Fall Weather

For the entire month of March and the first week of April the weather here in Buenos Aires was hot and blue skied. It was not unusual for the days to reach above 30 degrees and at night I would lie in sweaty sheets hoping that my little air conditioner could work a little harder. Then last week, the weather changed over night. The news stations were going crazy over the fact that in the countryside the temperature had dipped below zero and formed ice on the roads helping to facilitate even more crashes on the auto pista than normal. The temperature in Buenos Aires had even dipped to a cool 3 degrees before dawn. By the time I left for my Spanish class it was 16 or 17 degrees but you couldn't tell from the way that the Portenos were wrapped up. Gone were the bright skirts and strappy sandals of the day before replaced heavy wool coats and full length pants. There was an amazing variety of gloves, hats and scarves and it seemed as if the people were preparing for a winter in Montreal.

The cold only lasted for a few days. The temperatures rose back into the mid 20s but then the smoke came. The annual burning of the fields in the Buenos Aires delta got out of control and several of the fires jumped, and closed, major commuting routes. The smoke from the fires innundated the city and made everything hazy. The smell of smoke has even permeated into the houses. The government has issued a statement saying that the smoke is not toxic and that it should clear soon but there has been no sign of it's lifting.

Ciclo Joven

Dad has completed his first week of Spanish lessons at our school in Buenos Aires. I think that he has been enjoying his classes very much and I know that he was delighted to discover that there were several people in his class not too many years younger than himself. He has been studying hard to learn his past tense, indirect/direct objects, and comparisons. I have been studying (relatively) hard as well. I have now almost completed Level 4 and each week I am here the Spanish that the teachers speak with me becomes a little more rapid. I would like to think that I am able to operate in the language at full speed (which I can depending on the topic) but I have definitely had a few headaches with the increasingly difficult and subtle grammar points. We have been fortunate, in the interest of being good roomates, that Dad´s classes are in the morning while mine are in the afternoon allowing each of us to have a few hours each day to ourselves in our tiny apartment.


On Tuesday, while I was in class, dad managed to lock himself out of the apartment and since his key was in the lock on the inside he was unable to unlock the door even after he had come to the school to get my key. He ended up having to go through the apartment of our neighbour (who luckily happened to be the doorman on duty at the time) and scramble from his balcony to ours (we live on the 10th floor) before jimmying our backdoor (which we had tried, obviously unsuccessfully, to secure against intruders) open and climbing in. Dad seemed rather nochalant about his Macgyveresque antics but he was very excited to have learned the Spanish word for screwdriver destornillador in the process.

Most of our days aren't quite so dramatic. Much of our time is taken up with school, homework, going to the gym, going to the cinema and watching far too much television. We have also made many long rambles through the city. Buenos Aires is a huge place with multitudes of interesting streets to walk along and buildings to discover. On Thursday, we we to see the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra play some Nicolai Rimski-Korsakov, Ralph Vaugh Williams, and Franz Haydn. Unfortunately, the orchestra's usual venue, the famous Teatro Colon is closed for repairs this season and we had to see them in a rather standard, poorly lit concert hall but the concert was amazing. The orchestra had amazing tone and their playing was crisp, precise, and clean. The highlight of the evening for me was the cello soloist in the Haydn piece, Jose Alberto Araujo. He was so passionate about his playing and so obviously pleased to be there that he almost made me cry.

The Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival is on this week and we have made several attempts to go. This week we are looking forward to taking in more Buenos Aires culture with a football game, some theatre and a tango show.

Home Improvements

Dad has settled into his new life in Buenos Aires. His luggage arrived Friday evening so we are now moved completely into our apartment. We are pretty happy with the place but have been making some small home improvements by tightening screws, rigging a new lock for the balcony door and jamming pieces of paper into the window frame to keep the glass from rattling in the middle of the night. Our biggest improvement by far has been buying some chairs and a table for our balcony. To buy these chairs we walked two hours to a store in Palermo and then walked 2 hours back with the chairs slung over our shoulders. The furniture wasn´t heavy but it was a bit difficult to walk down pedestrian-crowded sidewalks without accidentally whacking the odd passerby with an armrest.
Today is a lazy Sunday which we have spent reading the newspaper, studying Spanish and wandering around the deserted Sunday streets. Tomorrow the streets will be thronged with people but today everybody is at home resting up for Monday.

