El mangante (The Pickpocket)

27 Julio

In Spanish class on Monday I pondered what you are now still pondering from my last post. Every once in a while, I decide to bring mate to class. This was one of those days, and Marta helped me perfect my mate-drinking technique. I was pretty sure that I had to give a presentation the following day over my essay topic in my Political Science and Economics class, so I was practically consumed with that all day. I hadn't done much research at all. I recounted my mugging story to my classmates, and Adam graciously lended me some plata, which lasted me until Friday. I don't like borrowing money if I'm uncertain when I can pay them back, so I told him that was only going to hang on to it in case of emergency. On my way home, I saw a Guia-T for sale in a kiosco, and I figured it was a good investment. After all, I don't want to end up on the wrong side of town again just because I didn't have my map book on me. I now had smaller bills which made it easy for me to justify getting a cheap superpancho for lunch. My only other option was skipping lunch. When I got home, I started doing research, or at least trying to do research, or at least trying to try to do research. I managed to find several good sources on EBSCOhost. For dinner that night, my family had an entirely vegetarian meal, something I am not at all used to. It was good, but strange. The food was like a casserole but with eggplant instead of pasta or rice, topped with tomatoes, onions, and possibly other vegetables. It was also served with some cooked, buttered slices of sweet potato. I think they called it "batata." We washed it down with water and pear-tasting juice, and then I had a tangerine for dessert. Weird, huh? I went back to research after dinner, during which I realized that I had stood up Giselle! We had a private tango lesson scheduled for that day at 6:30, and I had completely forgotten. ¡Qué horror!

28 Julio

Tuesday, we started talking about how difficult our papers were coming along with Guillermo, and he said they were due next Tuesday. Excellent. We suffered through the four-hour class, and afterward Cambria came home with me. I gave her a tour of my lodgings and introduced her to Nico, Brenda, and Amanda. I also met Rochelle, a friend of Amanda's from California who will be living here until after I leave. I wanted Cambria to meet Alejandra and Luciano, but they had gone out to see a free dress rehearsal of a play. Dinner was good though; Brenda made a lentel stew, over which we reviewed the vocabulary that we talked about at dinner the night before: expletives, euphemisms, insults, etc. One of the expletives that I found the most funny is, "!La concha de la lora!" Lora means parrot, and concha can mean "shell," but not in this instance. Anyway, after dinner, Cambria and I took a colectivo to a movie theatre where we watched La era del hielo 3 (Ice Age 3) in Spanish. Cambria and I were both glad that of all movies to watch in Spanish, we chose a cartoon. Even though they spoke pretty fast, it was really easy to follow the plot. We shared the theater with only 3 other couples, which made loud laughter a little awkward. The theater itself was interestingly laid-out: there was a raised trapezoid-shaped space between that bottom of the screen and the front row of chairs, and the chairs weren't particularly comfortable. By the standards of the typical, too-good-for-Tinseltown Oklahoma City Area native, the theater was not very good, but I am not hard to please. As I walked the streets of BA that night before and after finding my bus, I noticed that I was still pretty skittish. I definitely am less trusting of the people I walk past at night, especially a certain demographic.

29 Julio

Wednesday I had Spanish class again, after which I met Adam's parents at their hotel. The four of us went to mall in Recoleta, and then I had a Starbucks grande cinnamon dulce latte and a heated chocolate chip muffin to tide me over until dinner. I've decided that I definitely like Buenos Aires coffee in any café more than Starbucks. I'm surprised that their business is doing so well here. And that's all I have for Wednesday.

30 Julio

Thursday was going to be a good day. Finally, Guillermo Bustinduy had not called in sick, so we would finally have our Culture and Society class, but first, we had a tour of historically significant buildings in B.A. We were supposed to meet at 10 AM at Plaza San Martin, which it turns out is the Plaza with the giant tree that I traversed on my second day here. Thus, I had to get up early for the first time in days. So, I got all my stuff together, and took the Subte to Plaza San Martin. When I got there, I still had 40 minutes before 10 so I found a Havanna café, and had some café there. I love going to cafés in the morning. Just like the other one I wrote about before Temaikén, there were several businessmen and women in the café, and each one had his/her own table. Most were reading their newspapers. I wanted to see if I could sneak a picture, so I reached my hand in my pocket to get out my camera, but my pocket was empty. Confused, I searched through my backpack to see if I'd put it in there, but it wasn't there either. I was sure I'd put it in my jacket pocket before I left the house because I wanted to take pictures during the tour. My camera was, and is, gone.

Circumstances had led up to this occurring. Somehow in the transtion from Misiones to BA, I misplaced my camera case, which I wasn't extremely concerned about, just annoyed that I'd lost it. Also, my camera's strap had broken, so I tied it together the best I could, but it made it to where I could no longer carry my camera with the strap around my wrist like I normally do. Again, just another annoyance. Normally, I would put my camera in its case in my backpack, or I would have it in my jacket pocket with the strap around my wrist, but today I kept it in my jacket pocket because I didn't want it to get all scratched up. And because it was cold, I was wearing my heavier jacket. All of these factors made it much easier for a camera to slip out undetected. Surely I would have noticed the bang on the ground if it had fallen out though. By the time I made it to the meeting place for the tour, I had decided that it was pretty clear that I had been pickpocketed, likely on the Subte on the way here. Later in the day as I was mulling it over, I did remember a moment in the Subte when it was pretty crowded and there was a man near me who I thought hovered in a strange way. I could feel/hear him making movements behind me, and he was holding his newspaper in a strange way that made it bump into me a lot, and it even blocked my line of vision to the floor on my left side. Of course, at the time, I didn't think much of it because everybody bumps into eachother in the Subte and I ignored it, but now I'm pretty sure that's when it happened. I never even turned around to look him in the face. I'm guessing he used the newspaper bumping me to distract me from my right side which is where the pocket was that I had my camera in. I can't believe though that he even knew that I had anything in the pocket, because it doesn't make a protrusion in the coat or anything. You'd also think that I'd feel the weight of it leave my side, but Adam reminded me that pickpockets are well-trained to be able to steal undetectedly. I must say, I'm impressed. I wish that people who are smart enough to steal so intellegently would use their intelligence to get a legitimate job.

