Gypsy Rants

i'm the homecoming queen of tango

2006-11-01T01:11:00.002-03:00

Well, kids, I'm officially unemployed again by my own doing. I know I haven't been great at keeping in touch with each of you individually, so I figured I should let you all know that I've quit my jobs at the institutes and I'm coming home from Argentina for good in a few short weeks. You didn't really expect me to stay in one place for much longer than this, did you?

So as a special treat, I'm going to let you take a virtual walk through my imagination. Okay, this is the part where I dream up a little conversation between you and me...

You: What happened?! Why are you leaving Argentina? Did your evil laundry lady pour bleach into your colors load? Have the drums of the protestors on your street given you a rare and incurable brain disease contracted only by fat capitalists from el norte? Wait! I know, I know...you mastered the Spanish language and now you're ready for a triumphant homecoming!

Me: Uh, not so much...on all accounts. Yes, my evil laundry lady is still evil, but only mostly so. I don't think even she has the heart to sabotage my entire wardrobe. As for the protests, they've certainly grown on me and inspired me to read lefty anarchist literature. Boy am I going to be a fun dinner party guest when I get back! Did I mention that I live across the street from the Communist Party HQ? As for my Spanish, well, I can say this: soy una vergüenza. For the sake of comedy (and your own edification), I refuse to translate this one, but let's say that doesn't quite mean "I'm devastatingly fluent."
No, see I initially bought a plane ticket home because I thought that Argentina didn't have much more to offer me. Now I have to admit that I was completely wrong about that. There's a ton of stuff that I just didn't take the time to explore down here. Not to mention, I've only in the last few months really broken into the reality of what goes on down here. If I could stay for another year or so, then I would really have a good understanding of what it means to be a porteño. Plus my Spanish would be killer.

You: Um, so why are you leaving then?

Me: To put in the vernacular: Visa has me by the short and curlies, and pesos just aren't going to cut it. Just like almost every other foreigner I knew here, I'm leaving because I'm broke. I could definitely go on living off of teaching for another year if I didn't have to send dollars to Visa every month.

You: Wow, that's too bad. So what now?

Me: That's the sixty-four thousand peso question. Got any ideas? Because otherwise when my press secretary is asked "What is Carly going to do next?" he's going to go with the old standby, "Well, she's going to follow her nose."

You: You're going to use a line from a scratch 'n' sniff children's book to justify not knowing what to do with your life?

Me: Well, my middle name is Bunny, uh...I mean....sure! Why not? Really, I do have a thought or two about my next bold move, but I'd rather not post that on the internet. Have you actually read that Patriot Act thingy? I'm not really itching to add post-it notes to my FBI file, if you know what I mean.

You: Okay, Ms. Terrorist. When will you be home?

Me: The week of Thanksgiving, so if you're going to be in the Los Angeles area, let's get together and eat some turkey and be thankful soon. In the meantime, I'm going to count up my pesos and see if I have enough to head down to Patagonia. If not, I guess I'll just cruise out to the casino in Tigre and blow it all on craps. Wait, I don't even know how to play craps! Got any pointers for me?

So as for that last bit about the pointers, I'm open to any wisecracking (or not so wisecracking) suggestions you can dream up for my life. Why not? It's not like I've got anything else planned. Oh, and I guess it would be a shame to call this blog Gypsy Rants and then turn around and only write about Argentina. If you have any advice that involves travel I'll give you a cut of future blog ad revenue!

Looking forward to seeing many of you soon!

hot button domestic issues

2006-10-31T21:10:00.000-03:00

A few months ago, you couldn't pick up a newspaper in Buenos Aires that didn't have "Aborto!" splattered all across the headlines as a few special cases arose this winter to challenge Argentina's anti-abortion laws.

To start, abortion is illegal in Argentina except in two cases:
1. If an abortion is the only means to save a mother's life or protect her physical or mental health.
2. In cases of rape or incest.

In addition, the penalties for illegal abortion are as follows:
1. Doctors who perform illegal abortions are subject to 3 to 10 years of imprisonment plus the loss of their medical license for twice the amount of time as their sentence.
2. Women who induce their own abortions can face 1 to 4 years of imprisonment.

Sounds a little like a liberal version of South Dakota, no? Well, let's get on with what happened here in August.

The first abortion case in the papers dealt with a 19 year old mentally disabled woman, known only as LMR, who was raped and subsequently became pregnant. When LMR's mother figured out that her daughter was preganant, she deduced how it happened and took her daughter to the hospital for a legal abortion. LMR's mother claimed that having the child would be harmful to her daughter's mental state, as her daughter has the mind of a nine year old and cannot understand the concept of being a mother. At the time, LMR was thought to be 14 weeks pregnant.
The ethics committee at the hospital was reviewing the case, I'm guessing due to the strict penalties for illegal abortions. Before the ethics committee reached their decision, a prosecutor in LMR's rape case alerted Judge Ignacio Siro to LMR's planned abortion. Siro then blocked the abortion due to "personal convictions". On appeal, the Supreme Court of Buenos Aires overruled Siro (who's now being impeached), but the doctors at the hospital refused to perform the procedure. LMR was now at 20 weeks and the physicians said that they could not guarantee her safety if they proceeded with the abortion. Incidentally, the other option here was to induce birth. None of the doctors were willing to do this because they might be charged with homicide, according to Clarín. Of course, the doctors might have had plenty of other objections to inducing birth, including personal ones.
LMR's mother was relieved when the matter was finally settled. Although her main concern had been for LMR's mental health, the mother was grateful to learn that the family would be receiving psychological and social assistance from the government.

Also in August, another mentally-disabled woman was seeking an abortion due to rape, this time in the province of Mendoza. The victim's mother requested a judicial authorization for an abortion, but it was blocked by an injunction from a Catholic organization. The Supreme Court in Mendoza overturned the injunction, and the abortion was performed as planned.*

The Ministerio de Salud estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 illegal abortions are performed in Argentina annually. Public opinion holds that the more money a woman has, the more accessible safe abortion is. Around 80,000 women are hospitalized each year after botched abortions.

The legal question of abortion in Argentina is complicated by the Constitution. In 1994, constitutional reforms gave the international Pact of San Jose constitutional status. This pact between Latin American countries focuses mainly on human rights but also declares the right to life "in general, from the moment of conception". The open wording here has led to some debate about abortion.

Contraceptives are readily available in pharmacies in the parts of the city that I know. The pill is even available without a prescription. However, in the villas (the "underprivileged" neighborhoods) contraceptives don't seem to be readily available, despite laws passed a few years ago to offer free contraceptives at public health centers. The Catholic church recommends that women pay attention to their cycles to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Even if women religiously tracked each day, most of them note that when their men come home drunk, they don't have much of a choice. In addition, a lack of education leads some to reuse condoms and engage in folk methods of contraception (some are rumored to use socks when they can't get condoms).

In more recent news, this week the legislature unanimously passed a law to require sexual education for all students from age five through secondary school. The new law is meant to shore up a 2003 law that allowed for sex ed in schools but did not mandate that the Ministry of Education create a curriculum. Some schools already have a sex education program for their students, but the new curriculum will be created by the Ministry of Education in conjunction with a panel of experts to cover the physiological, psychological, emotional, ethical and social aspects of sex, gender, and sexuality.

In the past, some families have argued that they prefer to educate their children at home about sex. To help sway the representatives of these citizens, the Ministry of Education will create the curriculum, but individual schools will be allowed to "adapt" the material to the sensitivities of their particular community. Some fear that this concession will allow schools to remove parts of the curriculum that are essential to the spirit of the new law.**

All I can say is that I hope the kids in the villas get some of this information before they drop out of school.

*Abortion Sources: Clarín: Los médicos no harán el aborto y la chica violada tendrá a su bebé, Kaiser Network: Argentina Supreme Court Rules Mentally Impaired Rape Survivor Can Undergo Abortion; Case Sparks Abortion-Rights Debate, La Nación: Otro pedido de aborto para una discapacitada.

**Sexual Education Sources: IPS News: EDUCATION-ARGENTINA:
Sex in the Classrooms - By Law, Clarín: En 2007 darán educación sexual en todas las escuelas porteñas, La Nación: Los porteños recibirán educación sexual, and Ya es ley la educación sexual en la Capital.

¿quiénes somos?

2006-10-15T15:42:00.000-03:00

Who are we? Americans? Norteamericanos? Estadounidenses?

Many moons ago when I was studying in Germany and someone asked my nationality, I would answer, "Ich bin Amerikanerin." When I visited folks in England in January 2002, my friends expressed their condolences for September 11th by saying, "No one expected an attack on America." And while I am fiercely passionate about my state (you know, the Golden One) I am also "proud to be an American". Despite all this talk from my past travels about "America", in Argentina I tell people, "Soy de los Estados Unidos." (I'm from the United States.) What's caused this change in label? Read on, boludos!

Before I jump into this linguistic war, let's walk down memory lane. Think back to elementary school. "Okay, people! Listen up, people, mkay? Eyes up front! Okay, today we're going to learn about Geography. Can anyone tell me how many continents there are?" Seven. "Good, now what are the names of the continents?" Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, North America, and South America.

Very good, class...unless you're in a Latin American elementary school. Prepare the dunce cap! See, little latinos learn that there are six continents: Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, and the Americas. No gold stars for you! Come back one year!!

Why do Latin American schools teach such junk social science? Well, it's not without cause. Once upon a time, oh, about 1507, a German mapmaker named Martin Waldseemüller first used the term "America" in one of his cartographic endeavors. Waldseemüller was describing that skinny little land mass on the left side of the map below, and he got the name from that swingin' Italian, Amerigo Vespucci (America is the Latin feminine version of Vespucci's first name). I'm going to gloss over the "why" of the etymology of "America" here, because the important bit is that the whole land mass, from Patagonia to the glaciers in the north, was named America.

So, now that we've begun to broaden our world view, you can see how the folks of Latin America consider themselves, well, plain old Americans. Seeing as how all these argentinos that I live with everyday consider themselves Americans too, I try to adjust my speech wherever possible to accommodate them. However, their solutions to this label issue are no better than ours. Most people I talk to here insist on using the term "North American" or "norteamericano" to describe citizens of the U.S.

We run into two problems here though. Point number one, the English-speaking world includes Mexico in North America. Anyone remember NAFTA? The North American Free Trade Agreement? You know, that little pact between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico...the three countries of North America. Now, many of my students don't mean to include Mexico into the fray of the term norteamericano, so I take that at face value, usually due to....Point number two, Canadians are not citizens of the United States of America. Actually, my usual line is, "North American, huh? But that's unfair to Canadians," Now, this gives my students pause. They have no beef with Canada (so far) so they don't know what to say. I like to point out that they are ignoring the second largest country in the world when they use the term "North American" to describe U.S. citizens. (Of course I also seize on this time to explain how Americans sometimes like to make fun of Canadians. It's a cultural teaching moment, to be sure.) Either way, my students don't know what to say next.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to invalidate my students' arguments that they are Americans too. Obviously they are. It's not like Europe had the foresight to name all of the land that would become part of the U.S.A.*, "America". No! They named what is now thought of as two continents (in English), "America." As Bubba Clinton would say, "I feel their pain." Except I mean it.

So at this point, I turn the question back on my students. First I remind them that the full and recognized name of my country is "The United States of America" and then I challenge them to come up with an alternative adjective other than "American". The only English-viable solution I get is "United Statesian". Some students say that would be okay. The others say, "I forgot 'America' was part of your country's name." At this point, I know that they like me because they're being polite and open to the problem.

Now that we've all grasped the dilemma, I also point out in class that people in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere refer to the U.S.A. as "America". This is to show my students that it's not just U.S. citizens that think of America as the U.S.A., but also hundreds of millions of others that agree. I mean really. Did your Irish/German/Italian ancestors say that they were going to the United States of America? No. They told their families that they were leaving for America.

So hopefully now, my students understand the gravity of the situation. They are not just arguing against the most powerful nation in the world, but most of the most powerful nations in the world. A good portion of the world's population (at least in terms of wealth). Now, while I can't envision many of us putting bumper stickers on our pick-ups that declare, "Proud to be a United Statesian", I can imagine us using the term "American" only when we're stuck for an alternative. I believe that in English, that's all we can do. Meanwhile, our Spanish-speaking friends can respect Canada just a bit more by using estadounidense when they want to describe a United Statesian, er...uh, a citizen of the U.S.

Of course I'm interested in hearing other salient solutions....if you've got any.

