Obama

I watched Obama accept the Democratic Party nomination for president on Thursday night at a bar in the chic neighborhood of Palermo Viejo. To my surprise, the bar was packed with over 100 other U.S. expats all there to watch Barack as his lifesize figure was projected onto the bar's wall via internet.

As many of you know, politics has consumed much of my life for the past 5 or so years. Upon paying close attention to the first 4 years of the Bush presidency, I felt obligated to get involved. So, while in grad school, I found(with difficulty) my way for the first time to a college Democrats meeting. I'd never thought of myself as a staunch Democrat and didn't like the two party system (I still don't), but I felt like I had to jump on the rightward swinging pendulum to bring it back to the center. Two years later, I was running phonebanks for John Kerry's unsuccessful presidential bid. Two years after that, I co-directed a campaign for a candidate for Ohio Representative in the Columbus area. In between these years, I traveled throughout the country campaigning for Democratic candidates and served in a number of offices for various progressive groups.

The summer after my last campaign, I moved to Argentina to get away from it all and improve my Spanish. During that summer, I met people from all over the world. It was an opportunity to take a giant step back from U.S. politics and the ugly partisan rivalry in which I'd been embroiled for so long. The experience was liberating. I finally felt as though I could think about politics outside of the partisan box, that I could talk to people with different opinions without shouting.

Before, I had felt that critical thinking was a luxury. Reasoning with Republicans had never worked. In my discussions, I would concede too much and they would take my concessions but never make concessions themselves. Because they would never compromise, I then felt that I could not compromise, especially in a time when our government had so little balance in the sense that every major branch of government was controlled by Republicans. And so, for nearly 4 years, I was a mouthpiece of the Democratic party, a pure counterweight, conceding nothing, as unthinking as the Republicans on the other side. I felt that it was necessary, but I hated it. I wanted to be able to think again. I wanted to be able to have honest discussions with people, to reason, to compromise. It is not in my nature nor do I think it is intelligent to be a pure partisan or to utilize talking points at the expense of critical thinking and compromise.

Thank God in 2006 some balance was restored to our government. In Ohio especially, state offices were swept by the Democrats (though I almost wish Marc Dann hadn't won). The U.S. House and Senate as well swung left and were suddenly in Democratic control after years of hardcore Republican majorities which completely and utterly ignored the Democrats and went full speed ahead with an agenda that was far right of the country. The new balance was like a gift to me. I suddenly felt as if I was no longer obligated to be involved in politics, at least for the moment. No more knocking on random doors or calling random houses of people who mostly didn't want to talk with me. No more constant blog checks hoping for good news or developments or encouragment. I was free to go back to doing what I wanted, which was reading, writing, improving my Spanish, and traveling.

I had never wanted to get involved in politics, nor did I feel like I was well suited for it. I would have much rather left it to others. Now finally, there seemed to be a solid cadre of Democratic volunteers as well as activists and some money. I was no longer needed. And it was bliss.

My summer in Argentina allowed me to come back not as a Democrat but more as a citizen of the world. I no longer felt the strong emotions for politics and political discussions that I felt in the past. So, when approached with a political discussion, my heart no longer raced and the words no longer spit from my mouth. I was still interested, but I could enter into discussion without raising my voice or becoming overly emotional. I continued to maintain my progressive views, but I could state them in a way that didn't make the people with whom I was having a discussion automatically defensive.

When the presidential primaries rolled around, I still had no intention of volunteering. However, I was intrigued by this guy Barack Obama. I liked him because he seemed deeply intelligent and because he was refreshingly apartisan. On the Sunday talk shows, he answered questions thoughtfully instead of shouting back the tired Democratic talking points or attacks. He seemed more a professor than a career politician. He seemed determine to maintain his independence, despite the party to which he subscribed. He teamed with Republicans in the Senate and sought compromises instead of outright victories. In short, he seemed like a guy who could bring the country together, who could help us all quit our bickering and focus on common goals. And did I mention he was a pretty good speaker:) Which after years of W was more than refreshing.

Here was a guy I could support without having to revert to my blood boiling old partisan self. Here was a guy who would represent my desire for compromise, harmony, and a desire to truly solve problems instead of fight over them. In conversations with Republicans, he was disarmingly pensive and reasonable. And though he was young, he seemed to have a strong grasp of almost every major issue of the day.

I've never been crazy or starry eyed about any particular politician and I don't currently feel that way about Barack. However, watching his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was like being in a dream. That is, I don't know if my mind could do a better job of creating or inventing a candidate who so precisely respresents my values, way of seeing the world, and hopes for the future.

To watch and listen to his speech and not be moved by its intelligence, humanity, reasoned approach, and humble intensity could only suggest such a strong bias against him that one could never be open to his message. It was by far the best live speech I've ever heard and for the first time in a long time made me feel guilty for being in Argentina and not in the all important battle ground swing state OHIO.

