Post/life lesson number three in as many days!

I don’t really know what’s changed to warrant such posting except that it is no longer satisfactory to lurk facebook while feeling bad that there is a world of fun to be had outside that I am ignoring while being lame and lurking facebook. That aside, also, I made a commitment to this blog and feel I ought to honour that. Blogs are good like that, I guess. You fill them with shit I bet they don’t like, ignore them for a few months and then come back and fill them with the shit you were doing while you were ignoring them AND THEY DON’T MIND. My blog hasn’t said, ‘where have you been the last few months? What makes you think that now, after this long, I want to know?’ or challenged me to a commitment I probably never could have maintained but wanted to because the idea of such a thing, while being imagined, is attractive but ultimately is probably not my style.

Anyway, in my last post I outlined a few valuable life lessons I picked up earlier this year in my preparation for, and early days of, this 'life changing' trip. And these life lessons are being brought to you by the hindsight that is at times crippling, makes me cringe and wonder how the shit I never thought that through. Possibly by putting them into writing and seeing in print a manifestation of the erroneous ways of ‘bugger it, give it a burl and let’s see how we do’ it is possible that a catalyst for change may present itself. SEGUE BECAUSE NOW LIFE LESSON NUMBER THREE IS PRESENTING ITSELF.

Life lesson number three. This lesson deals with the immense disillusionment that comes when the results of a particular endeavour don’t exactly match those projected in the original imagining.

So in the beginning, my sentiment towards my trip was a little something like this: ‘I’m young! I speak great Spanish! I like to talk to people! People will want to be my friend! I will want to be their friend! Life in a big city is going to be awesome! I am going to understand everyone! Class is going to be a breeze! Year long distinction average, here I come!’ and so on. 

Over time that sentiment changed to something like this: ‘I’m young and immature! My Spanish is shit! I am scared of everyone because of this! People don’t care that I am not from Argentina! I still want to be their friend because I am so terrified of them! Life in a big city is noisy and dirty and people hate picking up after their dogs and cab drivers love to honk their horns at all freaking hours and other motorists love to beep their horns to alert other motorists that that ambulance siren means an ambulance is on its way through the busy street and get out of the way! I don’t understand a lot of what goes on and this feeds my aversion to doing anything ever! Class kills me in a ‘I AM PANICKING THAT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING BECAUSE IF I FAIL THIS UNIT I HAVE TO DO A MILLION MORE AND MY HECS DEBT WILL BE UNNECESSARILY LARGE’ kind of way! Plus, classes are pass/fail so I should be glad to pass but will feel like shit if I don’t get a kind of good grade which is another unnecessary pressure on my life!’

And thus a big cycle of anxiety, attempts at confidence and lots of red wine is in full effect and (now we are speaking passively because this may or may not be what I am experiencing but these things front better in the passive voice) you are trying to avoid the disillusionment you are feeling as a result of too high expectations with very low results but it is crushing you and no amount of disgustingly cheap booze (ARS$15 will buy you gin, of reasonably good quality, and possibly something to mix it with) will erase this and didn’t you come here to get away from that self-perpetuating cycle?

Another thing that forms part of this disillusionment - the idea of a long distance relationship with someone you have known for a week and half, is a cute one. Like, ‘I am so in love! Some cracked out metrosexual who was probably wasted made a few lucky guesses about my future one time when I worked in a bar and I should believe that this first guy I have met is the guy he said I was going to meet while adventuring overseas and fall in love with!’ 

However, the lesson inherent here is that reality is probably much less cute and will probably feed the disillusionment that keeps you in on the weekend because the idea of being around people who aren’t feeling quite so jaded sounds like a momentous task and wine is cheaper than gin and like blogs, doesn’t judge you for not wanting to be around it all the time or not being enthusiastic about life and willing to talk about pointless shit for the point of company.