*In Spanish, the abbreviation for U.S.A. is E.E.U.U., as in los Estados Unidos with de América taken out. To be fair, we usually use the abbreviation U.S. in most contexts. And if you're wondering about the doubled letters on the abbreviation, in Spanish, plural words are abbreviated with double letters. Therefore, la Unión Europea is abbreviated U.E. since it's singular, whereas recursos humanos (human resources) is R.R.H.H.

why you may never take my airfare advice ever again

2006-09-29T20:51:00.000-03:00

Yesterday I got a call from my travel agent. "I'm so sorry to tell you this, but your flight to Los Angeles has been cancelled. Varig is no longer flying to the United States due to bankruptcy complications."

I am truly the best client a travel agent could have. No screaming. No blame. Not even a sigh.

See, I've been on the caller end of this conversation before.

"Sorry to bother you Ms. Murik. This is Carly, your travel agent. I'm calling you to tell you that Bankrupt Airlines has cancelled that ticket that you so responsibly bought months and months in advance for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, Bankrupt Airlines is no longer flying that route, but the good news is that they are prepared to offer you a full refund without penalty."

Rarely does a greater injustice occur in the world of commercial aviation than when an airline cancels a route. Sure they offer a full refund in this situation, but not an immediate one, and more often than not, fares have risen considerably by the time you get the bad news. Most times, you have absolutely no recourse. Who takes the brunt of the passenger's anger? That's right, the travel vendor.

And of course, your agent's airline rep vanishes into thin air at this time. "Hi, this is Scammy Greedmonger. I'm in Barbados right now, but if you leave a message after the beep, I'll be happy to return your call once I cash in on my golden parachute and get over my jetlag and this nasty Mai Tai hangover...or not." *beep* Bankrupt Airlines is never going to offer you anything more than your money back, no matter how unfair it is that you now have to pay potentially hundreds of dollars more due to their poor business practices.

That's why I scolded myself all the way home yesterday. I knew better than to book with Varig. Last I knew, they were a shaky carrier. Questionable service. Late flights. And wasn't there some issue with their finances? Heck yeah! Varig had their planes seized not too long ago. What the hell was I thinking?

I was thinking I didn't want to pay $1300 to fly home. Three months ago, five months before I planned to fly, I sought out a ticket. I knew that due to the Thanksgiving holiday in November, prices could be higher than normal, especially for American carriers, so I decided not to dally. After visiting with Alejandra at Delfino Travel (San Martin and Corrientes), my options were Varig for $970 or everyone else for $1300 plus. Varig it was! (For my former fellow travel hockers, that was an RG W-class fare...damn, gas got expensive!)

As I walked home from my last class, I began to freak out about what prices would look like now. Angry as all get out, I plotted to chain myself to the door of the Varig office in Los Angeles until they paid me for the inevitable "difference in fare". And worse yet, what if I couldn't afford to get home before Thanksgiving? Stupid Varig! (stupid me.)

This afternoon, I cruised by Delfino Travel to resolve the situation. My agent, Alejandra was really worried about my refund. She kept trying to reach someone at Varig who would promise a prompt refund, rather than the 6 to 10 week process that most cancellations go through. I finally told her to drop it. I couldn't take the suspense of the new ticket prices anymore. Plus, I knew that I could always do a chargeback (Oh God, I hope Lauren reads this...the queen of the chargeback smackdown! Lauren, you know you're my hero, but I hope that Varig isn't near as good as beating chargebacks as you are!!!).

Alejandra got to searching as I stared at the reflection of her booking engine in her anti-glare screen cover. I resumed my role as the Neo of the Airfare Matrix...

$D01NOVEZELAX

L)(LA/A20NOVEZELAX

LA601 F9 A9 J9 Y9 B9 H9 L9 ....

"Did I see S-class seats?! Did I?? Oh God, she's scrolling!"

*MD
*MD

"Please god oh god oh god! Q-class! Q-class! Q-class! My right kidney for Q-class!"

$D20NOVEZELAX=LA

"Why is she rechecking the fare sheet??? S-class! My first born for S-class!"

L)(LA/A19NOVEZELAX

"She's so damn slow! Faster woman! Faster! Use shortcuts, damn you! Let me do it already!!!"

01Y1Y2

$BB

"Oh sweet Jesus! I'll do anything! ANYTHING!"

"I've got Lan Chile for $830*, taxes included." She continued to bang away at the keyboard, checking the fare sheet for a third time, as her deadpan intonation rang in my ears. "Wait a minute. That fare is lower than my crappy Varig ticket," I mused. "LOWER!"

"So, I can reserve this flight for you until September 23, and in the meantime I'll call Varig to try and speed up the refund process...." Man, she's a bad salesman. Close the sale, sweetheart. "I'll take it," I retorted, digging in my bag for my Visa Card.

I am the Ferris Bueller of airfare.

So what happened here? Don't I always say "Buy your international tickets four to six months in advance"? This is an anomaly in the travel industry. Sometimes, just every so often, you have to wait until two to four months in advance to get the very best price. As Alejandra put the finishing touches on my booking, I remembered that LAN was always late in releasing its good fares, while to get a good price on Varig you had to book way, way in advance. When I came to Delfino the first time to check prices, LAN was super expensive. I bet you anything, they released this new lower price a month or so after I bought my ticket.

Of course you should never, EVER follow this rule for travel in the summer or during Christmastime. Barring terrorist threats, there are no summer/Christmas sales...EVER.

So for those of you who keep asking, I'll be home the week of Thanksgiving. Just remember...Carly's a turkey.

Traveling mercies, y'all!

*That's right kids, I got a LAN Q-class fare, and I get 100% credit on my AAdantage Miles account. Excuse me while I go celebrate...

teaching english in BsAs

2006-09-13T02:21:00.000-03:00

Let's see...you're not independently wealthy, you don't own your own software company, and you're not a hypnotist who can sell his recordings online...well, how in the world do you expect to support yourself when you move down here to Buenos Aires?! The answer is simple: you're going to teach English. With the exception of the examples above, almost all of my ex-pat friends and I teach English to pay the bills down here. In case you're interested in joining us, here's what we've learned. (Warning: all $ prices are in pesos because that's the symbol they use here. Dollars are denoted by U$S.)

To TEFL or not to TEFL?
If you haven't heard already, you can get a certificate to teach English abroad. It's called a TEFL certificate, which stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language. You can go to online schools, brick and mortar establishments, or some combination of the two to get it. It can take as little as four weeks or as many as six before you get a little piece of paper that says you're qualified. Of course the question you're dying to ask me is "Do I NEED a TEFL certificate to teach in Buenos Aires?" Well my friend, the short answer is "no", and the long answer is "yes". Short answer first...you can teach English here either through an institute or on your own without a TEFL certificate. There, I've said it. Now, let me tell you what you'll be missing out on if you decide to go it alone.

In any TEFL course worth its tuition fees, you will learn novel things like teaching methodology. Anyone know what the dominant method is for teaching languages these days? Hands...anyone? Okay, here's more free info (I'm way too nice!): it's the Communicative Method. Anyone know how to use it in a classroom? Anyone? Bueller? Yeah well, it's worth checking out because it works. (Okay, the free TEFL course material stops right about...here.) Of course, TEFL courses don't just teach you how to teach...Hmmm, let's see...how's your grammar? Do you know the difference in meaning between saying "it will rain" vs. "it's going to rain"? Can you explain that to a non-native speaker? Can you give an example of a Second Conditional and explain how and when it's used? Do you know the difference between "may" and "might"? Do you think that I'm a sadistic grammar nazi? Don't answer that. I'm just bringing up grammar points that most of the advanced English students in this city already know. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then take a TEFL course or only give conversation classes here to avoid having your porteño students grammatically kicking your butt.

Now, if I had to tell you what the single most essential part of my TEFL course was, without a doubt, it was the eight practice classes that I got to teach. My institute advertised free English classes in most of the offices in the neighborhood. The people who showed up were our students. We taught two classes a week, and we prepared our lessons completely from scratch. This meant not only picking the topic for the lesson, but also finding and/or making all the materials necessary to teach it. We never knew how many students would show up or how proficient they would be. We just knew that at a certain hour we had either a beginning, intermediate, or advanced class to teach (and those divisions were very loose). This was Commando English Teaching 101, and now I'm prepared to face all kinds of uncertainty in the classroom and do it completely on my own without a textbook or any other materials. I am basically the English teaching version of MacGyver, if you will.

But wait, that's not all! What else do you learn? How about creative ways for dealing with problem students? How to ace an interview for a teaching position and totally win over your new Argentine boss. And, perhaps most importantly, if your TEFL institute is anything like mine, then they will send your resume to 100 plus language institutes in the city so that they call you, rather than you cold calling them. When my TEFL institute sent out my resume, not a day went by that I didn't get requests for interviews (At one point, I was averaging 3 calls/emails per day).

So how do you go about finding a TEFL institute, you ask? Well, I'll let you know the name of mine because I was at least 80% satisfied with their service. It's EBC Servicios Lingüísticos. They're based in Madrid but also have a school here. The big TEFL company in town is Bridge Linguatec. (If you want to know the differences between EBC and BL, drop me a line because this post is too long as it is.) And, before you ask me...TEFL courses that are done purely online are a waste of money. If you don't get classroom experience and a team of people on your side, you might as well not do it at all. The only real drawback to any TEFL course is the price. Before you all go rushing to EBC's website to see how much they cost, I'll tell you. My TEFL course cost 1050 euro or about U$S 1260 in October 2005, and that's about par for the course in BsAs. (I paid another 100 euro to get a TESOL certificate with no extra work involved). Before you start kvetching about money, think about what you're looking for down here. In my case, I'm starting a career in education and language. For other people, they wanted to be trained to do their job better than their bosses expected. The rest were just lazy and didn't want to do a lot of footwork in finding a job. Of course, I do realize that TEFL courses aren't for everyone. In fact, my instructor at EBC taught English in Japan for a long time without a certificate (until he wanted to work for a better company). It's doable, you just have to really take stock of who you are and what you're planning on doing down here.

Pesos and Work Schedule
The big question: How much can I expect to make as an English teacher in BsAs? Answer: Between $12-20* an hour at an institute, don't take less than $15 if you've got your TEFL. If you're really hot stuff and you get some well-to-do people to pay you for private lessons, then you can bump that up to $30-$35 an hour. Now before you start estimating how much you'll be making per month, know that you will probably be working between 20 and 35 paid hours per week (lesson planning is done on your own time). If you're working for an institute that caters to companies, then you'll work between 8-9:30 a.m., midday, and/or after regular business hours. If you're a real workaholic, then you can pad your down time with private lessons. Really though, when you start out teaching, you're going to need a fair amount of lesson planning time so don't cram a lot into your schedule until you get your sea legs.

Okay, now let's figure out what your salary will buy you. To help, I'll break down my current income. I work for three different institutes that pay me between $15 and $18 per hour. I also have a few private students of my own who pay me between $22.50 and $30 per hour. Working more or less 30 paid hours per week, I earn around $2000 per month. That salary affords me a nice standard of living. I have my own studio apartment (for $750 pesos per month, not an easy thing to find for a foreigner). I go out about twice a week for a nice dinner and/or to hear live music in cafes or bars. I eat out for lunch about three times a week. But I don't buy clothes, books, or music. I'm not sure where it all goes, but I know that at the end of each month, I have virtually nothing left. So, my standard of living took a small dive since I used to regularly buy books and music at home, but I'm not suffering here. Of course, in the States I could also save money with this standard of living. So, if you need to rack up dollars in your bank account, then go teach in Asia or in the Middle East.

When to Come
If you want your job search here to be like shooting fish in a barrel, then I suggest you get on a plane in February or March. The main hiring season starts sometime in February and extends through March to parts of April. You'll notice some TEFL institutes claiming that you can get work down here all year long. While that's not completely untrue, it's not a fair depiction. If you come down here when I suggest, you have better negotiating power on your wage because institutes always need to hire native speakers then. If you try to find work at other times of the year, it can be done, but you might not get paid as much because the demand is lower. One time that I do not recommend looking for work is December through January. That's summertime down here as well as Christmas time. Porteños all go on vacation, and some take a hiatus from their regular English classes. It's pretty slim pickings then. Of course if you have dollars in the bank, you'll be just fine.

