Ensalada de Frutas

For many years we've gotten away with the boys thinking that dessert is a bowl of cut fruit, and that ice cream or other sweets are really rare treats. We're actually not that crazy about limiting sugar (all posts about day-before-the-holiday-break-class-parties notwithstanding). It's just been the best way to hoard all the ice cream and sweets for ourselves! But when we got here we realized that winter might put a crimp in our postre ploy.

Imagine how excited we were when we found that one of the cafes that we frequent often has a visually pleasing and tasty tall glass of cut fruit, which the boys have ordered almost every time we've eaten there!



Oh yeah, they also have great espresso and café con leche, too!

Hawaiian Style?

I've written a number of times about the dog crap all over the sidewalks and the parks here in Buenos Aires. Recently I noticed that many apartment buildings have someone who gets up early in the morning to wash down the sidewalk fronting the building, which means that within an hour there are brand new & neat steaming, well-formed piles left by dog owners too lazy to take more than five or six steps away from the front door, or to pick up after their dogs.

Here's what it often looks like in the area between our elevator and our apartment door...but at least our floors remain relatively clean!

Deadbeat Dad

Those of you who have done pickup in your car after school at Punahou (and probably every other school) have undoubtedly cursed the slow-moving (yet really efficiently organized) lines at least once in the whole experience. At Lange Ley, the boys' school, all the adultos crowd outside the double doors on the sidewalk and wait for a glimpse of their son or daughter so the teachers can let the students go home. It's organized mayhem: all the mothers greet each other and each other's children, ram bodies like bumper cars, and squeeze pedestrians into the street while they blow their cigarette smoke into each other's faces, and the nannies (the vast majority of the women) all chatter about whatever nannies chatter about when they come to pick up their little charges.

There are a few fathers who come to pick up their children, but most of them are dressed in their suits or other work clothes. There's one who sticks out like a sore thumb - the deadbeat dad who shows up with earbuds blasting The Dan Patrick Show, dressed in some goofy combination of layered jackets and sweatshirts, and looking confused at the words flying around him through the smoke while he searches for his sons through the glass puertas:

Punished by Rewards?

This week Jack has been having a little trouble going to school, sort of hitting a bit of a low after realizing that this is life for the next five months. And in his defense, he's also had a return of the ear infections that occasionally plague him. He had to stay home from school on Monday and Tuesday, so he got used to mornings with a parent and even cartoons on TV (cartoons are cartoons, even if they are in Castellano).

On Wednesday when I took him to school I left him sobbing in his teacher's arms, happy that preschool teachers here are the same at home: they all know that in such cases hustling parents out the door is far better than prolonging goodbyes (she and I had a funny moment when I thought she was telling me to give Jack a kiss, when if fact she was turning her own cheek for the hello/goodbye kiss everyone exchanges - a few head bumps were the only casualty of my latest misunderstanding).

Well, not all preschool teachers are alike...

When Erin came home with Jack that afternoon she first told me that Flopi (seriously, that is Jack's teacher's name) reassured her that Jack didn't cry long after I left, and that she also calmed him by giving him a piece of candy.

We were both cracking up and kinda horrified. Aside from the sorta shaky dietary issues (and I won't even get into the fact that Jack is supposed to avoid high fructose corn syrup and other "foods" because they are apparently interfering with his immune system, which we'd like to be kicking in in high gear, especially right now) I don't think Jack is very different from any other preschooler - he figures things out pretty quickly. Even his father would soon realize that just a few tears in the morning lead to a piece of candy! It just seems so obvious to me and Erin, but I don't see every student bawling his or her eyes out every morning, so what do I know?

Then again, today is the last day before Winter Break so there are class parties for both Quinn and Jack. Flopi informed Erin that Jack is one of the kids responsible for bringing drinks to today's bash: two big bottles of soda! I have no idea what else the little guys will be sucking down. Cotton candy? Pop Rocks? Those huge straws filled with a few tablespoons of dyed sugar? A slow drip of Karo's Syrup each kid can mainline? Needless to say, I can't wait for the boys' return from school today - I'm sure they'll be calmly in bed by 7:30 pm. With visions of sugar plum fairies skanking through their technicolor dreams.

We love the school otherwise, btw!

Um...Governor Lingle?

Unfortunately we slept through this one.



Unreal - in a country where there definitely seems to be a lot of machismo, a brutal history of repression and a whole lotta Catholics.