When the speech ended, I felt a sense of urgency that this guy must be our next president, that it would be a tradgedy if he were not. Who else will bring the country together to help us solve the health care crisis, get the troops safely out of Iraq, fix the education system, fix social security, jumpstart the economy, solve the energy crisis. It won't be the other guy who is obsessed with being in Iraq for the next 100 years or who is intent on bullying Russia and reigniting the coldwar. Despite McCain's solid record on the environment (I respect him for that), the guy is obsessed with being a hard A#$ throughout the world. After travelling throughout the world for the past few years, I can attest that is the LAST thing we need. The image of the U.S. in the world has been severely tarnished by Bush. The world wants Obama. To them, he means freedom. The idea that a black guy with a diverse background and experience who is extremely intelligent can become president would reaffirm the world's belief in a country that has recently resorted to using torture and whose president created an Axis of Evil and said, 'You're with us or against us'.

It will be bad news if McCain wins and overextends our already overextended military, further upsets the world (creating more terrorists), wastes soldiers' lives, and spends all of our tax dollars as he overcompensates for his rapidly declining testosterone level. Don't get me wrong, his story of being a POW is amazing. 5.5 years in a Vietnamese POW camp and he wouldn't accept an early release so that he could stay with his men. The guy is a superman in my book. But superman or not, 5.5 years in a prisoner of war camp does something to you. His temper and his aggressive military stances scare me. In short, I do not want his finger on the button...

I don't know beyond voting how much I will be involved down here in the presidential election. In fact, I'm not sure there's too much I can do other than to vote and to express my views in this and other blogs. In any case, I felt compelled after hearing Barack's speech to state unequivocally that I want Barack Obama as our next president. I no longer feel ambivalent about this election. Barack as president would make me proud again to be from the states.

Other Jobs

In my last entry, I failed to mention my other 3 part time jobs....

I also teach English about 10 hours a week in the leafy, residential, upscale neighborhood of Belgrano far north of the city center. The agency for which I teach does most of its work with employees at Argentina's Hewlett Packard headquarters adjacent to Chinatown in BA. I have about 6 or 7 students total and the classes are mostly 1-1. The students with whom I work range in speaking level from intermediate to advanced. Apparently, native teachers are reserved more for advanced speakers. On top of that, Hewlett Packard only hires, I believe, people with at least a basic level of English. So, I will likely not be working with beginning learners in this position (Although I recently arranged a trade with a yoga instructor who is just beginning to learn English, in which I provide 1 hour of English class in exchange for one hour of yoga class).

Much of what I do at Hewlett Packard is to have conversations with employees, help to explain grammar, illustrate common sayings, explain new and useful vocabulary, and help with cultural insights. Selfishly, the job allows me a chance to learn more about Argentina and Argentine history. As I've obsessed about in this blog, I've been trying to piece together an understanding of what it is like to have lived in a country with such comparatively outrageous economic and political swings. To find out, I ask questions such as... how do you deal with 25% inflation or what was it like for you and your family during periods of hyperinflation (when it was very common, for instance, if the price of milk at the grocery store was lower in the morning than in the afternoon). And I ask what they think will happen if the current rate of inflation continues. If middle class incomes are only $7-10 thousand/year and prices now aren't that far different than they are in the U.S., a 25% rate of inflation can put a damper on, well, eating.

Despite my gripes with the U.S., the government or, as discussed earlier, our consumerist system has done a good job of providing us a relatively strong and stable dollar over a long period of time, with minimal inflation. The result is that if you live in the U.S., maintain a decent job throughout your life, and save somewhat dilligently, you can more or less enjoy a high standard of living (If you weren't devastated by investing in the stock market during the dot com or real estate busts or by medical expenses or credit card debt or college loans....). The strength of the dollars that we have saved has more or less held up and inflation has been minimized. The same has not been true in Argentina. Despite the best efforts of the middle class to save and get ahead, they have consistently been thrashed by political and economic instability. The result is that it's nearly impossible to 'get ahead' here as part of the middle class and people don't concern themselves much with saving, let alone investing, even in solid work environments like Hewlett Packard.

Getting back to the original topic of conversation, talking with folks at Hewlett Packard has been enjoyable. I pick their brains about Argentine history and their experiences and I spend the rest of the time telling them that the U.S. isn't exactly what you see on TV, which is to say that we don't generally swear as much or that not all men in the U.S. treat women so badly and that while guns are a problem, it's not every day that we are ducking cover due to drive-bys, at least not where I've lived.

Despite the fun I've been having, the negatives of the job are quickly outweighing the positives. That is, I almost know that I am for the most part wasting my time by taking the 70 minute round trip there everyday. Here's why.

