Lemon knees and other language thoughts

We are getting better at Spanish. It happened without us really realizing it. I bet if we compared our starting selves to our now selves, there would be a huge improvement, but it's hard to see with everything in between.

We've discovered that watching argentine soap operas are a really good way to practice. Not only do they give you examples of argentine accents and inflections, they teach you useful phrases such as "I only have 2 months to live." and "You killed your own son."

We are forgetting english. You should see how many words are crossed out in my journal because they are misspelled. Yesterday, I forgot the word "pavillion". 

We find ourselves goggling at how bad some people's spanish is.

Nonetheless, we know we have a long way to go. We have many successes but we are also humbled most utterly more often than not.

A few weeks ago I asked my boss for some lemon knees. Didn't know lemons had knees? He didn't either. I actually wanted to ask for some lemon slices (rodajas de limon) but instead I said rodillas de limon (lemon knees). I know they're not super close but still.

Learning spanish has made me look at language in a different way. It seems to me that every language was invented because of the need to express feelings. And all the feelings are the same. You can say "What is that?" or you can say "Que es eso?". They're different words but they spring from the same feeling. For some reason, that is just fascinating to me. I feel like there are implications there but I'm not sure what of.

It's amazing that so many languages exist and that we humans have the capacity to put meaning to symbols and sounds and process them so fast that they actually work (well, most of the time).

Lonely Blog

Ok, so we really suck at this blog thing.

I think maybe it's a good thing. I think it's a sign we've settled into real life. People don't blog in real life. We don't feel so much like outsiders anymore, commenting on the strange behavior of the natives. We are the natives, and the behavior isn't so strange anymore.

But it is sad to come to our blog and realize we haven't written a single word in almost a month.

So....here goes.

Gabby got invited to go on a trip to Cordoba with her co-workers. She couldn't believe that they liked her that much! It was an 11 hour bus ride and 3 days with non-stop spanish. Her brain almost exploded but it was such a great opportunity to practice.

Mike, Ellen, Garth and Cindy are here to visit. Sarah and Andrea are going with them to Mendoza, the famous wine province for a few days starting tomorrow.

Sarah and Andrea have been going to salsa classes regularly and Gabby, tango. They all couldn't resist buying special dancing shoes just for the occasion. Sarah and Andrea even had theirs custom made and they should be ready in two more days.

The sunburn to end all sunburns

Maybe I'm exaggerating but it seriously could be.

They say most of the sun damage to your skin happens during your teen years. For this, I was always very careful. Lots of sunscreen, minimal exposure, hats, long sleeves. But for what? For in a single hour I have absorbed 10 years worth of ultra violet sun rays.

It looks as though I have taken slabs of raw salmon and plastered them across my mid-section. But this time, its not raw salmon, ITS MY SKIN. Yes, my skin. 

I will say this. Luckily, I only exposed my stomach to the sun because it was in the most need, so the rest of me is okay. Truly, if I laid on the sand, it disappeared completely, causing various passers-by to faint from the shock of seeing a disconnected chest and hips reclining on the beach. So it really was in the best interest of all to achieve some level of tan.

Hopefully, eventually it will turn into a tan. But for now, I carefully limp to bed and apply generous amounts of aloe.

I caused a middle-aged woman to scream for fear of her life

All I wanted to do was get my towel. We were going to the beach and I forgot it so I had to run back. But I'd only been there once and not by myself so I got a little confused. The door is hard to open with the key so I stuck my hand through the window to unlock it.

Next came a blood curdling scream and a crazy woman running toward me. This was definitely not our apartment, but the apartment next door!

I could only stammer how very, very sorry I was. 

She asked me where I was from.

"Los Estados Unidos," I answered stupidly.

"No, which apartment," she said. Duh.

How Embarrassing.

Pictures

Jeff's vistit!

The Opera house

There were a lot of intermissions

A lot.

We loved our blue house picture in our first apartment so much.

a possible tattoo for sarah

Huge solar-powered metal flower that opens and closes. So cool!

In Recoleta with our landlord, Ezekiel

Home Alone (5 or 6?)

Sarah and Andrea have left me to fend for myself as they enjoy a few leisurely days at the beach. 

Not really, I'm going to go join them tomorrow, but the house feels so empty without them. I am kind of enjoying being alone though, just because it proves I can do it. I can feed myself and walk down the street by myself and take care of the house by myself. It's quite empowering really.