Biking in the Park

Santiago, the young guy who is our doorman/utility guy at the apartment, suggested we take our ball to a bigger park (Frommer's calls it Parque J Newbery, but we locals call it Los Bosques de Palermo) a couple miles away. He assured us there would be fewer dog piles (true, though not completely absent of landmines) and that we would find the atmosphere fun for a Saturday morning. He was right. We'll have to put up a different post with the soccer/fútbol competition between Quinn and Jack, but here we are riding bikes on the street circling the lake in the middle of the park. They close the street to cars on the weekend (that's just a guess, but I think it's true) and one can rent all kinds of transportation: bicycles, tricycles, quadcycles, rollerblades, roller skates, skateboards, those hinged skateboard things they now sell at Costco, whatever. You name it, you can rent it. The locals, porteños, ride around the lake, joining joggers and walkers, and enjoy a beautiful day like we had yesterday.

At first Jack wanted to rent a rowboat or footpedal boat, but we convinced him the water was too cold to even float on - you can see it was an amazing sunny day, but the temperature was pretty cool - so he led us over to the cycles. Unfortunately, the only bikes his size all had training wheels, which he rejected immediately as "too baby," so he settled on what looked vaguely like a four-wheeled, ATV-type bike for him. Quinn grabbed a regular kid-sized cruiser, and Erin and I climbed aboard some kind of old-fashioned delivery bike that had a parking brake-ish lever that the guy showed me how to use but never seemed to work. After one lap around the lake Quinn and I switched places, I taking his bicycle and he taking my driver's seat on the two-person delivery bike.






Once we finished we walked toward home along Av. del Libertador, which looks far harmless in the sunshine than when I hiked down it last night in the dark, and headed for a café and lunch. Both boys said it was the best day yet. Hard to argue.

Imports

The first grocery store we found, Disco, was pretty good for the first couple weeks. I mean, they only have razors with three blades instead of the five we enjoy in the U.S., and I never experienced even one thunderclap preceding a misty downpour in the produce section, but when I saw they had an import section with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup cans and even a small posse of Heinz ketchup squeeze bottles, I was hooked!



We've since moved on to Carrefour, which is closer and has, like, seven different toilet paper choices and Coca-Cola coolers at the head of each checkout line. Just like home.

Seriously, though, the best part is that if we spend 200 pesos ($50 US) or more, they deliver for free! Honestly, the delivery man (so far they've all been young guys) even comes up the elevator and brings the bags into our kitchen. Unfortunately tonight I could only manage 148 pesos, so I had to carry my fabric bolsas (yeah, we really brought our own from home - we're nuts!) AND two 6 liter bottles of water home ALL the way home by myself. Rough.

Sushi in BA

Friday, Quinn was pretty sick and the rest of us were coughing and fighting sore throats, so we stayed in most of the day to avoid the cold (it's actually finally wintry here) even though it was the 9th of Julio, Independence Day. By 4:30 or so, though, we were going stir crazy so we bundled the boys up and went walking. Late afternoon in BA is time for a café and sweet, so we walked to a new part of the neighborhood and found a place to have a Café Jarrito and big glasses of cut fruit for the boys. That's my kind of afternoon!

Once we got Jack and Quinn out the door into the cold again we decided to walk for about 30 more minutes and then eat dinner, at least two hours earlier than any Porteño would eat, but we're Americanos so the excuse is built in. Quinn was really feeling junk (sorry, I'm talking Hawaiian) so I suggested we try a sushi restaurant I'd seen earlier in the week, knowing he likes sushi and thinking it was the perfectly stupid place to end up on Argentina's Independence Day.

We walked into Itamae Sushi, interrupted the wait staff sitting around two tables eating their own dinner, and had our pick of tables in the rather large restaurant. Jack seemed to loosen things up by greeting anyone who came near the table with a loud, "Hola!" and I was happy when the waitress poured my Stella Artois, brewed in Argentina, into a glass.

All in all the sushi wasn't that bad, but it was no Akasaka! I'm pretty sure the restaurant's red lighting was intended to obscure the color of the fish, which actually tasted quite fresh, and the various pieces of fish and shrimp and everyting else were Jack-sized, but we walked out satisfied and the boys were happy. I doubt we'll head back there soon, though.

Too dark for good pictures...

Win Some...Lose Some

After my successful taxi ride to San Telmo and the water polo game last Saturday I was pleased that Hector, the Argentine referee, sent me an email with another assignment for tonight at 8:45pm. Great, I thought, things went well enough last week that I have another opportunity! And this Saturday's game was closer to home, apparently at a pool next to the Hippodrome, which is a ten-minute cab ride away.

