So I’ve been cooking for myself about half of the time, here, which is really nice, mostly. The woman I’m renting the room from has a reasonably well-stocked kitchen in terms of pots and pans, in the sense that I can find pots and pans to use, and there’s been nothing really that I couldn’t make that I’ve wanted to. At the same time, people don’t really use cookbooks here, and thus there are no measuring cups; I use a mug to measure water and rice, for example, which is just a strange feeling.

In any case, when I got here I had no spices, and so I bought pepper; we’ve got salt. Technically I suppose I could use some of Elena’s spices, but they’re all unlabeled, and I’d feel bad, regardless. In any case, I ended up buying curry powder and red pepper flakes, and honestly it was the best decision ever, because if I want something to be spicey, I get a delicious curry flavor. Which is really to say that I made a really simple chicken curry last night and will make something vaguely similar tonight. (They sold me three chicken breasts for $20 pesos, and I wasn’t sure if I could ask them for just one, so I am using them one-at-a-time. They’re fucking huge — literally a kilogram of meat. And pretty good, I’d say. If I knew how to shop for it, I’d probably try and cook some red meat, but I don’t really know how, which is weird. I’m very limited in terms of buying and cooking. Some things are easy to figure out, but meat is not one of them, or rather not if you want to be safe.

Okay, right, babbling ’bout cooking.

I guess I can about-face and talk briefly about my second experience at Carolina Tobar García, the public mental hospital. I arrive this morning at 7:40 AM, after getting out of my apartment by 7 and taking the subte — it’s astonishing how many people there were at Constitución, the stop I got off at (and the end of the C-line), at like 7:30 AM. This is presumably because Constitución is also the end-point of a lot of train lines, which bring people into the city from the North — that is to say, people who work elsewhere in the city, but live from outside, come through here on their commute. When I got off the train, there (and very few people come in this way), I literally waded through people to get out. (It’s also amazing that while I had to switch lines and take the subte the length of a line-and-a-half, I still managed to make it to the hospital in half the time it took to make it by bus last Friday, even though the bus is much more direct. The buses are great if you’ve got time or are going somewhere the subte doesn’t go, but even if it’s a farther walk, it’s totally worth it to take the subte where you can.)

Anyway, I actually got there slightly early, so I wandered around outside in the cloudy dawn, and took pictures of the outsides of Borda and Tobar García, the two mental hospitals on this block (on the other block is Moyano, which is a women’s mental hospital; Borda is men, Tobar García is kids). Unfortunately, I can’t upload my pictures until I get my camera charger; I’m really hoping I can get some pictures at FLENI before it dies (else the CPGC will be sad). Still, these photos would be worth it; these places looked fantastic in morning half-light.

I went in closer to 8, and Marco introduced me again to Stella, who’s the chief of Admissions. I was ushered into a small room, peeling paint, along with three of the residents and an older woman who introduced herself as, I think, Iliana. We sat along the side of the table & she sat behind it — there was a one-way mirror along the wall, but apparently they don’t go for subtle, here. (That’s unfair — from my understanding, they can’t use the one-way mirrors anymore because all of the audio equipment has been stolen. This used to be a really well-equipped hospital, according to Sebastián.) We watched an interview of a grandmother and her grandson; the players switched, and I watched an interview of a pregnant mother, with her two hyperactive sons. I won’t write about the interviews here, but they were seriously unreal. These people were smiling and crying; the kids were oblivious. They went for maybe an hour or so each, and then the psychologist or doctor gave a treatment plan, as if everything was solvable, all of us knowing it wasn’t quite. No diagnosis really necessary — no insurance to bill, I guess.

At around 11, the interviews were over, and so I left. It was drizzling lightly, but I walked into Borda and walked around a little bit. No one bothered me, but it was bizarre to see an older man busking in the hospital hallway. I wanted to take some photographs, but was mighty uncomfortable.

I walked to Boca in the drizzle, a really tourist-y barrio not all that far away, just closer to the river, and walked down el Caminito, a corner of streets that was bright-colored & tourist trap nightmare. I ate my lunch sitting under a tree, looking over the dark, empty port (most shipping happens up-river, now), the tree blocking most of the rain. After lunch, I walked back down the road, and got pulled into a bar by a woman whose job, I suppose, was to lure tourists. (Lure makes this sound evil; she asked me if I wanted to come see a tango show, and I figured why not.) Today was a day for staying inside; I was the only one there, and all I wanted was a coffee. I watched the tango dancers, who were dressed well and not half bad (although not great; they were dancing in a bar mid-day on a Monday), and watched tourists take photographs with them (I was tempted, but held back, not sure why except that I hate feeling too much like a tourist). And then I finished my coffee, took out my Guia, and figured out a bus route home, which I took, and which dropped me off two blocks from my house after probably an hour of winding through the city.

