Gatos que bailan, locos que actúan, y poetas que enseñan

I have met some characters in Buenos Aires, and luckily for me, some of them happen to be my professors. Here is a snapshot of some of the really quirky ones:

My Argentine literature class is taught by an extremely tiny, eccentric, chain-smoking poet who we call Gaby. (I call all my professors by their first name, and even greet some of them with a kiss on the cheek. I like this aspect of the academic culture here, and have found that there is still the same level of respect without all the formality.) She is usually drinking mate during class, which actually is not uncommon for professors to do. It’s as if they cannot make it two or three hours without their beloved mate. Every English teacher I’ve ever had had an author love/obsession, and Gaby’s is Julio Cortázar. She owns something like 13 pets, including several species of reptiles I have never heard of. Her hands are usually trembling, if out of excitement or about the class material or caffeine, I’m not sure. Gaby’s style of teaching is what you could call abstract. She’ll start out talking about a poem by Borges, and the fleetingness of city life, and suddenly she’s talking about making eye contact with a man in a bookstore and falling in love, and how bookstores are the best places to fall in love, and how you have to lose yourself completely in order to find yourself, and suddenly we’re back to Borges, and while I’m not exactly sure how it all fits it makes sense in a very poetic sort of way. Something else cool about her class is that we get to do a lot of creative writing. Although I’m an English major, I’ve hardly spend any time writing creatively, and I’m really enjoying the opportunity to write my own poems and stories.

In the spirit of trying new things and stepping out of my comfort zone, I decided to sign up for una clase de actuación (acting). Considering that my previous acting experience can be summed up by my fourth grade role as vulture #27 in the West Mercer production of The Jungle Book, I can safely say this is something new and different. Originally though, I did not sign up for acting. Instead, I chose a knitting class. Looking back, I have not the slightest idea what I was thinking. I stepped into the classroom expecting to join a group of young Argentines (once again, no clue why I thought this would be the case), only to find a room filled with about fifteen elderly women. The teacher asked me “estás en esta clase?”, and taking full advantage of my foreigner I-don’t-understand tactic, responded no, fled the classroom, and signed up for acting instead. So that is how I ended up in Martín’s acting class. Martín always looks a little disheveled: he consistently sports two different socks, a pair or wrinkly cargo pants, and a shaggy head of hair sticking out in several directions. He has very intense eyes, and his face has always struck me as that of an eagle. Shortly after arriving to the first class, I found out that not only was I the only foreigner in the class, but also that it would be all improvisation. So needless to say, I was a little bit terrified. The good news is that I am learning to embrace the ridiculousness of the situation. We do exercises where Martín will count to ten and on each count we have to do a different facial expression (very exaggerated, of course), or we will walk around the room pushing of the wall and each time we push away from the wall we have to change mood. I’m convinced that Martín’s role of choice is the crazed madman, because the majority of the exercises we do involve acting like a crazy person. For example, once we broke into partners and had to act out a situation in which we were ranting at an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. Instead of talking face to face with our partner though, we had to stare at and speak to our raised hand. In the middle of the exercise, Martín came over to me and informed me that I needed to tense up my hand, contort my face, widen my eyes and bear my teeth. (Sara, the image that comes to mind is the face on the back of my dilatory shirt.) It’s pretty amusing because sometimes when a group is doing a skit, which of course involves characters who are insane, I will look back at Martín. He will be standing in the back of the room making his favorite crazed face. He is an actor, and I think it takes everything he’s got to restrain himself from jumping into the scene and showing us how it’s really done.

My tango class is taught by Marcelo, a fifty something year old man with an enormous, bushy mustache. Marcelo always wears the same thing: black pants and a white button-up shirt. There isn’t however, a whole lot of buttoning-up going on, as he opts to leave a large portion of his shirt unbuttoned, revealing his extremely hairy chest. Perhaps once you are a tango master you are entitled to do those sorts of things. Qué sé yo. The class has about 40 people in it (half Argentines and half exchange students), so I hadn’t really interacted much directly with Marcelo. A couple weeks into the class, I was standing over by the wall, practicing my ochos, when Marcelo approached me and said, “Necesitás caminar como si fuera un gato.” (You need to walk as if you were a cat.). Despite the undoubtedly very perplexed, I-have-not-the-slightest-idea-how-to-walk-like-a-cat expression on my face, he seemed satisfied and sauntered off. Marcelo will also randomly choose a girl in the class to demonstrate a new pattern. I managed to successfully evade him for the first few weeks by slinking off and hiding in the back during these moments, but my time finally came. I was concentrating so hard I must have been frowning, because Marcelo pushed my mouth into a smile, kicked the ground loudly to signal we were starting, and whisked me off into a giro (move where the man rotates in one spot and the woman spins around him). I think I missed a step, and maybe forgot a gancho or two (a sort of hook/kick thing between your leg and your partner’s leg), but I was relieved to have completed the pattern, and to not have speared him with the heel of my shoe (which I’m sorry to say, has happened before). There are also two assistant teachers. One is an Argentine woman with bleach-blond dyed hair, who wears hot pink velour outfits and matching hot pink heels. When we do ganchos she laughs hysterically. I’m not exactly sure why, but I suppose she finds our terrible technique amusing. The other assistant is a tiny little man, shorter than me in fact, who has a curly little pony tail and wears all black. He does not speak. I’m pretty sure that he walks as if he were a cat.