1. The pay is good for AR and for an English teacher, but I'm not working enough hours to justify the travel time and energy. Often, I'm only working 2 hours/day. 2 hours per day= 50 AR pesos (a dismal 16.50 USD). If it takes 70 minutes travel time, and 2 pesos for the round trip and if I have to spend an hour in the cold while I wait between classes, that means I'm making about 12 pesos an hour or 4 dollars an hour, not nearly worth the effort of the trip, especially when I came to AR to do much more than talk in English with people, when it is most convenient for them. Granted, the job is easy and fun, but there are plenty of those types of jobs that I could do in the states (and for more money) so there's no reason for me to be doing it down here unless the experience were just that overwhelmingly impactful.

2. I like all my students, but they cancel often when they have busy days. And, they typically cancel at the last minute, leaving me stranded in Belgrano with nothing to do but wander Chinatown or answer emails in a cold/busy/expensive locutorio. Granted, I have cancelled class a few times due to travel plans, but my students cancel about 3-4 times as much as I do, and as I said, often at the last minute.

3. While the conversations I have are enjoyable, I again am not here to speak in English all day. Sometimes I feel as though I'm in the states or I might as well be. I'd much rather spend the same time with conversation partners speaking Spanish. Granted, the experience teaching English is a good one, but I feel as though in almost 2 months of doing this, I have learned the basic gist of teaching intermediate to advanced English. More or less, it is a matter of finding subtle and effective ways of correcting details, introducing specific vocabulary, and emphasizing key grammatical rules. If I'm going to continue this sort of job, my time would be better spent with beginners.

4. Due to the travel time and the way in which this job has been spaced out through the week, I haven't had a chance to exercise, write, or read as much as I had hoped during this trip. Spiritual reallignment was supposed to be a large part of my BA experience and instead, thus far, it has been all about work (well, I did have a lot of fun with my parents for 2 or so weeks).

So, in short, when my job as a tour guide picks up, I hope to minimize or cut out entirely the job teaching English. It was nice to hit the ground in BA running with this job and to meet some people, but the negatives are outweighing the positives.

Speaking of the job as a tour guide... Well, I haven't actually given any tours, except for practice tours. I have instead spent the past 1.5 months preparing by memorizing scripts, learning about Argentine history, walking the tour route, and practicing with friends. I'm supposed to begin giving tours in September and I feel ready.

My knowledge of Argentine history, culture, and architecture has grown exponentially (it didn't take much seeing as how up until this point I knew next to nothing) in the last few months and so has my interest in discussing it. Passion, I think, is necessary for a tour guide. You've got to be able to convey interest in order for someone else to care and to enjoy the tour. I didn't honestly care much about AR history before, but now I'm hooked.

Learning about the history has explained and helped me fit together puzzle pieces to answer many of the same questions I've been pondering in this blog. It has made my everyday experience in Buenos Aires more interesting and meaningful as I'm able to more intelligently assimilate current events and my new life here into a more meaningful and comprehensible whole. One example is that I'm finally beginning to understand why so many Argentines have no interest in politics or in voting in elections, despite the fact that voting is obligatory. The following explains why...

I'm currently reading 'A Brief History of the Argentinians'. One curious point it makes is that the founding fathers of Argentina were very concerned that the immigrant algicultural nation that they were organizing was not sophisticated enough to participate in democracy. So, they decided that it was their duty to do for the people what they could not. That is, they justified autocratic rule by reasoning that the people were too ignorant, undisciplined, and lacked respect for authority to such a degree that they were unfit to govern themselves. And, the founding fathers did so not out of spite it seems or because they were power hungry, but out of a desire to see the country succeed, for altruistic reasons (if that is possible from government leaders).

I make this claim because the turn of the century in AR was its glory day. And during this time, universal suffrage did not exist.

Men got the vote in 1912 and women not until 1951 (due to the work of Evita). In short, the country was set up by a strong, intelligent, and apparently somewhat benevolent autocracy... and thrived as a result. The founding fathers helped implement new agricultural technology, worked out trade deals, structured the tax system, and attracted chests full of foreign investment in the city...Did all this so masterfully that BA and AR in general boomed. Out of the soil of the pampas it shot up to become the 7th wealthiest country at the turn of the century, without democracy. At the time, AR experienced widespread economic prosperity, a growing middle class with a relatively high standard of living, and immigration from all over the world was not only welcomed but encouraged (not out of kindness, but as a means of labor for the pampas). Public transportation was introduced and buildings and public infrastructure of the highest quality were constructed.

It reminds me a lot of today's China. If China had been a democracy, is there really any way they could have made the economic and infrastructural progress that they have made in so few years? Could they have put on such an elaborate and amazing olympics? Could they have organized such a gigantic country and moved it towards empire without autocratic power? I don't think so....Is autocracy ok? In general I don't think so but there are times maybe when it is necessary for the growth and stabilization of a country....It is undeniable that a great deal of progress can be made in a short time if the majority does not rule. But that requires that a ruler or rulers be benevolent and with power so often corrupting, this idea has spawned more examples of dictatorship and despotism than wide scale prosperity....