I want to go make dinner. I want “Dexter” to be on TV again (I watched it last night for the first time! it was really quite good!).

Also, on Sunday, Vincent Gallo, who directed Brown Bunny and Buffalo ’66, both of which I’ve heard of but never seen, will apparently be screening said films at MALBA and thence talking about them, or something. I think it would be interesting/fun to go. I have never seen either, but I’ve heard of them a few times — they sound a bit self-obsessed, but also kind of interesting.

I still intend to go to the Recoleta Cemetery sometime soon, but perhaps I should save that for when my parents are here; I definitely want to go to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Perhaps this weekend.

No, I’m not really sure why this is a separate entry from the previous. Other than that it wasn’t conneced thematically (but when has that ever stopped me).

So this morning I went to the Hospital Municipal Infanto-Juvenil — Dra. Carolina Tobar García, which is one of the public hospitals in Buenos Aires. As the name indicates, it’s a government hospital for infants and children, and essentially Maria sent me there to see what public health in Argentina looks like.

The hospital isn’t awful. It’s just pretty damn bad — there’s in article in The Daily Profile, here, that details (in Spanish) just how much is wrong with this place. In essence, though, the building is really fucking old, and the new building still isn’t finished, and they don’t have great equipment — so although there are some talented doctors, and they have good training, they can’t do all that much.

Anyway, let’s start up top. I was supposed to get there at like 9:30, so I figured I’d take a 9 AM bus, get there maybe fifteen minutes late, and all would be well. I got out a little late, waited for the bus for a while, and it took longer than expected; I got off a little before 10:30. Okay, you know, it’s not like they’re waiting for me. I was mildly upset, but not really. I walked down Brandsen, crossed under the autopista and uner the train tracks, and got onto Carrillo, which is where the hospital is. And then I madea huge mistake: I turned left. Let me tell you: left was not a hospital. Left was wall, all the way down, wall covered with graffiti. It was a beautiful morning; it was bright; I wasn’t unsafe. I just wasn’t where I needed to be. At the end is a giant area where they load trains and trucks, with who-knows-what; Barracas is still a factory district. I turned right onto Suarez, and essentially walked up a street filled entirely with trucks. Huge, hulking monstrousities, hauling what-the-ever, lorry-loads of Things. The paths were covered with leaves (it’s still technically autumn here, remember), blowing in the wind, crunching under my feet. Then I turned and I walked up Perdriel. Essentially, I circled the entire block — and this is not a small block, this is at least a kilometer of walking. And then I called Sebastián, who I was supposed to meet.

And Sebastián told me that I essentially had circled the WRONG block — there were indeed hospitals there, right where I had started, but they weren’t even the ones I wanted. No matter — I found my way to Borda, the adult neuropsychiatric hospital, and he found me there, and showed me around. The first thing I noticed was that there were people asking for change outside of the front entrance. The second thing I noticed was that the entire thing looked as much like a prison as like a hospital. My view of prison is tempered by my restorative justice class taught at the Detention Center in Philadelphia, but the lights were the same — not the bright, clean white light I associate with hospitals, not the white light and sunlight of FLENI, but flickering and yellow. Old lights. Sebastian showed me the different parts of the hospital (and, amusingly, I can’t think of the right words in English to describe them), the consulting rooms, the chapel, the fields, the cafeteria, the research and laboratory, the rooms for the… shit, internados, the kids who stay there. Apparently, there are around 70 of them — he said that they’re only supposed to stay for a few weeks, but sometimes parents just don’t come back. A lot of the kids who are inpatients are violent, apparently, or have violent outbursts — schizophrenia, or sometimes autism, but dangerous to themselves or others. Which makes sense, of course.

Essentially, Sebastián showed me around to the different parts of the hospital, showed me the outpatient services, which is where he work, and then introduced me to some of the psychologists who work there. One of them, a big, bearded man eating in the break room, stood up to greet me. I’m still unsure about why he was happy to see me, other than that he spoke some English — I also don’t really know who he was; he just looked like a Freudian. But he shook my hand, crumbs in his beard, asked me how I was and where I was from, and then we turned to go. As I walked out, he called, “Eh, ¡Che!” (Che, here, is sort of like “man,” only more gender-neutral and age-neutral; I’ve heard parents use it with their children, girls use it with their female friends, and so on. This is not what was funny.) He asked me, then, “Eh, who do you prefer, Obama, or…” I shrugged my shoulders, and said, “Obama, naturalmente.” Anyway, the point was that this giant bearded psychologist who I met for twenty seconds immediately asked me about my political affiliations. Rachel tells me this has been overwhelmingly her experience here, but this was my first brush with it.

