July 31st, Thursday...
Today I went to get money. Now, don’t you get a picture in your head and think you know what that looks like. First, I had to find a financial advisor. I went to Merrill Lynch because that’s who I do business with in the States. That was a good move. Then, he introduced me to a special kind of banker who, for a fee, transfered some money into the country for me. Then she, the banker, called me and let me know where to pick up the money. I went there and carried it home. I can’t really, completely, say I understand why I had to use the special banker. Somehow I do know it has saved me money. I also know not just anyone can do business with this special private banker. You have to have an introduction. I mean to get the rates I got anyway. When I talked about this with my friend he said, “Yes, yes,everyone in Buenos Aires has their little black book full of phone numbers.”
So, I’m starting to understand this. And to compile my own list of names and numbers. I've got to get a black book. An example, the other day I got a haircut. I got a referral from my friend Philip and I called and made an appointment. At first I was worried because I thought “If he has time to do my hair the same day I call then he mustn’t be very good.” I was wrong, about him - having time that is. You see, the salon gave me a 5:30 appointment. I arrived at 5:20. At 5:50 or so Javier, the hairdresser, sent someone to wash my hair. He was very sweet, the hair washer, even though he left in the middle and my head got cold. Then, the hair washer took me a station and sat me down. There I sat until 6:44, or so. Finally, Javier came over, sprayed my head with cold water (it had dried completely of course) and started to cut my hair. Mid stroke he would stop and run off and hug or kiss someone, talk to them lovingly, then come back, do the same to me, and resume cutting. On occasion, when he returned he brought the recipient of the love with him, introduced me, explained to me who they were (most of which I missed by the way - damn if only I’d studied harder in Spanish class!) and then we’d all hug and kiss, trade information and they would say lovely things to me about all the things we were going to do together (get your mind out of the gutter, I’m talking about business). Of course, I didn’t understand 63% of what they said. At the end I’d been in the salon for over 2 hours, made 3 new friends and business associates and got a great haircut and a lesson in patience. I told my friend Don (who is coming down here to go into business with us) that Buenos Aires would surprise him as it doesn’t have the slow pace that one might imagine in Latin America. I was mistaken. Yes, the city is busy and frantic in my experience. It is crowded and the streets and subways are full. Sometimes you just can’t get a taxi. Still, there are things Americans rush through that they take their time about. In these moments, as I hear myself comparing, “it wasn’t like this at home”, I try to remember that a different cultural experience was what I was looking for when I came to - a different culture. I am caught off guard at moments by the realization that this isn’t going to be easy. It could be fun, if I decide to play it that way, but it will be hard. Someday I’ll be sitting in a salon thousands of miles from here and as they efficiently wash, cut and style my hair, collect their money and send me on my way, next appointment already made, I’ll remember that in Argentina getting a haircut is a social event, and I may just feel sad....
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Starting to Teach While I'm Still Learning~
Tuesday July 22, 2008
Today at 9:00 am local time 4 people began Pranayama breathing in a “Jimmy” rigged, boot leg class room in our temporary rental loft in Palermo Soho. I have been in Buenos Aires for exactly 16 days. I had room for maximum 6 and there were 4! 4!
Jimmy helped me get set up and helped people find their way upstairs. Before they left 3 of them had booked in for their next classes, today and tomorrow.
The room wasn’t hot enough and the yoga mats were cheesy foam rubber camping mats and there were no showers but it was the best class ever! It was the first Bikram yoga class in Argentina and I taught it. I charged A$R25 which is about $8.50. It will go up when I have a real studio but I was so excited to be making money! The people here are very open to yoga and the expats here are hungry for the things they had at home in their own language. Eventually I’ll teach classes in English and Spanish but for now I am only teaching in English. Everyone we meet tells Jimmy and I how admirable it is that we have found our footing here so quickly.
One of my yoga students is also going to be a coaching client. That is exciting also. I know that we are both going find huge success here. I am hungry for the next few months of learning and discovery.
This afternoon we went to an exchange bank where we had to be told how many pieces of really expensive and difficult to come by papers we would need to obtain to prove we aren’t drug dealers or, yes, this is a direct quote, “bad people”. Before you can bring money into Argentina (unless you are Mafioso from other latin american countries and you come on the president’s private jet) you have to “prove” you earned the money legally. Of course, none of the stuff they ask for actually proves any thing. It only causes lots of stress, expended (read: wasted) money, time and energy and makes people look as if they are doing something useful. I mean for the love of God, if I were a drug dealer why would I buy a $130,000 house?!?!?! I am buying a $130,000 house because I can’t afford anything more! What kind of sorry drug dealer would I be if I couldn’t afford anything more than a $130,000 house?
