We spent last weekend out on the Delta, with Susana and Julio. They have a home on the Parana Delta, which is outside of the town of Tigre, about an hour’s train ride from Buenos Aires. The delta is a huge system of water and islands, formed as the Río  Paraná fans out and interweaves before joining the Río de la Plata. There are thousands of little islands, and thousands of people living on the delta, and they are reached only by boat. The “lanchas” leave and return to Tigre, which is the home base for all the island people.

Susana and Julio built their own home on a piece of land that they bought after the economic crisis of 2001. Some of their friends went to Brazil. Some of them went to Spain. They decided that this would be a good time to try to achieve their dream. A time of crisis can also be one of opportunity, and they slowly started to build their home. Julio said that when you don’t have anything to lose, it’s easier to take a risk.

The boats are the life of the delta.They depart from Tigre every few hours, and different boats follow different routes. Some travel up this river, some travel up that river. Susana and Julio live on the Caraguata River. We bought our tickets, then it was a little confusing knowing which boat to get on. There were about four boats being loaded with people and gear. We told the boatman (el lanchero) that we were going to Caraguata, and he showed us which boat to get on.We got on, found a seat and sat down, and soon we were on our way. There was room for about thirty people on the boat, and there were about twenty. There were banks of seats along the windows, and rows of seats facing forward. We sat along the window, and we could reach out and touch the water, the boat was so low on the water.

We motored away from Tigre, and soon veered off at a fork. Now we were on the Río Caraguata. I went up and asked the lanchero if he could notify us when we reached our destination, the island of Macondo. Julio named his little spot Macondo, because he had read One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Marquez, when Julio was a hippie selling bracelets on the beaches of Cartagena, Colombia in the 70’s. The water in the delta is cappuccino brown, but it is clean. It is full of minerals from the inland jungle. The Paraná is South America’s second longest river, after of course the Amazon. By the time it reaches the delta, it´s already gone over 2000 miles. It´s the only delta in the world that empties into fresh water, el río de la plata. The water system is huge, and each river is only a small part of it.

As we made our way up the river, we passed hundreds of docks. Usually we just kept going,but every now and then the boat would pull up to one, go into reverse and get right next to the dock, and somebody would jump off the boat, onto the dock, and they would be home. I wondered how the driver knew which docks to stop at. He didn’t have a list. Nobody called out to tell him. He just stopped, and somebody was home. I asked Julio and Susana about it, and they smiled and said that the driver knows who’s on board, and he knows where they live. Every home has its own name, and there are hundred and hundred of homes, each with a name and each with a dock.Pretty personal service.

Susana and Julio greeted us at the dock and welcomed us to their beautiful home. We looked at their photos of when they were building the house. It took them five years, bit by bit. All the building material had to come in by boat. When they were building it, there was no electricity. Julio did almost all the work by himself. Now they have a little piece of heaven, and they are happy as can be. They take in guests during the summer to supplement their income. (Susana is a professor) They are able to share a little bit of the Delta experience.

Soon, we heard a horn from out on the river. The “lancha almacen” was coming. This is the mobile store. It passes by, usually once a day, and it sells things that the people might need. A lot of coca-cola and beer, and also propane tanks, bottled water, canned goods, eggs and some produce. All you have to do is run down to the dock and wave to them. They’ll stop and bring you what you want. Susana was happy to see it coming. We spent a peaceful afternoon sitting on the dock and watching the river. Boats would pass, coming and going. Lots of parrots.We shared a pizza for dinner with our hosts, and spent a few hours talking. Lovely evening in the candlelight. Susana served us an elegant breakfast in the morning, and we relaxed and talked and lounged away a few hours until our boat came to take us back to Tigre.

Last Saturday, we went to the park in search of trees, peace, and quiet. We went to Chacabuco Park, which is  pretty big park, away from downtown, right at the Emilio Mitre subway stop. There are some beautiful parks in and near Palermo, which is a beautiful (and touristy) part of Buenos Aires, and there are some parks scattered here and there throughout the city. Parque Chacabuco is in a residential area, and it’s a pretty popular spot for nearby Portenos to come for a picnic, or to just sit on the benches. We had the afternoon free on Saturday, so we went over there. And yes, it’s a beautiful park, and yes, on most days, it’s a good destination for some green tranquillity, but not on Saturdays. Saturday is the day that the drummers meet to practice with the dance groups.

