Observations On Argentinian Culture

Graham is doing our taxes online right now… not the cheeriest errand. So I am taking it upon myself to do something useful too, like bloging about marginally interesting things.

We´ve been here almost two months now and we´ve made a few observations about the culture here in Argentina. Granted we are living in the countryside and our little town is very touristy.  This undeniably skews the results of our survey. But nonetheless, here are our observations:

1) Aside from the observance of the ¨siesta¨, private businesses pay little heed to ¨regular¨ business hours. Many times we will go to a store at 11am and it will be closed, we try again later at 6pm, and it is also closed.  Then we´ll happen to be walking by on a day we don´t need something from said store, and it will be open during these same hours. This may not only be a problem for foreigners like us. Our host mother, Nuria (who lives here, hello) said she tried to go to the butcher shop three different times during ¨normal¨ business hours and it was closed every time.  Though inconvenient, this trend just forces us to drink more beer and eat more ice cream while we wait for shops to open.

2) Food/drink: Argentinians hate hot/spicy food. Furthermore, they rarely offer or cook with hot-spice of any kind. I have yet to see a black pepper shaker on the table in any restaurant. Our host mother claims that if you eat spicy food (is black pepper really considered ¨spicey¨?) it will burn off your taste buds and you will be unable to savor the real flavor of a dish. While I´m talking about food, I will also mention the large Italian and Spanish influence in the country. You can find delicious, cheesy pizzas and pastas anywhere.  The beer, however, seems to be largely German and Swiss in style. I say boo to no hops, while Graham says yay! Both of us are interested in why restaurants and even pubs rarely serve beer on tap, here.

3) People:  Everyone here is so attractive!! Very few people are overweight and in general the women wear little to no make-up. At least in Buenos Aires and our little town here Cordoba, it´s very difficult to tell who is a foreigner and who is Argentinian as most people look very European in general. Graham has made the observation that most young men wear board shorts instead of real pants or shorts, and most women wear their hair long. We haven´t seen many gay folks around, though Nuria told there is one gay couple who own a small jewelry store in town. We want to go buy something from them. There is also the custom here of kissing on the cheek when you meet someone. Not a kiss on each cheek, normally just a peck on the right cheek (now, don´t get cheeky with me…) When Graham and I were discussing it, I claimed that everyone kisses upon meeting, and Graham said that guys don´t kiss each other. ¨How do you know?¨ I asked him, duh, ¨Hello! Because I´m a guy¨ he said, making his voice gruff. Point taken. So apparently when men meet each other for the first time, they shake hands like Americans from the United States (I´ve also learned to qualify ¨Americans¨ as there are more than U.S.-ers who live on the continents of America)

4) Driving: Dang. Drivers here are crazy. I think Becca Houser told us that there are more traffic related deaths in Buenos Aires than anywhere else in the world. We can see now why this might be true. a) barely anyone wears helmets when riding motorcycles, seriously, people, c´mon  b) I don´t know why they even have traffic lanes, since drivers like to drive on top of the lines, instead of between them. And a side note, our teenage volunteer companion told us that most of the cars in Argentina are manual transmission.  She said that only rich people or people with disabilities drive automatic cars, ¨cuz you don´t have to do anything, and they´re really expensive¨ she said.

Anyway, there are many more things, and perhaps after we leave our little town and experience more of the country our observations will change.

I´m including some photos below of a mishmash of things. The best is the before and after picture of Graham´s sunburn. He had a rip in his shirt and got an epic ¨slice burn¨.  There´s also photos of Graham teaching Lucia, our teenage volunteer pal, how to smoke a tobacco pipe, photos of Diego in his bee suit, and of the Waldorf school that our family and their neighbors built. We also visited a little town called Cumbrecita where our family´s son plays Beatles songs in a little restaurant for extra cash during the summer. They invited me up to play and sing! Graham didn´t bring his banjo, otherwise he would have been up there, too.

Thanks for reading!

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On Neighbors and Music

It´s commonly known among people of the world, that neighbors can be one of our biggest assets.  This is most especially true when you need four-wheel-drive to get to your front door.

Our little family shares a plot of about thirty acres with two other families. At one point they shared things as intimate as their water-well, that is, until the water ran dry.  But now they mostly share fun times together as well as a gentle dependence on neighborly favors.  Imagine if you ran out of eggs during a recipe, and your neighbor just happened to have 25 chickens?? Or what if you were digging a giant hole in the garden, and your neighbor just happened to be a sculptor with an endless supply of tools – perfect for digging?  These sorts of things happen often. What we didn´t know when we originally read the description of our family in the WWOOF directory, is that both families are full of incredibly talented musicians. In turn, they have become some of our favorite people.

Paulo y Paula, the neighbors who live closest to our family, are in love with Brazilian bossa nova and samba, so we are becoming enamoured with the music of Caetano Veloso, the infamous Brazilian musician.  So far we have learned three songs by him, in Portuguese!! (thinking of you Emily, Galen and the Farias!) The other neighbors, Ariel and Adriana (I know, these couples really picked their name-twins) play sitar! Ariel is supposedly one of Argentina´s best sitar players – probably one of the only sitar players, as well.  But he studied in India and has like 500 sitars in the basement home studio he is building. Wow!

A few Sundays ago, Ariel and Adriana invited everyone over to their house for some music. They have two younger sons, age 4 and 11, who are very lively, as well.  The evening began by sharing folk songs on guitar and banjo and ended with Grandma dancing the tango with a broom stick! Every time a song would end everyone would erupt in applause and the tiny little boy would scream at the top of his lungs in excitement. Yes! I love these people! They also taught us one of their traditional Argentinian folk dances called the Chacarera, where the men and women make eyes at each other the entire dance, but never touch. So there Graham and I were, stomping and twirling with our arms in the air, fairly clueless, but having a wonderful time.

These evening music jams usually includes wine and savory home-made torts. Paulo y Paula also have an extensive live-concert-DVD collection, so often we sit around listening to records and introducing each other to different songs and artists.  Recently, at one of our jam sessions, Paula exclaimed that she knew the owner of a local bar and asked if we´d like to play there one night.  Um, in front of an entirely Spanish-speaking crowd? For who-knows-how-long and under who-knows-what conditions?  We agreed, wholeheartedly.

Below you´ll see some photos of the bar – which actually reminded us of some cozy, Government Camp lodge in Oregon. It´s called Potrerillo (whatever that means..) and we played way up high in a loft like corner stage. The place was packed and our family and all the neighbors and their mother-in-laws and kids came too. Here in Argentina, they do everything later. Dinner is typically at 9pm, so even though we were the only people playing, we started at 12:30pm, que raro!!! The show went fairly well. The sound system gave us trouble the whole way through, so I´m fairly certain I blew out some ear drums with my harmonica. We asked the neighbors if they´d like to accompany us on a few songs, and we had a blast with those. A few people came up to us afterwards with very warm compliments. One couple in the crowd requested Pearl Jam and mentioned the soundtrack from ¨Into the Wild¨.  Unfortunately we had to let them down, but we did play a Beatles song that got some good applause (The Beatles are unbelievably huge here).  However, maybe the coolest thing of all is that we got paid $700 pesos! You heard me, $700 pesos. Okay, it´s about $165 bucks, but that´s way more than we ever get paid in the States. Thanks Argentina! That little pocket of dough will probably fund our entire three months in this town.

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Overall, we are still having a great time and we have about a month and a half left of our stay here. Then, it´s up the wind to send us in our next direction.

Thanks everyone for reading!