The New Apartment

Dad arrived on Wednesday, without his luggage. He has happily been watching movies in the cinema, attending his Spanish classes, and making small home improvements to our apartment. I had threatened before he arrived that we would speak only in Spanish. What has materialised is a mix of Spanish and English that, to be frank, has more English than Spanish. We will have to work on our Spanish speaking.
Here are some pictures of the new apartment and the school.

Moving Day

My father is coming to Buenos Aires for a month to stay with me and to work on his Spanish. The apartment that I had been renting for the last 6 weeks was totally unsuitable for 2 people, so yesterday I moved. Changing apartments was quite a stressful process. The fact that the water to my building was cut off 2 hours before I had to move making it impossible to clean the apartment (I washed the dishes with the water from ice cubes which I melted in the microwave) did not help either. Because I had not cleaned the apartment I was required to pay a 50 peso cleaning fee which meant that I no longer had enough money to pay the rent on the apartment that I was moving into. I had already maxed out my atm withdrawl limit for the day and changed every single American dollar that I possessed. Luckily, after standing in many Atm line ups I found a machine that would give me 50 pesos. It was day 20 of the dispute between the farmers and the government and the President, Christina Kirchner, was making a speech in the Plaza de Mayo. The streets were thronged with people and I waddled through the crowd carrying all my early belongings, which weighed considerably more than they did in my backpacking era just 6 weeks ago. I dropped off my bags at the language school and finished some last minute errands before going to my new apartment.

The new apartment is very nice. It is on the 10th floor and has a balcony (with not much of a view). It is the same size as my previous apartment but it uses the space much better. The kitchen and the television are not quite as nice but they are functional and have everything that I need. The best part of my new apartment is the location. It is 2 minutes walk from the movie theatre and less than 10 minutes to the language school.

Today, there were no classes at the language school because it is the 26th anniversary of Argentina´s war with the UK over the Falkland islands (here known as the Malvinas). I am taking the day to relax after yesterday´s running around and to wait for my dad´s arrival.

Protests

While the lifestyle of Argentina, and in particular Buenos Aires, is modern and in many ways similar to the way that I live in Vancouver, there is a political instability here that manifests itself in large public demostrations unfamiliar in my Canadian life. For the past 15 days there have been increasing tensions between Argentina´s agrarian producers and its federal government. These tensions have been simplified to the phrase ¨Campo vs Gobierno¨(The countryside vs the government) Every day thousands of people gather in the Plaza de Mayo to protest lack of funding or parade in the streets banging pots and waving banners. Major trucking routes have been blocked and there are shortages of many things on the shelves of the local supermarkets. One day there may be a shortage of eggs, the next a shortage of meat. The price of vegetables has steadily and noticibly increased during my 6 weeks in Buenos Aires. I have become desensitized to riot police, loud speakers and survellance helicopters. But despite all the protests, life here continues as usual in Buenos Aires and the people not involved in the fight continue on with their days just as before.

Note: As my Spanish skills become more advanced my ability to spell (in either language) is diminuishing quickly. Please forgive the atrocious spelling in this blog entry. I cannot find an English spell check.