But I digress.... My fourth and final job is to write reviews of restaurants and other landmarks for the same company for which I will begin giving tours. Each article is 800-1200 words long (a few pages) and involves both a trip or two to the place I'm reviewing as well as historical and other descriptive detail research. All said and done, the time that I put into the articles is far more than the money I earn for them. In fact, I figure I am very much doing this company a favor by essentially donating my services to them. However, the idea of writing for any sort of money is exciting to me. I figure that I have no body of published work in existence, save this scatter-brained blog, my editorial days for the Miami University student paper, and a few letters to the editor in various Ohio newspapers. So, my idea in donating my time is that I might be able to get another job writing in the future if I am able to point to the body of published work that I produced. My foot in the door, I suppose.

So far, I have written 3 reviews. One of the Jardin Botanical Carlos Thays or the Botanical Garden, a 100 year old garden of trees, plants, and flowers that supposedly exhibits the major plant life from the various regions of Argentina. The next review was of an almost 150 year old cafe that specializes in 5-0-clock tea hour that includes gigantic platters of cakes, cookies, and finger sandwhiches, as well as a fine tea selection and a boatload of artisan baked goods. The final review was of an Argentine barbecue/Spanish restaurant called Rodi Bar. They are supposedly known for their filet mignon (called lomo here) and it did not disappoint.

All in all, the assignments have been fun. It's cool to go to restaurants in the form of a critic-kind of a dream for a foody like me. It's also been good practice in the sense that it has forced me to engage in the writing process on a regular basis, which makes it that much easier to sit down and begin writing in general.

4 jobs sounds like a lot, but between cancellations for my English classes and the fact that I'm just finishing training for the guide job, I'm not as busy or stressed as it sounds. However, I could and should make things easier than they already are by giving up the English conversation classes at HP and instead finding more barter or trade deals. Maybe I could begin trading English classes for meals at fancy restaurants or more Spanish classes....

Quick Job Update

It's a weird feeling watching the beginning of the year emails roll in from my school psychology job in Reynoldsburg. I feel a bit guilty, like I should be there preparing my list of evaluations and taking part in beginning of the year planning meetings. Then again, I'm not ready to go back to Ohio and feel as though I'm just getting started here. And, I'm content with my series of part time jobs. That said, here's a quick update.

The job that occupies the majority of my time is teaching two kids from San Francisco, ages 8 and 10. We have class on Tuesdays and Fridays from 2:15 to 5:15. They're bright kids and in a 2:1 situation, I'm able to tackle some relatively tough topics. The crux of my lessons is a curriculum from their previous school in the states. The 10-year-old is studying the California Gold Rush of 1850. The 8-year-old is studying tall tales, the salmon life cycle and salmon stewardship. On top of the recommended curriculum, I've tried to add lessons that are relevant to the kids' lives and what's going on in the world. For instance, I taught them about Chile when they traveled to a ski resort near Santiago on vacation and ditto for when they took a sleeper bus to Mendoza, Argentina. Other examples are that we had a competition focusing on the olympics to teach the kids about market dynamics and on July 4th we explicated The Declaration of Independence.

I try to start each day off with a fun brain teaser game and ease into the day from there. Occassionally, I give them time to reflect on their school days as a means of allowing them to get off their minds anything lingering from school that might impede our time together. Lately, we have been journaling, but any sort of writing is difficult to get out of them after an already lengthy school day. Sometimes too we play competitive games to see who can decipher passages from Shakespeare and for my school psychology friends out there, we have been working on short-term memory through digit span type games.

Today marks the ending of our olympics competition, a market-based game in which we predicted the outcomes of 5 different sports. The idea behind it is if they predicted a favored team to win and the team won, they earned 1 point where as if a team that was not favored wound up winning, they earned 5 points (greater risk, greater reward). As it turns out, the 8-year-old girl won and as such, I will be taking her a large dulce de leche con brownie (Gold) ice cream cone. The 10-year-old came in second (Is there a silver colored ice cream that isn't appalling? I will soon find out) and I came in third (I'm not even giving myself a years supply of rice-a-roni). After the awards ceremony/ice cream party, we will talk about the general concept by which it worked, and connect it to the stock and other market concepts. I know, big stuff for kids this young, but when it's just the 3 of us, we can really push the limits.

The next big activity is a stock market game, an extension of the olympics competition. The rules are 3 stocks, 1000 dollars/stock, unlimited trades (10 dollars/trade), and choosing stocks that meet 2 sets of 5 criteria/market dynamics that we are going to talk about (supply and demand, risk reward etc.) After one month, we will see who has the most virtual money. The winner gets....Probably something to do with dulce de leche (Hey, cheeseburgers and cherry cokes seem to work for Buffet, right?)

Lucky

I never thought I'd say this, but..... Those of us who live in the U.S. are very lucky.

It's not that I've never felt lucky to live in the U.S. It's just that people in the U.S. say things like, 'The US is the greatest country on Earth' or 'Everybody wants to live here' without asking or even wondering why. I've always felt that while the U.S. is an ok country, there are likely countries with better systems and more humane policies. As such, it's been a while since I've felt let alone expressed that I'm truly lucky to live in the U.S.