Afterward, we had a nice cafe con leche served by a lovely flirtatious older fellow who convinced me to try the cheese cake. It wasn’t like cheese cake from home. It was like this gorgeous, rich parfait with some kind of sliver of cake around it and sprinkled with powdered sugar. On the way back to the Subte I found a cool purse that has an over the shoulder strap so the motorcycle bandidos can’t snatch it and an inside zipper pocket behind a click lock snap in front so the subte bandidos can’t open it.
Ah Buenos Aires, you lovely, cruel, completely indifferent lover.
Give me a hit of that cigarette and then let me get some sleep.
I’ve had enough of you today.
Today at 9:00 am local time 4 people began Pranayama breathing in a “Jimmy” rigged, boot leg class room in our temporary rental loft in Palermo Soho. I have been in Buenos Aires for exactly 16 days. I had room for maximum 6 and there were 4! 4!
Jimmy helped me get set up and helped people find their way upstairs. Before they left 3 of them had booked in for their next classes, today and tomorrow.
The room wasn’t hot enough and the yoga mats were cheesy foam rubber camping mats and there were no showers but it was the best class ever! It was the first Bikram yoga class in Argentina and I taught it. I charged A$R25 which is about $8.50. It will go up when I have a real studio but I was so excited to be making money! The people here are very open to yoga and the expats here are hungry for the things they had at home in their own language. Eventually I’ll teach classes in English and Spanish but for now I am only teaching in English. Everyone we meet tells Jimmy and I how admirable it is that we have found our footing here so quickly.
One of my yoga students is also going to be a coaching client. That is exciting also. I know that we are both going find huge success here. I am hungry for the next few months of learning and discovery.
This afternoon we went to an exchange bank where we had to be told how many pieces of really expensive and difficult to come by papers we would need to obtain to prove we aren’t drug dealers or, yes, this is a direct quote, “bad people”. Before you can bring money into Argentina (unless you are Mafioso from other latin american countries and you come on the president’s private jet) you have to “prove” you earned the money legally. Of course, none of the stuff they ask for actually proves any thing. It only causes lots of stress, expended (read: wasted) money, time and energy and makes people look as if they are doing something useful. I mean for the love of God, if I were a drug dealer why would I buy a $130,000 house?!?!?! I am buying a $130,000 house because I can’t afford anything more! What kind of sorry drug dealer would I be if I couldn’t afford anything more than a $130,000 house?
Afterward, we had a nice cafe con leche served by a lovely flirtatious older fellow who convinced me to try the cheese cake. It wasn’t like cheese cake from home. It was like this gorgeous, rich parfait with some kind of sliver of cake around it and sprinkled with powdered sugar. On the way back to the Subte I found a cool purse that has an over the shoulder strap so the motorcycle bandidos can’t snatch it and an inside zipper pocket behind a click lock snap in front so the subte bandidos can’t open it.
Ah Buenos Aires, you lovely, cruel, completely indifferent lover.
Give me a hit of that cigarette and then let me get some sleep.
I’ve had enough of you today.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Esplendor y Miseria del Buenos Aires
Journal Entry: Sunday, July 13, 2008
I have made a choice, dawning on me only now, to move my life, my heart, my world, to another place than the place I have lived for most of my adult life. Here now, the preparations finally over, the journey in the past, I am surprised at my surprise.
Sometime last summer, a day I don’t remember, walking across a bridge in Italy probably, I decided that my time in San Diego was done. I felt a pull to experience something new. A new language, a new culture, a new life. Maybe a new opportunity. In my mind on that day I gave up the idea of “settling” anywhere. I gave up too the idea of having a partner in my life for a time. I had come to understand that the culture gap between me and the men I would meet here was too big and would remain so for some time. I imagined that no one in San Diego would be able or willing to go with me, that there wasn’t time for that. In spite of that, less than a year later, I sit here in a small apartment in Buenos Aires with a man who knows more of my heart than any being on Earth has ever known.
I moved to San Diego 23 years ago, only 21 years old, alone, with a small child. I knew no one. I had no money. I had no job, no house, no prospects.
I don’t remember being scared.
In the years since I have raised a son, married and divorced, married again, buried a husband, built and sold businesses and homes, built a life and a community there. I know where to buy shoes. I know how to find my way home from anywhere in the city. My mother moved there for a time, and my sister. My son lives there still, with his girlfriend, in an apartment I still own. My money still lives there. My friends still live there. I wonder if there will come a day, someday, a long time from now, when nothing connected to me in any meaningful way lives there any longer. I know, I am certain, that I will never live there again.
The place I live now, have lived for all of 7 days, is a place where other than the man on the sofa, nothing connected to me in any meaningful way lives yet. My things are stuck in a cargo container at the port, held by customs because my visa is not clear yet. I don’t own a home. I don’t own a business. I don’t have any friends. I don’t know where to go to buy shoes. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I pass shoe stores on the street every day. I could stop and buy a pair of shoes in any of them. What I don’t know is where to go to buy the kinds of shoes I like at reasonable prices from a sales staff I can relate to. I can’t easily find my way from anywhere in this city, not without a map, or a taxi.