Commute
Most institutes here don't teach in house. Instead, they farm their teachers out to students' offices. Be sure to ask about how far you will have to travel, because while you can make an extra peso or two per hour for far away jobs, you won't be compensated for your travel time (which can be an hour or more each way). I'll put it this way, I've turned down every job offered to me outside of the City Center and I have never had trouble finding work.

Getting Paid
Ask when and how your pesos are comin' and if they don't pay you on time, then politely go on strike until they cough up the cash. Also ask about class cancellation policies. Usually you get paid only for student cancellations within 24 hours of a class, otherwise, you have to try to reschedule. Also, sometimes a contract states that the student has to pay for 75% of the classes no matter what. Be sure you know if there's a clause like that in your employer's contracts. In addition, if you get paid by check, you will need to go to the main branch of the issuing bank to cash it. One of my institutes occasionally pays me by check from the Banco Galicia. The main branch of the Banco Galicia is on the corner of Reconquista and Peron. They open at 10 a.m. and they close at 3 p.m. My advice: get there early or bring a good book. And don't forget your passport.

Teaching Materials
"Do I get my own textbook?" Most likely not. You'll get a photocopy of the book your institute uses. (Copyright infringement what!) Sometimes you have to pay for your copies, sometimes you don't.
"Do I need to bring my own tape recorder to class?" Majority of the time, that's a resounding "yes". The rest of the time it's "highly recommended".
Also on the textbook note, if an institute uses a textbook that its director wrote herself...Run away! Run away! Trust me on this one. I myself prefer Oxford's American Headway series because in my classroom, British English is just a footnote. One more tip: buy a grammar book in the States before you leave, because they're very expensive down here. I use Practical English Usage by Michael Swan. It's pretty standard.

I'm a One (Wo)Man Show!
Sooo...you're going to ignore my advice, eh? You're not going to take a TEFL course, and working for an institute chafes your free spirit. Okay, now what? Where are you going to find students? Are you going to advertise? How much does that cost? Once you get a student, you know that you have to negotiate your own rate and assess their needs and skills. Then you have to build a curriculum for them. Are you going to use a textbook? Because you'll have to buy it yourself (little hint: If you're going to do that, buy your textbook in the States, because they too are awfully expensive down here). If you need lesson planning ideas or guidance, who are you going to turn to? If your student doesn't show up one day, what are you going to do? If they never show up again, how are you going to deal with that? I hope you weren't counting on them to help you pay your rent (given enough time down here, this will happen, trust me). I'm not saying teaching purely on your own can't be done (I'm too much of a rule-breaker myself to do that), I'm just giving you very realistic problems to consider beforehand.

Interview
Just as a TEFL certificate helps you get your foot in the door, nice interview clothes can keep you from being quickly ushered out. This means no jeans, no T-shirts, no sneakers...NO flip flops. Appearances matter here. Get used to it. And don't be late!

The First Day of Class
One hint they might forget to tell you: bring your passport. You will probably have to check in at a security desk at your student's office, and they need to see your passport the first time. After that, you can carry around a photocopy just in case someone asks. Also, although I usually don't like classroom games, I always do the one where you write three sentences about yourself that are true and three that aren't. Students have to guess which ones are true. Then I make them write true and untrue statements about themselves. They love it, what can I say? If you've got any other questions, drop me a line!

Buena suerte!

* The exchange rate on the peso is about three to the dollar, in case you're not a loyal reader of my blog. Check out "budget and the value of the peso" for more details on how you can get by on 20+ pesos per day after rent.

so you want to be an illegal immigrant?

2006-08-26T18:38:00.000-03:00

Here's a little ditty I wrote for all those kids who are coming to Buenos Aires long term. Not that it won't make for fascinating reading for the rest of you...

I have a confession to make: I am an illegal immigrant. Currently, I have no valid visa, let alone a work visa, and I don't pay any income tax to Argentina as I am working en negro (under the table). But I wasn't always such a law-breaking individual. Back in Germany, I had two tourist visas and two student visas in five months. Not a day passed that the German government didn't allow me to be there and I knew my local immigration office intimately. In Israel, I got a 90 day tourist visa on arrival, and I later got a 12 month student visa when I visited home after September 11^th. I didn't earn money in either of those two countries, so I didn't need to worry about paying taxes. Which brings us to the million peso question: why have I turned into such a delinquent? Well, in Argentina, I'm just trying to fit in, where as in those other countries, they probably would have deported me back home. Since everyone likes a story, let me tell you how I got to this illicit place in my life...

Believe it or not, I did do some research before arriving to Argentina. This time last year, I was combing through websites, blogs and message boards to find immigration information about Argentina. Now, from my previous travels, I expected to need a work visa, and I thought that I might even need to pay taxes on any income earned. Both of those notions were quickly shattered. I learned that the great majority of English teachers in Argentina don't bother to get anything more than a tourist visa, which can be "renewed" by taking a day trip to Colonia, across the river in Uruguay. Many ex-pats griped on their blogs about having to make the trip and having nothing to do over there in Colonia, but those are just the sort of sour travelers that I like to prove wrong. I can't think of a place that I've been to that I didn't enjoy in one way or another...even Kansas. Wait, make that especially Kansas.

On the tax question, I couldn't find anyone that said the government demanded taxes, so that expectation was out the window as well. Armed with this information, I boarded a plane in mid October to Buenos Aires on a six-month ticket, and didn't think much of the matter. Upon arrival, I got a 90 day tourist visa and went about my merry way...until 89 days later. It was the last day of my visa, and I didn't feel like going to Uruguay. I had heard rumors that there were other ways around the matter, so I jumped on a computer and started googling away.

I found out that (in theory) you can go to the Immigration Office here in town (Dirección Nacional de Migraciones) and get your visa extended for another 90 days. Of course, cost was an issue. At 100 pesos, and with the prospect of losing an entire morning at the mercy of Argentine bureaucracy, I quickly scrapped that option. (Incidentally, I don't know a single soul who's gone this route.)

Feeling dejected, I went back to the Buquebus (ferry company) website to recheck the details. I could cross over to Uruguay on a slow, three hour ferry at 9:00 a.m. and return on another slow, three hour ferry at 6:45 p.m. for a total of 70 pesos. (I'll leave it to you to insert your own Gilligan's Island jokes here.) If I didn't want to lose a whole day, I could take a one hour hydrofoil at a variety of times for 100 pesos.

None of this sounded appealing at the time. I had more or less resigned myself to waking up early and going the Buquebus route when I ran into my buddy Jim. Jim told me that he had overstayed his visa by several months. I asked him if he was afraid of the consequences. He replied that the penalty he would face was 50 pesos.

Okay, for those of you whose strong point isn't math...that's 100 pesos for the visa extension, 70 to 100 pesos for a trip to Uruguay (plus lunch and expenses), or 50 pesos for doing nothing. Before you could say "porqueria", I had decided to do nothing. Of course, those of you who know me will not be surprised to learn that I was gripped by an amazing sense of guilt and shame my first illegal day, and I dragged my butt down to the Buquebus terminal to check out Colonia. When I got to Argentine Immigration control on the Argentine side of the river, the officer looked at me sideways, asked me if I knew that my visa had expired, and charged me 50 pesos. I was on my way to legal status once again.

On a side note, immigration at the Buquebus terminals is strange. On the Argentine side, you get checked out of Argentina by an Argentine officer, then at the same desk, an Uruguayan officer stamps you in to Uruguay. I can't remember how it works on the Uruguayan side, but I vaguely recall getting stamped into Argentina before getting on the boat and getting back over to Argentina. I think this is one of the few efficient protocols I've seen since moving down here to South America.

Anyway, on to Colonia...it wasn't as bad as the ex-pats make it out to be. Sure they've spent a lot more time there than most foreigners who visit, but Colonia is quite charming. It's a nice break from life in the city, wandering around the old colonial buildings by the river. I ate a tasty lunch of salmon and rice at a restaurant overlooking the water, and then I checked out the old fort and some of the artisan shops. Some of you may remember receiving an email from me about my Buquebus fiasco. This post is getting pretty long as it is, so I'm going to skip that little vignette for now with the gentle admonition to Colonia-bound travelers to check the time when they get to Uruguay. Anyway, the point of my story is that I was let back into Argentina without incident.

Three months later, the visa question wasn't even an issue. I popped back home to California for a quick trip around Easter time, but that didn't mean that I wasn't nervous upon my return to Buenos Aires. I flashed back to my training at the travel agency where my instructor drilled into me the policy that I was not to send anyone on a one way ticket to a country where they didn't hold residency or weren't a citizen. I heard horror stories of airlines not letting these passengers board the plane, and other tales of one way travelers being turned away at immigration once they landed. So there I was, the former travel agent about to break her own policy. The airline consolidator that sold me my one-way ticket did so without incident, but I was still nervous. Just to play it safe, before I left Buenos Aires, I bought a one way Buquebus ticket to Colonia. I knew that sometimes travelers got around the international one way rule by showing proof of ongoing travel. That still didn't help my anxiety much.

As I boarded my flight to Buenos Aires, the reality of what I was doing dawned on me. I was about to fly one way to a country where I had already overstayed a visa. I had absolutely no right to enter Argentina, and yet there I was. Was I nuts? Maybe. You could also label me an arrogant American. That's fine. Say whatever. All I knew at that point was that I needed to control my nervousness because it certainly wouldn't help my case once I got to immigration in Argentina. Taking a deep breath, I walked up to a female immigration officer about my age and handed over my passport. She flipped through it without pausing to check a single page before I heard *stamp stamp* *stamp stamp* "Bienvenidos." That was it. I was welcome. There were no hairy eyeballs, no condescending voices, and most importantly, there was no deportation.

To be honest, I lost a lot of respect for the Argentine government in that moment. They had just made it blindingly clear that I could do what I wanted in terms of my visa status. I remembered some of my students who have complained that in many circumstances, there are no consequences for deviant behavior here. This most often comes up in discussions about crime and the revolving door justice of Buenos Aires, but this laissez-faire attitude goes quite a bit deeper than that. Many Argentines also work partially en negro. They only claim a small percentage of their wages for income taxes. Why? Because as I hear it, there's no equivalent of the IRS breathing down their necks and auditing every decimal point.

One of my students, who used to work pretty high up in the government here told me that he admires the U.S. because we are able to keep law and order. Because people actually follow the rules up there. Of course, it's not as simple as he makes it out to be, but he's not too far from the truth. Through penalties, punishments, and even incentives, the U.S. government keeps most people in line. Think about it this way: Do you stop at a red light even if there are no other cars on the road? I do. I know that the penalty for running a red light is expensive, and there might be a camera somewhere that I don't see. Next thing I know, there might be a $321 citation in my mailbox. Nothing like that happens in Buenos Aires though. That's why it feels like there are no rules here. So, given that I have yet to see any serious consequences for not having a valid visa here, is it any surprise that I've now overstayed my welcome by more than a month? Is it any shock that I have friends who have overstayed their visas by more than eight months?

Now, I do associate with foreigners who are a bit more law abiding than I am. Some of my friends go to Colonia every three months like clockwork. Of course, most of them are staying here long term and might someday want to work towards getting their citizenship or opening up a business. In other words, most of my upstanding friends have an incentive to keep their immigration record clean...not that they're paying any income tax though. I don't have one foreign friend that is working here completely legally, one way or the other.

Since I do want to respect the Argentine system, when the weather warms up a bit more, I am planning to go back over to Colonia. Like I said, the place isn't half bad, and no, this has nothing to do with those leftover Uruguayan pesos that I'd like to spend rather than exchange. I love Colonia in the springtime.

* For those of you who care to know...legally you don't have to pay taxes to the U.S. government on any income earned abroad up to $7,000. Sadly, I'm in no danger of being in trouble with the IRS. So far I've earned about $3,700 in six months of teaching here, and yes, I've been living off of that.

elevator karma

2006-08-21T19:30:00.000-03:00

A summer re-run, because some of you didn't get this email six months ago...

When Americans first get settled into Buenos Aires, one of the first things they fall in love with is all the antique manual sliding-door elevators all over the city. Now, I'm not using "antique" here as a euphemism for junky out-dated machines that don't work properly. No, most of these old elevators, with their wrought iron cages and occasional wood paneling, are inspected and serviced on a monthly basis. The only problems I've ever encountered with them have been my own user error, like forgetting to close the door all the way, which sets off a buzzer alarm. The older model elevators are so common here that I had only used one modern elevator in this city, that is, until I started teaching English. As I might have mentioned before, most of my students are business people, and most of my classes take place in their offices. This means that I not only have to know the address of the office beforehand, but once I get to a new building, I have to contend with security desks and finding my way to the right floor and suite. Most of my students work in banks or brokerage firms, so the facilities at the office buildings tend to be top notch, and all of them come equipped with fully automated elevators. Now, with all I have to worry about with finding an office for the first time, I never guessed that I had elevator karma, so I certainly never knew that my elevator karma was bad.