I didn't come to Argentina with the intention of making an honest comparison to the U.S. or as a means of seeing how others lived so that I could appreciate my life in the U.S. I came as an opportunist who felt excitement about the value of my U.S. dollar spending power (3 pesos=1USD). I also wanted to increase my Spanish skills, have an adventure, gain life experience, eat carne (just kidding but not really), gain a different perspective, and have fun. In any case, after inadvertently learning about the history of Argentina and the plight of the average Argentine through working with Argentines and becoming a working Joe myself, I've come to understand that the average U.S. citizen is by comparison very lucky.

For my Fox News Bill O'Reilly loving friends and family (I love you all), my sense that we are lucky is not about the fact that we are the most free or that we all love freedom or that our way of life is the best or that our culture is the best or that our government is the most fair or that life is much better in the U.S.

We are lucky because we have a giant economic safety net. What do I mean by that? I mean that our country can make all kinds of economic and political blunders and no matter how many times we fall off the mountain, there is one thing that has and will for at least the foreseeable future save us-our rabid consumer culture and giant and currently irreplaceable marketplace. For this reason, our dollar will not fall too far, no matter how much and how many different types of debt we incur, no matter how many banks fail, no matter how many people are suckered into home loans that they can't pay. The rest of the world needs our addiction to buying stuff. They are as addicted to our consumption as we are to their stuff. As a result, until another country surpasses our marketplace in size and buying power (see China in a decade or s0-they are growing at 10% every year and currently represent 25% of the US economy), we will continue to experience only kid glove economic blows. This is one reason why the president asks us to keep buying stuff. It is our salvation.

The following is an exerpt from The New Yorker (James Surowiecki) that explains how Iceland is suffering economic woes since other countries have been spooked by the meltdown in the U.S. subprime market and have pulled money from investment in Iceland. As a result, the country's currency, the krona, has lost 22% of its value in the last year and the economy has been thrust into recession, despite the fact that they have more or less played by the rules. The difference between Iceland and the U.S. is that Iceland doesn't represent a signifant consumer market for the rest of the world (their population is the size of Pittsburgh). Consequently, they are considered irrelevant- there's no substantial reason for other countries to maintain their investment.

'And that's the second lesson of Iceland's plight; even in a flat world, there are different rules for different players. In order to prop up the krona, and keep foreign capital from fleeing, Iceland's central bank has had to raise interest rates to an astounding fifteen per cent, a move that will slow the economy to a crawl. By contrast, the dollar, while weak, has evaded the krona's precipitous fall; the Federal Reserve, far from raising interet rates, has slashed them; and Congress is borrowing a hundred and fifty-two billion dollars to hand out tax rebates. Iceland's government has been forced to inflict pain; the U.S. is doing everything possible to avoid it. If Iceland were to attempt to emulate America's approach, its currency would be demolished, and foreign investors would almost certainly head for the exits. The U.S, by contrast, remains the beneficiary of the world's generosity-no matter how bad our financial situation looks, countries like China and Japan keep pouring hundreds of billons of dollars into U.S. seurities. They're doing this not out of kindness, of course, but because the U.S. is a colossal market and they need us to keep buying stuff. The world can't afford to have the U.S. fail, and so we are able to get away with behavior that would wreck smaller countries. Great for us, but when we look at Iceland's predicament we should say that there but for the grace of China go we.'

My entire stay in Argentina, the following types of economic questions have been swirling in my head: Why is it so expensive to buy foreign products in AR, why did the country allow its currency become devalued so drastically, why is it so difficult for people here to get a line of credit, why do most people have to pay the full cost of a home upfront instead of getting a mortgage, why are credit limits so low, why are the offerings of foreign goods and products so dismal in comparison to the U.S., how come these same products are so expensive (more than quality products in the U.S.), how can companies and businesses treat customers with such comparitive disrespect and poor service, and why do the people put up with such terrible products and services? The only answer that Argentines have given me is that business leaders here are corrupt and take too big a cut and mistreat people for their own benefit and government officials are crooked and do the same.

I believe that's true, but only partially so. While Argentina has made its share of economic blunders and more, their fault is less in their selves than in their stars. That is, Argentina is unlucky. They have never developed the marketplace or the population or the geography to attract good international business. As a result, they are just like Iceland, only worse because their currency is so woefully devalued. Companies are only peripherally concerned with Argentina. As a result, there is less competition, and not much interest in competing. International business is difficult to attract and existing businesses aren't interested in and don't need to treat customers well because few other options or competition exist and economically, it's simply not worth the effort. Instead, companies concern themselves with kissing the feet of the biggest marketplace in the world. The U.S. receives the best and cheapest products, we max out our credit cards, we take on home loans we can't afford, we complain at the first sign of consumer injustice, we develop a gigantic sense of consumer entitlement.... and companies enable it. The businesses of the world are addicted to our rabid consumerism just as we are addicted to their products. We enjoy a dependent co-dependent relationship that ensures our high standard of living.

