We went to the last of the Mate and Biscochos events last night, it was extremely good. The evening was introduced by this guy and he'd been using a version of the same intro each time so it's good practice for our Spanish.

The music was mainly classical guitar, modern compsers though so there was a fair bit of unusual guitar use (playing harmonics and both hands using the fretboard and a good amount of hitting the guitar for percussion).

Martín, the guitarist, is phenomenal. He said hello after the show and seemed really pleased that we had turned up to three of his shows.

I bought one of his CDs but when I put it in the 'puter it turned out to be blank (I've sent him an email).

Update: Martín has just dropped off a replacement CD which makes him, not only an amazing guitarist, but an all round fine bloke (gracias a vos Martín) The CD was worth the wait too.

On the way home we went into the Bangalore pub. Someone had given me the card for it months ago. It's in the part of Palermo called Palermo Hollywood because a) it's full of the TV and Film companies and b) estate agents found that they can charge Americans higher prices to live there.

Next to the Bangalore there's a big v posh looking club where they were delivering an ice sculpture, probably a wrap party or something (or maybe just the Bush Daughters having a private do?).

The Bangalore itself is a Pub/curryhouse. Like most of the English/Irish pubs, it's done out with a traditional bar. We ended up upstairs though sitting on cushions (pouffes). As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm not a fan of blazing hot curries, and both Liz and I picked something off the menu with a single chilli (denoting hotness, the scale went from none to three, for the beef vindaloo).

We had chicken pakoras to start, and it seemed like someone had forgotten the spices (the curries mother used to make were hotter). Then the main courses came and we discovered that the Argentines really don't like spicey food. If anything the mains, with one chilli, were milder than the pakora, milder than blancmange. Reasonable flavour underneath, good fresh ingredients but we'll go back (happy hour is 2 pints for AR$8) in order to try the vindaloo, hoping that it migh be as hot as the Kashmiri's mildest korma.   ¶ 5:04 PM 0 comments

 
When I first met John and visited Calverley, Clare told me that he used to 'live on the balcony in the summer'....well, only the location has changed. Most evenings when I get in he's already changed into his shorts, looking a trifle hot. As you can see, the Irish legs still need a little work on the tan :)   ¶ 1:39 AM 2 comments

  That would be the term for clear blue sky (literally clean sky). So as you can probably guess, it's another of those today. Now I realise it's not easy, waking up day after day to these 30C cloudless days after years of northern English weather... but you'll be pleased to know we're struggling on.

Sunday was another safari (see the results here ) in San Telmo, the area GW's daughter was in when her bag got pinched, we were nowhere near it, and it was a different day. Another hot one though so we finished early and camped outside (opposite if truth be told) the Gibraltar pub... another English style drinking establishment where we amused ourselves by consuming pints of stout and eating homemade hamburgers.

And now, even though the weather is fantastic, it's a busy week. Exams for most of our students, so there's preparation and then marking to be done. It's enough to almost make me wish I were back home in the damp November drizzle.
  ¶ 7:18 PM 1 comments

  There's not really much to say to go along with this picture is there...


'cracking cheese Grommit' comes to mind.
  ¶ 4:26 PM 2 comments

  Just back from Colonia, we went over yesterday morning to do the visa thing again.

As ever Colonia was very pretty and peaceful. So we decided to shatter the noise with a moped. Pictures of me in my v dorky helmet to follow (thanks Liz).

We sped around, got a little chilly, ate, sped around a bit more and sauntered back to the port at ten to eight to check in for the 8:45 boat back... to find that we had missed it. It was ten to nine and we had forgotten that Uruguay is an hour ahead of Argentina (because Argentina no longer puts their clocks forward in Spring)...

ummm

That was an oversight...

So we wandered back into town and found a little hotel, slept, and headed back this morning.

We have all sorts of excuses, the most true is that the last two times we went to Uruguay the times were the same, so we just assumed... and there were precious few clocks in Colonia to disabuse us of our temporal inaccuracy.

We won't make that mistake again (largely because were not going to Uruguay again)
  ¶ 4:15 PM 0 comments

  Liz: Just when you thought the most tiring thing we were doing was lifting the kettle to top up the Mate gourd...
I ran in the Nike 10k this morning, along with Brett (an Australian chef and fellow Spanish student at our weekly class)... oh and 20,000 other porteños. It's been a good incentive to keep fit and get out in the spring sunshine, admiring the Jacaranda trees overhead (gorgeous blue) and trying not to come a cropper on the world's most unpredictable pavements. My aim was to finish in under an hour and I managed 54 mins and something...the flat wide roads of central B.A. a bit of a change from my usual windswept and muddy routes around Greetland and/or Calverley :)    ¶ 9:49 PM 2 comments

  The place we went last Thursday, No Avestruz (no ostrich???), has a series of events in November early in the evening (6:30) where you can listen to some music and have mate and biscuits. Today it was a guitarist who played stuff from Japan, Spain, Italy and other places.

The theatre is relaxed, almost bohemian. It's in a converted shed/warehouse. There are three rows of bench seats (6 steps, one step for the bum one for the feet) at one end, on theses seats there are small semicircular tables so that you can have your drink and a bite to eat. Between the stage and the bench seats there's a scattering of sofas (at the side), low tables and chairs, and beanbags and cushions.