Today I went out for breakfast by myself and later I'll go to the gym by myself and last night I single handedly out-witted a group of burglars with ingenious homemade booby traps by myself. 

You think I'm kidding.

Felices Fiestas!

Entonces, we spent Christmas and New Year's on our rooftop. Ezequiel threw a party and we watched the fireworks that were being set off all around the city. As Sarah said, if you could find it, you could light it on fire, wherever you wanted. And I think she's right. I don't think there are any firework regulations here. There were bottle rockets going off on the street below and shooting up to within feet of us. And these cool floating lantern thingies in the sky. 

They were both potlucks so for christmas we brought spaghetti and cheesecake and for New Year's we brought pita chips with meat and cheese, little morsels filled with blue cheese and wrapped in bacon and pumpkin pie.

Awesome.

Victory!

I got a job! Well, I think so at least.

It's at a little italian place called "Chez Juanito" which, after a very loose translation comes out to "Little John's", which is kind of like "Papa John's". I've never been there though. But I want to someday.

 Anyway, I went tonight to try it out. It was crazy busy! It was just me and the owner and he was making all the food and after awhile he was like "ok, that's it, no more food, only drinks." and I was like "Thank you, God!" But it all went a lot better than I expected and I think he really liked me and liked that I spoke english because there were a lot of tourists. Another girl is going to give it a try tomorrow and then he said he would call me on Saturday to say if I got it! So cross your fingers! Only one hand though, because both is bad luck.

I hope I get it, besides everything else, just so that I don't have to go searching for jobs again. It's so stinkin' scary and stressful! But I'm glad I did it, it was really good for me. 

During the job search, something really funny happened. I answered an ad on craigslist for a part-time cook at an old people's home and the lady replied and told me to come in for an interview. It was in Meridian and I was all excited so I asked our landlord where exactly that was and he didn't know so we looked and looked and finally realized that it was in Idaho! I couldn't believe it!

Ciao!

Gabby

Updates

Sorry we haven't written in a while. Here's what we've been up to:

>We went to the opera- It was "The Marriage of Figaro". Very good. We dressed up and had really good seats for only about $30 ($100 pesos). It had 3 intermissions! Sarah and Andrea drank champagne.
>We had Aissa and Ben over for dinner (friends of Joslyn)
>We had Thanksgiving at a friend of some friends of a friend's house. No one could find turkey or pumpkin pie. We had some quail eggs and candy teeth as appetizers. We brought deviled eggs and twice baked potatoes and met some cool people.
>Andrea and Gabby joined a gym! Their favorite things to do are yoga, swimming, spinning and toni-flex. Sarah joined a really nice yoga studio and she's really happy with it. Her favorite teacher is Roberto.
>Sarah has found a new talent as an empanada maker. We have been eating them a lot. She puts things in them like cheese, broccoli, spinach, onions, chocolate, bananas, apples, dulce de leche and beans. Not all at once of course.
>We finally moved into our permanent apartment. We love it so much! It has three bedrooms, it's decorated really nicely, and it has a rooftop terrace that we are free to use, and our landlord Ezekiel is great!
>Andrea started volunteering at "Club Acorn", an after-school program for kids, and she really likes it. It's in "La Boca", the shady part of town about an hour away from our apartment by bus. She is also volunteering at a hospital with Aissa.
>Sarah put an ad up on craigslist for a dog walker and she has her first prospective client! His name is, no joke, Michael Jordan and he wants her to take care of his dog while he is gone for a while.
>Gabby went job hunting for the first time. It was really scary but good for her. Nothing has come of that so far but Ezekiel got her a job interview at the restaurant of the hotel he works at so hopefully that will work out.
>Gabby turned 20 in Buenos Aires on December 12th! Andrea and Sarah made it really special for her. Among other things, we went ice skating!

That's all we can think of right now! We promise to put pictures up soon!

Love, Andrea, Gabby and Sarah

we found an apartment(s)!

we are finally out of the hostel. we found a sweet place, 3 bedrooms, wifi, great neighborhood (palermo viejo), complete with a new gay landlord and a beautiful outdoor roof patio! and sarah's already guilted him into buying us some new wine glasses, so we're happy. but it's occupied until december 16, so we had to move into another apartment in the meantime, which is not our favorite, but we're so pleased to be able to cook, and we've found hours of entertainment watching the security camera view of the front door (always live on channel cinco) and playing with the bidet. (in case you want to learn more on the subject, we found this very informative: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Bidet ) anyhow, we can now receive mail! i know you've all been waiting patiently for this moment. make it count.