It all started with my first class at the Banco Central. With more than 2500 employees under its roof, the fact that I had a little trouble finding my way around feels a bit like an understatement. My institute furnished me with the address, floor, and suite number of my student, but other than an instruction to use the "golden elevators", I knew nothing about the place. Upon arriving at the building, I looked up at the marble columns and statues of the facade and thanked the fashion gods that I had put on my best clothes that morning. After climbing the outside steps, I found myself in an entry room. A security guard pointed me through the golden revolving doors into the reception, a room roughly the size of my parents' first house. I gave my name, my student's name, and my passport number to the young lady at the marble front desk (which looked more like an open teller's counter than a receptionist's desk), and in return, I received a visitor's ID, an electronic security pass card, and a receipt. As I followed the receptionist's directions to the elevators, I studied my receipt. It stated my name, my business (profesora de inglés), my passport number, the time I arrived, and my student's name. I couldn't help but think that if I didn't like my student then maybe I could go back to the reception and exchange him for a nicer model.

Looking up from my proof of purchase, I was standing in front of a metal detector. I handed my bag to a security guard and walked through, only to have my briefcase-sized tote returned to me unsearched. I guess if I get anywhere near the vault I'll just exchange my lesson plans for bundles of cash and then freely saunter back through the front entrance. After the metal detectors, I passed through an electronic turnstile with my security pass card and proceeded to get hopelessly lost in the belly of the beast. Finally, a janitor pointed me in the right direction, and I boarded an elevator with a guy who was already waiting. He punched 2, I punched 6, and we were on our way. I reverted to my American ways once inside the lift by flipping through my day planner and avoiding eye contact with my fellow passenger. I snapped back to reality when we reached the second floor. The man said, "Chau!" as he slipped through the closing door, and I smacked myself on the forehead for forgetting that lots of Argentines like to make small talk on elevators. Feeling stupid, I punched the button for the sixth floor again and the door almost closed before opening again. I stuck my head out into the hallway to see if someone was trying to get on, only to find no one standing there. I punched the button again, the door rolled almost shut and then re-opened. I pushed and held my floor button this time, but my situation remained unchanged. This elevator was going nowhere. I stepped out to see if I could find some stairs just as a cleaning lady jumped into my elevator. The doors closed for her without a problem, and I wondered if even the elevator was messing with me because I'm a foreigner. Eventually, I made my way to the sixth floor by a different lift and encountered no further snafus. On a side note, when I finished my class, my student's secretary signed my receipt and wrote the current time down at the bottom. I wonder if that's going to hamper my consumer rights to exchange my student or to help myself to a stack of pesos on my way out.

The elevator incident at the Banco Central should have registered as a warning to me that my luck with elevators had shifted to the dark side, but I'm an optimistic skeptic when it comes to these things. The next day, I had my first class at Vitol Argentina, a commodities broker with offices in Puerto Madero. The building complex is pretty contemporary with a brick facade and elevators so modern, there are no buttons, only touch sensors. For some reason, Vitol was the first company on my list that listed an address but no floor number. As the Puerto Madero complex only has three floors of offices, I assumed I could find my way easy enough. I checked in at the security desk and, ignoring the giant floor directory behind the guard, I inquired which floor Vitol was located on. The guard told me to go to the first floor, and I thanked her and waited for an elevator. (Note: In many countries, you enter a building on the ground floor, and the first floor is located on the story above.) I made my way inside the first of three elevators and hit the first floor touch sensor. However, upon exiting the elevator, it was clear that I had the wrong floor. I thought that I might need to head for the second floor, so I hit the "up" touch sensor and waited for my carriage. The middle elevator came to my rescue, and I punched the number two. The elevator rose up one floor, and I finished fixing my hair in the mirror as I waited for the doors to open. But they didn't. I looked at the digital read out, and it stated that I was indeed at the second floor, but with no way to get out onto the second floor. It's funny how the realization that you are stuck in an elevator can take so long to grasp, but it did finally dawn on me that I should call for help. Right. Call for help. I looked up at the telephone above the touch sensors and then over to the instructions on what to do if you need assistance. Of course, since I'm in Argentina, the instructions were in Spanish. I could understand what I had to do easily enough: pick up the receiver, dial 0, and tell the operator that I'm in elevator number 2. What I couldn't figure out was how to explain that I was stuck in an elevator in Spanish. After a moment's panic, I settled on saying, "El ascensor se paró." (The elevator stopped.) Here's how the conversation went with my elevator tech...

Tech: Hola? (Hello?)
Me: Hola. Estoy en el ascensor numero dos y el ascensor se paró. (Hello. I'm in elevator number two and the elevator stopped.)
Tech: Se paró? (It stopped?)
Me: Sí, se paró. (Yes, it stopped.)
Tech: Bueno. Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah. (Alright. Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah.)
[Long pause]

Tech: Gracias, eh? (Thanks, eh?)
Me: Uhhhh, gra- (Uhhhh, tha-)
[Line cuts out]

I hung up, slid to the floor and hoped that somewhere in all those blahblahblahs there was a promise to get me moving again. Seventeen minutes later, the phone rang. If my first call for help was bad, then this one was worse. I lunged for the receiver only to receive a string of incomprehensible Spanish that I had to admit to not understanding three times before the guy on the other end stopped and asked me who he was speaking to. I told him that I was an English teacher for Vitol, and a miracle occurred. My elevator tech actually started talking to me as if Spanish wasn't my first language. We then established that the doors wouldn't open, and I guessed he said he'd see what he could do. Four minutes later, the light for the parking garage light up. Half a minute after that, the elevator started moving down. Then my second miracle of the day took place, the doors actually opened! Just as I was stepping out to freedom, the phone rang again, and again I caught a rush of Spanish in my ear that I couldn't understand. I interrupted the tech and told him that the doors had opened...

Tech: Las puertas se abren en el segundo piso? (The doors opened on the second floor?)
Me: No. Estoy en el garaje. (No, I'm in the garage.)
Tech: En el qué? (In the what?)
Me: Estoy en el garaje. (I'm in the garage.)
Tech: Ah! Estás en el garage. (Ah! You're in the garage.)
[Right, silly me for not knowing I needed to use an English word to be understood.]

I thanked the guy profusely, and let the evil middle elevator take off for a different floor. There was no way I was getting back in that one! But what do they say about your plans being evidence of God's sense of humor? The other elevators wouldn't come to my rescue. No matter how many times I tried or how long I waited to push the "up" sensor, the evil middle elevator always came. I looked around hoping to find a staircase. I was willing to do anything rather than tempt fate (and the evil second elevator), even if it meant hiking up four flights of stairs in high heels, but no such luck. I was in a room with three elevators and a glass door looking out to "el garage" that you needed a security pass card to open. So, wishing myself luck, I boarded the second elevator and hit the ground floor, realizing that I still had no idea where the Vitol office was located. I arrived in one piece and asked the security guard which floor I needed to go to. She asked me which company I was headed to again, and as I started to answer, "Vit-", I remembered that theres no "v" sound in Argentine Spanish. "Bitol" I replied. "Ah, Bitol! I thought you said something else!" she chirped in Spanish. "Second floor," she told me. "Second floor, thanks." I caught elevator number one and besides arriving to my class 20 minutes late, everything seemed to be fine. I apologized profusely to my student once I had the pleasure of entering the Vitol office, and explained that I got stuck in the elevator.

Student: Did you take the one closest to our office?
Me: No, I took the middle one.
Student: The middle one? Oh, because the one close to us usually doesn't work. In fact, it is very rare that all three elevators work here. Did the inside doors open but not the outside ones? You get to see all the gears that way!

The English teacher I inherited this student from never mentioned the finicky Vitol elevators. Thanks a lot! I think this episode only cements my love for antique elevators all the more...

porteño goodfellas

2006-08-21T16:39:00.000-03:00

I often hear people declare and read news stories that claim Buenos Aires to be the Prague of the 21st century. While many Americans are coming here long term to write, create art, and otherwise try to earn a living, I'd like to explain one crucial difference between the Prague of the 1990's and the Buenos Aires of the Naughts.

A couple of weeks ago, I made a new friend from the States. His name's Tyler, and he contacted me after reading my blog as he had plans for a short trip to Buenos Aires. After a few exchanges of emails, I could tell Tyler was the type of traveler whose mind I love to pick, so we agreed to meet for coffee one afternoon. When Tyler walked through the door of the café, one of the first things I noticed about him was the rather large and expensive-looking camera slung over his shoulder. I couldn't help but think, "God, I hope he doesn't get mugged." He took a seat at my table and hung his camera off the back of his chair as we made our introductions. A few moments later, the waiter who came over to take our order grabbed Tyler's camera strap and warned him to keep an eye on his equipment. Slightly embarrassed, Tyler placed his camera on the table in front of him, and I tried to diffuse the situation by explaining that many waiters in this city try to look out for foreigners like this. To which Tyler replied, "Is crime really that bad here?" Well, at least the locals believe it is. I'll put it to you this way, one third of all of the foreigners I know here have been robbed, and my American boss Tony says 100% of his Argentine friends have been robbed too.

Now, I don't mean to discourage people from coming here. If you decide to vacation in Buenos Aires, the chances of you getting mugged are not that great granted that you use some basic street smarts. However, if you're looking to stay here longer, the risk is higher because there's a feeling in the city that sooner or later it happens to everybody. So I want to share with you three stories of some of my friends' experiences with crime in Buenos Aires and the lessons they learned.

Lesson #1: Be wary of certain barrios.
My first friend to be mugged was my German friend Sebastian. Sebastian was preparing for a month long trip to Peru to see his then girlfriend so he was trying to cram in lots of sightseeing before leaving. Late one afternoon, he went alone to the neighborhood of La Boca, the tourist magnet home of the tango with all the pretty colored buildings. As Sebastian was absorbing the sights and sounds, he wandered down a side street off the main drag, El Caminito. Before he knew it, he was cornered by two men, one with a knife and the other with a rock. They nervously demanded his wallet. As Sebastian handed it over, he realized that his Visa card, which he needed for his e-ticket to Peru, was inside. He immediately began to burst into tears begging the men to give him back his wallet for just a second because the only picture he had of his girlfriend was inside. The men relented and Sebastian deftly palmed his Visa card behind his novia's picture. The men took back the wallet and took off. All in all, Sebastian was lucky. The men made off with only 50 pesos as Sebastian's camera and the rest of his money were hidden from sight. Also, Sebastian's quick thinking, acting skills, and most importantly, his Spanish abilities kept him from losing much more. Of course, it isn't all that bright to hang out alone in La Boca at sunset either.

Lesson #2: Pay attention to your surroundings.
My friend Kristen and her boyfriend were living in an apartment in Palermo, a decently nice and pretty chic neighborhood, trying to survive as English teachers. The only downside to their apartment building was that when I buzzed their apartment, someone would have to physically come downstairs to let me in. Of course, since I don't look like much of a threat, 8 times out of 10 one of their neighbors would let me in and I would show up at their apartment boasting of my ninja skills. Late one day, Kristen was walking home, lost in her thoughts of returning to the States in a few short weeks. She finally arrived at her building and unlocked the front door, letting a young man in behind her. He followed her into the tiny four person elevator, whipped out a gun, and demanded all her money. She opened her wallet and promptly handed him 40 pesos (although she had another 100 pesos tucked away out of sight). The mugger then spied her cell phone and demanded that too. She took a second look at his gun, and, doubting its authenticity, refused to give up her cell. Kristen then proceeded to scold the guy telling him that he was "a bad, bad man" in Spanish. The elevator stopped and she ran to her apartment and locked herself inside. Kristen was lucky, she was unharmed and she got away with her phone and her hidden 100 pesos. Of course, I don't advocate standing up to a mugger. You can probably call him a bad, bad man though.

