deliver to you.

I see their lives every Wednesday on the way to La Boca on the bus. They live under a grand galleria, marble arches and veranda that protect them from the elements. Well, the rain at least.

They live on the busy Avenida Alem.

street vendors

A fruit and vegetable vendor

on the street beside the

railway line into Barrio 

Chino. Buenos Aires

Chinatown.

I am sitting in Havanna cafe

syphoning the wi-fi before i head

to La Boca and the Eloisa

Cartoneras for my Wednesday

day of painting with the 

crew- Alejandro, Riccardo and

Miriam. They have received an

order of 1,000 books on

 Contemporary Argentinian Poetry,

so we are painting covers and

gluing in the pages until our fingers

bleed. Have i said how much i love working here with these guys? They have welcomed me into their lives and work, shared their ma'te with me, and all that with my limited spanglish. I will be so sad to leave them. Am having to start to think about what and where i go to next. My teaching work is starting to slow down, and come the middle of  December it will stop for two to three months. sigh. Might have to go and be a 'willing worker on organic farms' for board and food. Either that or become one of those dog walkers, which i really like the idea of. Have to have work to stay. sigh. This is a marvelous country with passionate and dynamic people. I love it.

In Spanish, Alice in Wonderland translates into....Alicia en el pais maravilloso.

(alice in a country marvelous.!)

More on the Argentinian art of protest...

Cabilldo. The original

seat of government.

Plaza de Mayo

Buenos Aires.

Yesterday (ayer), Tuesday

(martes) was a big, big

general strike.

The city centre(Microcentro)

was amazingly quiet.

Later that night i watched

the t.v. coverage of

various protest spots

where the people had

mobilized, gathering with

the drums, flags and banners, in protest on minimum wage, cost of living and inflation and government politics in general. On one of the main autopistas(freeways), they gathered with all the above paraphernalia in the middle of an empty eight lane highway, threw down some tyres and set them alight. Another signal in the protest repertoire. The environmentalist in me was aghast, but the pyromaniac in me was secretly delighted.

On a side note....i wasn't sure if the subway or buses would be working on the strike day, and Julio, el florista offered to double me in on the back (or front) of his bicycle if they weren't. Too funny. Belgrano to Microcentro (6ish kms) on the back of a bike!!!

(I took this photo on the way to the subway after my last class for the day. This building is totally white. A group of inspired artists had projected colour slides onto what is a perfect white screen. I watched this building transform in a number of ways in the space of half and hour.) 

Handy hints....

a statue in Parque Palermo

Buenos Aires

....Test the hot water for optimum

temperature, with your hand,

BEFORE you sit on

the bidet to wash

your pink bits!

(i have one of the

aforementioned in my

bathroom. Why do we

not have them in NZ?

They're so good for lots

of other things.... like

washing your hot tired

feet at the end of a 

long day and shaving

your legs.)

some russian orthodoxy

Russian Orthodox Church

in barrio San Telmo,

I'm a big fan of those onion style

cupolas. If i ever build a house

i'd like a couple of them

perched on the roof.

Didn't get inside this church,

the front doors resolutely

closed for public traffic.

On a totally wild tangent,

i think i was

chatted-up by the hippy

flower man wearing 

yellow jeans with the

name of Julio, or Hugo.

Saw him in the street as

i was walking into the cafe and we 'hablamos' (i think that means talked) and he was on his way to his house for lunch and he said to drop by his flower stall for 'hablando' Talk. I think that was the gist of it. We swapped names, he asked where i came from and how long i had been in Buenos Aires, and was i with family or solita? Solo. On my own. Long hair and on hot days he wears really short tiger stripped shorts.

 

folk dancing in Mataderos

Mataderos, a suburb in 

the south of Buenos Aires.

According to the labyrinthine

bus guide book, Mataderos

is the home to one of the most

amazing 'Ferias'...a market

fair type event on the 

weekends. True! I was

quietly thrilled that i managed

to get on the right bus in 

the right direction, and

an hour or so later and

several cd's worth of 

songs...i was there. 

Mataderos was the original home

of the slaughterhouses for

the city. So lots of meat, cattle

and Gauchos. Cowboys.

Smack bang in the middle of rows and rows of artisanal specialty foods and crafts and smoking parrillas (barbecues) was this stage thick with an eager audience! These dancers were one of several groups that flounced their frocks and kicked up their heels. I sat until the sun started to grill me, and watched many different of styles of traditional folk dances performed by men and women of all ages, some fabulous musicians playing some hair raising, blood pumping, crowd going wild music. Take bus 29 from Belgrano.!

 

some fabric chooks in Tigre

a shop in Tigre, a northern

suburb of Buenos Aires

It's Sunday and i was

hunting around for a cheap

place to siphon off

their wi-fi to update

the blog, and i went

into a Havanna

coffee shop and set up

the notebook, then,

in a city of 13million, 

my new friend Susana

and her man Guillermo

walk in. How crazy

is that!