I predict that despite our many deficits, the rise in gas and food prices, decreasing home values, and the drop in the value of the dollar, we will continue to experience only a slow drop in our standard of living. However, things might get ugly as soon as another consumer economy replaces ours in size, power, and consumer apetite. It is only a matter of time then before we will feel what it is like to be less relevant.

Parilla

During my almost three months in Argentina in 2007, I ate steak once. It was good, but nothing special and I was preoccupied with the idea that red meat is bad for you and you shouldn't eat it. Now I can't believe how completely and utterly stupid I was.

See above a picture of me cooking the Argentine equivalent of filet mignon.....for breakfast. Folks, I'm addicted.

Upon trying the steak again during my parent's trip, I quickly became hooked. In the past, I craved sweets, breads, sushi, and other ninny forms of food. But now that I have had tried truly good beef, it is what I crave above all else. And it's not just the finest cuts....

In a few moments, I have to leave to practice giving my tour of the city to a friend so I don't have much time to elaborate, but I want to impart a lesson I learned about a week ago....

Heaven is a town called Jesus Marie in central Argentina.

The town itself is without a doubt ugly. The people are really friendly, but the town is beat up, overgrown, poorly maintained, and just plain undesirable.

We entered the town after a long day of driving through the mountains from La Cumbre in search of Jesuit churches. Unfortunately, all the churhes were closed and, as we later found out, always are on Monday. Tired, hungry, and ornery, we stopped in the last town on the Jesuit trail, Jesus Marie. My parents were still full from a big breakfast, but I hadn't eaten as much and needed lunch. On the main drag of the city, we spotted one restaurant. It was one of the only restaurants open and there seemed to be many cars in the parking lot (a good sign typically). The name was Los Cruces and upon walking in, we were almost sure that we had stumbled on a tourist trap. As it turned out, everyone there was speaking Spanish and as I said before, Monday isn't a big day for tourism because the Jesuit church is closed.

We found seats away from the locals and the owner, who seemed annoyed to have to be dealing with tourists, approached us and said in Spanish...Well I don't know what you want but what we have is parilla (barbecue) so I if you're going to eat here, that's what you'll get. Fair enough, parilla sounded perfect to me. My parents weren't hungry and just wanted a little, but I wanted the whole shebang and thank Jesus Marie, that's what I got.

After haggling with the owner over the price, which I did not do a good job of because he more or less robbed us, a man began bringing us cuts of meat from a nearby grill. Our waiter was also cutting the fresh meat and grilling it at the same time. As soon as he gave us one piece, he began grilling another. My plate was never empty but never full. That way, the meat never had a chance to get cold and was as fresh as I have ever eaten. Friends and family, it was heaven.

Meat in the countryside of Argentina must be fresher. I'm guessing there is less distance that the slaughtered cow must travel since Jesus Marie is located near so many estancias. And the quality of cow is amazing, espetacular. We saw these cows grazing on 1000s of acres of land in the mountains. They had more than enough space and were chewing on exotic/wild mountain grass. It made me want to be an Argentine cow. The views from their resting spots were breathtaking and the air was crisp and clean. A very privileged life...before slaughter...And the resulting flavor was...need I say more.

That day in Jesus Marie at Los Cruces, I ate almost everything on my plate, not just the choices cuts of meat. I ate fat, intestines, weird cuts surrounded by fat and gristle that had somehow become oh so flavorful. The entire time, the owner watched us warily, as if he were pissed that he had to share such an amazing secret with us. Were it not for the quality of the meat, I would have been extremely uncomfortable. But it was as if I had been given a drug. My parents, who enjoyed only one piece of meat, had to endure my constant praise and sounds of pleasure as I tore into each new offering. Each time after thanking my waiter/butcher/grill artiste, he would simply nod knowingly, as if to say, 'Yes, I know you are from the city and you have never tasted good meat. Yes, I know it is good. Ok, that's enough'.

In the end, I thanked the owner and told him how I felt that the meat was the best I had ever eaten. He told me that the key was freshness at every step from slaughter to the table, and proceeded to overcharge me accordingly. I didn't care. I would have paid double.

Friends and family, I have found happiness and it is called Los Cruces in Jesus Marie, an overgrown, overcast town in the middle of Argentina. To summarize, the key is fresh meat, freshly cut, and eating it the moment it is off the grill.