Bicicletas y Bodegas: Mi Viaje a Mendoza

Last weekend I took a wonderful trip to Mendoza, the Napa Valley of South America. Bag in hand and excited to become a wine connoisseur, I boarded the bus with my two friends, Elsa and Sarah. Despite my enthusiasm, I was not exactly looking the part of a stylish Argentine vineyard-goer: Once we took our seats, Sarah asked me, “Ali, do you know that you have makeup on only one eye?”. Sure enough, she was right. After retracing my steps that past hour, I remembered that I had gotten an eyelash in my eye on the bus, and rubbed all the makeup off one side of my face. I considered evening it up, but ultimately decided that as I was already looking quite frumpy in my sweats and tennis shoes, any attempt to improve my appearance would be pointless. I little later we were each served an alfajor, a favorite Argentine dessert/snack which is a sort of cookie sandwich filled with dulce de leche and covered in chocolate. Suprisingly, the bus alfajor was magically delicious. It was however, extremely crumbly. By this point, I was in my seat, makeup on one eye, covered in cookie crumbs. Though I was not looking my best, I was feeling great, and had a great time on the bus hanging out with Sarah and Elsa. When I woke up the next morning, we had arrived in Mendoza, the land of vino.

On the bus:



Our first day in Mendoza was very chill. Mendoza is a very small city, more like a town in fact, and it was a refreshing change from the craziness of Buenos Aires. We spent the majority of the day wandering around a huge, very beautiful park full of fountains, statues and a large lake. We sat alongside the lake relaxing and taking into the gorgeous scenery. I was really excited because I saw a dog scampering around the park that looked exactly like Doug from the movie Up. I was tempted to dog-nap it, but ultimately refrained.



We had a really nice lunch sitting outside on the street our hostel is on. We hardly could contain ourselves when the waitress put a little bowl of peanuts on our table. This may not seem like anything extraordinary, but Argentines do not eat peanuts. I had not seen the sight of peanut butter, let alone a peanut, in months, and the sight of this salty treat was cause for celebration. Another culinary difference is Argentines’ lack of appreciation for ketchup. Though they add copious amounts of sugar to everything, they have yet to discover the joys of ketchup. Therefore, it was not cutting it when we ordered fries and the waitress brought us one single packet of ketchup. We finally managed to scrap up a bunch of packets and enjoy our French fries. I’m pretty sure an Argentine waiter knows the moment you ask, “More ketchup please?”, that you’re from the US.



That night we had an asado at our hostel, where we sat outside enjoying wine and a variety of meats with a bunch of British travelers. It was a little chilly, and the nanopuff made it's first big appearance. We went to bed fairly early so that we would be fresh and ready to go for our big recorrido de las bodegas (vineyard tour) the next day.



We had been hearing great things about this vineyard tour for weeks, and I could hardly wait to experience it for myself. We set off with a British couple we had met that night, and two Canadians we had met in our hostel room. After a bus trip outside the city, into the heart of wine country, we arrived at Mr. Hugo’s bike rental. By word of mouth, we had learned that of all the rental places available, Mr. Hugo’s was THE place to go. I had been expecting some sort of bike rental store. Where we showed up however, was actually the driveway of a house. Mr. Hugo emerged, with a huge smile on his face and a bottle of wine in his hand. After serving us a glass of wine and chatting for a while, Mr. Hugo set us up with our bikes and our map, and sent us on our way.



I love bike riding, and though this bike was what you could euphemistically call an antique, I could not have been happier. It was a perfectly clear, sunny day, the cool breeze blowing in my face. Grapes hanging heavily from the vine filled the air with their sweet perfume.



At the first vineyard we enjoyed a glass of wine and asado for lunch. The wine tasting technique got advanced very quickly. We learned about lágrimas (tears): if you swirl the glass around and the “tears” fall slowly then it is a good wine. Naturally, I found it essential to swirl my wine around and stare intently at my glass before each sip to evaluate the falling velocity of the lágrimas.





At the next vineyard we had our first wine tasting. The guide would say things like, “Note the smoky, woody, tobacco flavor,” and tasting neither smoke nor wood nor tobacco, I would nod my head knowingly and say “Ah, sí, sí claro.” Though, I did discover that I like Malbec wines the best, and prefer the older wines stored in oak barrels as opposed to the younger wines. We also did a tour inside the vineyard, and then explored outside as well, where I hunted for, and feasted on grapes.





After going to one last vineyard, we realized that the chocolate factory was closing soon. Elsa and I, our hearts set on going, hopped on bikes and booked it to the factory, where we arrived just in time to sample tasty chocolates, olive oils and of course, different kinds of dulce de leche. We headed back to return our bikes, where none other than Mr. Hugo was waiting for us with, you guessed it: more wine. I had been looking forward to this bike tour for weeks, and it ended up being everything and more than I had anticipated.

Us with Mr. Hugo:





We spent our next, and last, day in Mendoza chilling by the pool and exploring a nearby art fair. Our relaxing day took a mildly stressful turn when we were at the bus station preparing to head home, and five minutes before takeoff we realized our tickets were for four days earlier. After sprinting to the ticket office and buying new tickets, we made it onto our bus with hardly three minutes to spare. Though I was glad to make the bus, I probably wouldn’t have complained if I was stuck in Mendoza for a few more days :)