Lesson #3: Never, ever, ever invite people you don't know into your home.
This last story is about an American who was not so lucky...we'll call him Matt to protect whatever innocence he still has left. Matt is a teacher at one of my institutes who recently arrived to Buenos Aires. He's been living in his own apartment near Abasto. Outside his building, there's always a group of local guys hanging out. One evening, as Matt arrived home, high off of teaching a good class, he started talking to some of the dudes outside. Two of them spoke English, and Matt was in such a good mood, he invited them up to his apartment to hang out. Once inside, the guys turned on him, beating the crap out of him and knocking him out cold. When Matt came to, the guys were still there, trashing the place and robbing him blind. One of them told Matt in English, "Stay on the floor!" Matt replied in Spanish, "I'm not going to fight." The others were busy breaking his table and pouring milk all over the floor. The last thing he saw was one of the guys putting on Matt's coat which had $1000 stashed in a pocket. The guy then took Matt's keys and locked him inside (the locks here have keyholes on both sides). The first time I met Matt was about a week after the attack. He had two black eyes and contusions all over his face, not to mention stitches in the side of his mouth. He told me how the police had to break down his door to get in and his landlady was asking for money for the damages. All in all, he lost $1000, his passport, and his custom bass guitar, among other things. Strangely, these guys didn't have the presence of mind to take his wallet out of his pocket too. Matt explained to me that the most frustrating part of his experience started when he went to the bank to pick up money from a wire transfer. The bank said that they needed to see his passport in order to turn over the money. Having lost his passport, Matt went to the U.S. Embassy where he was told that they needed money in order to issue him a new passport. On a more positive note, Matt had no hospital bills since all the medical treatment he received at his local public hospital was free of charge. Last I heard, Matt is sticking it out in Buenos Aires and he's looking for a new apartment in a nicer neighborhood due to the mala onda (bad vibes) of his apartment in Abasto. What a trooper!

Now I know that there are some of you out there who are rolling your eyes and saying, "Gee, thanks for the advice, but I live in (INSERT NAME OF MAJOR BIG BAD CITY HERE) and I've got plenty of street smarts, thank you very much." Fine, then I say to you as a Los Angeleano (home of the original freeway shooting) that the major difference here is that you're a foreigner. I don't care if you hire Henry Higgins himself, 95% of you will never sounds like a porteño. On top of that, a large number of you will sound like total gringos (a word they don't use here, by the way). If someone suspects that you're a foreigner, this can lead to the assumption that you have something worth stealing. That means that you are perceived as a juicier target here than in the "bad" neighborhoods at home. The other thing that I'd like to bring up is that while I'm known to "slum it" in L.A., I don't hang out on Skid Row. Similarly, there are some neighborhoods of Buenos Aires that should be generally avoided.

Either way, here's a list of hints to help keep you safe...

* Places to be wary of (especially after dark): Constitución, La Boca, parts of San Telmo, southern parts of Almagro, and the corner of Lavalle and 9 de Julio.
* Don't carry around expensive electronics such as cameras, laptops and iPods, or keep them out of sight as much as possible...and leave your Rolex at home.
* Pay attention to the people around you (this is how I've kept kids from stealing my bag on at least two occasions).
* Keep an eye, or better yet, a firm grip on your bags. Don't put them on the floor or hang them off the back of your chair.
* Be wary of people who approach you in the street. I so hate to say this because the majority of people here are wonderful, but you have to ask yourself, "Why did this guy decide to walk up and talk to me?" Many times they are confirming that you're a foreigner (by your accent) and possibly trying to distract you or gain your trust.
* Always ride in radio taxis (this is true for all of Latin America). If you're here for a week or more, try to find a cab company you like and use it as much as possible. There are robberies that are associated with taxi cabs.
* Don't carry or flash around large amounts of cash.
* Be careful if you stand up to your attacker. There have been numerous violent home invasions committed here by folks high on paco (which I believe is like crack, but I'm having a hard time confirming that information).
* Sadly, watch out for kids snatching bags. There are virtually no consequences for minors who commit crimes, so many times older thieves put together a band of kids to do the real stealing.
* Watch out for police bribes. Sadly, the police don't seem to help too much in most situations here.
* In case you need to make an insurance claim, photograph your valuables and write down the serial numbers of electronics. You probably won't be able to recover your stuff, but you never know, and you might get compensated for it all back home.

Back to my evening with Tyler...after coffee, I showed him around the city center. We walked down to Puerto Madero and back through Recoleta. During all of our walking and talking, no less than three strangers stopped Tyler and told him to watch out for his camera, both in Spanish and in English. It became a running joke. Like I said, the majority of people here are warm and happy to help out foreigners. It's just the criminal minority that you have to look out for. So be safe, traveling mercies, and come to Buenos Aires. Now that you know all this, you can probably avoid most street crime. Not to mention, your tourist dollars will be much appreciated here!

In case you want to know, here's the laundry list of crime in the city, both perpetrated against my friends and others... Linnea, a Swedish girl who lives here on and off, was mugged in Constitution Park. Jazemin, an American girl, wasn't paying attention when she got off her bus in Recoleta. Two guys grabbed her and then grabbed her bag and fled. Brendan, an American guy, was sitting in a café when some guy came up and started talking to him. That distracted him long enough for someone else to take his bag, which was on the floor and housed his iPod and digital camera among other things. Yasi, an American girl, was walking in La Boca with a guy friend in the middle of the day when she saw a group of men grab a woman and try to drag her down an alleyway as a crowd watched in horror. Like many of us in that same situation, Yasi didn't know what to do. A story in the Travel section of the New York Times said that a reporter saw a man walk up to a Japanese tourist and snatch her bag in broad daylight on a posh street in Recoleta full of high-end shops. I can only guess that street was the seemingly safe Avenida Las Heras. Now be safe and get out there and buy a plane ticket!

please, please read me

2006-08-08T23:35:00.000-03:00

Okay y'all, I'm not normally the type of girl who thrusts her political opinions on other folks, but I recently got wind of some disturbing news out of Washington. I'm going to try my best to explain what's going on here, but to get the full story, you really need to take just five minutes of your time and read the full story from the source, the APCB. This will only take a second. Read my rant and then click on the link below. I'll be glad you did.

So I know that there are a lot of folks out there criticizing President Bush for the war and the economy and Hurricane Katrina and whatnot, but this is something that really caught my attention. It seems that the White House working to get final say over our tax dollars. See, you know how Congress is the one that approves the federal budget each year, while the White House only proposes a suggested budget? Well, if this law is passed then the President will have complete control over the budget. That means any program that the White House wants will get funding, and any program that it opposes will disappear without any checks and balances, whatsoever. It seems that Bush is trying to get this new legislation passed by using fear tactics on various Congressmen. Once the right senators are convinced to support it, everyone else on Capitol Hill will be too scared to vote against it. Every senator and representative will know that a vote against the bill will mean a major cut in federal funding for the folks back home. This is a brazen breach of the Constitution's checks and balances. But don't listen to me, CLICK HERE to find out more about the administration's disregard for the laws written by the founding fathers. Shoot, CLICK HERE even if you're not convinced. The APCB explains the situation infinitely better than I can!

...I'm still waiting for you to CLICK HERE! Thanks!

my hunger-related strike

2006-08-08T22:30:00.000-03:00

This evening I committed an unholy act in the city of Buenos Aires. Are you ready for this?? I ate dinner...at 7:30 p.m. Oh, I can just hear the collective gasp from the audience now. I can also see your brows furrowing in confusion. In case I've neglected to make this clear, Buenos Aires is a city for late sleepers and night owls. Due to its Spanish and Italian roots, the dinner hour comes somewhere around 10 p.m. How does a society function on such a crazy schedule, you ask? Well, for starters, there are very few morning people around here. My first class of the day is always in Puerto Madero, a neighborhood that houses lots of large corporations with posh offices. My earliest class of the week starts at 7:45 a.m. Without fail, every time I roll into work, I check The Coffee Store (an upscale café chain) for patrons. In five months, I have never seen a customer in there before 8:20 in the morning. To give this oddity its full impact, let's imagine this happening in Los Angeles. Picture yourself walking down Figueroa Street downtown among all the high rises of corporate America. You stroll past the dueling Starbucks directly across the street from each other near Seventh Street. You peer inside only to see baristas wiping the counters and loading the coffee bean grinders without a customer in sight. There are no gym goers, no early worm getters, no news junkies reading the New York Times, no ladies who lunch waiting to get the drop on a Macy's early bird sale, no "eight pump sugar free vanilla triple Venti half-caf, non-fat Caramel Macchiato with whip and extra caramel" fiends itching for their first $5 fix of the day. You glance at your watch and notice that it's 7:45 in the morning...on a Wednesday. You begin to wonder if there's been simultaneous terrorist attacks on the 10, the 110, and the 5 freeways to prevent everyone from getting to work because nothing else could explain the complete absence of caffeine addicts at such an hour. To illustrate a bit further...once upon a time, I was a Starbucks barista at the flagship store in downtown Santa Barbara, that's right, sleepy, touristy little Santa Barbara. I always worked the opening shift, and let me tell you that a day never passed without multiple customers in the door before 6 a.m. That's why we opened at 5:30 a.m., after all. By seven-thirty, the place was packed, and it stayed that way until well after 10. But down here in Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, folks won't have it. Sure, a lot of them get in to the office at 8:30 or 9:00, but they sleep so late that few of them have time for a café con leche before punching in for the day. Of course, there's no Starbucks here either...for now anyway.

Whenever I have visitors down here, they always ask how the locals are able to make it through the day seeing as how they eat dinner so late. The only insight I can share is that the lunch rush at my favorite spots downtown runs from about 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. On top of that, cafes start to fill up around five o'clock. Sure lots of folks are simply drinking cortados (a.k.a. macchiato = espresso topped with foam), but many will partake of merienda, which is like a second breakfast or snack. There are usually merienda specials for medialunas (small croissants), tostados (grilled cheese with or without ham), and tortas (cakes). My regular cafes will regularly have plenty of patrons until around 8 p.m. I guess that's how the locals keep their blood sugar levels up until dinner time.

The other question that visitors like to ask me is "Come on, Carly. Do you really eat dinner so late?" It's almost as if eating after 8 p.m. is an impossibility. *Sigh* Well, my answer to that is I usually dine at around 10 or 10:30. I've seen porteños eat as early as 9 o'clock, but even that feels a bit early. From what I can tell, on a usual workday you can expect to eat with locals between 10 and 11:30. Of course, on the weekends, all bets are off. You might go out to eat at midnight or later on a Friday or Saturday night. Anyway, I had a fairly easy time adjusting to the late dinner schedule because I finish work at 8 or 9 p.m. on most days, so it's not like I'm knocking off of work at 6 p.m. and then fooling around doing nothing until it's time to eat. Also, from what my students tell me, they generally work late too. Regular office folks can work until seven or later depending on how busy they are. I've heard differing theories on why they work so late here. Some of my students say that Americans are more efficient than Argentines are. Some Americans point out that Argentines take a longer lunch than folks do in the States. I think there's a bit of truth in both of these assertions.

The only other thing to point out about schedules is that if you're interested in going clubbing here, you better take a siesta. If you get to a club at 2 a.m. you will be one of the first to arrive. Yep, when it's last call at home, porteños are just getting ready to go out. Obviously, you can easily stay out until past dawn or even much later. I recommend catching a nap at around seven or eight if you want to keep up with the club kids around here. Which brings me to my last most asked visitor question, "When do people sleep around here?" Um, they don't. Sleep is for wimps. I have a number of students who constantly yawn through my classes, and no, that's not because my classes are boring. I even teach dirty words upon request. No seriously, I think that some of my students are part vampire because they never seem to get seven hours, let alone a full healthy eight. I don't know how they do it because I take naps between classes, so I'll repeat my standard line on this one. On Saturday night, they roll down the black out shutters and sleep all through Sunday. Think I'm kidding? The locutorio (internet café) across the street from my apartment opens at 5 p.m. on Sundays and closes around midnight. You tell me, hoss. Are they part vampire? Are they professional power nappers? Do they catch up for a week's worth of sleep deprivation in one day? Why not? I try not to judge, just to learn. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm giving up my siestas. That's just nonsense!