So, at 7:30 I climbed into a Radio Taxi and showed the driver the email from Hector, which contained the address. I should have known I was in for a new adventure when the driver's response was rapid Castellano that I could barely pick a familiar word from. Even though I've been religiously doing my Rosetta Stone lessons, the dialect here is different; e.g., they drop so many "S's" that to begin with, many words don't sound familiar to me, so instead of hasta luego, I hear hata luego, which isn't too bad, but when it's ripping by at ten-words-per-second I get a little lost. So my response was to give him the old "no hablo Castellano" and go from there.

After about ten minutes we were lost. All I understood was that we passed the street I wanted to go to, but the addresses were all wrong. Okay, no problem, just pull out the cell phone we've picked up (with a small number of prepaid minutes) and call Erin at home so she could communicate...which I did. All that got me was the understanding that, yes, the addresses weren't correct. So my next move was to call our landlady, who has become a helpful friend, and have her speak to the driver. We had pulled over at a gas station, so while the driver talked to someone, I called Flavia. We talked, and as the driver climbed back in the car, they were both saying the same thing...there were two sections of Avenida Dorrego, so he needed to get to the other section, where supposedly we'd find Club GEBA, where I would then emerge from the cab and find the Pileta (pool) with ease.

Cool! That was a little trouble, but I took care of that one. Piece of cake.

In about five minutes we were again lost, though by that point the Hippodrome was on our left, we were circling it, and I was sure we'd run into the right place sooner or later. Nope, we had to stop at an intersection, where the driver flagged down a woman holding her child and trying to sell some kind of wares in the dark.

She pointed us in a new direction, and soon we were pulling up in front of a large, wrought-iron-fence-encircled Sports Club with the sign identifying it as GEBA. So after handing over 35 pesos, 15 more than our apartment handyman/doorman(kid) Santiago told me I should spend (he also told me the pool was too far to walk to, especially at night, because of Opportunistas - people who might take advantage of me), I was there.

The kid at the gate spoke English, so he let me through the turnstile and I headed into the big mansion-like main building and walked up to the Administracion (who knows how it was spelled - at that point I had about 15 minutes until game time) desk and said something like, "Hola, soy Árbitro. Donde esta la Pileta para el Partido de Water Polo? (I still have no idea what to capitalize - I should know because I am doing the writing lessons on RS, too - and I can't figure out those bookend question marks that hang out upside down and backwards...or whatever). Again, the response was so fast that all I could discern was that the Pileta was out the door a la Recha so I headed out and found a pool under a dome-like tent...that was lit up like a, um, Hippodrome, with no one to be seen.

I started walking toward a number of big lights about 300 meters away but as I got closer I could see it was a Fútbol Cancha, a smaller soccer field with small, team handball-like goals. Luckily there were three young girls approaching, so I asked them where to find the Pileta. Young kids here seem to speak English much better than the older folks, so they gave me the clearest directions yet...pointing to the empty tent pool. Well, after wandering around the club's grounds a little, looking for someone else, the Fútbol game ended and a number of men walked my way. I asked one guy if he spoke English and he told me he did but only a little. When I asked where the Pileta for the water polo game was his answer was, "Sorry, I have only been a member for two years." I figured either his English was too terrible for him to be helpful, or I would never find the pool if he hadn't after two years.

The club was huge. There were at least two soccer fields, a building that housed as much exercise equipment as Sports Club Irvine, tennis courts and other venues, and I saw it all. At some point I called Erin to tell her it was twenty or so minutes after the game should have started, and in the middle of our conversation, luckily after I reassured her that I was safe and would probably just find a taxi and come home, our prepaid minutes ran out and we were cut off.

My last resort was to ask a lady sitting, for no apparent reason, in a well-lit booth between two dark fields - I'm serious, the club was huge - about the water polo game, and miraculously she knew what I was talking about! But I was not at the correct place. I still have no clue what the right place was, but I understood that I was supposed to be at another location on the other side of the Hippodrome.

I decided to catch a taxi home.

Returning to the gate, I once again saw the kid who spoke good English, and figuring I should make one more attempt to find the game, explained what happened and where I was supposed to be. "Oh, it's dangerous to walk there," he told me and began giving me bus numbers to catch. I told him I'd hail another taxi and ten minutes later one finally drove by. With a little help from the kid the driver had what I thought were the directions, and we took off through a super dark park in back of the Hippodrome - way too dangerous to walk through at 9:30pm. But of course, when we had reached the front of the track (man, I have never seen the size of a horserace track, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had its own area code!) the cab driver started asking me for street numbers, and I had no answer.

