Blogs from Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America - page 259

I will start this entry out by letting you know that tonight I enjoyed the tarta I was hoping to have enjoyed last night... and it was beautiful. My day: I was supposed to go to a gaucho town with Jessica and her friend´s, but I woke up and wasn´t feeling very well and wasn´t sure how far from the residencia I really wanted to wander (and if I really was up to being around strangers all day, the second day in a row). I decided against going with them, and no feelings were hurt. Instead of going to this town, I decided to take advantage of the town I was in and went exploring in Buenos Aires. I walked a LOT today. I will have to go and count out the number of blocks and ... read more

The Argentine Messiah In attempting to explain Argentina’s fanatical devotion to Soccer, I thought it might be helpful to explain their unconditional love for the big man himself, Mr. Argentina, Diego Amando Maradona. For those of you living in the only country in the world that isn’t obsessed with Soccer it is important to understand that Maradona is a ridiculously talented “futballer” who, during the eighties and early ninties, was competing head-to-head with Pele for the title of “World’s Greatest Futballer.” And while internationally Pele seems to have won out in this historic competition, I think it is safe to say that this has nothing to due with the fact that Pele had more talent then Maradona, and everything to do with the fact that while Pele was a nice, clean cut guy, Maradona has been ... read more

We have settled into teaching a little bit, although this will be the first week where we both have to teach about 20 hours of classes, which I am sure will be a little stressful. However one of the benefits of working in the same job is that we are able to swap lessons pretty regularly, and because almost all of our students are intermediate level business people, we can even recycle a lot of our old lessons. One thing that has been tricky though is that there was a subway strike last week and so the 1 million or so people that take the subway everyday were all cramming into buses, taking their cars or hunting desperately for free cabs, which made getting from one class to another somewhat difficult. This is sort of par ... read more

"¡Un pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!" So I went to my first rally in a foreign country today. President Nestor Kirchner, elected without a popluar mandate when previous presidential candidate Menem (running for re-election) realized he was going to loose so badly he dropped out, decided to re-invent the ancient tradition of public address in Peronism. In the Plaza de Mayo, where sixty years ago Evita Peron stood and heard the people´s plee for her candidacy for vice president, Nestor Kirchner and his wife Christine spoke to the people in a rally to demonstrate popular support for the president. I´m not sure how many hundred thousand people made the venture into downtown Buenos Aires for the rally, but it was indeed a crowd. As an American it´s such an inviting site to see peaceful gatherings of ... read more

This big ole house I live in is quiet. Everyone is out doing their own thing and I am left here with Alices trusty Italian Mac iBook G4. (One thing about this Italian Mac....it has some crAzy buttons on it....for instance...this...§....along with crazy buttons, I dont know where some of my American buttons are like the apostraphe. Please, I know many of you brood over my mispellings and unintended word use....do not dwell on my extremely faulty punctuation. You know what they say....."When in Rome..." (ha! Alice is from Rome...this computer is from Rome...get it?) Another little side note: Whenever I hear either myself say the expression "When in Rome..." , which is surprisingly a lot, or when someone else uses it I cant help but think of my Father. Sometimes he goes to embarressing lengths ... read more