Furthermore, in the beginning I probably shouldn’t have trusted this future-seeing metro man because he guessed Europe before South America, but it’s funny how we dredge up things like this to support a flimsy decision that may actually just be a fantasy. The reality is while the idea is cute, it will ultimately make you question yourself, the other person, your life, your ability to make good decisions and set in motion another cycle of FAIL AT LIFE, ADD GIN, EVERYTHING GOOD, HANGOVER, NOTHING GOOD, aka perpetuation of misery.

Also, you may be kicking yourself that you ignored those little voices in the back of your head who suggested that this isn't a good idea, for a mountain of reasons. Those little guys appear like such fun spoiling pricks but they might just be the guys who know you and know that you don't like to listen to them but that it is for this very reason you bloody ought to listen them!  

 

Because when you realise that what you had thought to be flawless in fact is actually quite flawed, and like most decisions you have made, actually deserved much more time and thought, you are in a hole of disillusionment because once again you realise your capacity to make any good decisions ever is significantly lacking and then you don’t want to be around anyone who is a) happy, b) happy and part of a couple, c) not a miserable sack of shit who is capable of feeling positivity even when they feel like balls and THEN YOU FEEL LIKE SHIT BECAUSE YOU CAN’T EVEN MANAGE THAT. 

And those little guys are having a field-day of told you so! and that's not fun for anyone. So I guess the lesson is, listen to those little guys cos they're not being pricks to be pricks. They're being pricks so you won't feel like such a sucker down the track.

All that Argy Bargy - parte II, aka life lessons in Argentina

So part of why I chose to come to a completely unfamiliar country in a part of the world entirely unbeknown to me was for ALL THE AMAZING LIFE LESSONS I WAS GOING TO LEARN - obviously without feeling like an idiot for not knowing beforehand.

Clearly, I am poking fun at the lack of foresight I applied to such an endeavour because, when you decide to take on the world and you can speak the language REALLY WELL and you don't need to worry about whether or not you are going to understand simple things like 'this amount of needless shit you are buying will cost you this amount of pesos' at which point a simple conversion of currency is necessary, YOU DON'T NEED FORESIGHT.

I'll start with one thing about Argentina - while all Spanish speaking countries throughout the world are different in their accents, regional 'dialects' and slang, Argentinean Spanish (aka Castellano and also Porteño), is such a different kettle of fish it's practically a kettle of writhing, flesh eating lizards. So I was on the plane (I think I mentioned something about chronology in my last post, but, uh.. bugger that. That's for people who have a good perception of time, and or arranging events, and or coherent blog posts) and in need of entertainment, at which point I decided, "I'll check out the movies section! Maybe there's a movie in Castellano that I can watch!"

El Secreto De Sus Ojos (The Secret of Your Eyes, roughly/literally) seemed like a great choice, being Argentinean, having won an Oscar (among others) award and having a pretty babin' lead actor (Ricardo Darín). So when I started to watch it, and it didn't have subtitles, and I couldn't understand it, I panicked and wondered if maybe this was some Eastern European version. Until I started picking up bits and pieces of Spanish in there. It was at that moment I maybe SHOULD HAVE realised the immensity of the adventure I had just embarked upon. Only, I was far too stubborn to admit this at that point. Anyway, apparently the movie is great. You should probably watch it, but only if you speak Spanish or find a version that is either dubbed or with subtitles - and then let me know. To me, I'm sure there were a few major points I missed because I was too busy panicking that THIS SHIT'S INSANE AND NOT LIKE THE SPANISH ANYONE I KNEW SPOKE.

And this leads me to life lesson number one.
If there is a guy in your Spanish class who has been speaking Spanish since birth and is good looking and you need to speak Spanish and the fact that he is good looking encourages you to ask him for help in that department - don't bloody flirt with the guy. Because he's probably (only a bit, but still significantly so) younger than you and thinks you want to shag him, which you do, but not after he drinks a reasonably good glass of wine too quickly, slurping while doing so, and starts getting naked in your kitchen while eating your face off, all in super quick succession. This is because after this occasion, you will not want to talk to him but you still need to speak Spanish and you don't want him to feel like an idiot for being so foward but you also don't want him to think he's getting another shot at whatever he was going for. Also, he is of El Salvadorean descent and knows nothing about Argentinean Spanish and your lessons will never be the same again, and the whole endeavour was pointless.