I’m scared this time.
There will be moments of Splendor, joy and celebration, in my discovery of this city and my creation of a life and a community here. There will also be, have been, moments of Misery, fear and aggravation. In this, my first year here in Buenos Aires, I will chronicle these moments. I will put them here where I can look back and remember them. Years from now when this time is only a memory I will look back at the things I chronicled in wonderment, laughing and crying at my vision of the edge I walked on during this year. I will say this, I have rarely felt so alive. The title of my journal comes from a headline in the first newspaper we bought here, an article about the vice presidency in La Nacion. Esplendor y miseria del Vice was the headline. Interesting to notice that the Vice President has his struggles in every country. I tore the word “Vice” off the headline and pasted the rest of it, along with the date and the name of the news paper, into my journal. I loved the sound of the words. Esplendor. Miseria. I said them to myself over and over again. Esplendor. Miseria. They both touched me in ways that already seem meaningful and I have only just begun to get my feet on the ground.
A foot note:
Since this journal entry a major political struggle for Argentina has been decided by the swing vote of the Vice President. He went against the President, voted against her, decided the measure against her, on his own. I like that this story is somehow connected to mine. I am going to be watching this guy. He's a shit disturber.
I speak Spanish. At least, I thought I did, until I decided to move to a Spanish speaking country. Then I realized I had been going around for years making do with my housekeepers and my handymen because they were patient with me and the things we needed to discuss were simple. They were really patient with me. They needed the money. I needed the work done. I don’t speak Spanish well. I make do. That won’t do here. Jimmy (the guy on the sofa) and I have been studying, since we arrived. We didn’t study before we got here. We were busy getting here. My Spanish, which has been learned over 23 years in Southern California, from friends, family, co-workers and employees, is coming in strong. Still, there will be a learning curve. Large amounts of what is said to me I miss. The accent here is different from the Mexican accent I learned in. The people use words and rhythm differently, cadence, facial expression, hand movements, everything is different. It’s, a different culture. That is what I wanted, it is what makes it gorgeous and fun and exciting. It is also exhausting. Listening so hard is exhausting. Trying so hard to hear and understand, to be heard and understood. Jimmy, speaks hardly any at all. In only a week he is picking up speed and in a year threatens to be far beyond me. Right now he must be utterly drained.
There is a disconnect here between me and the people native to my new home. They are warm and friendly, mostly, but I am not one of them and we all know it. We know it because I don’t understand what they say, no matter how hard I try. We know it because I don’t understand how they do business. We know it because, well, because I don’t know where to buy shoes. Last night, emotional, exhausted and anxious about the visa and customs and my stuff, I sat on the floor by the sliding glass window and, palm on the glass, looked across the street at the restaurant where large tables of people were eating, laughing, drinking, talking loudly (really loudly) and I cried. I cried for my friends in San Diego. I cried for my son. I cried for my quiet comfortable condo across the street from good, fresh sushi and a convenient grocery store filled with familiar food. I cried for my yoga studio. I cried for people who speak the same language I do and for Nordstrom, my favorite shoe store of all time, which they don’t have here. I wondered if I had done something I would regret always. I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake. I wondered if I would ever be comfortable enough here, accepted enough, to sit across the street at that restaurant until 1 in the morning laughing and talking and drinking with my friends. I wondered if I should go home.
Jimmy brought me upstairs gently and put me to bed. We fell asleep watching The Point on his computer. It’s a movie about a little boy who lives in the pointed village but was born without a point so is different from everyone else. He goes on a great adventure only to discover that everyone and everything has a point, even if you can’t see it. He is transformed by this adventure and his understanding of it. Hmmm...
I have made a choice, dawning on me only now, to move my life, my heart, my world, to another place than the place I have lived for most of my adult life. Here now, the preparations finally over, the journey in the past, I am surprised at my surprise.
Sometime last summer, a day I don’t remember, walking across a bridge in Italy probably, I decided that my time in San Diego was done. I felt a pull to experience something new. A new language, a new culture, a new life. Maybe a new opportunity. In my mind on that day I gave up the idea of “settling” anywhere. I gave up too the idea of having a partner in my life for a time. I had come to understand that the culture gap between me and the men I would meet here was too big and would remain so for some time. I imagined that no one in San Diego would be able or willing to go with me, that there wasn’t time for that. In spite of that, less than a year later, I sit here in a small apartment in Buenos Aires with a man who knows more of my heart than any being on Earth has ever known.
