I look up into a curtain of water, plummeting over 250ft into a chaotic white abyss just a few feet in front of me. My face, hair, shirt, leggings, all are already drenched. All around is just white, white, white. I feel like a helpless ant under a faucet. The roaring water relentlessly showers us from all directions, paying no care to my high pitched screams of "enough!"
That's when I remember the water isn't coming from a hose, a water park ride, or any human controlled pump device for that matter. I'm in a speed boat directly below Iguazu Falls, and there obviously is no off handle. The boat driver must have messed up, we shouldn't be this close. Back up, back up! Death seems imminent. I think of the faces of my family, thank god for a blessed life and ..... VROOOOM he guns it into reverse! The shower becomes a spray, and quickly reduces to a calm mist. The driver turns the boat around and we head back to the dock. Sopping yet safe. But absolutely sopping.
Iguazu Falls is apparently one the the 7 natural wonders of the world. This aquatic masterpiece wasn't dreamed up by architects, drawn into detailed plans and constructed by crews. Mama nature did all of it: the 1.7 mile edge divided into 275 separate falls, the breath and umbrella-taking Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat) where about half of the river's flow is concentrated in a narrow, U-shaped gorge 700-meter-long, and the breathtaking beauty from so many angles.
We hiked the upper trail along the top of the falls, the long bridges connecting islands that finally brings you right to the top if Garganta del Diablo, hiked the lower trail along the bottom of the falls and then got in a speed boat and did this crazy boat ride into the falls. And to think I used to be too scared to ride Disneyand's Splash Mountain...
The experience of Iguazu was like nothing I've ever seen/done/felt. The feeling of being completely awestruck with the planet Earth, mother nature and the beauty of life that I get every time I look at waterfalls, combined with thinking I was going to die for about 30 seconds, combined with seeing a toucan made for quite the experience. Pheeeew!
Butterflies like confetti. Surrounded by dense jungle - green vines, trees, leaves twisting together - with the occasional pop of firework like flower, red, pink, yellow. And the falls. The falls. The falls are like. like nothing i´ve seen before. can´t make a metaphor. good thing i can load pictures in a couple days.
When a guy friend from Argentina told me that a big book fair was coming to the exhibition hall down the block from my apartment a little over a month ago, I didn't exactly pencil it into my planner. When I started to see board signs for the Feria del Libro, I still didn't take much notice. But when my host mom's dad starting raving about it last week, I decided maybe I should check this thing out.
Turns out the Feria del Libro is the largest book fair in the spanish-speaking world. It's basically a two-week long meeting bringing together spanish authors, educators, publishers, librarians, bookstore owners and 1,200,200 readers from around the world. Yes, over a million. There's lectures, speeches, book signings, chats, contests, radio broadcasts, oh and books. There's books too.
This place has little, if any, resemblance to the annual elementary school book fairs where a truck would show up, unload a bunch of books about Aaron Carter and whatnot, posters (also often with Aaron Carter or some other half not-quite-but-almost celebrity)your class would have a reserved time to mingle and look at books. Then, you'd go home and tell your mom about the newest Babysitter's Club or vampire mystery, who would then send you to school with the next day with cash or a check if she was smart. Then, the girls generally returned home with a poster of yellow lab puppies and the boys with a poster of a Lamborghini.
No, this book fair is much more. It's not just a stuffy meeting of intellectuals or a giant bookstore, it's both, plus 1500 expositions from 42 countries, food, drinks, music. I guess it's more like a book party.
And how great that we still have book parties even though no one reads! And well attended book parties at that! The line was 3 blocks long all weekend, passing my front door. But I'm also in a country with a bookstore on every block. Somehow I don't think over a million people would come out for this no matter what US city you put it in...
But I like books, and being my mother's daughter, I been raised with a affinity for perusing bookstores. I can't tell you how many times I've had to beg her to leave a bookstore. If there's a bookstore in the proximity, she'll turn down ice cream, shopping, even a diet coke, so she can fondle used books. And like mother like daughter, I now seem to be stragnely attracted to bookstore, and have a hard time leaving. No matter that I will only read a fraction of the books I pick up, and a small fraction at that, there's just something fun about flipping through books, wondering what's inside, and knowing I'll never know. But how great that someone knows. If that makes ANY sense. (It's well past midnight). Anyways, I knew it was a bad idea to enter a gigantic book fair, but I did, and I've now been there three days in a row and kinda wanna go back tomorrow.