Murgas are drum and dance processionals. They originated in Uruguay, but have become very popular here in Buenos Aires also. We see them, experience them, feel them, and celebrate with them in our neighborhood in San Telmo. Saturday nights, sometimes at midnight or later, or whenever, depending on where you are, the murgas might be parading down the narrow cobblestone streets, the rhythms colliding against and bouncing off the buildings. Whether people consider them a nuisance and an unwelcome midnight racket, or whether they go down from their apartments to dance with them, there is no denying their presence. They are loud. They are cheerful. The cars have to wait for them. It’s a parade filled with noise and dancing and celebration, just out on the street for the phun of it.

They were drumming and dancing in the park. The drummers do not lightly tap their drums. They bang them as hard and as loud as they can. It’s deafening. The dancers are in front of them, and they make their way through the park.There were three separate drum groups in the park. This one above was made of bass drums. There was another one with bass and snare drums. There was another one with other combinations. The park is big. They parade all through it, for hours. The drummers keep drumming. The dancers keep dancing. There is joy and celebration, but not really any quiet picnics.This wasn’t a holiday. This was just a normal Saturday. There was also a rock and roll band with their giant speakers, trying to be heard over the drummers. There is a difference between life and between parks in the USA and in South America. The USA seems tamer and quieter. The parks are fuller in South America. The public places are used more. There is more life on the streets. Generally, the public spaces are cleaner in the USA, but in Argentina at least, that consciousness is changing a little. In addition to the drummers, there was also a campaign in the park that day to encourage people not to use so many plastic bags, and instead to use durable bags. We see signs in the subways encouraging the same. There are more and more garbage cans on the streets, and people are encouraged to use them. There is a new law stating that all marketing handouts need to have printed on them, “Do not throw this paper away in a public place.” The campaign in the park was giving away durable “Green City Buenos Aires” bags. Monica and I stood in line, got our picture taken in front of the billboard, and we got our bags. Together we can continue growing. Together we can continue evolving. A Green City. Not a bad sentiment for a Saturday afternoon.

One of the things that we wanted to do with our time in Buenos Aires was improve our Spanish. There are lots of schools that teach Spanish, and a few of them are listed in our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook. One of the schools they listed is in San Telmo, a few blocks from our apartment. Their website said that they offered classes to all levels, with a choice of how many hours per week. You could either take classes for two hours a day or four hours a day, with five students in the class being the maximum. We walked over to the school, located on Chacabuco Avenue, and rang the buzzer. There was no sign indicating that this was a school; it was just like all the other apartment buildings. An old building, probably from the mid-1800s, with a ten-foot wrought iron door. A voice came through the electric answerer, and we explained that we were here to find out about classes. Soon, Alejandro appeared at the door, explained that yes, in fact this was the school, he was the director, and could we come back later because he was ocupadisimo right now. (extremely busy) It turned out that he was in the middle of a class. We were expecting a receptionist or somebody, but this is a very small operation. We came back in a couple hours, and sat and talked with Alejandro, and Monica signed up for classes to start next week. You can sign up for one week at a time. I told him that I was also interested, but in a more advanced class, and Ale told me that perhaps the week after, there might be one for me.

Monica started her class, along with two young guys from England and another from Austria. Students from the USA are rare. Usually the students are from Europe or from Brazil. The two English guys, Nick and Alex, are in their mid-twenties, and they are in Buenos Aires to learn the tango. They go to milongas (tango clubs) every night, and they take lessons also. Tango is intimidating, especially for guys who are learning it, because it is a very male oriented dance. The man is in charge. he always leads, and the woman always follows. Nick and Alex have to get very confident in their skills before they ask a woman to dance. She doesn’t want to dance with somebody less skillful than she is.

Learning a language takes a lot of time. It’s not a consistently upward learning curve. There are times when you learn, but then you forget what you learn. There are periods of plateaus when you think you are not progressing. There are backward slips when you know what you should say, but you say it wrong. It can be frustrating, you have to be patient, and you also have to be comfortable with abiguity. We won’t understand everything, and we won’t always be able to express exactly what we want. Nevertheless, our Spanish is improving, mostly through practice. The classes teach and solidify, but you have to use what you learn in class outside of class. If you don’t practice, you don’t improve.