So, another 20 or so pesos later I climbed out of the cab and figured I'd walk around the block and try to figure out where I was. One one side of the huge boulevard, Av. de Libertador, was the Hippodrome, and on the other were just tall apartment buildings. No pool. After touring that area of the neighborhood I decided I was heading home. It was an hour after game time and there was no use walking into the pool even if I did find it.

But the next problem was that I wasn't sure where I was, and it was about 10pm and dark. I had looked at a map this afternoon (jeez, it's almost Sunday morning) so I had a clue what direction to head toward. I started walking. It was cold, I was carrying a bag of reffing stuff, and I wasn't sure where I was going. But I was adventuring in Buenos Aires - Opportunistas be damned!

I made it through the stretch of apartment buildings and while the track was still on my left at least eight lanes away, there was just a big dark field or something to my right, so at one point when some guy stepped out from between two cars and began heading toward me I figured walking on the sidewalk was totally unsafe; if I didn't get mugged, I'd certainly step in a pile of dog crap. So I stepped into the street and started hugging the right side of the far right lane. The cars were whipping past me, but I was in the light and no dog had left a present in the traffic-filled street.

After another five or so minutes I realized where I was. I crossed under the train tracks and found myself walking along the park we had visited today (I'll have to post about all that tomorrow) and knew I had made it. When I reached the next stretch of buildings I grabbed a free wifi signal, used Skype to call Erin and tell her what had happened and where I was, and emailed Hector to apologize for missing the game. Then I walked the ten more minutes home and passed through the door at just about the same time I think I would have arrived home if I had actually been whistling at the game instead of through the streets.

While I'm bummed to have missed another reffing opportunity and have no idea if they'll ever invite me back after this mishap, I have to say that sitting here safely in the apartment I'm smiling at this crazy night. Tomorrow we hope to visit our friend, Cat, in San Telmo and see Defensa Street before we come home to watch the World Cup final.

I'm really glad we'll be out in the daylight.

Socker

Even though the boys are playground-starved, since we've chosen to wait until the weekend to find a cleaner park, they've been trying to play soccer indoors. I'm sure whoever lives downstairs is really happy about that one! In order to save our walls from the regulation ball I made a sock ball:



~m

Skype

We've been keeping in touch with family through Skype, which allows free voice or voice&video calls between Skype-to-Skype users. It's also pretty inexpensive to use Skype to make calls to phone lines, whether mobile or landline. If you are interested, check out www.skype.com for details.

Our usernames are "mmaretzki" and "emaretzki," so if you do become a user and want to stay in touch, search for us and follow the directions that come up.

(and, no, unfortunately I'm not getting any commission for any of you joining)

~m

At the Zoo

So we went to the zoo, and we saw tortoises, a polar bear, sea lions, monkeys (which mom didn't see) got to feed the llamas, [ed note. Jack called the sheep llamas] saw penguins, and snakes. We got to take videos:






And I'm going to school today, and I'm going to tell my friends all about what we did in Argentina (when I get back to my old friends). Lily can come to my house, and I want to show Lily Rosetta Stone. I'm going to miss Lily.

It was really fun at the zoo. And we saw one lion, a big humungous anteater, tortoise shell, baby alligators and snakes [they made a big impression], fish that could eat you in a minute that were piranhas.




And I really like being in Argentina. So, that's the end of my story!

~J

the zoo

Today we went to te zoo it was soooooo cool we saw a polar bear and penguins!! (we did not go to the south pole or the north pole) :)


P.S. the orangutans look a lot like Jack!! :o

~Q

Water polo shows me the world (or at least more of Buenos Aires)

I just got back from reffing a men's game in their National League here. Thanks to my friend Alex S., I got in touch with a local referee who hooked me up with a game tonight, so at 6:30 I jumped in a cab and headed for San Telmo, an older Barrio that's been gentrified and has become one of the spots to visit in the city. Although it was already dark I enjoyed seeing new parts of the city as I drove to the pool. The most beautiful was Avenida de 9th de Julio (another possible butchering of Castellano) which commemorates Argentina's Independance Day. There's a large obelisk that the looks a lot like the Washington Monument (well, it's an obelisk, so that's not saying much) in the middle of what seemed like 6-8 lanes going in both directions. It's Saturday night, so many people were out on the town and things were hopping. The pool was on a cobblestone street, in a workers' union building. It wasn't much of a pool - the other ref told me there are better pools elsewhere, one at River Platte and another somewhere else I couldn't understand - but I was just happy that once again water polo took me someplace new to meet new people (and none of them threw anything my way during the game).

