Que triste cuando se acaba

We said goodbye to my family last Monday and headed for Buenos Aires, the capital, for our last five days in Argentina. It was a sad goodbye. We had so much fun and Mark was made to feel like one of the family.

Now we’re in Buenos Aires one of the biggest cities in the world. Similar to New York in its bustling and hurried lifestyle, and to Paris in its greatness and splendor it’s also a city of contrasts, where the excesses of the monuments and of the rich clash with the poverty left by a horrid recession. We’ve already walked through most of the city. My favorite part is San Telmo, the old neighborhood of the newly emigrated from Italy or Spain. Today it’s full of anticuarians and bohemians. Every store is like a museum and we found the best restaurant there, more like a local cafeteria. We’ve been to touristy and colorful Boca, visited Plaza de Mayo (where we’ll be returning today to watch the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo mourn for the disappeared), gotten tickets for the opera tonight at Teatro Colon, and visited the apartment complexes of the dead and rich at the Recoleta cemetery (where Evita is buried). But my favorite so far has been the Museum of Immigration, housed in the old Immigrant Hotel, a huge building complex where people from all over Europe where given housing, food, language courses, and helped to find jobs when they first arrived to Buenos Aires. They have a database where you can search for relatives for a fee. I tried it out hoping to find the dates when my great grandparents (my grandma Chola’s parents) came from Italy. I couldn’t find them but it seems someone with my greatgrandmothers last name and place of birth came to Argentina in the 1920s. I’ll have to ask my aunt to see if they might be a relative or not. Anyways, that’s it for now. We’ll be back on Sunday so see you (or talk to you) soon,

Giovi

Cousin Virginia and my grandma drinking mate

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Originally uploaded by La gio.

Mark is a Newel's Old Boys fan

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Originally uploaded by La gio.

My uncle Tola making asado

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Originally uploaded by La gio.

Asado

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Originally uploaded by La gio.

Juan and Laura, the happy couple

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Originally uploaded by La gio.

of Weddings and Meat

Well, as you can see I haven´t been updating very frequently. The last time I managed to drag myself across the street of my grandma´s apartment to check my spam I convinced Mark to post for us. I am in complete vacation mode. I know at some point I´ll have to return to my previous life with the keeping in touch with world events, and the being responsible and laborious, but for now that moment does not exist. Mark and I have created a very nice routine for ourselves. We get up around 11am, if we are feeling restless sometimes we forgo my grandmas coffee and medíalunas for coffee and medialunas outside of the apartment at a cafe, then we walk around the city center, then we have lunch, then we do touristy stuff, then we chill drinking mate and having tea, then we walk around some more, then we have dinner around 10, then we might go out with my cousins to a bar to catch some live music. Not bad, eh?
Well in bigger news,
Se caso el Juani!
My cousin Juan Pablo got married last Friday to Laura, his girlfriend of 8 years and the mother of the new addition to the family, the future Julieta or Santiago who is currently six months prepartum.
So you know how argentines like to party hard and late, right? Well the reception started at 9 and ended at 4:30 am, just after my grandma danced a tango with my uncle Tola. There was tons of food and drinks and tossing of my cousin up in the air, it was excellent. I danced liked I haven´t danced in my life.
And today we had the world-famous ASADO!! Vegetarians should stop reading at this point because their sensibilities WILL be offended. My family got together with the family of Laura to share in a small cow. Basically you eat everything, steaks of course but also, chorizo, sausage, tripe (small and large intestines), kidneys, mollejas (salivary glands), morcilla (blood sausage). All of course seasoned with chimichurri. Delish! Don´t knock it til you try it because down here they really know how to cook meat. And that´s coming from me, who is at best an occasional steak burrito, tri-tip eater at home. Generally not very enthusiastic but here I can´t help but have more beef than I would normally eat in a year.

I´ll really try to post pictures soon,
un abrazo

Esta Mark Aqui

After just three days, I can tell you the fundamentals of Argentina (y Argentinos). Here, futbol and meat reign supreme, usually accompanied by Quilmes cerveza. Also, the primary cultural undercurrent is familia and friends. There's a closeness here not found in the U.S. There seems to be two reasons for this. First, it's a carry-over from the Spanish and Italian influence of the Old World. Argentina is a confluence of these two cultures. Second, there is far less 'dispersal' here than in the U.S., which affords an opportunity to keep family and friends close (both literally and figuratively). Giovi's grandmother, for intance, has probably spent 90% of her life within 2 blocks of her present residence (she will be 86 years old in one week). This is of course not to say that Chola isn't worldly. Anyway, enough blogging para mi. Argentina y Argentinos es muy comodo, relajante, y placentero.

Ciao

Culture Shock

Men kiss on the cheeks.
Old fashioned elevators with wire doors.
Tons of internet cafes.
Mate (I´ll post a picture of it soon)
Dinner at ten, going for drinks at midnight... out with the boys until 6am.
Also, sadly, there´s still lots of poverty.
I´ll write more soon,

un abrazo,

Giovi

First Post Travelogue

I'm writing from an exotic land, where curious looking people roam the streets talking to themselves, doing weird hand claps while humming the tune of Star Wars. Where are we? That's right we haven't left Berkeley yet. This actually just a test to see if this thing works.

