empty nest

Parents have a way about them. Instead of just deplaning like regular folks, they seem to descend from heaven like angels of mercy wielding credit cards, good times, hot food, cashola, and priceless, kind words of advice.

There last few days with us here in Buenos Aires were spent in proper Nisbet style: nice leisurely walks along the banks of the Delta in neighboring Tigre, enjoying the sunset over the river from a boat-bus, gorging ourselves silly in our favorite Peruvian restaurant, Carlitos, during Peru's football games and cramming in as many last-minute empanadas as our poor bodies would hold.

Late last week I awoke cold and hungry, wondering if my mom and dad might be interested in a coffee and forgetting that I had put them on an airplane the night before back to California. Our house is empty again and visitors have temporarily stopped until later this month when we greet an old friend who returns to Argentina, little Laura Rivas, and Doctor Jenny Yusin who's visit might actually mark the final installment of the Buenos Aires adventure.

I am hungry. Hungry to finish my last Spanish class and have exams be behind me for once instead of looming ahead. I am hungry to be better: a better writer, editor, English teacher, helper, cook, wife and life partner. I am hungry to improve myself in every way and hungry to be on the road feeling I know every nook of every cobblestone of this city. I am hungry to visit Paraguay, revisit Bolivia, and step into Peru, Colombia, and strange coners of Central America. Most of all, I think I am hungry to go home. Though my family is continually littered in all corners of the globe from Michigan to Greece to the South Pacific back to the homestead in a little corner of Goleta, I am hungry to be home again though home may mean poor, jobless, homeless, and a whirling dirivsh of directionless.

As I write, dear friends, snow is falling in big, fluffy chunks onto our terrace in Almagro. My neighbors have taken to the streets with their digital cameras in vain attempts to record this historic day. The-little-heater-that-could is trying its very best to keep the living room above freezing and studying is, once again, being put off in favor of the Gilmore Girls.

patagonian prices

- Flight to Bariloche to Bariloche, Argentina - $300US
- Proper waterproof gloves for scraping ice chunks from mud flap of rental car - $8US
- Hot chocolate and churros in 2 degrees C - $2US
- One night in the finest, homiest hotel in Argentina where you know the owner's son from Santa Barbara and stumbled into completely by accident - $50US
- Pair of boots when you realize that Converse just don't cut it in 8 feet of snow - $100US
- Bottle of the finest Argentine Malbec for end of the day chat - $4US
- Buy into the Nisbet Texas Hold 'Em Poker Game - $3US
- Wool and needles to appease Mary's knitting addiction - $8US
- Digital Camera for proper capturing of the little Mexican's first snow fall, snowball fight, snow meal, and blizzard - $200US
- Getting your rental car dug out of a snow drift by kind Argentine rescue workers after careening, slow-speed accident - Free!
- Post melt down dinner of fine Patagonian Lamb, Trout, pastas and other comfort foods - Who cares? We were post-meltdown at this point.
- View from the top of the Aerosilla at kilometer 17 of the Circuito Chico - Abso-fuckin-lutely Priceless

More photos and adventure stories coming soon. Back to harsh Buenos Aires reality on Wednesday. In the meantime I will be enjoying all the gorgeous ups and downs of our amazing Winter Wonderland adventure with Mary and Roger.

¡Que coman!

Maybe it's the chilly winter weather, maybe it's the fact that I am working out regularly again, maybe it's the fact that my panza has grown to a panzota over the last year, maybe it's the blurbs I am writing about food over at One Sorry Blog, who knows what it is exactly? But I have food on the brain. Good, fresh, wholesome, nourishing, home cooked food on the brain. I sit here now with Mexican rice and Chipotle chicken (thanks, Bubba Ray) and love life, love winter, love delicious plates of hot food. So without further ado, here are some of my favorite people doing some of my favorite things. I wish you all good soups and stews this winter or good salads and smoothies if the sun is shining where you are. I have to remind myself to be thankful for one of life's most essential luxuries.

feliz día, mamá

Today is Mother's Day in the USA so I wanted to give a shout out to the greatest mom in the world, Mary Nisbet. I know most people think their mom is pretty great but mine really, really is. For real. Today my mom, dad, and sister are going to climb a hill in Ojai, California and have dinner together to celebrate my mom's birthday and mother's day in one and it's only on rare days like these that I wish I was home. Without the support of both my parents, their voices at the end of the telephone, their kind and encouraging words, and their sense of adventure, I would not be able to continue running around whatever corners of the world tickle my fancy. On June 18th, my parents are coming to visit me for the second time in Buenos Aires and I just can't wait. Their last visit was busted up by a burst eardrum, canceled trip to Iguazu Falls, and domestic issues between Paul and I. So this year's trip will be different, filled with fun and healthy people, and the domestic bliss that Paul and I are enjoying.

In the meantime my blog has been lacking due to finals coming up this week. If anyone has insight into the uses of the presente subjuntivo, pretérito perfecto subjuntivo, imperfecto subjuntivo, pretérito pluscuamperfecto subjuntivo, and the like, I have until Tuesday to get it down. Today I am making cookies, empanadas, and things to make my mother proud to entertain asado guests - a beautiful Sunday tradition.