Monica is speaking in the past tense now. It is really fun to listen to her and to hear her improvements. This week, they are concentrating on the past tense in class. Here is Mon, standing in front of the board that says, “What did you do this weekend?” Weekend is translated as “fin de semana,” but everybody just shortens it to “finde.” It sounds great.The classrooms are really small, with one whiteboard. We sit around a table, with coffee or water or pastries, and talk it over. Our classes are two hours each day. Mike’s class is from 10:00 until noon, and Mon’s is from 12:15 until 2:15. Nick is the blond guy from England, and Lautauro is there in the school to help out with whatever we need. They are both pretty tall. Nancy is a portena (born in Buenos Aires) and she loves languages and grammar. She teaches Castellano (Spanish) here in our school (Escuela Rayuela. This means “Hopscotch.” It’s a title of a book written by Julio Cortazar, one of Alejandro’s literary heroes.) and at another school. She’s cheerful and very clear in her explanations. Both of us love her classes. Mike started classes a week after Moni. His classes had one other student, a girl from Sao Paolo Brazil named Natalya. Natalya is here in Buenos Aires to study Marketing, and she hopes to stay here. After a week, Natalya left, and now I am taking individual classes, just me and Nancy. It is great. It’s thrilling (really) to be able to speak, using complex grammar, and have someone to explain your mistakes and help you. It’s thrilling to be able to say, “We went to a tango show because we didn’t want to get back to the USA and realize that we had been in Buenos Aires for two months without going to at least one.” In Spanish.  Here, Natalya is in the middle, after her final class.We each have one more week of class. Hopefully, we’ll learn some new grammar, and more importantly, hopefully we’ll remember how to use it.

Before we left Eugene, we contacted a private English school in Buenos Aires and arranged to be volunteers in the school. Some of our friends thought that we were kind of nuts (you can delete the ¨”kind of” from the sentences to make it more realistic) and they told us why. Why would you want to work when you’re in Buenos Aires, when there is so much fun ot be had? And why wold Mike, especially, want to work as a teacher, when he’s taking a break from teaching? Some ofour friends (thinking of you, Jayne) still wonder why we would choose to work instead of play.

Our reasoning is something like this. First, we see our time in Buenos Aires as kind of an acclimazation period. We see it as an opportunity  for us to land in South America and get centered before we take off traveling through the continent. We can take some time to get used to the sights and smells and sounds of South America, while living in the same place and getting more solid with the language. We wanted to begin to feel comfortable here, instead of just dropping down from a spaceship and not knowing where we were.

So far, it’s working. Buenos Aires no longer feels all that foreign to us. We are still surprised by things that we see, like the dog on the subway (that’s another story) and it does not feel completely normal to step around people sleeping on the street or see families searching through the garbage bins for things that they can sell, but we are feeling at home after being here for a month.

Volunteering at English House has helped us to feel at home. We work there three afternoons a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, for three and a half hours each day. This schedule gives us some definition to our week without overloading us. There is still plenty of time for fun. Working at the school gives us a sense of belonging.

This sense of belonging is important for us. I don’t really consider myself a tourist in the strict sense of the word, but everyone else here thinks of me as one. And tourists always live in an “us” and “them” paradigm. They never fit in; they are always different. This otherness can wear on you after a while. It feels good to have this work routine, where we are a part of a whole, recognized and welcomed as a contributing member of a group. Everybody likes to be part of a tribe. For Monica and me, it is really nice to walk into English House and be greeted with, “Hello Monica!! How are you” It’s nice to belong.

We are classroom assistants. We take the subway to Plaza de los Virreyes, and Gaston picks us up at 4:30 in the afternoon