The game went well. By the end they were asking me if I could come back again, so assuming that's not so they can throw huevos or tomates that they neglected to bring tonight, I'll try to see other parts of the city while continuing to whistle and stay active. After the cab rides there and back, and the bottle of water I bought at the kiosko on the corner, I came out 10 pesos in the black, which buys a decent bottle of wine so I'm happy. Next time maybe I can take the Subte (I don't know what to capitalize and what I shouldn't, so I'm deciding arbitrarily) and save for a loaf of pan (bread doesn't deserve a "P") and a bigger water bottle.

Sitting in the stands watching the game before mine (and wondering what in the world I had gotten myself into) I was thinking about all the places I've seen through water polo (unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the pool - way too dark for the iphone camera - you'll have to just imagine it). I never thought I'd end up standing in an inch-and-a-half of water on a narrow pool deck in Buenos Aires when I took my first dive into the UH pool back in 1981. I'm a very lucky guy.


~m

hola-hi. we're haveing a great time in Argentina (except when Argentina lost) :( ,
also we walk every where!


and the plane ride(s) was awesome and also daddy got business class and the seats went all the way down and there was a tv right in front of you with a remote.

-Q

NED vs BRA

Sorry if I'm spoiling anyone's afternoon of dvr World Cup, but the streets erupted in horns and cheers as soon as the game ended.

Guess there's no love lost between Argentina and Brazil!

Big game tomorrow:

~m

Going to school...

The boys had a great day at school today. I have no idea how they had the courage (was it ignorance?) to head off to class all morning in Spanish, but both said it was great. Quinn's only complaint is that the girls were all trying to touch his hair and shoes (?), and the firefighters who visited all just talked in Spanish/Castellano. Jack's big gripe is that the water tastes yucky at snack time. I think we can live with those concerns.

Had to add one more uniform picture. Quinn wears the ol' gray pants, polo shirt and sweater or sweatshirt combo, except on the day they have PE, when he gets to wear the school sweats (very excited about that one), and Jack wears whatever he wants under the red smock-ish thing called a delantal (I probably buchered the spelling but Erin's already asleep) and his green school jacket. They both think the uniforms are the greatest.


~m

We've made it!

Hi, friends!

I've been slow in getting this going, but here's our first post. The plan is for everyone in the family to post here, so Quinn's been taking pictures and we're all collecting stories. Check us out every so often if you're interested in reading about and seeing what kind of adventures we're having...


With our Argentine (Argentinian?) flag flying proudly from the balcony we're settling in to our apartment in Palermo, Buenos Aires for the next six months. We've mostly been exploring our neighborhood on foot, stocking the fridge, buying school supplies (we even had to buy a ream of printer paper to send with Quinn!), buying and getting school uniforms tailored,
and even heading over to Parque Las Heras for a game of fútbol made especially exciting by the need to dodge (quite unsuccessfully) the millions of dog poops that we find everywhere (after two days I finally washed the boys' shoes, but mine are still sitting outside our front door, Hawaiian style, while I work on controlling my gag reflex).

This morning the boys headed off for their first day of school at Instituto Lange Ley, which is just around the corner from our place, a three-minute walk from door to door. We figured only one parent, the Spanish speaking one, should take them for their first day, so Erin came home after dropping off Quinn, who begins at 8:00, and reported that firefighters (bomberos) are visiting the school today - they must have ordered that one specially to reduce any first-day anxiety from Quinn. Jack took off with her for his 9:40 start time, armed with a little slip of paper in his pocket that read, "bien." He wanted a reminder of what to say when a new friends asks, "¿Qué tal?" Both will get to come home for lunch before returning for English study in the afternoon, so we're eager to hear how it went.

Big plans for today...a walk to find cheap cell phones, gray socks for Quinn (more uniform requirements) and more wrangling with VISA to figure out how to get cash here. I gotta add that now that credit card companies are required to disclose all their fees up front we are horrified to see how much we pay each time we take out a cash advance. We're limited in what we can take out from ATMs not only daily but each withdrawal, so in order to pay tuition and rent, which must be in cash, we have to use the ATM multiple times, days in a row, to get the full amounts...with a $15+ charge for each withdrawal! Unreal, huh. It would almost be cheaper for me to fly to New York each month to withdraw money from an ATM there. Oh well, a relatively small price to pay for a great adventure.

I'll leave you with a boring "First breakfast" video - just practicing how to upload everything.



Hasta luego,
Mark