But let me try to catch up, working backwards from today.
I am off to the U.S. Embassy now to pick up my books. I managed to convince them not to send the books downtown to the Fulbright office, as we live five minutes from the embassy and many of the books are staying in our apartment. Let's if they get all nervous when I walk up with several big suitcases to carry the books back in!
Eve and I have been alternating zipping downtown to Spanish classes this week -- me in the morning (everyday) and Eve three afternoons a week. We are both learning, but aren't ecstatic about the classes. They are small, which is great, but they pack in people of different levels because there aren't enough for many different classes in each time slot. I was put in with people a good bit stronger at Spanish than me (that would be most people). But today I was demoted to a group closer to my level and that was better. We may continue with a school in Palermo next week.
I finally made it out to "my" university -- Universidad Torcuato di Tella -- and spent a good hour touring the institution and meeting (again) my host professor, the Dean of the architecture school, Jorge Liernur. He is exceptionally kind and welcoming, and is already plotting exchange programs and a symposium next year (for which I would have to, of course, return!). The university is the successor to El Instituto di Tella, which was an important art school in the1950s and 1960s but was shut down by the government in the late 1960s. It reestablished itself as one of the best universities in Argentina, although it only recently has brought back its school of art and architecture. There is a lot in a single letter: Pancho (as he calls himself) says that those who want to remember the heady days of di Tella at the cutting of art use the shorthand of "El di Tella (because Instituto gets the masculane El) while those who know it as the university call it "La [Universidad] di Tella."
Some memories of the past few days:
--free internet in the Subte!
--utterly packed Subte cars. I have luckily headed in just before the rush hour (which really begins around 8:30 or); Eve has had the worst of it, coming home right after 5 pm. But today when I returned around 1:30 it was insane -- people just pushing as hard as they can to get in. I waited for another train, only to find it just as crowded. Once squished in, you are still subject to further compression at each stop, as those in the middle try to get out. But everyone still accompanies their body-slam of you with a curt "permiso." I can't wait to take these rides in November or December when it is 100 degrees.
--everything was closed on Monday. Really, everything. It was the holiday in honor of the Libertador, San Martin. So, we had rather quiet day (although both Eve and I still had our Spanish classes) including a lovely trip to the park, where the kids spent a good forty-five minutes climbing up, down, and around a fallen tree (it must have fallen years ago, because it is covered in carved messages and is completely smooth. We played a little baseball (provoking lots of stares) and walked again through the lovely promenade of the Rosedal garden.
--School continues to go okay for the kids, although the work is far too easy (not counting the Spanish, which is slowly coming along). Also, Jonah's good friend suddenly turned on him (you know how these things can happen) so he is feeling rather lonely. He delivered a note (in Spanish) to Ernesto and we hope that things will sort themselves out.
--a couple of big news events here, which might not have made the front page of the New York Times: the manager and security chief of a club where over a hundred people died five years ago were convicted. But perhaps the bigger news was that the band, which apparently was fully implicated, were all cleared. There were riots in the streets (about five blocks from our Spanish language school), as family members battled fans of the group. Apparently, in order to identify rioters, the police fire blue paint on everyone involved in a melee. As people flee policy can grab them. Second news item: the government paid something like $60 million pesos to make televised football (soccer) free for all -- it had been exclusively on cable. Bread and circus comes to mind.
--We just returned from Comunidad Bet-El, which has long been a mythical place for me, as it was Marshall Meyer's community and it was from here that he developed a new type of conservative service -- filled with singing and dancing -- and a renewed focus on social action. When I attend Bnai Jeshurun, there were regular references to Comunidad Bet-El, the world of Buenos Aires Jews. It deserves a longer post, which I will get to tomorrow. But summarize it this way: one can quibble over the kinds of tunes they chose, the Musak-y keyboard in the background, the feeling that you were the "audience" a good amount of the time. But the bottom line is -- and I felt this at BJ as well: here we were on a Shabbat evening and there were several hundred Jews singing loudly and confidently and with great ruach. That in and of itself was enough to make this an uplifting experience.
Shabbat shalom.
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