cute creatures

This city is full of delightfully charming animals. I thought I'd share some adorable friends I've met so far -

This cat (who is getting ready to yawn) is a fun friend I met in a coffee shop in the neighborhood of Recoleta. Here, shop owners don't seem to mind having their cats lounge around like furry little bums.



This tolerance is also evidenced with this sleeping cat, who is, in fact, sleeping on a mattress in a mattress shop. If it weren't so socially strange, I would've curled up right beside him or her in the window for a nap.



I've also met a handful of pigeons who have no qualms with flying up into your face as you're walking down the street. Being an awkward white person, it's hard for me to take this in stride, somehow the Argentines manage to look cool even when a pigeon flies into their path. This little bastard stared me down while I was sitting in Plaza de Mayo in the center of the city.

From Untitled Album

Apparently animals coexist very well here, or at least they've been forced to coexist well. Though it's hard to tell in this picture, this is a rat and a kitten sleeping together, and, from what I can tell, embracing. True love knows no species.



BA loves dogs, big time. They are everywhere, whether they belong to someone, or they're just savvy street dogs who charm their way into earning a few meals a day. This dog I found in San Telmo, peaking his head out of the apartment he/she lived in.

...boogers

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I've been stricken with a few awful, albeit quick, images in the past few days.

Picture this. Adorable kids walking down the street in the little lab coats that are the school uniforms of Argentina. One little boy is walking toward me, big brown eyes and a cute little boy haircut, he looks me straight in the eyes as he digs into his nose, finds a booger, and then, yes... you know what he did. The little fucker ATE IT! All while looking me in the eye.

WHAT IS IT in our DNA that makes us WANT TO DO THIS? COME ON KID!!!!
Human nature is GROSS, son.

That's not the only nose picker I've seen recently. Today, as the subway train pulled out of the station I caught perfect sight of a kiosk worker picking his nose with his PINKY. It felt like a scene from a movie where the girl sees her love for the last time as the train leaves the station. Except my love was picking his FUCKING NOSE. With his pinky.

Be still my heart.

goals revisited

So I haven't fully met my two goals that I aimed to meet a while ago. 1. Ride the bus 2. Buy a phone

BUT...the good news is that I've ridden on the bus like 3 times now! Yaaaaay, turns out getting onto a bus, paying, sitting down, and then getting up and getting off at the appropriate stop is not so hard. Although, last night when i was using the coin machine to pay once I got on board, I managed to open the machine to expose the inner workings of the giant contraption when I thought I was turning a lever for my ticket. The big door came right open when I turned it and shocked the hell out of me, but luckily I swiftly closed it right back up, took my ticket, which came out on its own, and sat down.

The phone, unfortunately, has yet to be purchased. However, other big things have happened. haha! Some good, some bad, mostly good.

#1 - I'm moving
I am leaving my place and I haven't even shared any pictures, so, here they are. Better late than never.

My little bed & nightstand


My dresser


Bathroom


The hallway & front door. Okay, that's enough I'm tired of loading these.

I'm moving in with a very nice Columbian guy in an area of town called Caballito. I'm super excited because my new roommate is aware of how bad I want to improve my Spanish, so he'll help me immerse myself and hopefully introduce me to some of his lovely Columbian friends? Maybe he knows Shakira.

#2 - I've got a ton of teaching hours each week starting April 4
I have been patient, (haha, mostly), sent out countless resumes and emails, but finally, the company I have been working a few hours for every week has finally come through and they're giving me the hours I need to survive here, starting next week. I'm excited about getting productive again, and it's a pretty smooth schedule.

Just keep on putting one foot down in front of the other. :)

easy breezy friday

It's a 4 day weekend here in BA, not that that matters when you don't have a real people regular job. Even if I did, I will say these people sure do know how to relax.



I thought I'd share something nice and fun - a view of my laundry from the roof of my building, (better enjoy it while I can, I'm moving next week). I really love doing laundry here, carrying it all the way up to the roof for it to dry in the sun and breeze. Give me a few months and I'll be cursing like a sailor going up each step as the novelty will have worn off by then and my laziness would take over from there. For now it's great.



Also, a few weeks back I saw a free concert with a few different artists from South America. One of whom was Marcelo Pretto who I now love. He's Brazilian and brilliant. We couldn't use cameras at the show, but that didn't stop me from recording a bit of one of his songs from my purse. Just enjoy the sounds of the video matched with his elated face and have a happy Friday!

bomba del tiempo

This was a really fun concert I went to with some friends a while back. A group of drummers go nuts for like an hour and half while the crowd dances and from what I remember smelling, smoke pot openly. Lots of fun. Especially the beautiful conductor, he's somewhere in this city and I will find him...

the sounds

This is a pretty loud place. Sometimes even when I'm walking down the street with my headphones on at near-full blast I can still hear the random roars of the city around me. Here are a few things you might expect to hear here (here! here!:) -

Whistling buses - Not sure why but many of the "colectivos" or public buses that drive around the city are accompanied by a high-pitched and inexplicable whistling noise. This combined with the fact that they go very fast, making a roaring engine sound, helps to create a consistent vibrating hum on the street during the day and well into the night.

Screeching sounds of the subte - In between certain subte (subway) stations as you pass through there is a horrendous sound of metal scraping against metal. These seizure-inducing screeches are pretty bad. It's like when you have your iPod turned up loud already and then a song comes on that you downloaded, (legally or illegally?), which was recorded extra loud, (because you downloaded it legally or illegally). That moment when the song pierces your ear drum and you could drop to the sidewalk from the shock is comparable to this scraping sound on the subte.

Random music - Sometimes I hear songs that are under the radar even in the US. There are some radio stations that have a great mix of indie music and 90s and 00s. But then sometimes, you're in a cab at 2 in the morning and your middle-aged, male cab driver is playing Super Trooper by ABBA and tapping cheerily on the steering wheel.

Morena hermosa! - If you at least even resemble a woman here, chances are, you will receive cat calls. If you are not a woman and you get cat calls, I would encourage you to show your true self to these men and scare the hell out of them. If there has been one man who has succeeded in picking up a woman through cat-calling, I would love to meet him. This man would be an international hero, because 10 times out of 10 women want nothing to do with these assholes, myself included.

More sounds to come, I'm sure...

tread lightly

Before I get into the nitty gritty of the sights and sounds of this really cool city there is one thing you should know. When you're walking here, always look down.



WHOA!

This place is littered with this kind of treachery. I have yet to take a spill, but just know that it's coming. And it will be hilarious.

Apparently it's part of the culture for flirty, (or, rather, all), Argentine men to look directly into the eyes of women as they walk past them in the street. If women look away the men can normally tell they are foreign. It is customary to hold their gaze as you walk past. The flirtatiousness in this city is never-ending... for better or worse. But I don't glide with the swan-like grace of a Latin woman. My goal is always to move with the grace of a quick-moving dinosaur. I'm just trying to get to where I need to go. I look away and down so that I don't plunge to my death into the street where a bus is whizzing by or fall head-on into the crotch of the man who's giving me the opposite-of-evil eye. I don't know which of the two would lead to a more dire situation. Bus or crotch? Who knows. For now I'm just going to keep looking down and be a foreigner.