Colonia, Uruguay.

A cute cafe in the old

 part of Colonia

A nice day trip to

 Colonia to refresh my 

90 day visa.

I will have to go Uruguay

 next month again...

before the 19th.

It doesn't seem like i have

been here nearly another

three months. Time fugit eh.

Colonia was gorgeous, an

old port originally established

by the Portuguese.

 A gorgeous day compared to

 the day i was supposed

to  go....hurricane type winds

 so strong that people in

 Montevideo had to use

ropes tied across the streets

 to get to the other side.

 

a typical day....

a merry-go-round horse

on a carousel in Tigre.

Weekdays i get up at either 6.30am

or 7.30am, depending on the day and class.

Horrible.

I take the subway into town. I

can just about doze standing up like

the locals.Must be something to do with the

air, hour or the rocking of the train.

Mondays and Wednesdays i stop at a 

cafe for a cafe con leche as a treat

for making it out of bed at that hour.

My classes vary, always an early class,

classes around lunch times and then the

after work hour classes. so i can be

wandering the streets from 8am until

8pm. i have also learned that when that

empty subway train pulls into the first stop

as soon as the doors open (praying

hopefully to the Goddess of Subway doors 

to open up in front of me) i jump in like

its a life and death game of musical chairs.

It's heaven to get a seat for the 12 stop/25 minute 

ride home after a long day. 

anyone for an asado/parilla?

A restaurant on Lavalle

Microcentro, Bs As

Is it wrong for a vegetarian to stop and stare?

Let alone take photos.

This is a classic example of the Argentinian

version of the bar-b-que. 

The asado or parrilla.

There are a number of these restaurants

on my routes to student's workplaces.

I am fascinated by them, the way the whole body

is spread out on their hangers that

the chefs roast and turn.

I would like to see how they chop it up 

for different orders and bits. I guess.

the last class of the week.

These guys are the troublemakers......

not.

Delightfully introducing the IT whizzes of

an un-named bank...Nora, beside

her is Adrian, and behind him is Omar.

We did have Gustavo also, but he is now

in my other class group.

Sorry about the slightly blurry picture-

the guy on the end of the camera

obviously got the shakes, or couldn't stop laughing.

I look forward to hanging out with this crew,

i've laughed so much at times my

ears hurt. I will never be able to hear someone

say 'bootlicker' without thinking of them.

I've learned the Spanish version...

 chupa media...sock sucker.

This is Paola, another fabulous student/guide

Introducing Paola (...i can't find you on facebook!)

She is another great student i have had the 

good luck to have. At first my kiwi accent

stumped her (and other students), but i

learned to slow down and

 enunciate more clearly.
Paola works for an international banking
corporation and is the secretary you go to
for all the things the bosses don't know.

Sadly it was our last class on Thursday,

her evil bilingual  overlord doesn't want

 her to continue her classes.

Paola also printed off maps from google

in aid of my artistic and cultural adventures.

Guillermo, my mat'e drinking history guide

This is Guillermo, he also also works for the 

same logistics company as Ingrid and Roberto.

He always has his mate (pronounced mah-tay).

It should have an accent over the 'e'.

We have some great off-track converstations

about the history of Argentina and

 all it's 'heros'.

He gives me all the inside gossip on the 

historic goings on in the country and

the political machinations of notable

characters.....and where the wrong

statues ended up.

He even gives me homework!

Introducing el Doc....Roberto

Roberto works for the same logistics company as

Ingrid. Mondays and Fridays are our classes.

He would like the women of NZ to know he

his available for a 'good time'.

We have totally competitive classes, his idea

not mine. But, when in Rome, or 

capital federal.....i think he is ahead of

me (so he thinks) in the linking sentences

exersize. Roberto 6. 

Alice 5.

If anyone is interested in meeting Roberto,

 i know where he works!

Mi fin de semana guia, Ingrid

my weekend guide, Ingrid

Meet Ingrid, she works for a large logistics

company, and on the side, she googles

maps for me for my weekend explorations

that also include valuable spots where

the best ice-cream places are.

Ingrid was the one who found me my

room at Beba's place.

She knows all the best english

expletives, and where to find the

recipies for Alfajores and dulce de leche,

my favourite biscuit here.

My alfajore thighs are coming along nicely.

we will be able to make them in NZ.

Hola Gabriel

We don't look too bad, considering 

the hour. 9am-ish. 

Monday and 

Wednesday mornings.

Gabriel works for a Bank, 

and on hisPhd thesis. 

He wants to improve the banking

mode/system by looking at micro-financing

for the little people.

He was wondering how his hair was

looking...definately better than mine.

He also likes to give everyone at

international meetings the warm hearted

Argentinian kiss on the cheek.

I see him as the kissing archangel Gabriel

live life like a muppet!

Kermit on the sofa at 

Casa Beba,

Belgrano, Buenos Aires.

Beba and i have a running gag with kermit,

every couple of days we change his

place and pose. 

this is the latest.

frog with flower.