So all this brings me back to the beginning. My very own senior citizen early bird special of spaghetti at 7:30 this evening. Why did I do it? Well, for one, I was hungry as all get out having sort of skipped lunch. As I made my way home I thought about sucking it up and eating at 10 like normal. Then I turned down my street only to run smack dab into a giant protest filled with banners, drums, whistles, and chants. As I waded my way through the protestors, I thought of how my evil laundry lady shrunk my sweaters today because she didn't understand me when I told her "wash only". I also recalled how the internet service that I ordered from Speedy DSL three weeks ago has yet to arrive and how I haven't been able to call through to my voicemail for four days now. At that moment I snapped. I made my way up to my apartment, opened my window wide to catch all the drumbeats and put on a little Cannonball Adderley as I boiled a pot of pasta water. Even though I had to decided to rebel, I had to give into the protesting masses outside. They left me no other choice. Besides, I missed most of the protest yesterday on my street as I was catching up on my beauty sleep with my daily little siesta.

my homes away from home

2006-07-25T22:55:00.000-03:00

As most of you have noticed, I have gone into a long hibernation from blogging. Don’t forget, it’s the middle of winter down here in Buenos Aires, although you wouldn’t know it to walk around the city. Temperatures have been in the 60’s during the day…and you people are debating the scientific validity of global warming up there. Shame on you! Anyway, I have felt remorseful for months now for not writing anything. Every weekend has come and gone followed by a pang of guilt every Monday morning for the last three months. Well, that all stops now.

I thought about changing topics for my first new post…I’ve been tempted to write about the current situation in Israel and Lebanon. Those of you who received my emails from Jerusalem would understand the temptation all too well. Although when I sit down at my computer to put down my thoughts, I find it much harder to speak with authority on events in the Middle East than ever before. Go figure. Maybe that’s because I’m not there any more. So instead, I thought I’d try to find some middle ground in between the Middle East and Argentina. That’s been surprisingly easy to do. Sadly, here’s more about terrorism and violence. I’m sorry the first post-hibernation post isn’t lighter. Hang in there with me.

The fight between Hezbollah and Israel is nothing new. Back in 1992, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) made a concerted effort to drive Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. The fighting continued on for weeks with the usual tools of destruction on the Israeli side (i.e. special forces and tanks) until Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Sheikh Abbas Mussawi, along with six other individuals including his wife and child. Now, those of you familiar with my emails from five years ago would expect Hezbollah to retaliate harshly, and you’d be right. Israel was expecting a violent backlash after the new Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, vowed revenge. Revenge came, but not in a form anyone expected. In March of 1992, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 38 people. A few hours later, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Wait a minute!!” you say. “How did we go from talking about Israel and Hezbollah to Argentina and Islamic Jihad??”

“A valid question,” I answer. Here’s the deal. There are some who say that Islamic Jihad is just the Palestinian wing of Hezbollah (which the U.S. State Department defines as a Shiite Muslim terrorist group of Lebanese origin which receives aid Syria and Iran).

“Okay, that answers the Islamic Jihad question…so what’s up with Argentina?” Well, Argentina is home to a rather sizeable Jewish population, as many as 200,000 by some estimates today. Seriously, there are parts of Buenos Aires where you see so many black hat orthodox Jews on the street, you would swear you were in the Mea She’arim neighborhood of Jerusalem or Brooklyn. Strangely (or not surprisingly), that makes me feel at home. On a more serious historical note, Jews have immigrated to Argentina in waves over the last five hundred years: (1) in 1492 when the Jews were kicked out of Spain, (2) in the mid 1800’s mainly from France, and (3) in the late 1800’s as anti-Semitism began to rise in Eastern Europe. With the Argentine--Jewish connection, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires makes a logical target for anti-Israeli terrorists. (In case you didn’t know, Hezbollah’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel.)

But wait! I’m not done. And I’m sure you can guess that the Mideast violence didn’t end there. You’re right again, my savvy reader! More acts of terrorism ensued on an international level (I won’t get into them individually and I won’t try to place blame either…for now), but Israel was not out of the fight. In May 1994, Israel kidnapped Hezbollah bigwig Mustafa Dirani. Again, one would assume that Israel would be the target for retaliation. Such was the assumption of the day until July 18, 1994 when a Jewish community center called the AMIA was bombed…in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85 and wounding more than 200 others. (AMIA stand for Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association) Again, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, but you can guess who many people thought was behind the planning of this awful attack…that’s right, Hezbollah.

Last Tuesday marked the twelve year anniversary of the AMIA bombing. There were protests and vigils in the city. According to reports, a siren went off at 9:53 a.m. to commemorate the attack, and people laid flowers and candles as the names of the victims were read. Unfortunately, I missed all this because I was busy teaching, but I did see a gathering at the obelisco* in the city center later that day. As it stands now, no one has been convicted for the AMIA bombing twelve years ago. Last year, a prosecutor here specifically blamed Hezbollah for the bombing. Hezbollah has denied responsibility. That all sounds like what I saw in Jerusalem, but here’s something you don’t see over in Israel: a local policeman allegedly sold the van that was used in the bombing to the terrorists. As I said before, no one has been convicted in connection with this bombing. Rumors, insinuations, and accusations persist in the mind of the public, but no smoking gun has emerged. I’ve even heard it rumored that former Argentine President Carlos Menem had advanced knowledge of the bombing. Of course, roasting the president has always been a national sport down here, much like telling the coach of the national fútbol team how to do his job.

Thanks for reading. I intend to write more about Argentina’s economic crisis, Buenos Aires’ trouble with crime, fútbol, and various other related topics…of course you know what they say about good intentions… I also reserve the right to write about Israel/Palestine/Lebanon/Hezbollah if I ever get my ducks in a row to still be relevant. After all, this blog is named Gypsy Rants, not Argentine Gypsy Rants. Oh, and Traveling Mercies, y’all. Don’t stop getting out of the country on my account!!

*el obelisco: In downtown Buenos Aires, there’s a giant marble obelisk commemorating Argentine Independence Day in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio (Ninth of July Avenue), which, at 140 meters across, is touted as the widest avenue in the world. This obelisk is often the meeting point for protests as well as celebrations of various fútbol teams.

vos estás aquí

2006-04-08T15:00:00.000-03:00

It’s about time I started talking about getting around town. First, let me start with the cliché description of Buenos Aires...the Paris of the South. What do people suggest you do in the real Paris (besides eating snails)? Walk everywhere! Same goes for this Paris, too. Sure when you arrive, you’ll have your list of places that you want to visit, but any seasoned traveler will tell you that it’s the little places you find along the way that make a trip. How do you expect to find them if you jet across the city in cabs all the time? So, bring some comfortable shoes and wander around for an afternoon or two. Of course, if you’re staying in Palermo but you want to explore San Telmo one day, you’re going to need faster transportation.

The easiest, cheapest way to get around town is on the Subte (subway). A ride will cost you 70 centavos and tickets of 1,2,5 or 10 rides can be purchased at any station (Just walk up to the counter and say the number of rides you want. Really. “Cinco, por favor.” is all you need to get a five ride ticket.). The Subte is not extensive, but it is convenient to travel around all the main parts of town. Trains run from just after 5 am (great for going home after a long night of clubbing) until just after 10 pm, seven days a week. Monday through Friday, trains run an average of every 3-5 minutes. Just be wary of taking the Subte during rush hour, especially during the summer months, because you will get packed into your car like a Japanese salaryman on a Tokyo train, and with the heat today, I nearly passed out on the D line. Even if you’re a high roller who has no intention of traveling with the masses, don’t forget to take a ride on the A line, the oldest subway in South America. This line dates back to 1913 and features cars with carved wooden benches, wood paneling, and giant mirrors by the doors so you can fix your coif and check for spinach in your teeth before getting off. Speaking of the doors, they are manually operated, so you have to pry them open to get on or off and then they slam shut from the force of the train jolting forward. It’s worth every centavo and then some!

If you’re feeling brave, check out the colectivos (buses). This is no small task as there are more than 200 bus lines that criss cross this city and they run all hours of the day and night. The only trick is figuring out which colectivo will take you from where you are to where you want to go. Luckily, there’s a guide called a Guía Lumi, or Guía “T” that’s readily available at any newsstand for about 5 pesos ($1.60 US). However, in order to use this guide, you will either need to enlist the help of a local or get your Ph.D. in Geography to figure it out on your own. Here's how it works...let's say that I want to take a colectivo from my place in San Telmo to my favorite Mexican restaurant in Palermo. First, I would flip through the pages of my Guía to find the page that has the map of my neighborhood. Then I would find the page with the map that has the restaurant. Easy enough so far. On the opposite page of every map page, there's a grid that lists the bus numbers that run through that part of the map. You look at those numbers and hope that there's a bus line that runs from where you are to where you want to go. If you can't find one, then you have to look at surrounding areas until you find a colectivo that will work. Okay, so let's say that about five solid minutes have passed, and we have found a bus that will run from my place to the restaurant. So, now you have to flip past all the map pages to the part that lists the routes of all the buses. Let's say the number 39 will work for us. We would flip to the page that lists all the streets that the bus runs down. This is where you have to know the city a bit, because it lists the route going and coming, and since this city is full of one-way streets, you have to catch the bus on different streets depending on which direction you're headed in. Basically, you're looking for a street near you and a street near your destination so you can catch the bus and then get off at the right place. The whole process usually takes an average of 12 minutes from start to finish, and that's assuming you are familiar with where you are and where you're going. You get to repeat the process when you decide it's time to go home. I'm pretty sure that I'm not capturing the brain-splitting frustration that is the Guía "T", but hopefully, you've got a glimpse into the most stressful part of my day. I lose my usual optimism when the time comes to find a colectivo, but my Australian friend, Aiden keeps his spirits up. "You can work it out, it's kinda like bingo," he says. I think I end up smiling at his Brisbane accent more than his optimism though. Unless, of course, he decides to figure out the Guía "T" for me. If you find yourself in the same situation, do yourself a favor and ask a local.

Before I go any further, I should tell you how you go about catching a colectivo. First, find your stop and if there are other folks there, get in the back of the line (I know, I was shocked that they actually line up for buses too!). If you’re alone and your bus is approaching, be sure to hail it like you would a cab. Otherwise, it’ll blow right by you. The main reason for this is that on busy thoroughfares, multiple lines will share the same stop, so you have to make it known that you want to get on. Once you’re on board, there are different fare structures on these damn buses depending on where you want to go. If you don’t mind speaking some Spanish, tell the driver your destination and he’ll figure it out for you. If you’re lazy like me, just say “Ochenta, por favor.” with 80 centavos being the full fare. Then, step past the driver and put your money in the machine behind him and take your ticket. On a side note, while the ticket machines will dispense change, they only accept coins, so be sure you’ve got some on you when you get on.

The pros about the colectivos are that they’re much more refreshing than the sauna-like conditions down in the Subte, and you get to see the city as you travel. One of the cons is that many of the routes zig zag rather than take a beeline. Then there’s my personal con...more often than not, after waiting too long for a colectivo, I’ll finally spot one lumbering down the street only to be followed by another colectivo of the same line right on its tail. Yep, the colectivos often piggyback each other for some frustrating, God-forsaken reason!

If all of this sounds like too much for you, you can always just yell, “Taxi!” and get your own private ride. While taxis are generally out of my budget, you’ll find them ridiculously cheap. For example, the base fare is about $1.98 AR ($0.60 US) and it’s hard to drop more than about $5.00 US on any given trip. Not to mention, most of the cab drivers in this city are pretty cool. The best cab ride so far was a couple of months ago. I went out dancing with some friends and we tried to catch a cab back home. The street was packed with people from the club hailing cabs, so we were trying our best to join the fray. Suddenly I turned around to see my friend Kevin hail a taxi whose cabbie had a giant, slightly bloody bandage across his forehead. All I could think was that this wasn't a good sign, but I couldn't have been more wrong. He was a very safe driver, and more importantly he was blasting Frank Sinatra. I couldn't help but smile. We all got to talking, and he switched to playing various versions of "The Girl from Ipanema". It helped to calm us down after dancing all night. We gave him a tip, which was nice because no one tips cabbies here.

Last bit of advice, don’t forget that in Buenos Aires, as in all of Latin America, you should only ride in radio taxis. Otherwise you could be fleeced on your fare or even worse!

So there you have it, Buenos Aires transportation in a nutshell. Hope it treats you right once you’re down here! Traveling mercies, y’all!

budget and the value of the peso

2006-03-25T17:28:00.000-03:00

Back when I was a travel agent, I hated discussing my clients' budgets. One reason I liked to avoid the topic was that many of them wouldn't tell me how much they were willing to spend for fear that I would try to fleece them. Honestly, that hurt my feelings as I only fleeced the ones who were mean to me. ;) The other reason I hated this topic was that many of my clients had unrealistic expectations of the cost of spending a week in New York, Paris or Tokyo. See my clients preferred expensive destinations, and I didn't really want to be the one to break the bad news. However, if you're reading this post, then you are quite possibly interested in a trip to Buenos Aires, and I am happy to give you the (mostly) good monetary news!

