English.

Okay, I can´t stand it anymore. I have to tell you: I miss my language. We don´t think about it, we don´t realize it, but we have a sound, us Californians. Us chill SoCalers who take the five to Wahoo´s to have tacos and, you know, stick a skater sticker on the back of the toilet.

I thought that I would leave my language behind when I came to Argentina. My plan was: forget English. Learn Spanish. Become Argentinian (never leave). So I buried my language and decided that it was gone.

That plan lasted maybe 4 days. Then I was aching to speak English. I felt a weird emptiness that made me want to retreat to my bedroom away from the rolling burbles of Argentine Spanish. A dialect that, really, puts so many "j" sounds into everything, they might as well admit that they´re Spanish bastards of French parents and just move on.

I don´t think I ever valued the ability to express myself before. Forget any talent, just ability. When you have a great joke to say, when you´re gonna pee your pants just thinking about how funny you are, having to spend 10 minutes explaining your slang can be almost physically painful. And I make up so many slang words of my own that are, occasionally, a far cry from common slang to begin with ...

I don´t even have a "normal" English accent here, because everybody in Latin America is taught British English, not American English. They all pronouce their t´s with proper puffs and painstakingly remember the h´s in where and there. Their English sounds like England, France and Spain had one hell of a love child. (Possibly named Fabio.)

I, on the other hand, lazily slice off the end of every other word. My t´s, they have marvelled, come out as d´s, n´s, and u´s ... if they survive to make any sound at all. "Economy of sound" one Mendocino English student painstakingly pronounced to me. I miss my economy of sound.

Besos, Cuidate

By far the best part of being a "Level 3" student is translating for the Level 1 and 2 students when their new Latin lovers text them.

Fín.

In the Taxi

I appear to have developed a certain problem concerning the, uh, public, uh, propriety of my English. If I can just pretend, that if I talk ... just fast enough ... nobody else will know what I´m saying ever ... I could say ANYTHING. Anything at all. Uh, not that I would, but, uh, I could.

I would like to inform you, though, that I am rapidly not spinning into the dark abyss of, say, heathen-who-talks-about-her-thong-sensations-in-public. (... But if I call it a "cracker", nobody knows, right? ... ... Right?)

Picture Theft and Argentine Drag

Tiles at "Plaza España" (shipped over from Spain especially because apparently them Spaniards want some Mendocino glory too) ...
PS: I "borrowed" this picture.

I´ve been busy facebook stalking this morning, and "borrowing" pictures, so I decided that, because I CANNOT SLEEP IN EVER EVEN IF I GOT IN AT 5 AM, I would very calmly and cordially update this blog. For you, Max. For you.

I went out last night to a tango show, then to dinner, then to a club, then to a, uh, "Mr. Dog" around 4:30 in the morning.

At the tango show, they passed out free wine to whoever wanted some (...WHY can´t they do that in the States?? WHY???)

Dinner afterward was $60 total for 8 people to either eat WELL, split a bottle of wine, or both. It should be noted here that I DID NOT (ahem) drink half a bottle of red wine and then proceed to go around giggling like a maniacal troll.

The club we were directed to by our darling (gay) Mendocino friend "Facku" ... which is the kind of name that you just want to SHOUT ... was called "Queen". Wherein I danced with a lot of boys in tight shirts that were surruptitiously looking at my guy friends over my shoulder, and convinced the Mendocino (wearing a wedding ring?) at the counter to order me something (anything) with vodka because the barista was actively ignorning my little blue eyes and gringa face.

I recieved a cup of vodka and an energy drink called "Speed" ... and I can´t seem to decide if it´s worse or better than the energy drink called "Cocaine". The vodka was SO harsh on my little princess Costco-Grey-Goose tongue, that I almost spat out the mixture and had to give half to my darling Facku. Who took it, drank it without batting an eye, and then shook his head sadly at me.

The drag show was indescribable. Suffice to say that a 6 foot tall blonde queen wearing nothing but fishnets from the waist down immitated Marilyn Manson by dancing, lip synching, and cutting up a Barbie.