If you talk to your mom today - tell her you love her and Happy Mother's Day. If you're anything like me, her job ain't that easy.

vecinos, ruido y oscuridad

This week already seems a bit nuts. It started out with a tormenta gigante that swept through the city on Sunday leaving us without electricity for a day and a half and living our Monday in the 19th century. For us, it was a relatively non-event. I spent the morning cleaning and re-cleaning all the floors of the water that had flooded in from the outside, then washing and re-washing the towels that I had used to clean the floors, then throwing out rotting food from the decorative refrigerator, using the outage as the perfect excuse to defrost our freezer that needs defrosted approximately every two weeks anyway. By early afternoon I was losing to myself at Solitaire, 75 pages into my novel En El Tiempo de Las Mariposas (the most I think I've ever read in Spanish), and wistfully imagining myself a modern day Emily Dickinson, writing by candlelight and composing future masterpieces.

Around 10pm the serious levels of bronca started to set in and the porteños became ornery as porteños are like to do. We thought it would be a perfect opportunity to visit our favorite Almagro restaurant, Carlitos, but we stepped into the street to quite a scene. The moment we stepped outside, we experienced a protest tactic that I had previously only read about in Bad Times in Buenos Aires by Miranda France. It started as a giant banging from a single balcony. It sounded like someone pounding a wooden spoon against a giant metal pot. It grew... to a fever pitch. We scurried away from the noise and on to the bus. 10 minutes later we were safe in the folds of our restaurants watching the bronca unfold on the televisions. All of our neighbors lined up in our usually quiet corner of South Almagro, banging pots, yelling, holding up traffic, and making mischief... all in the name of the government turning their lights back on. Fair enough the day without lights left most of the businesses in our neighborhood paralyzed for a day. In Buenos Aires, a day's earnings are no small potatoes. Ultimately, the neighbors did well taking their protest to the streets as deep into the night, the lights flared back up with a vengeance and now our fridge is running like a champ again.

Despite the ruckus, I dearly cherish our neighborhood and neighbors. The top photo is of our two next door neighbors Estella and her mother Margarita. They sleep Burt and Ernie style in beds 6 inches apart, are constantly force-feeding me empanadas, pickled eggplant, cakes, tartas, and mate (I blame them entirely for my weight-gain), and they call me linda and tell me I speak good Spanish. On this particular evening the stayed out watching tango until 5am (as all good porteños do) and I had to take a picture as Margarita is clearing wearing a wig (this hair came out of nowhere). The first photo is our precious Felipe, el vago, who jumps through our roof every morning like clockwork. He's quite spry for an old kitty.

I am deep into the dark forest of learning the past and conditional usage of the subjunctive. Level 5 Spanish at UBA generally just gives me a headache these days despite wonderful teachers and endlessly entertaining classmates. My favorite is the Brazilian girl who speaks Portuguese the entire time. I expect she is just hoping our professor was dropped on her head as a small child and won't notice. Bright and early on Friday, Heather and Taylor arrive for their whirlwind spin through the city. I am honing up my empanada and panqueque skills for their visit.

The news of the week is that Mary and Roger, my parents who drove me to write great literature (take that how you will), are braving Buenos Aires for a SECOND TIME and coming to visit in July. I feel very loved to have parents that will fly all the way to Latin America to see me. Maybe they are coming to see the glaciers, the penguins, or the falls, but I feel loved anyway. It makes me wonder, how far on the globe I would have to go for no one to follow me there? Is actually possible, in this day and age, to fall off the map? How lucky am I to have a family that will come and see me, no matter how far into the heart of darkness I go? I am, in so many ways, a lucky, lucky girl.

Poor, three-legged blog!

My blog really should just be taken out and shot just to put it out of its misery. There is just so much to say. The past couple of months have been filled with thrills and adventures, tears and laughter. Peeing in semi-public places, burst eardrums, hellacious bus rides full of cockroaches, having my heart broken, then put back together, flying like a bird with a paragliding champ, sleeping for a month in hostels, eating steak sandwiches like every day is my last on earth, becoming re-addicted to cigs and diet coke, whipping through books one a day, travelling from the tropical north to the farthest south you can go before jumping the boat to Antarctica, laughing to tears with Julie, and feeling very, very restless.


This link should take you to a small selection of photos from my trip with little Julie... around Argentina in 30 days.

back in the sick of it

I totally hemorrhaged again when I got back from my trip with Lynn. It was total culture shock leaving Buenos Aires for the Northwestern Patagonia Countryside and it was worse culture shock coming home for two weeks. Shortly after Lynn arrived we decided that flying to Bariloche (Argentina’s skiing and chocolate capital) instead of taking the 25-hour bus ride. Lynn made a good point that since she was taking her entire vacation allotment for the year, she might as well not spend more than 2 complete days of it on a bus. It only took us a few hours to sweep in through the clouds to this weird no world where there is no dogshit or $10 peso sex acts and where the mountains and crystal clear lakes unfold all around you like some sort of sick heavenly joke. I spent the first 48 hours or so just in complete shock and awe at the idea of staying in a hostel, trying to speak English again, trying to make friends. I realized pretty fast that I had spent the last four months of my life in a full-body cringe, totally wound-up and scared all the time, constantly on edge, constantly exhausted and suspicious, and totally not myself. The idea of a relaxing vacation was just hard to adjust to I suppose.

