Today, I’ve locked myself in my office and I’m working on own story, a novel, about a young man from the US who comes to Argentina to find out about his roots after his Argentine mother dies.  I’ve written for about an hour today and I will try to write for at least half an hour more.

Yay!  L just came home and announced that he bought bread so I think I may go take a break and have some lunch.  I love the fresh bread here!  You can buy a half kilo of delicious fresh bread from any bakery for about 6 pesos (that’s like $1.25).  And there are bakeries literally every five blocks.  Why don’t we have this in the US?  Bread is always so shitty.  Decent fresh bread is so expensive.  Bad, bad, US.

I’ve quit smoking again- this is day 4.  I feel so much better, not that I was smoking much, just a few cigarettes a day.  But my appetite has returned fiercely.  So I will try to keep my fresh bread habit to a minimum.

Okay, sandwich time.  One roll of bread only, but with some prosciutto and olive oil- yum.

besos

Tango

Today its a day for political organizations to show their strength, as happened with the Partido Obrero (Worker’s Party) in Plaza de Mayo.

A really weird thing happened to me today.  In my small, rural town of California cockroaches sightings are not a common.    So today, I saw an enormous cockroach on the counter in the kitchen of my house (gross!!!!).  I screamed (I’m really wimpy when it comes to insects).

The weird thing was, the cockroach looked at me.  I swear it looked straight into my eyes.  In that silent moment, I felt a connection between us.  As if we both recognized something of ourselves in the other and our connection to the eternal conflict prey and predator.  Then the moment was broken, and then we both ran.  Well, the cockroach scurried and I ran to the counter.  The cockroach ran into silverware drawer (gross, gross, gross!!!).  I looked around for something to kill it with, muttering and swearing to myself.  I found an OHLALA magazine, which I rolled up in one hand and ran back to the silverware drawer.

I tentatively opened the silverware drawer and poked into it rather deeply with the magazine.  The cockroach jumped at least five inches into the air. (I’m not kidding.)  It scuttled up some of the big wooden spoons and leaped out of the drawer and under a stack of wooden shelves on the floor.  (We have a very strange kitchen set up made up almost entirely of found or gifted furniture   I tried to hit the cockroach with the magazine as it ran across the drawers but it went into a crack so I missed.  Damn.  This gave the cockroach the opportunity it needed to escape under the fridge.

My heart was racing as I grabbed the can of “roach” or whatever its called here and repeatedly sprayed under the fridge.  I didn’t see the cockroach and I feared that I had missed and it was still alive under there.  Ten minutes later I checked under the fridge again, this time poking with the broom.  I spotted the cockroach on the side of the fridge, turned over on it’s back and wriggling its legs in agony.  I felt bad.  “Sorry dude,” I said and sprayed again, this time for the kill.  I sprayed and sprayed but the writhing of the cockroach just got more and more intense.   I felt paralyzed.  I didn’t want to watch this poor insect suffering so terribly but at that point I just wanted it to be over.  I kept spraying but I started to feel a little light headed, and not wanting to suffer the same fate as the poor the cockroach, I decided to leave the kitchen and finish watching Seinfeld.  When the show ended ten minutes later the cockroach was dead.

I heard somewhere that if there was ever a nuclear holocaust then cockroaches would the inherit the earth.  They can live without food for over a month and can survive being submerged in water for over an hour and half.  They can survive for months on limited food, such as the glue from the back of a postage stamp.  This cockroach was no exception a mighty foe…

You will be missed Jen.

Ok,  finally I was able to go running.  There was a little break in the rain around 3PM.  It was the first time in a really long time but since quitting smoking a month and half ago, I feel like I should start exercising again.

Now I’m off to a superbowl party at Casa Bar in Palermo with my American friend who’s moving back to the US next week

I had a transcendental experience tonight upon the party bus.  This is the kind of thing that only happens in South America and it makes you thank god you are in a country reckless enough to allow this kind of thing.  Two of my friends threw a party (one turned “dirty” thirty and the other is moving to Columbia).  So they decided to the right thing and rent a party bus to go the boliche and invite at least thirty of their closest friends.

The bus, shaped like a boat, showed up in front of my friend’s apartment decked out in streamers and strings of lights and blasting reggaeton.  The party jumped on the bus, with an assortment of sodas (not so) discreetly filled with different types of alcohol because, technically, alcohol wasn’t allowed on the bus.  The crowd rushed to the back of the bus and started dancing as the bus took off, skillfully weaving through traffic and occasionally lurching to an abrupt stop and causing the crowd to fall forward and a few of the unlucky ones actually fell on the floor.

Of course,  we felt obligated to entertain the pedestrians, bicyclists, motorbikes, taxis, and cars with our shennanegans ( I love that word!).  We danced, hollered, screamed, and yelled out “Sexy!” to the bewildered machisto porten~os.  Some people tried to ignore us and others, especially children, clapped and started dancing too.  After a while, it actually became quite hard work.  I started doing the princess wave and I noticed a few others started to sit down.  When we got close to Plaza Serrano (the main bar district) in Palermo, a few street kids jumped on the back and everyone screamed and grabbed our purses, not sure how to react.  But it was all part of the fun, and the kids eventually jumped off the back of the bus, and a few minutes later we made our grand entrance at Honduras Club where we dined on pizza, beer, ice cream and champagne and were entertained by drag queens.  But I have to say, the real party was on the bus.  After all, life isn’t about the destination but the journey, right?

I just got back to Buenos Aires yesterday.  I’d been in San Martin de los Andes with L visiting his family and hometown.  We took a six day bike/camping trip through the Andes into Chile with his sister, her boyfriend, and L’s friend and his girlfriend.  It was intense to say the least, resulting in trip to the hospital due to my horrible allergies (I feel like such a nerd!).   I woke up with my eye swollen so that it was about half the size that it normally is.  But the trip was also incredibly beautiful and peaceful.

And now we are back (again).  It is incredibly hot and humid.  The temperature is relentless and there is no relief from it unless you are submerged in cold water or are lucky enough to have air conditioning (I am not).  Since L and I are both totally broke at the moment, we’ve decided to try to cook everything (including bread) after a very tense trip to the local Carrefour.  An unfortunate consequence of this is that using the oven in this heat is a torturous endeavor.  But L and P are bravely cooking a mountain of milanesas.  The ones we don’t eat tonight will go into the freezer for weeks to come.  I made some foccacia bread that came out okay-not great.  I was not aware that the yeast and sugar mixture are supposed to “bubble”.  Oh well, I’ll try again tomorrow.  The first time is just a trial, right?

Here’s the milanesa recipe from L.  These are kind of like a chicken parmesan but with thin slices of beef.  They are delicious!:

A word of advice, however, try to avoid cooking them in sweltering hot weather

Milanesa

(for about 5 milanesas)

Ingredients

• 5 pieces of thin beef cuts (about 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thickness)
• 2 eggs (beaten)
• salt and pepper to taste
• pinch of basil
• pinch of garlic
• pinch of oregano
• 2 cups flour (pan rollado- this is a crisper type of flour.  I don’t know if its sold in the US.  Its kind of like a mix between dried crotons and flour.  Perhaps these two could be mixed for the effect.)

Mix the eggs and salt together in a small bowl.  Combine flour (mixture) with spices.  Soak milanesas in egg mixture, dip it into flour mixture, pound bread with a meat tenderizer.  ( You can repeat the dipping process if you want a thicker crust.)

Place milanesas on an oiled baking pan.  Bake the milanesas in the oven at 350F for approximately 30 minutes.  During the last couple of minutes you can add some cheese and a tomato if you like.  Enjoy!