Vamos a Mendoza!

This episode has inspired me! David is apparently following his mother in Mendoza to keep an eye on her and the tanguero (gigolo). He is talking about the beautiful lake, trees, vineyards, and clean air. I can not remember clean air. I have been in the city for so long I need to get out. I think my monday is free from work so I could have a long weekend riding a bicycle and trying tinto (red wine) to my hearts content. I have been looking at bus tickets! I took a 23hour bus ride to Bariloche a few months back and it blew my mind! The long distance busses here are INCREDIBLE! They give you piles of food, wine, desert, and whiskey! Additionally there are multiple movies and the seats recline into beds. If you are ever in Argentina the busses are a must! Central America is a whole other situation though. I was afraid to sleep on the busses for fear of waking up at gun point and needing to have a plan of action formulated. The busses get stopped by street gangs and robbed, often with many people being killed.  They cannot drive past a certain hour due to the danger of driving on the streets (these little facts are the things I try to leave out when telling my parents I am heading south solo with a backpack). 

Anyways, David is tracking his mother in Mendoza all the while on the phone with Jimena who is tailing her boyfriend because she fears he might be cheating on her. Hate to stereotype Argentina, but the men down here are PRETTY scandalous. Most of the guys I meet who are hitting on me have girlfriends, and most of the women I have talked to are aware their boyfriend has cheated on them or had a boyfriend who cheated in the past. Malisimo! Why have boyfriends?

His mom has a gigolo!

Well, this little dicho is too good to pass up. I will bring the bikini you bring the kisses. It reminds me of better times when the sun is shining and you can crack open a cold beer in the shade of your beach unbrella. QUE PASO BUENOS AIRES??? It is freezing. Moments like this and I am questioning the whole art co-op drafty 120 year old house in the middle of winter next to the most polluted body of water in the world. Ah La Boca you are a difficult love. Sometimes I am all about it, and other times she is just a dirty cold friend. Well, I should never complain. My life is to make art, music, and learn to speak spanish in Buenos Aires. In fact after writing that I feel better. Tomorrow I have to get up at 11am for a whopping 2 hours of work and then return to my art space to hang out and spread paint on a canvas while trying to make the strenuous decision of going to meet up with the circus in Peru this coming January. Rough life. My friends are in a great circus out of San Francisco called Dreamtime Family Circus, they are AMAZING!

I need to keep pushing the spanish for these upcoming possible South American adventures. Lesson 23 was pretty amazing where I learned quite a bit of vocabulary through David's tales that his mother is running off to Mendoza for a weekend with a strong muscled young porteno tanguero who speaks no English, and she no spanish...hmmmm. And she is paying for the whole trip. Well David, more power to her I say! I have respect for the cougars, they help to tip the traditional sexist scale around. Why not, if everyone is having fun. I wonder what the spanish word for gigolo is?

push my buttons

Class 22! I am cruising along and actually learning with this program Bueno, entonces...David is such a chamuyero but he does make the lessons interesting. I don't know if I will ever be able to approach an ATM (cajero automatico) without thinking about David's little tall tale of the transvestite behind him in line with the "baskteballs"  and the policeman waving his hands, the cell phone going on speaker phone with the woman yelling that David is bad in bed. The humor really locks the lessons into your brain with memories you don't actually have but access as if they are your own personal tales. I think I will see if I can steal his little story to retell in spanish as a person test for myself. I love that he raps it all up with a reference to Jimena about being able to work her like a cash machine, but she tells him he has no idea what buttons to press (the above clip refers to that). You just can't get a better language learning program with humor than this. 

I am currently working on a painting right now with architecture from my balcony window. The houses in this area of La Boca are so incredible, the one I live in is over 120 years old! I sit in my balcony and sketch the surrounding buildings and iron work patterns for inclusion into my painting. Life is pretty sweet! And the guy who sells my produce downstairs is hot so I get to buy my  veggies while practicing all of Davids ridiculous lines : )

beware the telo

Some spanish programs teach you about the "room" and the "bed" and go through descriptions to be able to speak about the boring room. Not Bueno, entonces...in class 21 David describes the "Telo" he went to with the girl he likes. Now this is pretty hilarious because a telo is basically a sex hotel where you pay by the hour. Now, honest - I haven't been so lucky to see one of these establishments yet, and I hear in BsAs they are quite the trip. Super sketchy, dirty, benches with belts and straps, bad lighting, pornographic pictures on the wall. I love that they go through room descriptions in spanish so David is able to describe the awful experience he had in this place and now feels that he has a dirty soul. 