Eclectic

Songoro Consongo (de Mamey), Hector Lavoe
Jaan Pechechaan Ho (Ghost World Intro song)
President of What, Death Cab for Cutie
De Cuba Traigo un Cantar, Carlos Puebla
Sentimental Journey, Ruth Brown
La Salsa de Hoy, El Gran Combo
Cambumbo, Tego Calderon
The Kids are Alright (live), Eddie Vedder
La Ci Darem La Mano, Mozart:Don Giovanni
The Mansion, John Vanderslice
Penso Positivo, Jovanotti
Fools Rush In, Elvis

The end result is always better than "The Plan"

I saw the first part of Best of Youth two weeks ago, a Saturday matinee the day before M. got back from a dog trip to Austin. Now "The Plan" was to see the second part the next day during the Sunday matinee. Unfortunately for the completion of "The Plan", it is veritably impossible to go from Oakland to the other end of San Francisco in 20 minutes (score 10 nerd points for using the word veritable). But I was in no rush, just happy to be enjoying the beautiful sunny day with el Marco. And, as usually happens whenever we dare to venture out of the house on a sunny weekend in Northern California, we got stuck in a traffic jam. However, as usually happens whenever we dare to venture out of the house on a sunny weekend in Northern California,we managed to find something cool and fun to do. In this case we stumbled onto the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown(cause of the horrible jamming of the traffic).


Japantown

I love it when things like this happen!
Who invented Parades? What a great concept! Can you tell this was my first Parade ever? I know, it's like I'm a martian.


Here come the singing ladies!

I've decided that the next hobby I take up shall be the Japanese Drumming. Can you think of anything cooler? OK, you probably have a good enough imagination but you can't deny me japanese drumming is cool enough. It's called
Taiko and it looks like a work-out. I bet it gets rid of the flabby underarms (you ladies know what I'm taking about...)



And I should mention I took almost all these pictures standing on my tippy-toes holding the camera way-up in the air and using the flip-out viewer to try not to catch the bald-spot from the guy in front of me. I risk my life for art.



The one regret I have is the turning into an idiot gawker when His Royal Dreamboat, the mayor of The City by the Bay, Mr. Gavin Newsome walked by. How did I miss the chance to immortalize the moment?! I was too busy being surprised at how young and handsome he was. I always thought myself more of a Matt Gonzalez type, however, you have to give due where it is.. um... due. Plus his hair wasn't as oily as I was lead to expect.


Shake those flowers Sister!

In the end it was a great weekend, even if I didn't get my intended way.

If soap operas were works of art of existential meaning...

...they would be something like this. Have you seen it? Es excelente.
A saga that deals with the epic struggles of average human beings living their normal lives. I realize the title of this post might be off-putting.I don't want to give the impression that the movie is a melodrama. It's just that we get to know the characters with such intimacy, such familiarity and empathy, it's like we were truly watching the evolution of a family over time. Most movies are a snapshot, an idea, this movie is a novel, a dissertation. I saw it over two Saturdays at the Balboa. I'd never been there before. It took me over an hour to get there from Oakland. I went alone each time, and each time I emerged from the darkened movie theater startled by the sunlight and by the strange language spoken around me. Whenever I come back from Puerto Rico it takes me a while to get used to English, it feels like I am surrounded by actors in a sit-com. I felt the same way after watching La Meglio Gioventu. I had been living these peoples lives. As far as I knew I was in Roma, Palermo, La Toscana. I would call the movie vouyeristic except I had no sense of self or shame. How could the acting have been that good?
...I want to go back to Italy. I was so happy to find out I could still understand Italian...
Anyway, you should see this movie because I know you would like it. Because you love your family and friends, because you believe in goodness, and beauty, and beauty even within the daily ugliness, because your life, like all our lives is epic and illuminating.

Lo Mejor de la Juventud

A ver como sale esto.

Mi primera confesion: Nunca fui buena con "querido diario" ... asi que ahora mismo estoy declarando que esto va a ser una relacion libre, sin compromisos, ni culpas, sin excusas, ni exclusas, ni dijiste que me ibas a llamar. Estamos de acuerdo asi que buena suerte. En sus marcas, listos, fuera, pero teniendo en cuenta que esto no es una competencia, que no hay ganadores ni perdedores, ni porra de porristas, ni una pistola que hace un estruendo y marca el inicio de una carrera que me va a cansar y hacer que me duelan las rodillas. En resumidas cuentas esto es un experimento "guilt-free" y "pain-free", a menos claro esta que yo quiera someterme a mi misma a guilt o a pain, en cual caso traere susodicho guilt y pain a la mesa y me lo comere con un poquito de sal. He dicho.