Scalabrini Ortiz 1136
2do "D"
C1414DNY
Ciudad de Buenos Aires
Argentina


love you

Las Tres

The nicknames we have received as a threesome since starting our travels (we love them all):

Tres Hermanas - la escuela de la montaña

Tres Mosqueteras - PLQ in Xela

Las Davidson  (and this refers to all three of us or just one at a time, we were always las davidson) - Garden House Hostel

Twisted Bitches - our new apartment and in general

La Pelicula

This is the film that we created to say thank you and goodbye to our wonderful language school (PLQ) in Guatemala. It is the tradition for graduating students to present something. Typically they will stand up and say thank you, tell a story or recite a poem. But since we like to believe we are cooler than everyone else we took this as a challenge. We spent two weeks working on our "proyecto secreto" and everyone was looking forward to something clever and funny from Las Tres Mosqueteras. Of course, two hours before the big event all the power in Xela went out. The only other thing we had prepared to communicate our gratitude and sum up our entire five weeks of study at PLQ was an intro to the movie. Here it is in it's entirety:

Sarah: Primero, nos gustaria decir Muchas Gracias a todos.

Andrea: Hemos hecho una pelicula para ustedes.

Gabby: Entonces, por favor, vamos a la sala de cine.

Needless to say nobody was impressed and we were depressed. But, a few hours later after dinner had been served, the beer had run out and people were just getting ready to leave the power came back on...Sarah immediately ordered Carlos, the director of the school, to herd everyone into the theatre "como vacas". Of course, the people loved it.

Disfruta!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLlkSUfpCfk

-Gabby, Andrea, y Sarah

Vamos Vamos Vamos River Plate

We went to a futbol (soccer) game here in BsAs; we got to watch River Plate (or the River Plates?) play los Huricanes. We were picked up, and of course kissed, by our guide Matias.  Dinner was included, it was grilled sausages or hamburgers at a vendor outside the stadium.  This was pretty great as far as I was concerned, it was made even better watching Andrea enjoy her burger.

The cheer that the crowd was singing during the whole first half when River Plate had not scored was this (as transcribed by our guide Matias, because of course we made him write down the words, he is just lucky we didn't ask him to write down all the words to every song they were singing):

jugadores, la concha de su madre, haber si ponen huevos que no juegan con nadie!!!

I will leave the translation to you all who speak Spanish.

¿De Donde Son?

Almost everytime I tell someone I´m from Hawaii, they do a little cheesy hula dance and I love it.

unas fotos para ustedes

sarah in our hostel

we love these purple trees! they're everywhere


pedis!

our first meal in Bs As. we're quite pleased that medialunas are everywhere too

how sweet is our hostel?

First Impressions

We arrived in Buenos Aires at 5:15 a.m. on November 5th, 2008. We were greeted by two quite good-looking Argentinean boys* who helped us to our taxi. As we were driving, the city was all lit up, active but quiet, pristine, beautiful and topped off by the news from our driver that Obama had won. I would call it a near perfect moment.

One of the first things we did when we arrived in the main part of town was to go get pedicures. Now, I usually could care less about the state of my feet, I'm really not that girl, but even I could see that after two months in Guatemala, they were terrifying and something had to be done. Once this matter was taken care of and we could breathe a little easier, we turned our attention to more important things (almost), like finding an apartment. We found several ones that we liked and have appointments to go see them through next tuesday. We are even playing with idea of getting separate rooms as a way to meet more people and learn faster.

The spanish here is a world apart from that of Guatemala, or I think anywhere. It sounds a bit like Italian to us. For the double 'l' sound, like in 'me llamo', they use somewhere between a 'sh' and a 'j', so it becomes 'me shjamo'. A lot of words are different too. Butter is 'manteca', not 'mantequilla'. It's weird but cool. 

We are staying at a really amazing hostel that is nothing like a hostel at all. Its being cleaned constantly, there are activities everyday (last night was "Emparty"-an empanada party), the staff is awesome, and there is art everywhere. During the day we walk a lot, sometimes just blindly to see what we find and sometimes with a map. Today we stumbled upon a theatre, where we bought tickets to go see the opera "The Marriage of Figaro" (Las Bodas de Figaro), and the most amazing ice cream shop ever where we bought banana split, chocolate chip and a really fancy chocolate that starts with an "N" but I can't remember exactly what the name was.

We also have been needing to take naps around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, we're probably still a bit jet-lagged, and take great relish in filling up our water bottles from the tap (we still can't figure out how to order this in restaurants though). 