And that was months before I even left the country. Living/learning, what sort of crap is that? Anyway.  
Life lesson number two.
You probably should never have believed aforementioned guy when he told you your Spanish was good. In hindsight, this is a good way to shirk responsibility for your pigheadness when you realise your Spanish is okay, but nowhere nearing being good. And there is a big different between 'okay' and 'good'. Like, 'okay' being able to order a coffee or exchange money with only a small amount of difficulty, and 'good' being able to maintain a conversation with minimal misunderstanding, or not be ripped off by smug cab drivers in plastic puffer vests. But at the time, he was saying this because you are a babe (this is my blog, and this is my truth), and he wanted to drink Oomoo Sauvignon Blanc like Sprite before probably nailing you like some sort of jackrabbit*, not because you are good at Spanish.

However, being as I am, I failed to take into account these things. I arrived to my host family's house, glad to be out of reach of people-trafficking bad guys who wanted to sell my white booty onto some terrible black market where whatever pretense of innocence I once had would be siphoned away and replaced by a crippling opiate-addiction. I still maintained the pretense I was kind of good at Spanish. So I got there, chilled out a bit, showered away the 15-hours-in-transit-scum and enjoyed a cup of tea before asking my host mother where the nearest supermarket was. I thought I understood her directions, but ended up at least seven blocks away from where she'd directed me, and found on my return journey home (which I was grateful to achieve) that the supermarket she'd actually directed me to was a mere block and a half up the road. No matter, because the Coto I ended up in was massive and gave me a false idea of what supermarkets were like in Argentina. Evidently I had stumbled upon either a 'hipermercado' or a 'maximercado' - the distinction between the two being one I have yet to make - that had TOYS and SOUND SYSTEMS and COMPUTERS and other such things dispersed between the yerba (yeah I love linking to Wikipedia, what of it?), shitty cheese and UHT milk.

Anyway. Being in a foreign land, beginning to sense you are not in fact as good as you thought you were at Spanish and also having just realised a smug cab driver in a puffy vest who was oddly generous with cigarettes ripped you off more money than you care to have been ripped off could very easily be mistaken for grounds to pick up life-destroying habits like smoking. WRONG!

Anyway, in the spirit of continuation and not giving it all away too soon (life lesson number.. something, not sure, never learnt that one), I think I have covered enough life lessons for today. Also it is Friday night, and as appealing as it sounded this afternoon when it was raining, drinking cheap but delicious red wine and blogging by myself in my house is no longer as entertaining as I had hoped. I am in one of the city that never sleeps, probably already have red-wine teeth and am determined to make something of my evening. Life lesson number three - from the streets of Buenos Aires, coming soon. Hasta luego.

*this never happened, and for my parents/prospective employers ever read this, this is simply artistic liberty and/or maybe my future contains writing erotic prose for Cosmo or some such so I am getting in some practice now.

all that argy bargy - parte I

Hey blog-o-sphere!

It's been awhile coming - I needed to give the big bad world a chance to show me its teeth before I could write about how scary/sharp they are - but this is big post number one from the other side of the world!

I guess I'll attempt some sort of chronology for the sake of ease, starting with my arrival at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires. In spite of my fatigue after what I consider in some ways having been spastic in time (an idea attributable to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five - 'Billy Pilgrim is spastic in time') I was determined to maintain my sense of independence and definitely delay inevitable feelings of 'oh-shit-I-can-barely-speak-this-insane-form-of-Spanish'. So I marched up the arrivals hall, suitcase in tow feeling very purposeful, looking for a bank to change money.

