The heat! And other topics of interest besides the weather.

As a Minnesotan, I of course cannot help myself from obsessing about the weather, and here in Buenos Aires it has become unbearably hot! While this was a part of my plan, to be somewhere warm and not suffer through another brutal Minnesota winter this year, yesterday I think I reached my limit. For some reason, starting this week, the sun has begun to feel more intense, wearing 40 SPF has become inadequeate, I am starting to get burned, even if out for only an hour to walk somewhere, and along with my sunburn, my whole body heats up and cannot cool down, even while I sweat profusely. In the past few days my skin has begun to itch, causing me to wonder if I am developing a sun allergy, or is there an ozone hole opening up above me? Is it the combination of air pollution and lack of rain? The country is in a drought and it has not rained in days or weeks it seems - the scorched grass at all the parks and crispy leaves on trees seem to reflect what is happening to non-natives like myself; this condition has become a bit of a preoccupation.

Yesterday, I was kindly invited to come along to cruise the Rio de Plata on a friend of a friend's company yacht that he had for the day with a dozen or so of his friends that I had never met. We listened to music, had a barbeque, hung out on the various decks, cruised along the river and then we anchored and stayed anchored for the next 8 hours, with a view of Buenos Aires in the distance. By the time we dropped anchor, I'd already had too much sun on the deck; even with full sunblock protection I got fried. It was a scorcher, at 104 degrees or more. So while I stayed under the covered rear deck or inside, the rest of the group lounged in the sun and swam in the river, for hours. By the time we had our civilized 5pm tea-time, I was beginning to go stir-crazy. And while I should've been practicing my Spanish, feeling more and more uncomfortable, trapped on this boat with near heatstroke, I wasn't, and therefore was not really part of most conversations and one of the guys, if I spoke English, would say I had to speak Spanish, that it wasn't fair, I was in their country and needed to speak the language. I felt more and more awkward as the day went on and sensed that I was coming across as an uptight stick in the mud. When we started to head back, as the sun was going down and the stars came out, listening to Bob Marley, I was ready to hang out for a while longer, but then alas, it was over. Even if I did come across as the sweaty, staring, silent American I did manage to make a couple of new friends that live just a few blocks away from me.

So I woke up this morning feeling a bit homesick and after putting on my daily dose of sunscreen and covering up my sunburn with a hat and sunglasses, I headed out to get a cafe con leche at my favorite cafe in Recoleta, Cafe Victoria. Going here always makes me feel good, even if I do feel a bit awkward around a certain cat-calling waiter. Buenos Aires is well-known for this practice of cat-calling and I'd have to say that my favorite is the hissing and clucking - it really helps one to imagine what things must've been like for neanderthal women. So I was sitting there writing in my journal, having my coffee, listening to the accordian player with the red clown nose playing away off in the distance, and an older man, a tourist, asked me if he could join me. I was a little taken off-guard and while staring at his extremely white teeth, hesitated, thinking, oh no, I really want to be alone right now, but then agreed. So I whiled away the next two hours talking with this man, a Canadian, who, after losing his wife seven years ago, has spent six months out of every year traveling somewhere warm, a plan that he and his wife had for once they retired. They had come to Buenos Aires together over ten years ago and had sat in the very same cafe together, enjoying cafes con leche. He had amazing stories, told me great things about the Seychelles, where I now want to go, and about his depressing experience in Fiji, where after being dumped by a girlfriend he found himself trapped and isolated on one small island after another.

After coffee I wandered over to the "grand" park in Palermo, still feeling homesick, seeing the scorched grass and cigarette butts littering every square inch it seemed, with people lazily lounging about in the sun - either tourists or locals that most likely couldn't afford to leave town, since it seems that no one stays in the city on the weekend, it's a ghost town in my neighborhood, amazing. But what I found today is that the El Rosedael, a glorious Rose Garden with benches and fountains and watered grass and Greek bridges, was open to the public (every other time I'd wandered over there it was fenced off with locked gates). It felt rather life-affirming to wander around in here and I spent some time sitting by the small man-made lake watching people go by in the peddle and paddle boats, sometimes painted with a spiderman or batman theme, that looked as though they were on the verge of completely falling apart, only to send the occupants into the murky mucky water (where, by the way, I last month helped pull an almost-drowning little boy out that had fallen in - it was the strangest thing, he just seemed to disappear in a black cloud once underwater). At one point I thought I was watching a rat swimming around, unable to tell due to the lack of visibility, but to my surprise, it was a turtle. How nice.

I've also kept up with Spanish class, although it was a bit of a shocker the first week. No longer was it just three of us, but almost ten, and we had two new teachers that took a little getting used to. There are four Brazilians in the class who mix Spanish and Portuguese all class-long, and since I don't quite know the difference between the two languages when they are mixed together, I never know what's right. And then there's a German man who speaks in French and an Italian- American that mixes Italian and Spanish and an American that somehow bypassed level 1 and never knows what's going on, and then there's me with a crazy party going on in my brain trying to make sense of everything. But it's getting better. And I think once I'm working with children, the base I have will serve me well, and I will pick up a lot. That and the other teachers I'll be working with do not know English. Fun challenges!!

I also can tell that I am adapting more to the culture and settling in here. I am no longer freaking out about having organic food and really like the way the produce tastes here now - and although I can't find peanut butter, I've found that tahini on bananas makes a great snack! I can actually go to the gym or grocery store and run into people I know and I'm developing a little social network in my neighborhood. And the fact that I hardly batted an eye when a stray dog from the street came into Spanish class last week looking for water tells me things are looking good, I can manage in this city just fine.

Until next time!