I moved to San Diego 23 years ago, only 21 years old, alone, with a small child. I knew no one. I had no money. I had no job, no house, no prospects.
I don’t remember being scared.
In the years since I have raised a son, married and divorced, married again, buried a husband, built and sold businesses and homes, built a life and a community there. I know where to buy shoes. I know how to find my way home from anywhere in the city. My mother moved there for a time, and my sister. My son lives there still, with his girlfriend, in an apartment I still own. My money still lives there. My friends still live there. I wonder if there will come a day, someday, a long time from now, when nothing connected to me in any meaningful way lives there any longer. I know, I am certain, that I will never live there again.
The place I live now, have lived for all of 7 days, is a place where other than the man on the sofa, nothing connected to me in any meaningful way lives yet. My things are stuck in a cargo container at the port, held by customs because my visa is not clear yet. I don’t own a home. I don’t own a business. I don’t have any friends. I don’t know where to go to buy shoes. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I pass shoe stores on the street every day. I could stop and buy a pair of shoes in any of them. What I don’t know is where to go to buy the kinds of shoes I like at reasonable prices from a sales staff I can relate to. I can’t easily find my way from anywhere in this city, not without a map, or a taxi.
I’m scared this time.
There will be moments of Splendor, joy and celebration, in my discovery of this city and my creation of a life and a community here. There will also be, have been, moments of Misery, fear and aggravation. In this, my first year here in Buenos Aires, I will chronicle these moments. I will put them here where I can look back and remember them. Years from now when this time is only a memory I will look back at the things I chronicled in wonderment, laughing and crying at my vision of the edge I walked on during this year. I will say this, I have rarely felt so alive. The title of my journal comes from a headline in the first newspaper we bought here, an article about the vice presidency in La Nacion. Esplendor y miseria del Vice was the headline. Interesting to notice that the Vice President has his struggles in every country. I tore the word “Vice” off the headline and pasted the rest of it, along with the date and the name of the news paper, into my journal. I loved the sound of the words. Esplendor. Miseria. I said them to myself over and over again. Esplendor. Miseria. They both touched me in ways that already seem meaningful and I have only just begun to get my feet on the ground.
A foot note:
Since this journal entry a major political struggle for Argentina has been decided by the swing vote of the Vice President. He went against the President, voted against her, decided the measure against her, on his own. I like that this story is somehow connected to mine. I am going to be watching this guy. He's a shit disturber.
I speak Spanish. At least, I thought I did, until I decided to move to a Spanish speaking country. Then I realized I had been going around for years making do with my housekeepers and my handymen because they were patient with me and the things we needed to discuss were simple. They were really patient with me. They needed the money. I needed the work done. I don’t speak Spanish well. I make do. That won’t do here. Jimmy (the guy on the sofa) and I have been studying, since we arrived. We didn’t study before we got here. We were busy getting here. My Spanish, which has been learned over 23 years in Southern California, from friends, family, co-workers and employees, is coming in strong. Still, there will be a learning curve. Large amounts of what is said to me I miss. The accent here is different from the Mexican accent I learned in. The people use words and rhythm differently, cadence, facial expression, hand movements, everything is different. It’s, a different culture. That is what I wanted, it is what makes it gorgeous and fun and exciting. It is also exhausting. Listening so hard is exhausting. Trying so hard to hear and understand, to be heard and understood. Jimmy, speaks hardly any at all. In only a week he is picking up speed and in a year threatens to be far beyond me. Right now he must be utterly drained.
There is a disconnect here between me and the people native to my new home. They are warm and friendly, mostly, but I am not one of them and we all know it. We know it because I don’t understand what they say, no matter how hard I try. We know it because I don’t understand how they do business. We know it because, well, because I don’t know where to buy shoes. Last night, emotional, exhausted and anxious about the visa and customs and my stuff, I sat on the floor by the sliding glass window and, palm on the glass, looked across the street at the restaurant where large tables of people were eating, laughing, drinking, talking loudly (really loudly) and I cried. I cried for my friends in San Diego. I cried for my son. I cried for my quiet comfortable condo across the street from good, fresh sushi and a convenient grocery store filled with familiar food. I cried for my yoga studio. I cried for people who speak the same language I do and for Nordstrom, my favorite shoe store of all time, which they don’t have here. I wondered if I had done something I would regret always. I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake. I wondered if I would ever be comfortable enough here, accepted enough, to sit across the street at that restaurant until 1 in the morning laughing and talking and drinking with my friends. I wondered if I should go home.
Jimmy brought me upstairs gently and put me to bed. We fell asleep watching The Point on his computer. It’s a movie about a little boy who lives in the pointed village but was born without a point so is different from everyone else. He goes on a great adventure only to discover that everyone and everything has a point, even if you can’t see it. He is transformed by this adventure and his understanding of it. Hmmm...
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