I couldn't find one so I marched back down the arrivals hall, attempting to look as purposeful as I didn't feel while the nerves inside me fought the cool inside me. I found a stall to do so and successfully changed my precious Australian dollars (at that stage the best Spanish interaction I'd had) before heading up to a kiosk to buy water and a newspaper. I did the latter on the advice of my well-traveled older brother so as not to look like a tourist, though that tactic only works when you don't leave the bloody thing on the counter.

So I hurried up to a phone booth and called my host mother to inform her I had arrived and would see her at her house soon - assuming I wasn't smuggled into a prostitution ring upon stepping outside of the airport. One of my first thoughts as I stepped out into fair, and fairly windy, Buenos Aires was something along the lines of 'GOOD GOD I WANT A CIGARETTE.'
I was recovering from a chest and lung infection, and on antibiotics, and had only a week before been warned by two doctors that quitting was paramount to not dropping dead anytime soon so I had to fight that urge. I spotted a cab (a radio taxi - for reasons of security it is strongly advised here not to use any others) and asked in what was apparently shithole Spanish to go to Recoleta, a wealthy suburb close to the city. The driver I approached didn't look threatening though after a confusing swap of customers and cabs I ended up in a cab with a young guy in a puffy jacket who seemed very nice - but who probably saw in me easy money.
I say that because in my fatigued, fresh-off-the-plane state, I had asked if it would cost 'one hundred dollars' to get there. I'd read in Lonely Planet on the plane that the cab should cost around ARG$100 from the airport to most parts of the city but what they hadn't mentioned was the paramount importance of using the word peso instead of dollar. This cabbie was savvy and didn't think twice about turning on the meter nor clarifying that for me. He took what I said as 'I'll pay you USD$100 to this address in Recoleta' and stuck with it. In hindsight, he was a little too flattering about my Spanish as well as very generous with his cigarettes but I was just looking forward to being within private property, safe and sound. So I coughed up ARG$400 for a ride which should have cost no more than ARG$100 - and in case you're not into keeping up-to-date with South American currencies and their exchange rate, ARG$400 is, at this moment, AUD$103.416. So I got swindled.

Anyway, being that nearly two months has passed since I started this post I can say I have, thanks to that shitty and expensive experience, not been swindled quite that much since. Sure, some cab drivers like to take elongated routes when they think I don't know the area but that's okay because a) I'm too shy to tell them I know that they are taking me a long way and b) they might not actually be doing that anyway because, except main roads, streets here are one way and sometimes you can go two or three blocks before finding a street that runs the way you want it to and c) one time I complained in English to my brother that the guy was taking us a long way before asking him why he didn't use another street that I thought would have been quicker and was told, 'I understood, and because the street you are thinking of doesn't run two-ways until much further down the road', and d) for me it's usually only the difference between $3-10 dollars, something I feel I can afford, for reasons I will outline shortly.

Since then, I have mastered public transport, mostly for reasons of cheapness. By 'mastered' I mean I know one subway (here called the subte, literally 'under you') line and use it often, but also know which buses to take to go to the few destinations I frequent and have been forcing myself into this sort of thing to 'be like the locals'.

And this is nearly a perfect segue to inform my (few) readers, who similar to me - white, middle-class Australians aka unwittingly privileged members of the developed world - are white, middle-class Australians who probably have never really had to pay much thought to just how 'white' we are (in inverted apostrophes because the term, in this context, seeks to encapsulate all the characteristics I just named in varying degrees throughout the following).

First of all, because I am white, and by my fashion sense (read: laziness which leads to jeans-and-a-t-shirt, something that isn't done quite so simply here) I am picked to be extranjera (foreign). Walking around the busy streets of Buenos Aires, if I am solo, means I am a target for men who call me 'beautiful' (the word's many manifestations in Spanish including but not limited to bonita, señorita, mina, linda) and ask me where I am going or harangue me in such a manner until I am out of earshot. Admittedly, at first, I felt complimented by this. I thought, 'I am the best looking foreigner here!' though this sentiment has changed over time. Firstly, because I can be on my way to or from the gym (one of the few destinations I have here in Buenos Aires), sweaty or in men's shorts (for the wrong soccer team, might I add.. Boca Juniors are one of the most popular teams here, though for many reasons I am sympathetic to River Plate. I mistakenly thought the shorts were of Argentina's colours, whoops) and still garner this kind of attention. I feel gross and sweaty and you are telling me I am the most beautiful girl? Get out. You are lying. This led me to suspect that it was merely the colour of my skin and the fact that I don't colour co-ordinate my outfits or wear ridiculously elaborate outfits to the gym aka that I am not from here, that garners such attention.