Figuring Pictures out ... with food.

Quince ¨Bread¨

1 kilo quince
1 kilo sugar
Molds or something of the like. Pretend you´re making small loaves of bread. Plastic is OK.

Make quince paste:

Buy a bunch of quince. Wash, peel, quarter, and core. Save skins and cores to one side (for jelly).

Boil peeled quince in water like you would potatoes until it´s soft enough to mash. It should be turning a golden brown color.

Mash quince into mashed-potato consistency. Dump into saucepan and heat with a little less than an equivalent amount of white sugar.

Heat and stir with a long wooden spoon (it gets kinda bubbly and hot) until the mixture is a jelly-like consistancy and starts pulling away from the sides of the pan. When you drag the spoon from the edge of the pot to the center, it should take the quince paste some time to fill in the space. Make sure not to do huge batches of this all at once. Fill half of a medium-sized saucepan. If you do too much, the quince is too dark.

Wet the molds. Fill each with paste until it is level with the top of the mold. If you´ve got extrys, you might have to improvise a few little molds. Let cool.

After 6 hours or so, flip the molds upside-down on a plate. Sprinkle sugar on top. It should be clearish golden with a jelly-like consistency. It´s good now, but really you should let it dry for a few days.

Tasty with nuts and cheese.

Pankekes or however they actually spell it ...

3 eggs

Roughly 1 cup flour

Milk until it´s fairly runny

Cook like a pancake, but not too big. Should be relatively thin, dense, and eggy. Put dulce de leche on top. Forget the maple syrup. Eat rolled up and at will.

Also, find a cute gaucho to kiss.

Love,
Me

Patagonia

I don´t need to tell you how gorgeous Patagonia was, because I´m sending pictures. I really, really had a blast. Patagonia is about 20 hours south driving of where I am in Mendoza. Another 5 or 10 hours and we would have been at the glaciers at the tip of South America. I REALLY wanted to go see the glaciers, but those are for another trip, I think. We went hiking almost every day, and everybody stayed in the same building with 2 or 3 people per room. We all shared walls and the walls were REALLY thin, so there was a lot of ... bonding going on. You could hear toilets flushing two rooms down, not to mention everybody´s alarm clock and conversation.

The view from my bedroom window was spectacular-- I could see the lake and the snow-capped Andes. A few of the nights, the ground frosted over and in the morning everything was white and still. I was doing classwork too, because my professor came with us, but it was only for an hour or two a day, and the rest of the time I was hiking or horseback riding, or in town ... or at a club dancing. My whole body aches from hiking mountains, playing volleyball and dancing until 4:30 am in smoke-filled clubs. I slept the whole drive back and barely made it two hours awake at home in Mendoza before I fell into another 3 hour siesta. All of my clothes are wet and smell like me, mountain, and cigarette.

On one hike, we went to (basically) the border of Chile to the "Selva Fría" or "Cold Rainforest". There were lories (like those colorful birds they have at the San Diego Zoo with the exibit where you can go in with cup of nectar), and bright red and yellow mushrooms in between the ferns. Not to mention funky red waxy fungi growing from the trees, bright purple hanging flowers, and cows. There are cows everywhere here. Between the constant sprinkle of rain, hiking into the hollows behind waterfalls, and the waist-deep rivers I crossed clinging to a rope, I got completely drenched.

Well, we were so close to Chile on that hike that we had to go through customs. On the way there, nobody had to get out of the bus, but on the way back, everybody had to get off and present their faces with their passports. Well, I had been so drenched getting back on the bus, I had decided that I wasn´t going to sit for two hours in soaked jeans ... so I took them off and covered my legs (and crotch) with my ski jacket ... so you can imagine my face when they stopped the bus 20 minutes later and told us all that we had to get off and go into the customs building. My jeans were in a muddy dripping pile at my feet. And I was naked except for underwear from the waist down. Imagine me, with two tiny rag-towels (borrowed from friends) clutched together around my bum and front, standing in the Argentina customs line soaked and barefoot with my passport between my teeth (because I needed two hands to hold the little towels up). You should have seen their faces. They´ll think twice before they kick me off the bus again.