And then, maybe only two hours after I got there, maybe less, Sebastián left me with the head of the residents, Marco, who is another friend of Maria’s, and who was very helpful and friendly, and spoke English with a British tinge, and had a black sweater and a soul patch and seemed, like everyone here, younger than he probably is. And in the space of 10 minutes, Marco had arranged for me to return Monday morning at 8 AM (actually on-time, this time, ugh) and watch the admissions procedures for inpatients. I think. That part was in Spanish. 8 AM, definitely. Monday, definitely. What I’ll be doing, not so clear — and honestly, I don’t think it was my Spanish so much as that they didn’t really tell me. But hey, I’m interested, and it should be a good time, no?

Maybe “good time” isn’t quite right. Regardless.

I really want to go back there and take photographs, but I don’t know how much that’d be possible; I also don’t want to run out of battery without getting pictures at FLENI. I’ll consider it.

Right right, enough enough. I think I shall nap, now, or maybe go to yoga… And besides, it’s a Friday, and I should figure out something to do this evening. Oh, how frustrating this life! (Hah.) In any case, to explorations and new places, and a fond farewell.

A few good things that have happened recently:

1. I found a place that has yoga classes that I like, and I’ve gone to them. I’ve missed two that I meant to go to since the first one, but I’m sure I’ll go again, and they have both Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga, hurray.
2. I found a copy of Isabel Allende’s La Casa de los Espíritus, and started reading it. I’ve finished Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal; this is considerably more difficult. (It starts off with a lot of words about mourning, religion, and piety, and damn me if I knew any of them.) I’ll try it without a dictionary eventually, but for now I’m looking up words right and left.
3. I started reading Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, which is apparently his first well-known book; it’s really good thus far. (I read about 150 pages in two days, but then I started the Allende.) I think I can sort of see the ways that his confounding explanations have improved since this one, but as always I like reading the way he writes. Sometimes these books feel so foreign (well, they are indeed written originally in Japanese), and sometimes so very American. It’s cool to feel.
4. I bought delicious dates filled with… well, I’m not quite sure. Some kind of nut.
5. I got my clothes washed, my dress shirts pressed, and everything folded, for $15 pesos.
6. I found cocoa butter (I mean, this was quite a task! I’m not sure if pharmacies didn’t have it, or if I just hadn’t been looking closely enough, but nowhere had any signs of lip balm; of course, I should’ve probably just asked for manteca de cacao, which is what this is called anyway), which is a blessing since my lips had been quite painful.
7. I figured out where the post office is! So as soon as I go somewhere and find more postcards, I can begin sending them. I should probably send my cousins and grandmother ones… I guess I need addresses.
8. I decided to actually start doing things on the afternoons I get back before five — like, going to museums, or exploring places in the city I haven’t been yet. I even made myself a list.
9. The list of films that they’re showing at MALBA this month actually came out. I lied about French New Wave, although an occasional film falls into that category, but they’re showing a few films I want to see: Polanski’s Cul-de-sac this weekend, Teshigahara’s Woman of the Dunes. And then they’re also showing some movies that would be fun to see, especially in Buenos Aires: Yellow Submarine, Rocky Horror Picture Show. I guess I mentioned all of this already.
10. I guess that’s about it. Still, better to buoyed up than weighed down, says I.

I think it’s clear from the way these entries are going why I didn’t want to have this be officially a blog for the CPGC. Besides the fact that those never work out so well, I also am talking only occasionally about my project. Which, honestly, is as it should be.

1. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been humming weird music — like, just now I caught myself humming “Mockingbird,” or whatever it’s called, “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, papa’s gonna buy you a mocking bird, and if that mocking bird don’t sing..” Earlier today I was humming “Clementine” (“In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine, dwelt a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter, Clementine. Oh my darlin’, oh my darlin’, oh my darlin’ Clementine, thou art lost and gone forever, oh my darlin’ Clementine…”) And the other day, walking back from the one club I’ve been to here, I could swear I started humming “America the Beautiful.” I don’t even know the words!

2. I have been trying to write a lot. I am sort of succeeding. I mean write fiction and stories and sketches, and it’s good to do. On the other hand, I’m certainly succeeding in writing about my trip on here. I’m sort of sad that I’m not writing so much in my journal, but it’s a lot easier to write on here, and a lot faster, and easier to go back and edit… still, I’ll definitely have my journal ten years from now. But where will this be?

About a week ago, now, I saw one of the women I work with on the street, and stopped to chat with her. She was buying bread, and she stopped to tell me some places she thought I should go — what are called peñas, these folk-music-and-parrilla (grill) places. She recommended two in the Palermo region, which is where we live, saying to make sure to make a reservation.