Los negros son feos, los judios son raros, los paraguanos son vagos, los peruvianos son ladrones. Yesterday, I was practicing talking about hypothetical situations in spanish (for the exam) and I used the example "If I were Michelle Obama..." to which my host mom cut me off to say "but Michele Obama is black". If there's one thing I can't tolerate, it's intolerant people.
I realize that BsAs is a multicultural city and therefore there are bound to be class/race conflicts, but the amount of blatantly racist comments and rigid stereotypes i hear on a daily basis from my profesor, host parents, newcasters is astounding.
I think this is a product of lack of education and desperation. If your neighbor takes your job, you're probably going to hate him, and, if you don't feel so god about yourself, noting that at least youre better than your neighbor will make you feel better than something! I think that lack of resources ($) makes people desperate, and looking for someone to blame, hate, feel better than. In a nation insecure about its 2nd world status and still struggling to overcome a financial meltdown a decade ago, it seems logical that racism would flourish. And i am here to testify that it is.
It's been quite an experience to live with and care about people who think and talk like this. It's a lot easier to mentally place racists way over there...in the south...or on TV...and to think of myself as being so distinct from them. But putting a face on the "racist", living with them, and loving them has reminded me that racists are people too, even "good" people. When I hear such comments coming from the mouths of , for example, my host mom, I want to explain to her the basic concept that the existence of distinct races is a mere mental construct, a skin color and no more. But I know she can't just snap out of her racist mind. She's been trained since birth to think this way, and her entire reality is this way.
And that's the suckiest part about racism, it's really hard to change. Which makes me almost feel sorry for them. They clearly weren't educated and/or feel bad about their own situation if they resort to racist thinking. How sad.
I'm not trying to say that racism is okay or acceptable, just that living here has confirmed racism is not a product of an evil heart, but an unfortunate upbringing. (not that i really thought it was an 'evil heart' before, but you know what i mean.
On the bright side, all the youth i talk to are ashamed of the racist commments of their elders. Hope for the next generation? I hope so!
It'll be nice to return to hippie wonderland Sebastopol where we have nothing to fight about and all the hippies get along with everyone, as long as that person is a hippie.....
The definition of family and friends is a little different here. A family is a group of people who share lineage, a last name, holidays, homes and a few other things. But here in Argentina, they share it all.
Every Sunday in Buenos Aires, all the shops close down so the families can get together. Hundreds of families convene for rollerblading, BBQ, boat rides at the rosedal (park) . Parillas (BBQs) are ignited at houses, apartments, and parks across Buenos Aires. Teenagers sober up from Saturday, divulge from their rooms, and come home from their friends' homes to give grandma a hug and eat dinner with the family (hormones are not an excuse here in Argentina).
Not only do they dedicate one of their weekend days to family, they pay tribute to this sacred structure every day. My host mom talks with her sister every day at 8:30, shortly after her parents call and often her sister calls back again. Even my host mom's sister's mother in law calls a couple times a week. I don't think my mom even knew her sister's mother in laws name or city of residence. My host dad eats lunch with his parents every single day and still goes on Sunday. One of my friends openly calls her sister her best friend and I have yet to see them without the other. Another friend's best friend's mother was her mother's best friend, and this has been going on for 3 generations.
The size of the family here is also of note. They're big, and always getting bigger. You don't have to become pregnant or even sign adoption papers to ad someone to the family, you just have to "consider" them family. I know people that have brothers that were later revealed to be "brothers". My host dad spends copious time with uncles, holds dinner parties for cousins he's never met visiting from Italy, and calls me hija. The bigger the better.
Part of the reason this can work out is that people don't move around a whole bunch here. People seem to move to the city, but rarely move out. I mean why would you? ;)
Whereas n the US it seems, the family structure has reduced in importance with divorces, people moving around all the time, and the fact that our culture just doesn't allow time for family (all the Italians didn't manage to diffuse it out to all of us I guess), we're way too busy with other things. At least we make up for rare visits and infrequent phone calls big gifts on xmas?
Anyways, the whole family structure itself is bigger and stronger. And I like it. I'm importing a few trends to the US: drop crotch pants, mate, long cafe chats, and the value of family.
