Observations

Photos

i have a special gmail mail box with my photos.
sign in with username: marusya32 and password: ma32shka
you can watch some funny movies and loads of photos
please do!

Che

my favorite word. it´s how you address people when you want to draw their attention. much sexier than "hey you". when i´m called "che, maria" i feel really authentic :)

Chamullero

argentinian men are terrible! everywhere i go i´m beeing asked " so where are you going? and where are you coming from? and how long do u stay in argentina? and what happens when you fall in love with a chico latino?". well, let me tell ya what doesnt happen - i´m not staying in argentina and i´m not having an argentinian boyfriend!
chamushar basically means to go bla-bla. and that´s what they do. they tell you after knowing you for bare 7 minutes that you´re the most beautiful creature they´ve ever seen and call you mi amor. after 8 minutes you´re begged for a bezo on their boca, which is a kiss on the mouth, no more no less. and that´s beeing everyone, regardless of socio-economic status, race, color, descend, regardless of the time of the day, the weather, of how many people are in the room and how many of them are your friends or ex-boyfriends, reagrdless of age difference, cultural difference, and mostly regardless of your own will. and you will be solicited untill you hit them, run away or agree...
my usual question is - if couples do get together, and people do make families how do they pass this humiliating act of chamushering, how do u know if someone likes you for real? - you just know, they tell you, you learn. well sence i dont have time to learn cause it looks like you neede a life time for that, and since i find it outrageous and disrespectful, deceiving and molesting - i´m giving up, and i will never have an argentinian boyfriend!

Chacarera

it´s the best thing that happened to me in Argentina.
take Hava Alberstein with Yohoram Gaon make them look nicer and sing better, put them on stage with guitars, a drum, and a dancing couple dressed like gouchos to accompany them - i cant get enough of it!
chacarera and zamba (pronounced "samba") are the folklore of the north. its the single most passionate peace of music and the most sentual emotional dance i´ve ever seen. i cant explain more than that, but i´ve already got about 7 CD´s of it and even been dragged to a stage to dance with a gaucho (and survived it). i´m moved and i´m in love.
... and btw, i had a date with an indian chacarera dancer today that i picked up in the club. he showed up in the complete outfit, with the sombrero and the leather belt and the boots and all. had a great fun! i couldnt stop smiling :)

mate, football, asado, siesta, dulce de leche, peña and chiquititas

the cutest thing about spanish is that everythign is either diminished to it´s smallest size or blown up to an exageration. let me explain. if you ask your friend out for beer, u dont offer him a "cerveza" but a "cervezita", and a "cafe" becomes a "cafetito", which is like saying "would you like to take a small, cute coffe with me?". a party u´d be checking out tonight is a "fiestita", and your girlfriend is a "gordita". gordo is basically a fat-ass but apparently its the most caressing name u can be called here, and your boyfriend will probably want call you anything bu that. on the other hand if something is bueno, it will always be "buenissimo", and its never just "grande" but "grandissimo". if you know what you´re talking about though, u´ll say "rebueno" and "regrande". it´s pretty fun, this word games :)

so, according to one argentinian who was trying to give me a cultural lesson, that´s how your day is supposed to go:

1. in the morning you wake up with a matito, at about 11:30 a.m.
mate is the essence of their socializing, family oriented life style. it´s this sort of green tee, very bitter and strong you brew in a special cup and sip from a special straw. every second person is hanging around with a thermos, a tupperwear with this tee, and his own, engraved with his family initiuals mate cup. people are taking mate on buses, on the benches in the town plaza, and basically everywhere. but it´s not just the mate. it´s passing it around. you cant take mate alone, so you invite everyone to share.
the mate itseald is pretty disgusting, but when they ask me i say i love it! it´s wonderful, the mate circles - the best socializing ritual i´ve ever seen. way better than the joint.

2. so after you´re done with your matesito, or even while you´re still doing it, u watch some prime quality footballito. i won´t elaborate on this one, because just like the germans didnt teach me to drink beer, the argentinians won´t hook me on football... so we go straight to number 3

3. asadito - i have a lot to say about this.
it´s not just a plain BBQ. you´re basically not allowed to eat anything else to not waiste any space in your stomack designated for meat. so there are some nasty salads with too much salt and too much oil you can have but you dont want to. the meat is great! the sossages are even better! but they do exagerate, let me tell you. the amounts of meat they consume are enormous! it´s all meat meat meat. some people, in remote villages, i was told, eat ONLY meat. if you order a salad, as expensive as the restaurant might be, you won´t get more than chopped tomatoes, lettuce, onion and red beet with loads of oil. olive oil is strictly for export. i get deeply frustrated at times, and eat bananas and oranges all day.
at least the meat is really good... and it always comes with superb red wine from Mendoza, 2$ a bottle... didnt mean to complain

4. siesta is sacred. in villages little kids that go out of the house at siesta time are being severely scolded. and for a good reason - in the northern summer the temperatures reach 40+ degrees.

5. dulce de leche is sweet. and it´s in 90% of the icecream flavours, and all other flafours as well. they even have Orio´s with dulce de leche. exciting!

6. peña is a folklore night. but everyone loves it! and everyone from 10 to 90 years old knows how to move with a chacarera!
tango is another thing, it´s for Buenos Aires urban snobs.

7. chiquititas are actually chicas (girls) that became chiquitas (little girls), and ended up as chiquititas (tiny girls), exemplifying topic #1.