Tonight, my sister Rachel and I were going to go to this Vegeterian restaurant, but she called me when we went to meet up, and said, no, come to the Bulnes subte stop, my friends are going to be there and they are going to this peña and we should join them. So I said, sure, definitely, why not, I haven’t really been to a traditional parrilla yet, and it’s not like I can’t eat vegeterian food any time, and anyway Rachel had been feeling sort of sick so she can’t eat much wherever we go. So we went.

The place was indeed one of those recommended by Nora; it’s called the Peña del Colorado (website), and it was a small, homey-is-the-only-word place, with a big grill in the back and a small stage in the front. Rachel and I hadn’t made reservations, but they were able to seat us all together, and we sat and ordered food and wine and watched the show when it started at 22:00 or so. (I love that they use a 24-hour-clock here; it’s so nice, especially since I always try to use one at home and no one is ever willing to deal with it.) The singer was this woman named Gabriela Torres, and we collectively decided that she was nice to listen to but that we wouldn’t ever really put her on at home; I really liked some of her accompaniment, like the harmonica and the flute.

The food was really very good; I got my first steak since I was maybe 10 (I’m making that up; I’ve no memory of when I last actually ordered steak, rather than chicken or fish), and it was really delicious so long as I didn’t think about it. The wine, for $12 a bottle, was perfectly fine (remember, that’s fucking $4 US), and in general it was a pretty cool experience, although they ran out of flan before I’d ordered it (I never get to have flan here when I want it! and the one time I did, it was sort of bad and I could’ve sworn that my flan is better). I had café con crema instead, which was nice. (I’ve been into drinking coffee here, even though I so rarely drink it in the states; it’s something reasonably inexpensive to buy, and it gives you something to do.)

Earlier today, I went to the Feria de Mataderos, in Mataderos, which is a barrio in the south-west of the city. It was an hour-long bus-ride, and I’m actually sort of proud of myself for figuring it out and going on my own. Todd F had recommended it, and it was a pretty cool time; it’s less tourist-y than, say, San Telmo, in the least because it’s not on a subway line, and there was a lot more music and dancing, and good food, including tamales (oh man, so delicious), and lots of sweets. I talked myself out of buying cotton candy, twice. I want to go back with more than $30; there was some cool stuff there — all I ended up buying was a bombilla for my mate gourd, since the wooden one Rachel bought me, as nice as it is, got clogged immediately when I tried to actually use it.

Ferias are, well fairs, street fairs, clogged with vendors, and foodsellers, and people. I don’t know how better to explain them.

Tomorrow morning I am going to a yoga class, if I can get up in time to make myself. If I like it, I imagine I will buy a pass and go once a week, although not necessarily on Monday mornings. The place I’m thinking of going is surprisingly not-cheap; it ends up being more than yoga is at the place I go to near Haverford (although certainly cheaper than anywhere I’ve been to other than that; Daniel, who owns the Haverford place, gives fantastic discounts to students).

Saturday I finally went to MALBA, the museum Joe had told me about; it was pretty good, but in general I wasn’t horribly impressed; they had a floor devoted to Tarsila do Amaral, a Brasilian artist who was, errr, okay. I mean, fine, I loved some of her dream paintings, but in general I wasn’t so impressed. I just like dreamscapes.

MALBA also has a film series, and regular daily screenings in their auditorium (you can only look at the schedue if you’re on the Spanish version of their website). From the looks of it, they’re going to be doing a French New Wave cycle this month, which is exciting — I can see French movies with Spanish subtitles! I imagine I’ll go at least to a few films; I’ve been wanting to educate myself a bit more about French film. And they’re showing Rocky Horror Picture Show, twice, and especially since Joe said it was fun, I shall have to go and see it in Spanish. Or, I guess, subtitled in Spanish. Jesus, it’s been a long time since I actually saw Rocky Horror.

Saturday night I didn’t leave my apartment, I don’t think.

Which brings us up to now, temporally oddly, but nonetheless. I have lost some English syntactical ability, and my keyboard makes it so that every time I try to type some, literally every time, I type smoe instead. Fucking A. This is what I get for pretending that a toy computer is a real one.

I wish I was taking more pictures. I’m not allowed to photograph at FLENI, so I won’t get pictures of the kids I’m working with, which does make sense I suppose; still, I should take some pictures more than I am. I should’ve purchased a small camera for this; I always feel so awkward with my gigantocam. Regardless, when I get the chance I will indeed upload some photos onto Rachel’s computer, thence resized, and thence to the web.

Until then, folks.