1. I actually have a love/hate relationship with the beef here. I love beef and its incredible healthy here (free range and everything)...but I can't eat beef every day! It's insane! I knew that they ate a lot of beef here and was very excited coming from Galicia (the seafood capital of the world) to Argentina. I had even lovingly coined these 2 months as my "2 months of Malbec and meat"! But I was completely unprepared. I think it was a combination of me underestimating how much meat they actually consume as well as how little meat I actually consume.
2. I love living near a world city again. Since August we had been living in a small fishing town in Spain, where "going in to town" to get Chinese food was a special day out for us. It feels good to have access to so much again, something that we had really missed while living in Spain. Argentina has a really interesting history of immigration and so there's this worldliness here that Spain doesn't have even it's biggest cities (Spain expelled, rather than embracing, their Jews).
3. Meeting all of Jonathan's family. It has been really incredible for us to meet all of Jonathan's family here. He is meeting most of them for the first time and it's been a really important experience for him. Everyone has been so sweet and so generous and I am definitely looking forward to maintaining the relationships we've started here.
4. The Spanish here is so much easier to understand. Though I still suck...it is so much easier for me to communicate with the family here than in Galicia. In Galicia they have their own national language, Gallego, which is a mix between Portuguese and Spanish. Though everyone knows Spanish, as it is still their national language, they speak with a Gallego accent.
5. The ice cream and pastries here are amazing (they are, in fact, better than in Spain). I am having a serious love affair with Dulce De Leche ice cream. But not only is the ice cream good, but they also DELIVER it. Thank goodness that ice cream delivery doesn't exist in the US...I'd need an intervention. Every ice cream store has a man on a motorbike that will deliver you ice cream. Amazing.
6. So the men here are super aggressive. When I walk down the street, or really go anywhere, men wink, make kissy faces, yell things, whistle, you name it. They yell profane things, but I don't really understand any of it because I don't know the slang they use. And I'm being serious. This does really happen. I'm not one of women that thinks that everyone is always checking her out. On a theoretical level, I find this behavior really offensive and am completely opposed. But there's also this part of me that well, kind of likes it (note: I have only been subject to this objectification for only like 2 months, so it's possible that the novelty still hasn't worn off). But the train station is right next to the track where I go to run. So during my run a train will pass by maybe 4 or 5 times. There's nothing quite as motivational as being told how damn sexy you are with every kilometer you run :).
7. This house down the street from Jorge and Nora's house. I have no idea if anybody lives there, but there are always like packs of stray cats all over the front lawn and I love to stop and look at them every time we walk by. Makes me miss my Marty!!
Things I hate about Argentina:
1. Reggaeton music. As sick as I was of the eurotrash club music that everyone listened to in Spain, hearing reggaeton at every street corner isn't fun either. If you don't know what reggaeton is...click here. Although, thanks to this culture I do get to say "papi" and not sound completely absurd (note: I said completely because I do acknowledge that I still sound kinda absurd :)
2. Public transportation. Okay, so the government owns and operates the train system which is the easiest way to get from the suburbs of Buenos Aires (where we are staying) into the city. It is quite possibly the most poorly managed thing ever. So the ticket offices close regularly because they don' have change. And when they are open, they could care less whether you buy a ticket or not (which value a about 30 cents a trip). So then once you're on the train, which half of the time is so packed that there's people hanging off the side of the train, you're bombarded with people begging for money or selling stuff. People sell everything on the train. Everything. There's food (hot dogs, ice cream, candy, gum, nuts, baked goods), garbage cans, flash drives, locks, scissors, notebooks, and knives (I'll never forget a guy holding a hand full of knives in front of me on the train). There's also this group of people who sell Reggaeton cd's and they stand in the middle of the train with a huge boom box, blasting Reggaeton music. There are also tons of people begging for money on the train, but what's interesting is that they don't just ask for my money. They walk up and down the train, hanging out anything (prayer cards, Lisa Frank notebooks, horoscope books, pens, etc) and then walk back up and down the train collecting them all. When you give them their stuff back, you can choose to hand them some cash too. What I dislike about this is whether or not you want it, they're going to put whatever they're handing out in your lap. And I can't help but think about how dirty this stuff has to be, being handed out all day. ew. And then lastly, the train is dirty and hot. It just makes for a not pleasant train experience. The subway system is actually pretty good, but its hot and crowded. Like literally bodies pressed all up against each other like this is India or China something. Never experienced anything like it in my life. The buses are interesting. First off, you can only pay the bus fair with coins, which you insert into a machine upon embarking. Which is fine, except for the fact that nobody has coins. Jonathan and I are going to start a coin machine company here and make billions. The buses stop at every street corner, which I'm sure is probably pretty annoying for the driver, so to compensate, when you solicit a stop they just never really stop. They kind of roll by the stop and you have to jump out. Oh, and lastly, they always drive with the bus doors open, which freaks me out.
3. There are stray dogs everywhere. They freak me out.
4. No veggies. When you order a salad at a restaurant it is lettuce with either tomatoes or shredded carrots (note: one or the other, never both) covered in oil. I went out and bought broccoli one day and none of the family had ever eaten it before. They couldn't even identify what it was!
But what I hate most of all about being in Argentina ( and in Spain too) is that I don't have my stuff. I miss my stuff. The other day Jon said to me, "I miss my wine fridge" (insert hipster elitist joke here). And it sounds absurd, but I just miss my stuff. I miss my bed and my pots and pans. And I can't wait to move back and look at my stuff, and touch it, and organize it all again. :)
interesting emily.... now I miss your stuff too!
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