Parent Edition

The parents left yesterday morning for the Salta province in the North of Argentina, close to the Bolivian border. It's about a two hour flight from Buenos Aires to Salta and the resultant change in geography brings with it dramatic differences in climate, food, and culture. Buenos Aires is flat, humid, and concrete. From what I gather, Salta is mountainous, dry, and far more natural. The culture and food are different as well. Buenos Aires is a big city where you learn for better or worse not to trust people until you're almost sure you know them. Salta is supposedly more like middle America, a place where the people are kind and giving from the outset. And while Buenos Aires is dominated by an Italian/Spanish food mix, Salta apparently offers more indigenous fare like locro stew (beans, different cuts of beef and pork, sweet potatoes etc), tamales, choclo (corn stew), and even llama. The weather is also different in Salta province, with more sunny warm days in the winter and almost unbearably hot ones in the summer. As an example, today was a dark 50 degree winter day in Buenos Aires and according to my parents, it was sunny shorts weather in Salta.

Anyhow, the past week with the parents was fun. As many of you know, their flight was delayed an entire day as a result of thunderstorms and the arrival of King Bush errr president Bush to the Atlanta airport. Apparently when Bush flies into an Airport, all flights are grounded and none can land either. I suppose it's the least we as citizens can do for a man who has done errrrr... so much for the U.S. during his time in office. But I digress....

Despite mom's profound frustration at being delayed a day for a trip she has been planning for half a year (by a guy she didn't vote for...twice), her mood had changed noticeably when she exited the remise(sort of a private taxi service that I set them up with). Before I get to that, I want to mention that the remise was almost an hour and a half late, or later than I had anticipated. So I was totally worried, already having created a worst case scenario in my head for what had happened. The parents were caught up in customs having to pay import fees on all the stuff I had them bring me from the states. The remise driver hadn't connected with them and they were trying to figure out how to get to my place or had accepted a ride from a crooked cab driver. The guilt was sinking in. Why didn't I meet them at the airport instead sending a car for them!?

My fear eased when I saw my mom coming down the road in a nice mid size taxi type vehicle driven by an older female remise driver. Except, before reaching my apartment, the remise turned and circled around my block. I ran after the car at top speed hoping to catch up with her at the next light, but she was already gone. The car was circling the block, trying to find my address once more. On the second trip down my street, I ran on the sidewalk toward the approaching car and could see my mother pointing to me from the front seat. I herded the remise next to my apartment and soon learnt that the driver had a number of problems finding not only my apartment, but my street as well. I knew then that the driver more or less had no idea what she was doing. The street on which I live is one of the major veins of BA and if you don't know Paraguay, you haven't been around the city much. In any case, my parents told me that the driver treated them very well and drove safely. This reassurance in itself was enough for me not to care that the driver charged me extra as a result of her inability to find my street.

The parents were in and out of my apartment in less than 15 minutes as they we needed to catch the subway to start their first Spanish class in the leafy well-heeled Belgrano neighborhood inside the heavenly Esmerelda cafe where fresh pannetones are regularly pulled from the oven and placed temptingly in front of the coffee drinking crowd. On the way to the subway, we stopped in to a local bakery and bought fresh empanadas because....because we could. At 66 cents a piece, a fresh beef, chicken, or ham and cheese empanada is the perfect cure for low energy or just about any other ailment. And that is a scientific fact.

We made it to Belgrano only a few minutes late. Upon entering the bakery, my parents were mesmerized by the unprecedented array of amazing sweets. I practically had to pull them away from the display cases to their waiting teacher, my friend Silvina, a translator and BA native. After settling the folks into their new morning home, I left the class to spend time in an internet cafe studying Argentine history to prepare for my job as a tour guide.

The second half of our first day involved searching for a foam mattress to cover my sandbag-like futon so that my parents wouldn't have to visit a chiropracter during the trip. For me, the walk to the Villa Crespo neighborhood was a normal day's journey, nothing out of the ordinary. I forgot that for my parents it was not. We found the foam, but the walk proved fatal. My dad estimates in the end that we walked over 10 miles on their first day. On the bright side, we packed a ton of sights and sounds into one day, easily two days worth, thereby making up for the lost day. The downside was that my mom's reoccuring leg injury flared up and more or less put her out of commission for the next few days. I had forgotten about this injury and my mom, like her daughter and grandaughter, is not one to complain. She was far more interested in this new experience than in protecting her leg.

That night, I took my parents out for their 40th wedding anniversary at my favorite restaurant, El Remanso. We arrived at about 8:30 pm(the first customers in the restaurant). I knew the parents would share their food so I ordered for them, two dishes I felt they needed to try, a full sized filet mignon and a large serving of paella. I ordered pollo a la plancha, or a simple grilled chicken with some fried eggs. As an aside, the pictures from the parent visit are coming. The parents have them all on their camera and I will include them when they are back in town in a week and a half. As I was saying, the arrival of the filet mignon signalled my father's first lasting smile of the trip. Granted, he had smiled earlier in the day upon seeing pannetone fresh from the oven. However, dad was clearly smitten at the amazing cut of meat before him and the flavor did not let him down. We tore into our meals and left nothing save a few pieces of bread. More than satisfied with the first meal, we caught a cab home and my parents fell quickly asleep and stayed that way until after 9 am the following morning, uncharacteristically late.