Needless to say, I was hacked. Mugged and pickpocketed in less than a week. I kept telling myself things like, "It's just a thing; it can be replaced," "At least you got in Iguazu photos," "At least there weren't many pictures in there," and, "There's only a week left and you won't need to take any more pictures." But none of these changed my anger at this city, and it made me really want to go home.

I sucked in my emotion, though, for the sake of the others during the tour. I wasn't even going to tell them what had happened because I didn't want it to be an issue, but I remembered that they often expect me to take pictures of the things they don't. So I told them, unintentionally spilling out some anger as I told. Cambria, my homie, let me take pictures with her camera during most of the tour, saying that I would take more than she would any way. She's a good friend. I did enjoy the tour. It was led by Nacho, one of the two tour guides who had taken us to La Boca, San Telmo, and Puerto Madero, and it was in Spanish which I could follow most of the time unless I was focused on trying to make Cambria's camera focus.

Plaza San Martín itself has historical significance, and from it you can see the miniture Big Ben near Retiro train station. I believe it was a gift from the British or something. Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, facing the clock tower in Plaza San Martín is a memorial to the men who died in the the Falkland's War in the 1980s against England. From there we walked across the street to a mansion called "Palacio Paz" (Peace Palace) that used to be the home of a single wealthy family. Now it houses the Club Circulo Militar, which is something like a Veteran's Club. The mansion is astounding. The rooms are enormous and decorated ornately. In the ballroom, I even danced a little tango with Alex, and Cambria sat at the head of the table in the dining hall. One room was enormous and resembled the Casper mansion. The patio floor outside was slick enough to skate on, and our tour guide said that actually, many people did skate on it. On our way out, I noticed that there was a memorial for those who died during "La guerra contra la subversión." I asked when it was, because I had never heard of that war, and by now I thought I'd had a decent understanding of Argentine history. They gave me a year, which was enough to be able to look it up later. After we had gone outside of earshot of anyone around the mansion, Nacho explained that that was what they call what everyone else calls the "La guerra sucia" (The Dirty War). During this period in time Argentina had its most destructive military dictator, Videla. During his rule, thousands of people who spoke out against the government mysteriously disappeared, most of whom were killed. The men in the Club Circulo Militar and their families are a small minority who are still faithful to Videla. They are also part of a higher class, as Nacho later asked if we noticed our tour guide's nasal accent. I enjoy getting tours from the everyday Joes that Expanish provides because they don't sugarcoat the history, and they provide perspective from the point-of-view of the everyday middle-to-lower class porteño.

After the palacio, we took the Subte to Plaza de Mayo, where we went to El Cabildo. This is a really old building that had been reconstructed several times. It was originally where the viceroy, the political leader of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata ruled under the Spanish crown. But since 1940, it has been used as a museum.

From there, we walked across to the center of the plaza. There were some protesters there circling the Revolución de Mayo Obelisk. This group is called the "Madres," and they gather every Thursday morning at Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada to mourn for their children that disappeared during the dirty war and to demand that the government releases information about them. I was expecting that we would be able to go inside the Casa Rosada, so I was sad when we didn't. But, we did see the markings left on the Casa Rosada and the charred palm trees around it from when the government bombed it twenty-fiveish years ago.

From Plaza de Mayo we walked to the the Museo de Eva Peron, which left me with several songs from Evita playing through my head. It was quite an impressive museum despite the controversiality of Eva Peron herself. After this museum, we only had to walk a few blocks to get to class, but we stopped in a couple kioscos to get some lunch. By now we were starving. We were late to class, but Guillermo didn't seem to mind, and he didn't mind that we ate either. For me, class seemed to go on forever. Guillermo is fun to listen to, but he pauses so much that it cn be difficult to follow his trains of thought. Also, he's a big talker, so the class is not at all discussive. If you ask one quesion, he's answering for the next five minutes.

Eventually we got free. After class, I took the bus that Cambria and Bridget take home every day. We talked to an Argentine girl a little while. When we got off the bus, we walked to Recoleta cemetery because there was a place there where I could by tickets to go see El fantasma de la opera. Cambria and I are going Wednesday, and I'm really excited about it.

Then we walked back to Cambria's apartment, where no one was home. Cambria shared her ñoqui with me from the previous night, pronounced NYOH-kee. It is a tradition here to eat ñoqui on the 29th of every month in celebration of still having money, or something like that, a much-needed celebration for a culture who has suffered through so many changes in government and economic crises. My family doesn't do the tradition but Cambria's and Bridget's do. Ñoqui is a pasta thats made around a chunk of potato, and I liked it a lot. It was kind of like tortellini. Then I went home, had dinner, and updated you on the last week of my life. Finally, I'm up to date!

Too tired to do a spelling and grammar check. I'll do it later. Don't judge me.