Garish American accent, designer sunglasses, a sunhat, a crown of blonde hair and a naive smile. A backpack the size of a bear cub behind, another smaller pack on the chest and a plastic grocery back of food in one hand.
To some, this girl looks like a young foreign college student travelling. To others this girl is a lost, wounded antelope, all alone in the savannah; an easy kill for a lucrative robbery.
So there I was, all alone in the Subte during rush hour practically asking to be robbed. And these predators are smart; I was only a little lost, and not wounded, but my backpack was loaded; we’re talking passport, macintosh laptop, Nikon camera and a wad of fresh $ar100 bills. But I’m not a dumb little deer, I knew I was a target. So with a vice grip on my backpack straps, an exaggerated “don’t you dare fuck with me” facial expression, and security camera eyes, I boarded the packed linea D for downtown Buenos Aires. Bring it, I thought.
Apparently, these precautions weren’t enough. A couple stops later, I glanced down to catch the hand of the man creeping from under a strategically placed sweatshirt like a trained cobra, about to strike on my zipper. SMACK! I swatted the little serpent, hissed “Fuck you”, gave the man a look absolute repugnance, and he hopped off at the next stop.
Minutes after it happened I mentally reenacted hypotheticals in which I yell a clever, painful phrase in quick Castellano, bust out a self defense move I saw in Tomb Raider and he leaves the Subte in tears.
After hundreds of warnings and anecdotes about the rutheless Buenos Aires robbers, I expected it would happen to me once. Maybe even twice. But three times in a week and a half?
That’s right. A few days later, leaving an ATM with crisp bills and a credit card, I thought felt something touch my backpack, anxious from the recent Subte episode, I casually shook my backpack to deter stray hands, kind of like how a horse flinches to deter flies. The, sure enough, some fine gentlemen at the next corner informed me that my backpack was unzipped. And no I didn’t forget to zip it thank you very much.
That weekend, I was on one of my weekly photography journeys, flittering through picturesque places in the city when I stumbled upon “La Catedral”, a huge, beautiful church. While inside a pigeon pooped on me! A couple of seconds later, a women who had a face just like Mother Mary in the idol to my right, tapped me on the back to inform me that she had a wet towel and wanted to help me. Phew, I thought, no embarrassing walk of shame! She proceeded to help me remove my backpack and DSLR camera and wipe the “poop” off my legs, back and out of my hair … all the while turning … wait … turning me? I thought. Why is she turning me? I turned my head just in time to catch another women who had been kneeling and “praying” to a baby Jesus, had quickly taken her hands out of prayer position and put them on my camera. Whoa! I thought! Whoa, Whoa, Whoa! I quickly snatched my camera, zipped the backpack and said “muchas gracias,” in a voice that got my point across. Get your grimy hands of my shiny stuff.
As I walked out of the church in a confused daze, I still couldn’t believe it. Did I just get robbed in a catholic church? No way, no one does that in a cathedral. And she looked just like Mary. And where would that poop come from? This was eiterh a grand, nasty plan, or that women wasn’t an accomplice, but someone else trying t help me? Hmm.
Maybe the bored security guard could help. Uhhh Hay uhhh palomas al dentro de le iglesia? He laughed.
I then got home and the first words out of my host mom’s mouth were “What is that stuff on your backpack?” (translated, of course). “Caca, paloma caca.” She looked at me weird and said “No,no,no,no,no, no es caca!”
It was then that I finally admitted that I’d been robbed in a Catholic church. Or attempted to be robbed.
Unfortunately, now I'm suspicious of just about everybody: children in school uniforms, pregnant women, neighbors, our sweet house cleaner; everybody’s a suspect. What a transition from trusting little Sebastopol, where suspicion is looked down upon. Theater seats and restaurant tables are held by purses: "Hey man, if I leave my wallet on our seats, don't you think people will know they're occupied?" Homeless people make more cellphone calls than some people who actually pay for a cell phone: "Bro, will you lend me a minute on that cell, I really gotta talk with my homie real quick." And everybody goes with it, fearful they might appear too suspicious, uptight, or worst of all "not chill."
I've been raised surrounded by hippies, storybooks and parents teaching me that we are all one, everyone has a good heart, blah, blah. And a beleive this. But. I also earned real quick that even if someone has a good heart, they still may want my stuff. And here, most people want my stuff. Because few people have my stuff.