Buenos Aires is a lovely city. It reminds Andrea of New York and Sarah found parts that remind her of Denver. You will all love it when you come and visit us. 

Tally of cheek kisses so far: 5 each

*NOTE: Everyone in Argentina is good-looking. And tall. It makes no sense.

Fiambre

The traditional meal for El Dia de los Muertos (November 1) here in Guatemala is called fiambre. As it has been described to me it is a mix of pretty much every vegetable known to man thrown together and cooked, similar to stir fry. (The vegetarians have been looking forward to trying this for like a month.) They also include pretty much every different kind of meat you can think of, ground beef, sausages, lunch meat strips (I think I even found a piece of a hot dog in mine). Then they throw in some eggs and cheese for kicks. Everything turns bright pink because there are beets involved. One thing they failed to mention was that most of the vegetables are not fresh but pickled, and I suspect there are leftovers thrown in there, because hey, who will know the difference?

I thought I had escaped having to eat this on November 1st because I didn´t eat meals with my family that day, however, they were kind enough to save me some leftovers and serve it to me cold the next day for breakfast. Now, I have eaten some very questionable things here in Guatemala for the sake of not offending my family, but this was too much. It was the only thing so far that has required me to be totally honest with my family because the idea of eating an entire plateful was more than I could handle.

It has basically driven us to leave the country. We are on our way to Guatemala City today and tomorrow we are flying to Argentina.

-Love and Besos

The Race is Over . . . I Think.

Monday, October 27th
For all of you who are competing to be the first to visit us during our travels here is the latest update:

There are rumors that our first visitors (Gabby´s fantastic parents, Judy and Michael) have flown in to Guatemala. I suspect they may even be in Xela at this moment although we haven´t seen them yet. We can´t wait to see friendly faces from home! So if you want to beat them here you better hurry, you may only have minutes before they show up . . . or you may have days.

-Besos

UPDATE:  It is Wednesday, October 29th. Andrea´s birthday has come and gone and still no sign or word from Judy and/or Michael. ¿Donde estan?

UPDATE:  Wednesday...later.  Judy and Michael were driving through Parque Central when we ran into them today.  The race is officially over....but who will be second?

A few things that Guatemaltecos would like us to know about Jesucristo

as evidenced by billboards, graffiti, store names, bumper stickers, bus decor, and general musings to this effect.

El es el camino
El es mi rey
El es mi mejor amigo
Solo él puede cambiar tu vida
El es el pan de vida
El es la vida
El vive
El viene
El es dios
El es amor
El te ama
El es el señor
El es el señor de ______ (muchos buses, tiendas, pueblos, y ciudades)
El es verbo, no sustantivo
El es la única esperanza para ti

My Jero

Escuela de la Montaña, where we spent our first week in Guatemala, is awesome for a lot of reasons. It is a gorgeous mountain setting where we had our one on one lessons in our own individual “ranchitos” surrounded by flowers and fresh air. We spent our afternoons drinking coffee grown nearby, and doing our homework in the hammocks. The school does its best to educate students on the social and political reality in Guatemala, and seems very conscious of its impact on the nearby communities and the general environment. But I’m pretty sure that my favorite thing about Escuela de la Montaña was Jorge.

Jorge is Escuela de la Montaña’s very own herbal medicine specialist. (I think I just made that title up. I’m sure there’s something much more official.) He studied the medicinal properties of plants for years, at a couple different schools, and the man is basically magic. Anytime a student was sick, we’d describe our symptoms to Jorge, which usually went something like:

“hurt” pointing, rubbing stomach “stomach” making fist “no good” “me stomach,” and repeat.
And that was just to describe a sore throat.

But Jorge always got it, and he’d walk through his garden picking some leaves here and there, and boil it all into some magic potion of a tea for us to drink. He saved Sarah’s life twice, Gabby’s once, and I got in on it every time, prevention-style.

Naturally, being a tiny bit obsessed with Jorge and his gift, we made the poor guy walk us around his garden, telling us the names and uses of each herb, while I snapped photos and Gabby and Sarah wrote down exactly what he said. So now we have our own little catalog—let us know dondé tienes dolor. Oh, and Jorge also happened to be son of my host mother, Aurelia, uncle of Lucrecia, and the one who built our ranchitos. For some reason, Jorge declined our offer to travel with us for the next 9 months.

Sorry it’s been so long. I promise to be a better blogger.