Ya never know when you might end up in one of these spots, so pay close attention to lesson 21 

: )

I have been painting like a possessed person, making art and playing guitar all the time. The newest piece I am working on is inspired by the incredible architecture in the barrio of La Boca. The old architecture and wrought iron work supply a never ending flood of ideas. I sit out in the streets and on my balcony to sketch and take ideas back to the art space. My mind feels like an open conduit and the ideas rush in faster than I can create them. I kind of just want to sit up and drink mate and paint to my hearts content!

mi palabra nuevo

Well, great news! I met an excellent man at a bar that my friends are interested in buying and opening in San Telmo. He is a writer and works for the Buenos Aires Herald, AND he wants to do a story on me and my experiences in Buenos Aires. It is linked to the bigger story of the very old buildings here in Argentina and that I live in a home over 120 years old in La Boca. Interesting enough he is including one other person in the article who happens to be the man who started  Bueno, entonces...What a synchronicity! Out of a city of 13million I seem to get involved in all the right groups and keep running into the same people. The writers name is Matt, and he came and took photos of me and my art work.  After finishing this blog I need to write back responses to the questions he is asking me. When it is published, I will post the link!

I am already in lesson 20, I can't believe it, and yet the sex jokes keep rolling. I am also wondering how I have made it this long without learning the word for orgasm in spanish...ACABO

Acabo de llegar de mi clase de espanol - In this context it means I just arrived from my spanish class. But in another form -  siempre acabo con Diego - Means I always orgasm with Diego. I can see that is one palabra to be careful with. Watching the lessons feels like an addictive TV series where you are waiting to see what will happen next. David is ridiculous and asks to borrow Jimena's apartment to have sex with another woman in her house because his mom is staying in his place...oh David...

my teacher is an old pervert

To acquire a new language is difficult. I waver between casually enjoying the process and declaring proclamations such as "I will NOT speak English in this country any more! Only Spanish, I must learn this language". And then I carry my little dictionarrio around and try to be all studious and eventually realize this approach is not for me. I am on the look out for a new Spanish teacher to supplement my lessons through Bueno, entonces...for as great as the program is, I still need guided practice. I had an excellent teacher in theory until he tried to go through a lesson on the names of the body parts in Spanish by touching me...not that that hasn't been one of my most dreamt of fantasies, it is just that it always features a drop dead gorgeous Spanish teacher followed by a lesson of the names of all the places in the house "mesa", "cama", "douche". Well, I am done with male teachers, getting a female and sidestepping the whole problem. 

I thought my handle on the verb "to be" had gotten pretty good, but the reality is that it is still confusing. I realized this when lesson 19 went back and addressed "ser" and "estar". I completely get the concept but these words are used so much in conversation I don't even realize I am using them incorrectly. It is great to see the color coding the way they do it on the program because you see it in context and then it locks that image into your head for later use. This is also true for all of the masculine and feminine adjectives, the color coding is helping me to access it for later use in my vocabulary. 

secrete show!

As most of our shows have been on the streets of BsAs, it was a beautiful change to actually play in a bar. We called the show "from streets to seats" and it was in the incredible bar in Palermo that didn't even have a name but an address that you have to ring and they unlock the door for you. Inside was beautiful art work and interesting decor, complete with the lower halves of women, all legs and sexy stockings. We set up in a back room that was very Victorian style with beautiful wood and elegant chairs. Many of our close friends came and piled into the cozy intimate space. We had a wonderful time, the harmonies were beautifully mixing, and we even had a friend come and play the cajon (Peruvian box drum). A special surprise came when the brother of the cajon player showed up and danced the most incredible flamenco and they sang old flamenco songs - they kind of stole the show, but we were a nice contrast with our strong female energy. We have video footage and will be recording a CD tomorrow, I LOVE THIS CITY!  

Clearly the art and music has been coming on strong, I just need to keep the momentum with the spanish. I am learning great things through Bueno, entonces...and as it is very street smart and nightlife aplicable, I put the lessons into direct practice right away. The program displays the verbs and conjugations so well with the color coding and all of the visual cues. It prevents the confusions between adjectives, verbs, nouns, feminine and masculine. A very hard concept for me in spanish are the reflexive verbs, but again they deal with what could be a boring subject in such a funny way that the concept gets directly wired to your brain.
Who wants to waste time learning to say "she has a white dog" when you can be learning much more applicable things (especially in this country) such as "tiene piel como chocolate blanco".