Love,
Me

PS: The upside is that I got my passport stamped again, so my tourist visa has been re-extended and I have another whole 90 days in Argentina. Yes!

Security for Flying Elephants

The doors here mean business. They´re big, heavy, solid things that probably don´t even love puppies. The door to this house is inches thick. I think it might be some kind of re-inforced metal in the middle. It swings real smooth, though, clearly there is WD 40 down here.

And I have never seen more decorative iron in my life. No house or shop goes without swirly iron bars. I guess it´s the catty way of saying keep the fuck out. At night, to go into the minimart, they have to unlock the metal bar doors to let you in. But the doors are broken and not actually attached to anything, so it´s really pretty funny to watch the dude lift the whole door away to let you in, and then fuss with it to wedge it back into its little crevice.

I live on the second floor above a 15 foot flat wall, and even my littlest window is covered in ¨decorations¨ that also conveniently keep even the most daring flying elephant safely on the other side.

Not to mention our house laser security system that I´m SURE I´m going to drunkenly screw up at 4:00 am sometime within the next week. The police are going to show up and I´m going to be frantically pressing buttons and begging to know why there is suddenly three of every number on the keypad.

The first few days my sister walked the town with me to teach me how to exchange money. Carefully. Like the Argentine that I´m not.

... It should be noted that obviously she wasn´t teaching me how to find my way back from the center of town. Never fear, I still have absoultely no idea where I´m going ever. Not that it´s her fault. I mean, seriously, when Chuck Norris is confronted with my sense of direction, he can´t even roundhouse kick it.

PS: I love maps.

Meatless.

Okay, so, this irony better not escape anybody.

The farmers were striking over raised taxes last week, and there was NO MEAT. After all of my worries and terrors over having to eat dry salads and smirks for two months in the land of ¨would you like some steak with that steak¨, I went to the Argentina-version of Costco with my family and the meat section was EMPTY. BARE. WE. BOUGHT. NO. DEAD. ANIMALS. HA!

Of course, it´s somewhat of a problem when the farmers strike so bad that they can´t use the roads to bring food. ... So I hope I didn´t offend anybody when I pretty much sat there and pointed and laughed for twenty minutes straight.

Unfortunately, in every other sense of the word, people here seem to really not understand the concept of ¨no meat¨. I was at a restaurant this evening, trying to order an empanada ... asked for the one with no meat, and the waiter looked me straight in the eye and said, ¨Ham and cheese?¨ Yes, please, but only planted ham straight from the field.

It happened this afternoon at lunch also AND LAST NIGHT when my FAMILY was ordering. Three times in one day. It´s not just my Spanish. The truth is: ham is not meat.

Here.

Hey!

I´ve been thinking in Spanish for two days straight, and it´s weird to write in English. I keep trying to type Spanish words ... and then I have to stop myself and start writing in English again ... but really, instead, it´s a fiesta of weird symbols because my fingers are totally lost on this keyboard. It looks like I´m swearing violently and censoring myself with upside-down question marks.

My family is absolutely lovely. My flight was absolutely not lovely. And here in Mendoza, it´s ... well, it reminds me of Mexico, some, except for it´s somehow kind of Italian ...? I miss my dogs and my horses ... it´s weird to be in my own room without animals. But my family already has me totally pinned ... Ani´s boyfriend lives two doors down and has a Golden Retriever ... and they brought him over yesterday so they could watch me fall to my knees and break into rapid English cooing. They were not disappointed.

I would freak out over being in my own room, except for the room is so damn cute, I want to be in there all the time to soak up the adorable factor. It´s little and it´s all floor-to-ceiling windows with cream curtains that open to the street. And to top it off it´s wood and white tile and RED. They totally scanned my brain and pasted it onto a bedroom.

Ciao,
Me