We usually get to the school around 5:00. Monica works with a teacher named Natilya and I work with Pat. The classes last for an hour, and we help out in three or four classes during our time. The youngest students are four years old!! There are middle-school aged kids, high-school aged kids, and there are also adults who come in for classes at 8:00. Sometimes the kids are just wild, very loud and unruly, but not disrespectful. We wonder sometimes how or if they actually learn English, but they do. Some of the students who are 12 and 13 and older speak really well. My favorite group is the adults, because there is more communication, but at times I help out with the youngest groups also. Pat really likes it when I’m there, but sometimes I find other things to do.Like all teachers, I like some classes more than others. I really enjoy working with the young high-school kids. We often do role-plays where they invent dialogs and act them out. They also read some reduced English novels and then describe what they read. It’s really not so different than my teaching ESL in Eugene. My second week there, one of the girls, named Felicita, brough me a big cake that her grandmother had baked. It’s called Pastaflor. We cut it up and shared it with everyone. Very nice. Felicita wanted to give Monica a piece also, so we found her in a different classroom and called her out so she could get a piece.Th teachers, as well as the kids, appreciate having us there.Monica often sits on the floor and reads to her students. The older students-highschool age- are reading “Twilight.”  Monica helps  out and leads classroom discussions. Portenos everywhere greet each other and say good-bye with an air kiss on the cheek. You see it everywhere. Boys and girls, men and women, girls and girls, boys and boys, men and men. It doesn’t matter. It is surprising to see two burly guys talking things over in front of a hardware store or the corner kiosko, then kiss each other goodbye when they depart.The waiter in El Refuerzo, one of our favorite spots, kisses us when we come in. We ran into the waitress from another cafe, and she kissed us hello and goodbye. It’s always a surprise for us (and somewhat delightful) when the kids file in for class, and come up and kiss us before sitting down, then again after class on their way out. They do it with each othertoo. It’s hard to imagine being a high school teacher in Oregon, and the boys coming up to give their teacher a kiss before class. Here, it’s just another part of the phunn.

We are working as volunteers in a private English school, every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon. We take the subway to the end of Line E, which is Plaza de los Virreyes. Gaston picks us up at 4:30 and drives us to the school, and at 8:30, he drives us back to the subway for our trip home. During our time there, we help out in classrooms, with students ranging in age from six to adult. Working with the middle school aged kids, the high school kids, and the adults are our favorite classes. We actually speak a lot of Spanish there, as well as English. If we have questions about how to say something in Spanish, we often ask our teachers who we are working with, because they speak excellent English, but they are Argentinians. Every Wednesday evening, there is a conversation exchange, where anybody in the school (I think just the adults) can come for an hour to speak in English, and we can speak in Spanish. It’s always interesting to find out about their lives, and to talk about whatever subject anybody is interested in. Here is Mike, talking with Frank and Guadaulupe. Guadalupe wants to become an English teacher, and her English is perfect. Frank works in the banking industry, and has to know English for his job. Monica had her small group also. They were talking about movies and TV shows. Here’s a photo of the whole group that was there this week. It’s a pretty big effort for some of the students to come to the sessions. They are very grateful for the opportunity to speak with native speakers of English, and of course, we are grateful also, to get to know new people, and to practice our Spanish with them.

Our Spanish classes are held in an old building on a cobblestone street. There isn’t a sign, or any other indication that is in fact a school, and we have to ring the bell, then somebody (usually Alejandro, the director) has to run down to open the door for us and lead us upstairs. Two doors down from the school is a little bar called El Refuerzo. It’s a tiny place, with about four tables inside and two little tables outside. Sometimes, after Spanish class and before we head for the subway to go to our English school, we go into El Refuerzo for lunch, and there we get reinforced for the rest of the day. They cook up great food. Alejandro is the waiter who works there, and he became our friend the first day that we stopped in. There are little cafes like this everywhere. At first glance, sometimes they seem kind of dark and divey, but this is where people go to meet, and once inside, they don’t seem dark and divey anymore. People sit and eat, or get a coffee (just about every place has espresso machines) or a glass or a bottle of wine. People do business or talk or relax. Guys in suits and ties, women in high heels and makeup, lots of people in t-shirts and blue jeans.

The waiters never bring you the bill here until you ask for it. You can sit there for hours. The hovering waiter is not a problem here. Nor are there many waitresses. There are a few, but mostly they’re men. When finally you are ready for the bill, first you have to get his attention, and then most people use their fingers to scribble in the air, which means they’re ready to go. Often, they bring you the bill and expect you to pay them right there, so you’d better be ready before you signal them. Our friend Diana, who is from Argentina but who lives half the year in Eugene, told us that she thought the waiters in the USA were extremely rude, because they brought the bill so soon.

The menu of EL Refuerzo is written on a blackboard. The bottles of wine are listed on the left. They serve stews, pasta, soups, sandwiches. The kitchens are always tiny, and I’m always surprised that they can produce such good food in such tiny places. What El Refuerzo really is, though, is a bar. They are busy at night, serving all kinds of drinks. We walked by last night about 10:00, and there was a crowd of people, saying goodbye to each other on the street, after having probably spent a long and happy time drinking whisky and a drink that they make called “El obrero amargo.” That could be called, “The bitter worker.”