Once we'd sat down a lady came over and asked 'Toman mate?' (Are you drinking mate?) and when we said yes, brought us a flask and a mate gourd. While she did that we chatted to a guy who came over and asked us where we'd heard of the place, he turned out to be the guitarist, Martín. In the interval the lady came round again to offer us a refill of the flask and a change of yerba (the herb...). It was an agreeably relaxing afternoon, a room full of mate drinkers, the guitarist (phenomenal) and a chap doing an introduction which was in praise of... what else, but mate.  ¶ 1:55 AM 0 comments

  Cecilia, our Spanish teacher, suggested we go to see a show by the Grupo de Teatro Catalinas Sur which is a community theatre in La Boca. Their website has a section in English and it gives their history, they started at barbeque, but had to wait until the return of democracy to be allowed to perform...

" We are still a neighborhood group and although many of us do not live in the quarter, we are still a group from La Boca del Riachuelo. We work in the neighborhood and are acknowledged followers of the traditional artistic forms performed in the quarter which has been the birthplace of the popular arts: puppeteers, musicians, actors, artists originating from the old continent or from our Latin America and who mingled their art, like a crucible with the neighborhood. The operetta, the zarzuela (brought here by the Italians and the Spanish), the sainete (that mixture of local immigrants in the boarding house courtyard), the circus (the birthplace of our national theatre), the murga (of standing tradition in La Boca), the candombe (fundamental in the development of popular music and dance) and the art of puppetry, all art forms which were born in the quarter, are taken up, mixed together and thus offer atmosphere to our Group’s productions and through which we offer tribute." (There's more on the site in the history section)

Outside the theatre some of the neighbours set up a parrilla (naturally) and sell choripan and empanadas and cakes... all home made, all very tempting. Ceclia came along, as well as Marco and Julia (two of her students from Montreal) and Christian, a friend of hers from BA. We stood outside the theatre munching on 'chori' with chimichuri (chilli and oregano - I think) while loads of people came to eat, either before the show or just because it's value for money.

The show we saw was called Venimos de Muy Lejos (We came from far away) and it's a story of the immigrants who arrived in La Boca. There's a cast of twenty or so and it's a performance largely in song. A big part of the dialogue was in Italian (or a weird mix of Italian and Spanish) but with some little parts of German and Yiddish as well. We all enjoyed it a lot, and we even got some of the jokes...    ¶ 4:12 PM 0 comments

  Almost every day we use the subway, the subte. Monday to Thursday both of us start at 8am, Fridays and weekends it's the quickest way into the centre of town. So we're in a position to observe some of the different patterns of early morning use.

Mondays: At 7:35 the subte is rarely packed. People generally loook like they're trying to snatch the last few minutes of sleep (which is what my students claim is all they do on Sundays anyway) while hanging onto the white plastic hanging straps.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays: At 7:35 it's a little busier. If a train is delayed at all then you can end up with a big game of sardines but for the most part it's just a little busier. There's space for the chicas to put on their makeup (if they're not sleeping).

Thursdays: Packed. Get on, try to steer yourself to somewhere where you won't have to make way for people leaving the train, try to grab hold of something so that you can avoid the domino effect. Either listen to mp3 player or try and have your book out before you get on the train as you won't be able to get into your bag in the crush. Makeup? No chance.

In the downtown stations there are big electric blowers but in all the other stations there are ancient mesh covered fans that make a noise like a small plane... did I say it was hot as well? No?

It's pretty warm too.

Fridays: We don't use the subte that early.... heehee!
  ¶ 1:49 PM 0 comments

  ... it's Flickrtime. This time the occasion was Lou, the guy on the right, who's Argentine/American and was in town working on a commercial, so we met up for a beer in the Buller bar. The bar is a brewpub and as you can see, they sell beer by the pint.

Isobelle is holding the pint of stout. They do good stout there, and IPA amongst other things.

Now it's Monday, there's a week's worth of lessons to think about, and yet more things which will elicit an exasperated 'but why?' from students. For example, today, the why moment came when I spelled womb.

Bomb, womb, comb.

And for a follow up, cough, through, thought, bough. The spelling is easy though compared to the difference between Do and Make, why do we make a withdrawl, do homework, make a mistake but do it wrong and what do you do to make money (not to mention how do you do?). In Spanish there is just Hacer (make/do).
  ¶ 11:49 PM 0 comments

  Silke's family had a dog, Luna, who was a bit pleased to see us... pleased to see anyone truth be told.


She lives outside except for the winter and isn't at all fierce... just really happy to say hello.  ¶ 4:47 PM 0 comments

  "It's called the death road." My students said, when I told them where we'd been at the weekend and how we'd got there. Route 14 to Entre Rios (literally Between rivers), the province to the north of BA and next to Uruguay.

Silke had invited us to spend the weekend at her mum's house in the town of Urdinarrain (close to Gualayguaychú... try saying that when drunk). Her husband, Mariano, drove us there on Saturday morning and we left BA in cloud which cleared to a classic Argentine big sky. It really does feel that the sky is somehow higher here...

We spent a very relaxing weekend eating, chatting, wandering around taking photos, getting sunburned. There's a train station that is right out of 'The Railway Children'. Okay, a long way out but it was built, like all of the original railway, by the British and wouldn't be too out of place on the Settle to Carlisle line.

On Saturday night there was a storm so Silke and Mariano spent a while trying to capture one of the hundreds of lightning strikes (photographically before anyone has too many improbable images of people chasing after errant bolts).

Sunday wasn't so good, weather wise, so we did the (apparently, according to our students) traditional thing of sleeping late and lazily eating and chatting before coming back.

The road there and back has a bad reputation, even though it's straight, it's single carriageway and has a lot of dips big enough to hide a car in. There are lots of accidents there but I didn't get scared until we were on the 8 lane/10 lane (8 painted, 10 of cars) highway into Buenos Aires....  ¶ 8:12 PM 1 comments