Let's start with the airfare. If you don't plan a bit in advance (or unless you are as lucky as a four leaf clover) you can easily get taken to the cleaners. Look, I only promised mostly good news... Now, if you are staying less than a month (and definitely not more than four months), there are some really good deals out there. The lowest rate I ever saw between Los Angeles and Buenos Aires was about $500 US. Sounds pretty good for a fourteen hour flight, right? Well, so does that elusive $99 LAX-NYC fare, or the $29 LAX-Vegas ticket on Southwest (prices are one-way, before all the "take it in your rear" government taxes and greedy airline fees). Yep, you know as well as I do that you have to buy these fares before they disappear and you start believing that they're as fictitious as the Tooth Fairy. Honestly, the average fare that I sold from LA to BsAs fell between $700-$1000 US. If you see something under that range, snap it up before someone else does. Of course, I'm only talking about stays of less than 30 days (and definitely stays of less than four months). If you're going to be down here for longer than that, you'll have to wait for a detailed airfare post.

Okay, so now that we've swallowed that bitter budgetary pill, let's get on to the good stuff, the value of the peso. One US dollar is equal to about three Argentine pesos, but as far as I'm concerned, that means nothing to those of you who haven't been here post-economic crash. What you need to know is the peso's buying power, so let's see what you can get for three pesos...

café con leche and two medialunas (croissants). (Some cafes will also include a glass of mineral water and a glass on Tang for the same price.)
a sandwich/hamburger/hot dog/choripan and a soda at a "fast food" place
three alfajores (see “fed and watered in BsAs” post)
two newspapers
a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice (approx. one pint) and an alfajor
a wash cycle at a laundromat (Don't forget, they do it for you...wash and dry is six pesos.)
a 30 minute phone call to the US
three rides on the bus or Subte and a chocolate
a ten block cab ride (base fare is about $1.60 AR)
three hours at a locutorio (internet cafe)
a basic bunch of flowers
two empanadas
two ice cream cones at McDonald's (hey, don't knock it till you've tried 'em here!)
a liter of sparkling mineral water in a sit down restaurant (two if you go to the store)
And at your local corner store (most of which are run by Chinese families), you can get the following for three pesos: a liter of beer (it's less if you return your bottle), a bottle of wine (not the cheapest of the barrel either), a package of pasta and tomato sauce, three milanesas, or a grocery bag full of veggies.

Hopefully you've got some idea of what a dollar will buy you in Buenos Aires now. (A quick side note before I go on. In Argentina, they use the $ for prices in pesos. To get you used to it now, when I say $AR, I mean pesos, when I say $US, I mean dollars.) To illustrate my point a little further...the other day I treated myself to a movie at a theater I hadn't been to before. Now, normally I frequent the cheap theaters on Lavalle street where a movie is $5.50 AR Monday through Wednesday. So when I bought my ticket at this new theater on Saturday, I was a bit miffed at the $10 AR ticket price. I had to give myself a reality check as I stood in line waiting to get into the theater. At home at the ArcLight Theater on a Saturday, I've been known to pay $14 US, and that's just for one ticket! God, I'm turning into a cheapskate! One more example before I go...Last night I went with some friends to an "all you can eat" parrilla joint to fill up on some of the local beef. For 15 pesos each, we feasted on grilled provolone, two kinds of sausage, achuras, two kinds of steak, pork chops, and endless fries and salad. When we left, we didn't walk home, we clutched our fat bellies and rolled ourselves home. Between the five of us, we split three bottles of wine in addition to the endless meaty goodness...total per person: 20 pesos ($6.60 US). And that's not even a cheap parrilla place! Yep, last time I checked $6.60 in LA bought me a turkey sandwich and a coke. Like I've said before, I'm not coming home anytime soon.

fed and watered in BsAs

2006-03-19T22:45:00.000-03:00

So let’s face it, one of the best reasons to come to Buenos Aires is the food. Before we dive into the culinary delights of this city, a warning to my non-red meat eating friends: the pickin’s can be slim here especially if you’re a vegetarian, and nearly completely hopless if you’re a vegan. See, Argentines are exceedinly proud of their beef (and their Italian heritage) and most of the menus in this city stand as a testament to that.

First let’s start with the mother of them all: parrillada. The word parrilla means ‘grill’, so parrillada is usually translated as ‘mixed grill’, but I prefer to tell folks that it’s the Argentine version of barbecue. If you’re looking for beef in Buenos Aires, then you are well served by almost any place that has the words parrilla or parrillada associated with it. However, if you are lucky enough to get invited to an asado (the home version of parrilla), then by no means pass it up. The best beef you’ll ever eat is when you gather around a parrilla (grill) at a porteño’s house. Not to mention, an asado is a great opportunity to brush up on your castellano (Spanish). The typical parrillada is a three course affair, so let me give you an idea of what to expect.
The first course is usually comprised of grilled provoleta (provolone), chorizo (mildly spicy pork sausage), and morcilla (blood sausage). I could get my fill on this course alone, but that’s not the point here. If you are sitting down to parrillada, your mission is to eat as much beef as humanly possible.
Now, if the first course is a crowd-pleaser, the second course is a “love it or hate it” ordeal: achuras. I’m not going to go into detail on achuras because while every kind of achura is a part of the cow, it’s not the meat and muscle part, if you catch my drift. My advice is to try everything before you ask what it is (or better yet, don’t ask at all), but I will give you the names in Spanish. You can expect to sit down to chinchulines, riñones, mollejas, and maybe higado and ubre as well. If you’re not so adventurous, ask which ones are the mollejas, they’re my personal favorite and don’t taste so “insidely” for lack of a better euphemism.
Okay, if you’ve survived so far, this is where all the meat comes. If you’re eating at a restaurant and doing the full parrillada, then you can always expect vacío (flank steak) and (tira de) asado (crosscut ribs), as well as matambre (stuffed, rolled veal flank), pollo (chicken), or some variety of cerdo (pork). Now, I have to confess that the beef cuts listed above are not the best beef cuts in this country, so at some point you should also look into bife de chorizo (porterhouse), bife de lomo (loin steak), filet (filet mignon), ojo de bife (rib eye), and bife de costilla (T-bone).
When you sit down to parrilla, you can usually expect some sort of potatoes and salad on the side. However, you are guaranteed a basket of bread (they can’t eat anything without bread down here), and of course, chimichurri sauce, (oil, vinegar, garlic, oregano, and parsley). Know in advance that because the Argentines are proud of their Italian heritage, they are staunch purists. The only things that season your beef before it hits the table are salt and fire. While Argentine beef is tasty in this natural state, slap a little chimichurri sauce on there too!
One last word on the whole parrilla thing...you will notice restaurants here called tenedor libre. These places are all-you-can-eat buffets that also serve a limited parrillada. While a tenedor libre is cheap and has a ton of variety, it usually doesn’t have the best meat and it’s a little heavy on crappy Chinese food for my tastes. Instead, try a place that has parrilla libre...that’s the real parrillada that I’ve talked about here.

When you’ve had your fill of beef, head on over to one of the many Italian restaurants in Buenos Aires. Now, I understand that pasta is quite possibly one of the most straight forward foods in the world, but let me give you a bit of insight as to pasta in Buenos Aires. First, don’t be surprised if you see a fideos section in your menu. Those are pastas! (Why do Argentines have a different word for everything? I stopped asking myself that a long time ago.) Second, a lot of restaurants will list the pastas and the sauces separately, so that giant plate of pasta that you think is so cheap will come out to your table as naked as the day you were born unless you specify a sauce. Third, if you’re going to be here for some time or have access to a kitchen, check out the pasta shops that you’ll find around town. You can get fresh pastas and sauces to take home and make your own. Lastly, if you’re here on the 29th of any given month, don’t forget to eat ñoquis (gnocchis) for good luck!

While we’re on the subject of Italian food, let’s not forget about pizza. The pizza here, for the most part, is not of the thin crust authentic Italian variety. Here the crust tends to be thick and bread-like, but don’t let that deter you. It’s just a different animal here. Usual toppings in Argentina include mozzarella, green olives, jamón (ham), and morrones (bell peppers). While these are common, I prefer Napolitana (cheese, tomato slices, and oregano) or Calabresa (a Napolitana with chunks of salami). Normal so far, right? Well, before you go you have to try a couple of things. First there’s fugazza (focaccia bread) and fugazzeta (fugazza with cheese and onion slices on top). The second thing to try is faina (a flat chickpea bread), which you can put on top of a slice of pizza to bulk it up. I can’t say that it tastes like much on its own though. Oh, and before we close this chapter, the place to go in Buenos Aires for pizza is Las Cuartetas on Avenida Corrientes. This place is often confused with El Cuartito on Talcahuano, which I also like a great deal, but I know that there are many who disagree with me on that one.

My foreign friends and I often joke when trying to settle on a place for dinner that our options consist of pizza, pasta, parrillada, or empanadas. While that’s not far from the truth, here’s an idea of what else is out there. First, I haven’t mentioned empanadas yet. Empanadas are basically little turnovers that are filled with any of the following: carne (beef), carne picada (ground beef), pollo (chicken), jamón y queso (ham and cheese), queso (cheese), or humita (mashed corn with cheese, onions, and spices). Many times you will also find bits of egg or olive along with the meat empanadas. Empanadas are often found in a menu section called Minutas. These are foods that are easy for the kitchen to whip up for you. Other minutas include milanesa (breaded and fried meat, can be beef or chicken), potato dishes, and tartas (quiches). If you’re on the run, I recommend grabbing these before resorting to the real fast food that I’ll tell you about now. The ultimate in Argentine fast food is the choripan (a chorizo sausage served on a french roll). If you’re not eating a choripan it’s because you couldn’t find one. In the absence of a choripan, I will hit up one of the many pancho (hot dog) stands in the city. Most of them are open 24 hours a day, are the cheapest meal you can get, and also have things like hamburgers. One note about hamburgers...be sure to order a hamburguesa completa, because a hamburguesa sola is just the patty, no bun, no accoutrements. If you’re in the mood for a sandwich, try a pebete (pebete bread, and usually something like ham and cheese inside).

Okay, enough of the solid stuff...let’s get on with the beverages! The most popular beer in Argentina is Quilmes, but I will tell you from personal experience that Quilmes gets old pretty quickly. Instead, try to hunt out Isenbeck, Iguana, or Brahma. (Of course I don’t know why I’m telling you this...I know that y’all will just defect to Heineken, Warteiner, or Stella Artois once you figure out the conversion from pesos to dollars.) But you didn’t come here for beer, did you?
Nope, if you drink, you can’t leave without doing your fair share of wine sampling. Argentines guzzle about 76 liters per person per year (while Canadians only nurse an average of 9 liters per person per year). This is serious business. Now to keep you from getting all overwhelmed when you’re standing in the wine aisle at the supermarket, here’s some general tips. If you like red wine, then you’ll be looking at Malbec (what Argentina does best), Cabernet Sauvignon (they’re nice and hearty here), Tempranillo (a toast to Argentina’s Spanish roots), and Syrah (the future of Argentina). If you prefer white, then your options include Torrontés (a national varietal like malbec), Semillon (It’s a little pricey though. This fickle grape is found in its best form in only two places here in Argentina), Chardonnay (they’re getting better here all the time), and Sauvignon Blanc (why not?). Now, I’m sure you want to ask me some labels that you should check out, but I’d rather give you this general rule. Unless you are serious enough about wine to drop some real money down here, don’t ever spend more than 10 pesos (about $3.30 US) on a bottle of wine at the supermarket. There’s just no need. Now, if you really want to learn something, then go to Mendoza for some wine tasting and then you’ll know more than me. I’ll be happy to learn all I need to know about Argentine wine from you...as long as you’re buying!

Of course, there’s more than just the booze down here. In case you haven’t heard, Buenos Aires has a healthy cafe culture. Be sure to spend some time in the cafe of your choice sipping café con leche/café cortado/café doble and nibbling on medialunas (croissants) or some other factura (pastry). I’m not going to go into too much detail here because if you’re in Buenos Aires and you’re looking to hang out in a cafe, you should really call me. I waste time in cafes like they’re paying me to be there. Oh, and it’d be sweet if it was your treat on this one too!