Thoughts on a Month in Buenos Aires

Last night, during our weekly phone call, my parents informed me that it was my duty to update my blog. ¨Too many people have been asking about it and it´s driving us crazy¨ they told me rather melodramatically and I promised to update it, if only for their sanity. The truth is that after a month of renting an apartment and attending Spanish school here in Buenos Aires, life has taken on the routine of residing in a city rather than visiting one. In the first few weeks after I arrived I completely replaced my travel weary wardrobe and purchased long desired (but weighty) luxuries like separate shampoo and conditioner. I took the subway to every corner of the city and had fun discovering the nooks and crannies of my new neighbourhood. Now, I have a routine, I know the names of the cashiers at the supermarket, which paving stones to avoid on the walk to school, and the order of the stations on 3 of the 5 subway lines.
My days are mostly occupied with my Spanish courses. Until recently, I have been taking my Spanish lessons in the morning from 9-1 30 but now my lessons are in the afternoon from 2 45 -8 30. The Spanish school is very nice. It has high ceilings and an open air courtyard where we can sit during our break. The curriculum also deals with interesting and provoking topics that one is interested in discussing regardless of the language.
I feel that my language skills have progressed far above what my embarrassing attempts at learning languages in the past would have predicted but I am still far from fluent. In the class room I can understand almost everything that I read and hear but in the real world I am a little less successful. I still have trouble understanding extremely rapid speech and speaking (while correctly conjugating every thing) can be a bit of a challenge.

In another week or so my life here in Buenos Aires will change again. My father, who returned to Canada just over a month ago, has decided to spend a month with me in Buenos Aires working on his own Spanish and we are going to be room mates. It will be interesting to see how well we get along in the tiny apartment we have rented!

Buenos Aires

I last wrote a blog entry from the island of Chiloe in Chile. A week later, I am in Buenos Aires, I have rented an apartment and I have signed up for a month of Spanish lessons. This was not exactly the plan but I felt that I was drifting without a purpose and not really enjoying the process. So, 6 months after I arrived in South America, I was back in my first hostel. Looking around at the eager faces fresh off the plane, I felt like a seasoned veteran of the travel wars. I found the reverence with which these neophytes viewed me amusing but I did not have a lot of patience for their tendency to return to the room loudly at 4 30 in the morning. On my last morning I woke up with the guy from the bunk above me sleeping on the floor beside the bed. When I returned from breakfast he had moved into my bed and I had to wrestle the sheets (which I had to return to reception to get my deposit back) out from under his unresponsive body. I have had enough of hostels. My apartment is small enough that it has a fold up bed to provide more space but it does have a full kitchen, bath and air conditioner but most importantly it is my own space and after 6 months on the road that is a wonderful luxury.

Chiloe

The days following our journey on the Navimag were spent on the island of Chiloe, a charming pastoral island on the west coast of Chile. Our first stop was Ancud, a small bright city at the northern tip of the island where we relaxed by the harbour (when we weren´t running around frantically trying to secure tickets for mom and dad´s journey to Buenos Aires), went to a penguin colony, and simply enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Ancud, unfortunately, was also the place where my parents and I went our separate ways. After a celebration of Mom´s birthday, they made their way to Bariloche while I headed further south down Chiloe. I made a brief stop in the town of Quellon and headed back north to Castro. From Castro, I visited Chiloe National Park, a beautiful sand duned beach. Chiloe is a very scenic place with brightly coloured buildings, wooden churches, craggy coastlines, and fields full of sheep. It is a good place to relax for a few days. I am now back in the city of Puerto Montt. What a difference the weather makes in ones perception of a place! When I was here before, after disembarking from the Navimag, I found it dirty and unappealing but in the sunshine it is quite a pleasant city. From here I will head north up through the lake district and try and find somewhere to stop and learn more Spanish.

Navimag

We sailed nearly 1000 miles north up the fjord coast of Chile on the Navimag ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt. The trip took 4 nights and 3 days to complete but the time passed quickly with glacier sightings, movies, and 3 meals at regular intervals. The cabins were small but the beds were comfortable and we slept well at night. On the last day of the trip, the sun came out for a brief period and everyone found their way to the top deck to bask in it.

We arrived in Puerto Montt, a dirty, industrial city, and went directly out of it on the bus to the island of Chiloe. In Ancud we found a beautiful little hostel overlooking the bay full of brightly coloured fishing boats and took a tour in the afternoon to see the local penguin colonies (Humbolt and Magellan penguins, as well as, seals, otters, cormorants, sea gulls etc). Chiloe is a beautiful place to relax and spend a few days. Unfortunately, we have been a bit stressed trying to book bus tickets for my parents´journey to Buenos Aires which starts tomorrow.