Buenos
Aires, Argentina: So, we have been here two weeks now and things are slowly
coming together for us.
The city is
quite a character to get to know. Rough and not so charming and beautiful as i
might have hoped for. Grand, old style buildings are put next to modern cheap
houses that have not been looked after for a long time. There are many poor
people trying to survive in all kinds of more or less creative ways so
everywhere we go people want something from us and the atmosphere is quite edgy
and a little aggressive. People are selling everything from socks to CDs or
singing or juggling or begging in subways on the streets and even in the
traffic as cars wait for green light. In the evenings we have seen lots of
people go through piles of bin bags with garbage to find things to eat or keep
or sell. I would imagine this is only the beginning of what we might encounter
as we travel, but it is making an impact on me.
Two girls
(one of them Swedish) that we met in our hostel have been robbed on separate
occasions, one of them (the Swedish girl)was robbed twice during a period of
under 24 hours and one of the times 3 guys came in to our hostel (this was
before we where there) and pointed a gun to her head...This made me much more
careful and suspicious in this city. The local Buenos Aires people tell us not
to trust anyone on the streets, not taxi drivers, not people in shops.... It is
like a film.
But the
people we meet and engage with are very nice and what the city maybe is lacking
on the surface, it certainly has on a deeper level. Very generous people with
good hears and a passionate attitude to life. I hope to be experiencing more of that during
our time here.
We have
found a place to stay for the 3 months we are here. We are staying in a family
home, a big old beautiful building that we think was built to be a hotel. The
Argentinean couple that we live with rent out rooms on an ongoing basis and
they have got 6 daughters which are all grown up. They come and go and we
actually do not know who lives here and who does not. We have only been here
for 3 days and since they only speak Spanish our conversations are very limited.
Roy is doing quite well and manages to arrange many things in his simple Spanish
and i am on the level of saying one word and hoping that my body language will
convey the rest. Studying Spanish is high on my list of priorities, that is for
sure.
We are
trying to fit around the Argentinean life style that involves eating dinner at
10 or 11 in the evening and the dinners usually consist of the largest steaks
that i have ever seen, served with nothing but bread (ok, sometimes they come
with potatoes). This is not an ideal place for a vegetarian, and i end up
eating a lot of pasta and bread. But Roy is happy. Although after two weeks of
eating out we are now looking forward to cooking at home and eating some more
simple foods and salads.
Our tango
studio, DNI, has turned out to be a fantastic place filled with young
enthusiastic tango people who love to teach us this modern (and for us slightly
unusual) form of tango. We have taken maybe 4 private lessons so far, Roy with
female teachers and me with male teachers, and we are in the middle of the
process of re-learning everything we knew about the basics of tango. It is very
challenging to build new habits but it is fun! This style of tango has more
movements with the hips and has larger moves in general. It is quite a grounded
form (as in low level), which is different to the form that i have been taught before
in which the hips are still and the core of the movements come from the cheats
rather than the hip. The teachers have prepared a plan of private lessons for
us and next week we are starting to join the group classes as well. As it looks
now we could do up to 3 classes per day (about 5 hours). We shall see how much
we can cope with daily. We are here for 3 moths after all and there is no
rush....