If you need a stimulant, but you don’t want coffee and cocaine sounds like overkill, then try some mate. Mate, or yerba mate, is like a loose leaf tea (yerba) that you drink out of a hollowed out gourd (mate) through a metal straw with a filter on it (bombilla). It’s a communal thing, so if you have a flavor preference, you might want to ask if it’s amargo (bitter, a.k.a. natural) or dulce (sweet). Mate is purported to have mateine in it (just like Red Bull’s wing supposedly come from taurine), but who cares? It will give you a small buzz, kill your appetite (and thereby help keep your weight down from all the parrilla and pasta you’ve been eating), and if you’re a touch constipated, it can help in that department too! What a wonder drink! Last beverage, before I go...you should really try a licuado. In its simplest form it’s milk, banana and sugar blended together. At its most frou-frou, it’s akin to something you get at Jamba Juice. Just give it a shot...or better yet, buy me one!

Well, it now occurs to me that I’ve made it this far in my discussion of Argentine food without once mentioning that Argentines have a shameless sweet tooth. Well, just because I haven’t said it until now doesn’t mean that it’s any less true. Before you leave Buenos Aires, you will most likely, at some point, overdo it on the dessert. Here’s what to look for. Helado artesanal, and don’t forget the artesanal! This city has some great gelato, but you won’t find it if you go to a regular helado (ice cream) joint. If you need me to simplify things, just find your closest Freddo (it’s a chain) and go back as often as you can to sample all their flavors. As I mentioned briefly before, be sure to check out facturas (little pastries) at either cafes or bakeries. Most cafes will also have some mean tortas (cakes). However, all of this pales in comparison to dulce de leche and the mightly alfajor. Dulce de leche is caramelized sweet condensed milk, so is therefore much more superior in every way to the rinky dink caramel you’ve had at home. Dulce de leche is so good, in fact, I’m sure that the alfajor came into being just to give people a portable way to eat dulce de leche. An alfajor is a little layered cake (with dulce de leche between the layers) and it’s classically dipped in chocolate, or rolled in sugar (or coconut). The other way to define an alfajor is heaven. I’m not alone on this one. I’ve heard that as many as 6 million alfajores are consumed on an average day in Argentina. If you want to know the place to go, check out any Havanna coffee shop in the city...they’re the best for alfajores artesanales!

So I hope you’ve enjoyed this little preview of culinary delights in Argentina. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m a bit hungry. I think I’m going to grab a choripan or two!

putting the “sha” in caste-sha-no

2006-03-12T13:45:00.000-03:00

Okay, so you want to move to Latin America and learn Spanish? Great. Take some advice from me, (a humble, budding English teacher who lives in Buenos Aires and wonders if her degree in Linguistics is ever going to get her anywhere...) don’t come to Argentina if you want to learn “normal” Spanish. Yep, there is at least one reason not to join me in the craziness that is Buenos Aires. See, down here people don’t speak the español that you learned in high school, and they don’t sound like your cleaning lady Marta either. In fact, they don’t speak español at all in this country. If you ask any self-respecting Argentine what language they speak, they will answer you, “Yo hablo castellano”. Okay, boludos. Let’s roll!

The variety of Spanish spoken here in Buenos Aires is referred to as Rioplatense Spanish by people like me (read: language geeks), and you’ll find it spoken in the areas around the city, some other parts of Argentina (that haven’t been “corrupted” by Chilean Spanish), and across the river in Uruguay. Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect to hear.

First, let’s talk about phonology (sounds). The most distinctive sound difference in this dialect is that they say sh (like in mission), or zh (like in measure) when “y” and “ll” are written. What does that mean? Well, you didn’t see a protest in the Plaza de Mayo, you saw it in the Plaza de Ma-sho. Last night, you didn’t eat arroz con pollo (chicken), you had arroz con po-sho. (I generally try to use the “sh” sound when I speak here, but I do make an exception at Mexican restaurants. It just feels unholy to me to order po-sho con mole. Call me a purist.)
The second thing that you’ll notice is that you won’t hear many “s” sounds on the ends of words when the locals speak. Most of the time, porteños will make an “h” sound instead, or they’ll drop the sound all together. For example, los vasos son sucios (the glasses are dirty) might sound like loh vasoh son sucioh. Don’t freak out. Other dialects of Spanish are doing this too, and it’s one of the most natural sound changes in the history of human language. Just ask your local linguist.
One thing that everyone notices here is that the locals sound like they’re speaking Italian (read: intonation). It’s actually quite nice to my ear, but I recently found out that Argentines haven’t always spoken like this. Before a wave of Italian immigrants showed up here about a century ago, everyone sounded like people in Andalucia, Spain. It’s just one more thing that proves that Italy rules!
Okay, if you’re a real language geek, you might notice that some locals will drop the “r” sound at the end of their infinitives. If you can hear this, congratulations! You might be a closeted linguist! Let’s go grab a beer some time and I’ll tell you all about this phonological feature of Rioplatense Spanish, because the rest of my readers don’t really care.

Now for the good stuff. For all you language geeks out there, Rioplatense Spanish employs the use of voseo. For all the rest of you, porteños don’t use tú, they use vos. Yep, remember vos? That verb conjugation that your Spanish teacher never made you learn? Well, get crackin’ because it’s all they use down here. Don’t worry, I’m here to help as always! Here’s the deal with vos...vos works as a nominative and an objective pronoun. Or in layman’s terms...

It can be a subject as in...
vos estás escuchando un CD de Jorge Drexler
(you’re listening to a Jorge Drexler CD)

Or it can be an object as in...
“Muchas gracias!" “No, gracias a vos!”
(Thanks a lot! No, thank you!)

That’s the easy part, but don’t worry, it doesn’t get much harder than that. All of the vos conjugations are the same as the tú conjugations, except for the present tense and command forms. Here’s how it works for the present tense...take the root of the verb, and add –ás for –ar verbs, -és for –er verbs, and –ís for –ir verbs. For commands, the endings are –á, -é, and –í, respectively. Hmmm. I don’t know about you, but I always think examples are helpful, so here you go...

hablar (to speak) --> vos hablás (you speak) hablá! (Speak!)
comer (to eat) --> vos comés (you eat) comé! (Eat!)
vivir (to live) --> vos vivís(you live) viví! (Live!)

Really, it’s that simple. Now, you know all those verbs that change their root (poder --> pued-, tener --> tien-), well there’s none of that nonsense with vos. It’s vos podés (you can) and vos tenés (you have). Okay, I know what you’re thinking, “What about all those other really irregular verbs?” Let me tell you that vos is truly your new best friend. There are only two truly irregular forms for vos: the command form of ir and the present tense form of ser. Check it out...

Ir (to go) --> vos vas (you go) andá! (go!)
Ser (to be) --> vos sos (you are) sé! (be!)

That’s it. Hacer becomes hacés, estar becomes estás, haber becomes habés. Would that they were all this easy to learn! If this is too much for you, you can use the tú form here, but why not be adventurous? Especially when you’ve never had it so easy. (If you’re still confused, go to this website: http://www.verbtutor.com/learnit/verbs/verbconj.asp )

Before I get into the vocabulary differences down here, I have to tell you about re-. Re- is a prefix that Argentines put on just about anything: nouns, adjectives, even verbs! The meaning of it can be something like “very”, “really”, or “such”. Actually I’m simplifying things a bit here, it’s really pretty hard to translate. Re- basically just emphasizes whatever word it’s attached to. To give you an example, when an Argentine friend saw me after I landed my first teaching job here, she said, “Estás re-contenta!” (You’re so happy!) To learn more, check out my link to Wally’s Argentine Dictionary.

Okay, we’re in the home stretch! The last thing to throw out at you is Lunfardo, the slang of Buenos Aires. That’s right, they have enough slang for there to be a word for it, and this will be your final hurdle in adjusting to Spanish in Argentina. Lunfardo came about in the beginning of last century in the lower classes of the city. Because there were a ton of European immigrants arriving at that time, Lunfardo uses Italian and French words as well as words from some of the indigenous people here. Now if that weren’t enough, there’s also something in Lunfardo called vesre which is when they mix up their syllables. The best example of vesre is the word itself, which is the word revés (reverse) all mixed up. Another example is gotán (tango). Other features of Lunfardo include word play and the use of metaphor. If you want to get a jump start on learning Lunfardo, go pick up some tango albums. It’s the easiest way for you to start hearing the language from abroad. Outside of that, check out Wikipedia’s entry on Lunfardo. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunfardo] There are some great links listed at the bottom!

Well, you’ve gotten this far in my post and you might still be asking yourself, “If going to Argentina to learn Spanish is like going to Mississippi to learn English, where should I go to learn “real” Spanish?” Well, my friend, I would avoid most places in the Caribbean. If you’ve ever heard how they speak English in Jamaica that should make my point for me. If you decide to go to Spain, know that you will have to learn new words when you travel around Latin America. (Every cab driver in this city will tell you on your way in from the airport that you shouldn’t use coger while you’re here. In Spain, coger means “to take”, while here it means something more...um, carnal.) If you’re crazy enough to go to Chile, you’ll find out that it’s as difficult as Buenos Aires. By some accounts, it’s even worse in terms of accent and slang. To the best of my knowledge, and this is not my specialty, Mexico and Colombia are supposed to have the “cleanest” Spanish. Again, I’m crazy enough to go learn languages in places that have heavy dialects, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Feel free to challenge me on this one. In the end, I’m not sure that it matters all that much. I know Israelis that talk with Aussie accents, Arabs that speak with British ones, and one Chinese dude that had a Scottish brogue. I can’t say that I’ve had too much trouble understanding them. (Except for that Chinese dude. The Scots are nearly unintelligible!)

Happy language learning!

allow me to introduce myself...

2006-03-11T21:35:00.000-03:00

Well, if this blogging relationship is ever going to work out, then I suggest we get to know each other a bit better...

Hmmm. How to start? Five months ago, I was working as a travel agent in Los Angeles. I had just earned a promotion to assistant manager of my agency, and whenever I wasn’t selling plane tickets, I was watching CSI or catching up on my reading for my monthly book club. Sometimes I bought jazz albums for me and my little cat to enjoy (she’s a big fan of Theolonious Monk). I even made donations to my local NPR and PBS affliates, and I always paid my bills on the day they arrived in the mail. So how did a responsible, vanilla individual like myself end up in South America? Well, I can’t say that I did it alone. I also can’t say that this was an uncharacteristic move for me to make.

I try to make it a habit to go live in a foreign country every couple of years. It all started when I was 17 and took off to Germany for half a year. While that experience was a mixed bag, I did end up with an addiction to travel. Three years later, I spent my junior year of college abroad in Jerusalem. That’s a prickly pear to get into for introductions, so let’s just say that while I fell in love with that city, I knew that the next time I took the plunge, it needed to be somewhere a little bit less violent. I carried around my expat itch for four years after returning to California from the Middle East. To the surprise of my friends and family, I didn’t try to scratch my itch right off the bat. Things just kept popping up. First, I had to finish college. Then I convinced a friend to move out to Los Angeles, and I got sucked into an unsatisfying world of dead-end jobs, first as the manager of a boating supply store, and later as a travel consultant. I wasn’t happy to say the least, but at least I had some good people around me. After listening to one too many horror stories of the trials and tribulations of selling travel, my former boyfriend, and now good friend Joseph set me straight. I had to leave again. Forget all my excuses about having no money and feeling attached to people in LA, I needed to follow my little nomad heart to someplace new. (Not to mention, my little brother was getting ready to move to Italy for an internship in a highly rated restaurant, and I couldn’t help but think I wanted a little something like that for myself.) So over countless dinners of pasta bolognese, mushroom risotto, queso fundido, and tacos seasoned with homemade salsas, Joseph helped me settle on moving to Buenos Aires and teaching English. Why not? My Spanish could use some work, and my Linguistics degree wasn’t exactly being put to good use selling plane tickets. Funny thing was that once I made my decision, everything else happened so quickly. Before I knew it, I had quit my job, broken up with Joseph, moved out of my apartment, given my cat back to my parents, cut off all my hair, and boarded a plane to Argentina. Whew! Who knew that being a nomad would be so much work?

So here I am in the “Paris of South America” with five months under my belt. I can’t say that I’ve done all that much since I arrived last October. My new friend Kristen says that’s okay because I needed a nice, honest break from my stressful corporate job at the travel agency. I think that’s a good enough answer for me. Although, now that my life is up and running down here, I can’t help but share what I’ve learned and what I’m experiencing with anyone who cares to read about it. Here goes nothing...more to come!