Lynn and I shared an amazing experience in the short time that we spent in and around Bariloche. It occurred to me that I probably hadn’t spent that much time with Lynn since she began Medical School, or even before. It also became clear how different we have become and how much of her life I have missed. It was nice to get to know my sister again.

As far as where we were, there are no words. We teamed up with 2 other Americans for the Siete Lagos or Seven Lakes Route so that we could afford to rent a car and do the trip in a couple over a couple of days instead of the panicked 3 hour bus tour the brochures offer. After a few short hours in the car Sean, one of the other Americans, suggested that we were all experiencing serious “adjective deficiency” because after a while of your jaw dropping, gasped breathes, screaming wow, cooing, commenting on how, beautiful, charming, lovely, gorgeous, breathtaking, wonderful, magnificent, spectacular, incredible everything is, you just sort of run out of things to say. Combine that with the fact that at every bend in the road, things just get better, and you realize quickly that you might as well just keep your mouth shut and enjoy it.

It felt good to be out in the country, to have offensive smelling clothes. It felt good to hike for hours and be on a real bike. After the initial shock to the system, it did feel nice to meet people and speak in English and, for the first time in my life, be the better half of a barely-Spanish-speaking duo.

When I returned to the city I really had a hard time readjusting. Once again I was back in this world of honking horns and “kill or be killed” pedestrian walkways, of guys testing out their English on you by asking “Would you show me your pussy?” and just feeling really sorry for myself. Every time I want to throw up my hands and say that I hate it here I try to bite my tongue and remind myself that it is me and not this place. But it is hard.

I am about to finish my Spanish class at UBA – my test is next week, and still I often feel my Spanish is no better than the day I arrived. I have a hard time understanding the accent people and (naturally and understandably) people speak very quickly and impatiently. The other day I was in a giant, expensive, and touristy store buying something. The store clerk rang up my items then said something that I didn’t understand. I asked as politely as possible if she could repeat what she said more slowly. She rolled her eyes and told me, “No importa,” with a giant sigh. But it does matter to me. I wanted to cuss her out and run out of the store screaming that I would never shop in that shithole of a place anyway but I couldn’t think how to say that in Spanish. Naturally, I meekly bought my overpriced things and limped out into the street like a wounded puppy. I curse myself for not having thicker skin. Maybe on some level I am tougher than when I got here and when I return to Santa Barbara I will realize that I am practically a New Yorker by comparison. For now, the porteños continue to be able to crush me like a bug every day.

The winter is very erratic. For a while life in the city was extremely cold and I was wearing all my clothes at once and still coming home cold. The only way the Argentines survived the worst of the weather was the world cup fever that felt like an inferno striking a polar ice cap. It’s been 15 years since I lived in a country where the world cup mattered. And while it mattered in Scotland, it was mostly because everyone in Scotland was glued to their televisions to root against the English because the Scottish side never qualified for the cup. El Mundial, as it is called here, is inexplicable. There are televisions everywhere. There are televisions in kioskos and newsstands. Cafés and restaurants are standing room only. You can’t pass a conversation without someone talking about football or the Brazilians being putos. Children and grandparents are decked out in team colors. Oh, and the entire country is drunk.

After one of Argentina’s wins we walked to El Obelisco which is a few short blocks from our house and one of Buenos Aires’ most recognizable landmarks. It was reported the next day that hundreds of thousands of people were there. People were climbing on top of garbage trucks and thousands of cars honked their horns. Fireworks exploded all around and people drummed and danced and chanted cheers for the home team. It felt like being in the eye of a hurricane. While your own world is relatively calm, life explodes all around you.

Argentina is a crazy and lonely place. Anyone who wants to get a great sense of it should invest in Pico Iyer’s Falling Off the Map, which is a serious of essays on “Lonely Places”. He really gets to the heart of this strange place.

Paul headed up north yesterday. He will spend the next month stomping across the Northwest border towns that cuddle the Bolivian border. News from him will follow. Time permitting I will go and meet him in a couple of weeks before Mary and Roger descend into Argentina.

I can’t wait to see the folks. They could not be coming at a better time. Since leaving town I have missed 2 funerals, just found out I am missing a wedding, and no less than 3 nervous breakdowns. At these times I feel homesick. And I miss my friends. I do, however, know that what I am doing here is important; that I won’t see how much I have changed until I go home. I won’t see how much stronger and smarter I am until I confront my past life - which I'm sure will be unrecognizable. I can't imagine what I ever did with a Venti Latte from Starbucks anymore. This is something I have to remind myself of every day when I feel weak.

I am attaching a photo of Paul and I… in the eye of the Mundial hurricane.