The remaining week before my parents flew off to Salta was an exercise in Frato indulgence. Mom couldn't walk as much the following days as the first. So, we spent a good deal of time sampling foods and seeing local sights instead, as well as making one touristy trip per day to places like the Plaza de Mayo, the Casa Rosada, the Obelisk, and the San Telmo street fair. We also made trips to some of the biggest grocery stores in the city, Jumbo and Coto Abasto, as a means of giving my parents a better sense of all the types of food that Buenos Aires has to offer. Further, I indulged my parents with a different Argentine food every day. The following is everything that my parents stuffed their faces with in their first week here: Empanadas (beef, chicken, ham and cheese, and choclo), pasta frola, veal milanesas, fresh ravioli, boulagnese sauce, multiple loaves of pan del campo (country white bread), Argentine pears, Argentine Pink Lady apples, giant croissants, facturas, medialunas, alfahores, dulce de leche with brownie ice cream, super dulce de leche ice cream, pistachio ice cream, and boisenberry and chocolate icecream, roasted red pepper, ham, and cremoso cheese pizza, torta de calabaza, torta de espinaca, torta de jamon y queso, una parillidita, and filet mignon (4 nights).

I know my dad doesn't like big cities. He spent much of the first week pointing out the trees and birds and wondering which direction was North, a futile exercise when the buildings are so tall that you rarely see the sun in the winter. Watching dad try to relate to the city was kind of like watching the movie Crocodile Dundee. Granted, my dad grew up in the inner city and is no stranger to it. Regardless, I don't think he is comfortable with or made to be in such a perceptually deafening and unnatural place. To ease his time here, I made sure to appeal to his love for good food. In fact, in addition to the aformentioned indulgences, we bought a porcelain covered cast iron grill for my stove top so that we could grill up steaks. To date, we have grilled filet mignon and fresh eggplant 3 nights on the little grill. With filet at 7-10 dollars a kilo, we could not justify restraint.

Mom seems to have connected with the city a bit more. I can't say that she seemed enamored with it, but she certainly seems to have enjoyed exploring, learning Spanish, trying new foods, and learning about the culture. Speaking of which, we were able to meet up with my former host family on two separate occassions, once for dinner at their house and the next time for coffee and cakes. Both events were successes, the two families connecting very well despite an almost complete language disconnect. My former host family speaks no English, save a few words and my parents speak barely more Spanish than my host family speaks English. I was forced into the position of translating as much as possible, which becomes extremely exhausting (if you've ever been put in this situation you know). Nevertheless, basic connections were made and both evenings ended more warmly than I thought possible for two groups of people who could barely understand each other. Surprisingly, my parents expressed that they enjoyed both of these encounters, pointing out that these types of cultural events are what make great travel. I hadn't considered it, but it's true. The cultural connections I made sitting at my host family's dinner table sharing coffee and cake for hours and hours were the memories and feelings that stuck with me as I made my decision to move back down here for a year. Despite how much I talk about it, it wasn't the food that brought me here. It wasn't the draw of big city life. And it wasn't just the opportunity to practice Spanish. It was the emotionally substantive connections that I made with people through conversation, made that much more interesting by communicating in a second language.

The highlights so far of my parents stay have been our first night at El Remanso, A fun day walking through the San Telmo street market, a wild trip to Retiro station to buy bus tickets, Dinner and coffee with my former host family, and our second try at grilling filet mignon which resulted in what can only be described as a dinner of dreams.

In general, though, it has been fun to have my parents in the city. It makes me realize that my family certainly isn't the reason why I left Ohio for the year. Sharing this experience with my parents has revealed to me that I can continue to be challenged and grow despite the presence of my family. Having my parents here has given me the best of both worlds, so to speak. The loneliness of being in a place without family has been alleviated, but the excitement remains.

In less than a week, I'll leave on an overnight bus trip to meet my parents in Cordoba, on the West side of AR. From there, we will drive out to the surrounding countryside to, I hope, spend some quiet time in the hills before returning to Buenos Aires a few days later. My parents will then have almost another week in Buenos Aires before heading back to the states to start the work year. At the same time that they leave, my daily workload will increase and I should enter into a routine that will define my life for at least the next year here. My hope is that the routine I create is healthier and more people filled than the life I left in the U.S. I'm finally beginning to feel comfortable in the city again, content to read on the subway without worrying too much about pickpocketers and the like. The language is beginning to come to me almost spontaneously. And I can saunter as opposed to rush walk when I concentrate.

I think it's still too early to tell whether I'm a country or city person. Certainly I'm more comfortable in the country or small towns, no doubt about that. But despite my lack of comfort in the city, it does seem to be the only place in which I feel truly alive, forced to be in possession of my wits. In small town U.S., I can daydream through life. Here, I am forced to live in the present. And the truth is I spent way too much time daydreaming of excitement when I was a kid. Now is the time for the actual adventure.