Secondly, because on more than one occasion it has been presumed I have a shit-tonne of money. By aforementioned cab drivers, by sales people in stores, by people I have met who are surprised when I evince that I am not a rich gringa. Basically, the feeling I get, is that because a) I am white, b) I am not from here and c) I am white, it is assumed I have a lot of money. The thing is, and I don't know how to make this at all obvious, that I worked my ass off to be here. I busted tables (see post below this one for an idea of how much it was shitty) and only drank 3 nights out of 7 to save the money to be here (a grand sacrifice, I am sure you, dear reader, will agree).

Thirdly, and this is the point I want to make most, because I am white and I am automatically assumed to have money has helped me realise that I do indeed come from a privileged position. First of all that I can travel, and that I could work myself to gather capital to do so in an economy that is currently faring super well, suggests this. Furthermore, that I have been given the opportunity to learn another language and am undertaking a university degree that requires this, and very much so recommends a semester abroad speaks of this. And perhaps it is for this reason - realising my privilege - that this is recommended. I always knew that I was lucky not to be a starving African baby, or that at birth I wasn't abandoned on some train tracks under a one-child policy, but I never really knew.

I'm not preaching, and I am going to finish this post shortly, by pointing out a parallel I wouldn't have realised from the suburbs of Canberra.

Argentina and Chile are nearing 'developed' status. This means something in economic terms, maybe says something about the politics, but basically it just means, that like the rest of the developed world, there is a small percentage of wealthy dudes that got a bit bigger. Maybe there are less people living in slums, maybe the gross capital (or something, I don't study economics) is a bit bigger than last year, but, to my understanding, because the circle of fat-cats here just got a bit bigger, these countries are a little bit closer to joining the 'developed' club. I'm not sure if membership is lifelong or if you wear the wrong sort of shoes to the annual do you are ejected, but I do know this. In every nation throughout the world, capitalist or not, there is a grand concentration wealth in a small percentage of the population. In America, something like 5% of the population has the most money and the greatest access to resources. Australia can't be too different.

In Chile, driving down an autopista (freeway), you compete with BMWs, Audis and Volkswagons who are zooming past small dwellings of subsistence. Here in Argentina, the autopistas are filled with both crappy, thirty year old antiquities that you would never see on the road in Australia as well as new model Audis, Porsches and Mercedes, but these autopistas separate the wealthy neighbourhoods that fit neatly and cleanly into the cityscape from the sprawling urban slums that are much bigger than those wealthier suburbs.

My point is, we have it lucky, but that's relative. If you live here and earn pesos, it's almost the same as earning dollars in terms of relative wealth, though things like Pringles and some other brands of potato chips cost more than cigarettes (score one, my diet. Sorry, lungs, you lose! Hips, you win!), but I guess in finishing I want to put it out there that, in spite of my skin colour, I am not so different to the people here. I benefit from a system that doesn't favour me in myself, but the position I was born into, much like the people I am taking the bus with, much like my cab driver, who according to many, is lucky to get the work.

I think this got a bit rambly because it's dark and my eyes are doing that 'my-surroundings-are-dark-but-the-computer-screen-is-really-bright thing' and also because I got distracted slash I can't lie, haven't written in months and feel like a shitty fledgling journalist, but do watch this space.
All that Argy Bargy, parte II coming soon, in a better and less rambly fashion. I might even map out what I want to say before I start, but who knows.