Well... if they gave out medals for museum going, I'm sure I'd at least have earned a silver for this past week.
For my Arte Argentino Contemporaneo class, we are a given practical assignments to go to certain museums and/or monuments and buildings in the city to view the art pieces we are studying in person. I love this! Not like I need an excuse to wander my day away absorbing culture and beauty and history via artwork, but now at least it counts as homework! Homework.... see now that's a word that I definitely left at HOME... somehow it just didn't make it into my suitcase. Getting my student's-head back into gear for the start of real classes has been interesting. After my visit to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Jardin Botanico de Buenos Aires, I knew I'd have to at least prove that I went to those places with a brief description of what I saw, but when I rolled in last Thursday with nothing but names of paintings and artists jotted down on the back of my program I found that everyone else had typewritten pages with photos and full paragraphs! AAH! Aparently the South American me is a slacker-student! "Todo bien..." I thought, "I'll just let the overachieving kids do all the talking in class today." And then she calls on me. So I proceeded to improvise some intelligent artistic BS on the spot IN SPANISH! I have reached a new level of scholastic aptitude. Give me another medal for that please!
Friday was a blustery rainy day... perfect for more museums right?? So I spent the day in MALBA, the most talked about modern art museum in the city with Erica. I'm not quite sure which hurt my head more... trying to interpret the explanations in Spanish or the art itself! That evening we checked out the cinema in MALBA that plays independant Argentine films. We'd already seen on very interesting movie there called Plan B, about a guy who seeks revenge on his ex by making her new boyfriend fall in love with him. Friday was a documentary about Jewish gays in Argentina, Otro Entre Otros, about being a discriminated minority within a discriminated minority. Super relevant and touching subject, but without subtitulos, the already exhausted analysis-drive in my brain kinda went on strike and decided to just enjoy the body language and rainbow yermulkes.
Saturday, Tom and I went on an excursion to find the free tango festival thats happening in Microcentro for the rest of the month.... we were a block away from it and somehow too dense to stumble in the right direction. But the trip to Plaza de Mayo was worth it when Tom asked "Hey, did you know that the Casa Rosada (the pink equivalent of the White House) is a museum?" No I did not... but hey! It's free on the weekends, let's just go wander through the president's office! No big deal right? We got pictures with the cheery laid back guards in their full uniform, flashing smiles for tourists' photos as if that's the extent of their responsibilities, and then a tour of the rich wooden and gold plated offices and conference rooms where everything goes down. As I write this I'm watching the news and seeing a government meeting about traffic safety taking place in a room that I walked through a couple days ago!
The yesterday Erica and I went down to La Boca, the oldest most authentic and unique barrio in Buenos Aires, considered an open air museum in itself! It is the part of town where immigrants settled down upon first arriving in the city. Most of them were Italian, many were artists, and basically all of them were working class. They didn't have alot of money or status, but they did have alot of heart, and they wanted their run down dirty little neighborhood to reflect that. So they painted their homes and storefronts in the brightest boldest Italian colors: rojo, amarillo, azul, verde. If you've ever seen the classic image of a couple dancing tango on the street in BsAs, chances are it was taken in La Boca. However, it is a self-proclaimed tourist trap. And after two months of learning to adopt the language and mannerisms and dress of an Argentine life, I really didn't appreciate being approached with "Blondie, where are you from?" in English. But aparently I'm still more obvious than I would like to be.
So that's about 5 museum visits in 7 days... not bad at all!
Friday was also Franco's birthday so Thursday night some extended family came over and we celebrated with empanadas and a chocotorta, a cake made up of layers of crushed chocolina cookies and dulce de leche... easily the greatest dessert ever invented by mankind. He'd been whining the day before about how turning 19 made him too old for presents... oh please! So I got him a nice little card and a box of bon bons! We've been talking alot more now that we have similar schedules and hang out in the kitchen at the same times, and last night when a bunch of his friends came over he wanted to introduce me to them. Oh yeah... I'm in! I'm cool.
I would also like to share the mini-victory of my first successful phone call in Spanish! Until now, I've been completely useless over the phone, unable to understand anything without visual aids. But I was able to call the director of La Casita de Ninos, who excitedly told me she'd been waiting for my call, and arranged to spend my Fridays out in Escobar with the kids. I could not be more humbled or thrilled that they'll have me.
Thus went my week! Stay tuned for pictures via facebook!
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