Monica woke up early on Saturday to go out and sit zazen at the dojo at the Japanese Association. There was a strict Japanese monk in charge of things today. They sat for forty five minutes. Moni came back home all zenned, then we ate some lunch and got ready to go out on the town. We had a date to get together with Silvana, Ana, and Fabian at a restaurant downtown at eight o’cloc. This was really early, because Ana had to take a bus, then a train back to her home, and we didn’t want her to have to be out too late. As it was, Ana didn’t get on her bus until 1:30 a.m. but at least we tried. The restaurant where we met was called “Bodega Campo.” It specialized in rustic country food, mostly from the north of Argentina. The area in the northeast of the country borders with Bolivia, and it is the least developed area of Argentina. Small mountain villages that still retain their traditions. We look forward to getting there some time in the next few months.

We had hours before we were supposed to be at the restaurant, so we decided to start the day by taking the subte, then walking to a super-modern shopping mall called “Galerias Pacifico”–just for kicks. The ceiling is painted with murals by French painers, and it is quite impressive.

After the mall, we had to recover. There were too many people, too many stores, everything was in hyper-mode. We walked out of the mall, and right across the street, there was a church, La iglesia de Santa Catalina. Santa Catalina is the saint of nurses. There was a little courtyard where you could sit and drink tea. There was a sign that said that its mission was to attend to the spiritual needs of people working in the neighborhood, and those passing through. How could we go wrong. We stayed there in the beautiful afternoon light, drinking tea and enjoying the springtime, until we were ready to head for Bodega Campo.We walked down Corrientes Avenue on our way. Corrientes is one of the main arteries in the city, and we were walking toward El Obelisco–The Obelisc–Which is perhaps the most well-known sight in the city. Maybe it’s not as impressive as the Eiffel Tower, but it serves the same purpose. It’s the landmark of Buenos Aires. It is located in The Plaza of the Republic, at the intersection of Avenida 9 de Julio and Corrientes. This has to be one of the most awesome intersections in the world. Usually I’m not impressed by city scenes, but when we arrived at the intersection, we had to sit down just to look, boquiabierta. (open-mouthed) We were overwhelmed by the immensity, by the lanes of traffic, the openness, the size, the giant TV screens, everything. Avenida 9 de Jlio has twenty lanes of traffic, ten in each direction, and Corrientes is no slouch itself. The plaza where they meet is huge and round, with the obelisk soaring into the sky like a rocket. Monica said that finally she felt like we were in Buenos Aires itself, at the heart. Our neighborhood is quiet, with cobbled streets. The school where we work is in a working-class neighborhood. This at last was the world-class city that we had heard about. We continued on Corrientes, looking for the street where the restaurant was, Rodriguez de PeÑa. Corrientes was booming. The guidebook says that it is the Broadway of Buenos Aires. There were lots of bookstores, lots of pizza places (I think that if they eliminated pizzas and empanadas, half the city would die of hunger) and lots of theaters, large and small. Saturday night. People everywhere. Finally we found the street, and turned down it, looking for Bodega Campo. The street was kind of dark, and we walked right past it without seeing it. Finally, we backtracked, and I went into a hotel to ask where the place was. The concierge laughed, and said there it is, right across the street, but it’s only 8:00, and it’s not open yet. That’s why we didn’t see it. Soon, Silvana came along, then Ana, and we went to a little cafe across the street to sit and wait for Fabian. He was coming from work. We stayed there a few hours, talking and remembering. The lights on the whole block went out. Nobody even seemed to notice. Pretty soon, they came back on, and we left to go to the restaurant.We got to the restaurant at 11:00. Not bad for an eight o’clock date. The place was small and dark, with about fifteen tables. We sat down and ordered a bottle of wine. Everybody got a bowl of stew, served with bread. Very delicious, served in stone bowls. We stayed there for a couple more hours, and customers kept on coming in, well past midnight. Finally, we were ready to go, at one o’clock. Silvana asked the waiter what time they closed, and he said, well, maybe around three or four. Ana got on her bus, and the rest of us walked through town on our way home. There were lots of people out, and walking through the big city at 1:30 a.m. was very pleasant. We reached the street where we separated, and Monica and I walked home the rest of the way. We finally went to bed at 2.30, and we felt like verdaderos portenos!!