Spanish

¡Spanish kicks ass!
I´m taking classes with Graciela, a complete sweetheart, and we're having a blast!
Everything you can say in English with a couple of "would have should been doing"s there is a special conjugation of the spanish verb for this. The worst part though is that the meaning that some gramatical structures and tenses are intending to convey is so weird and unfamiliar that you really have to twist your mind to start thinking with this structures and to trying to use them. And of course pretty much all of the verbs are irregular. And besides every time i look for a word in a dictionary Graciela says "oh, forget about it darling, that´s of no use in South America, that´s good old España". So my only dictionary is Graciela herself. You could guess how deprived i feel, beeing the dictionary girl that I am. At least she speaks German too.
All that being said, i still speak like a 10 year old, conjugating everything the wrong way, and using my hands half the time. But I mostly get to hang out we argentinians and spaniards, and it´s working pretty good. So I stick to Graciela.


AC

no air conditioning. it´s 30 degrees, and its still yearly spring. not in the cinema, not in the hostel, nor in cars (even new ones), stores or restaurants. maybe in banks, and some travel agencies. you just sleep siesta of 4 hours during the hottest time of the day, and its all good. there is one guy from Buenos Aires in my hostel, working in an office here. every noon i watch him walk impatiently back and forth in the hostel hall - "I cant take siesta. i have to work!" he says. but he will get used to it in no time...

Hugs & Kisses

you kiss everyone. one time on the left cheeck. basically enyone you can address as "che", plus their family members and their friends, which is everyone.
once, when i had a really lonely day, i picked up this funny kid on the street that was making mice out of wire on the central plaza. we went for a walk in town, and he kept stopping people on the street, allegedly his aquaintances, and talking to them, which ment we both had to kiss all of them. i really got into it, i admit, makes u feel a bit special. in the end it figured that most of them he didnt know... apparently he consummed so much pot that he wasnt sure whom he knows and whom he doesnt. he didnt even know if i was a real person, because he said sometimes he sees some figures who are not real... a funny dude
but for one thing, they suck in hugs. the only 2 decent hugs i´ve got in these 2 months were from this israeli guy and this one 19 year old french chick with a pierced chin and dread locks, that told me that she feels like Salta is her home and it meakes her elated to walk on it´s ground, which she never felt in Paris.
u cant get it all, i guess.

Streets & Avenues

every single city, town and village has perfectly direct streets that go from north to south and from east to west, with perfect 90 degrees junctions. every block has it´s number. for example block 800 can only have houses numbered from 800 to 900. a bit underchallenging...
i carry a little compass with me, because everytime i enter a store i totally loose a sence of direction. its really helpful.
also every city has, for some reason, a street named "the state of Israel". in Buenos Aires there is an interchange of "the state of Israel" with "Palestine".


Compatriots

israelis traveling in south america are disgusting! they travel in groups by the dozens, being loud, rude and basically abnoxious. so far i managed to avoid them, sometimes having to change hostels. as i totally ignore them, sometimes they speak about me in hebrew in my face, ignoring the Crocks sign - there is no Crocks shoes in any other country in the world, and if there is then no one buys it. I have them in neon yellow - how obvious is that?! what ever sort of trip they do here is so different from mine, and when we all go home, we will all say the same thing "i´ve been to south america".
to you my foreign friends, a little clarification - there are tens of thousands of israelis backpacking in peru, bolivia, brazil and argentina. it´s a part of our culture, just as the army service and the falafel (döner). mostly they are silly kids, that are not interested in anything besides cheep hash and making photos of them paragliding, rafting and riding horses. they go to israeli hostels, look for israeli food and are not interested in speaking anything other than hebrew, even though they all master english on a perfectly conversationl level. traveling doesnt make them nice, open or looking for company, as it normally does to any other travelers. they´re quite immune to traveling experiences.
there are quite alot of abnoxious caracters you meet on the way. listening to drunk norwegians speaking norwegian, or to stupid french kids speaking french is as annoying, but for me israelis are my group of reference, and i cant detach myself from them. cause when i´m asked where i´m from - that´s where i´m from, and i have to excuse myself in front of all these travelers that had some pretty sickening experiences with some of my compatriots. and it makes me sick.
dont get me wrong, there are some remarkable people within my nation, but u won´t be looking for them in south america...

Time

time is not an issue. there is no time budget.
i dont know the day of the week, the date or the month. i dont know how long i have stayed here and how long more i will. i dont even know what time of the year it is since it´s all reversed on this side of the globe. the only thing that reminds me of the time that passes is my period, but as far as i´m concerned i could as well be living in the same month over and over again. isnt it september now?
oddly enough in one of the hostels i swapped my book for "The Time Traveler´s Wife"...

i take one day at a time. i dont make more than the vaguest plans and never really try to stick to them. i`m always ready to be surprised, and i always am, almost every day. it`s wonderful. and when they tell you on all those self exploration workshops that we humans dont know how to live the moment, and to be in the present - it´s because our life style is not meant to allow us to do that. in reality it´s nothing doing.

some moments are a biting loneliness, some are so overwhelming that i get scared. but once i know when to close my eyes and to count till 100 (which, between us, is less than 1.5 minutes), and when to pack my backpack really quick and get away on the first bus - i´m pretty much out of trouble.

So far so good...