Mendoza

You can always tell when I'm busy having a good time because I get behind on my blog.

I spent a week in Mendoza, Argentina where both the people and the climate are warm and giving.  I went there to study Spanish and to drink good wine.  I ended up being drawn into this sleepy city’s spell, thanks to the welcome its inhabitants gave me and my fellow students.  It’s a gift of hospitality that I want to return very badly, but probably will never be able to.

The sprawling metropolis of Mendoza
It's bigger than you think!

Mendoza was bigger than I expected.  The city itself is small but it is surrounded by other boroughs that make the metropolis sprawl a long way out.  Still, the streets are wide, there is a lot of green space and even the occasional apartment complexes are only 8 floors tall.  So it doesn’t feel like a big city.  The view from the 6^th floor apartment where I stayed for the week offered a great view of the surrounding mountains, especially in the morning. 

From left to right: Jeff, Julie, Julia,
Juan and Sylvia

I arrived around at the apartment around 9PM Sunday evening, which turned out to be right before my host family sat down for dinner.  (Everything in Argentina starts later because they take a “siesta” from 1-5PM and reopen stores from 6-9.)  Betty, her 22 year old son Juan, her 8 year old grandson Lucio, and another Spanish student (and chemical engineer!) from New Zealand named Jeff were my family for the week.

Lucio caught 3 fish!
Best day in the park
I've spent in a long time.

I was proud that I could hold a conversation with Sylvia on first evening there, even if it was very very basic.  It means the studying up until this point actually did some good!  Betty turned out to be a patient Spanish tutor and her son Juan spoke very good English so I could ask the meaning of many words or how to phrase something in Spanish.  The flip side is that it was also very easy to break into English when I needed to communicate something.  It’s really common for extended families to live together here.  Until they get married, most 20 somethings live at home, and even after they marry, they usually stay very close to home.  Argentinians are generally very affectionate and family-oriented people.  It was common to see Juan cuddling with Lucio or friends and family holding hands in the street.  PDA is widely accepted between couples.

Parque San Martin is huge
And there are a zillion people
who work out there every day
It felt very western indeed.

In Parque San Martin
next to the "lake"

Our hiking group:  Me, 3 Germans,
and Eugenia (our Argentinian guide)

Spanish school ran Monday – Friday from 8:30 – 1:00, usually with free activities afterwards and sometimes I elected to go on excursions.  Mondays is an intercultural exchange with local Argentinians who are learning English at another school.  Tuesday was pronunciation training, after which I went hiking with 3 German students to the peak of Cerro Arco.

A view from Masi winery.  Spectacular.

Wednesday after class was a rafting trip on the currently tame Mendoza River and I skipped the conversation class on Thursday but did sign up for the wine tours all day Saturday.   The school (named Intercultural) arranged for all of this as well as my housing, all for less than it normally costs me to live in Houston for a week.  I learned so much Spanish that it is hard to keep everything straight in my head!  Carin and I actually got together to practice verbs several times on our own and I will be practicing all the conjugations I’ve learned during my free time the rest of the trip.  I think I did accomplish my goal, which was to learn enough to communicate during the rest of my stay in South America.  In general, the lessons and my working knowledge of French allowed me to follow most conversations during the week.  But I still have a long way to go before I will be able to contribute to them with any fluidity, even here in Argentina where they naturally speak slowly.  I like Spanish though.  I like that folks here describe goodness as “lindo” which means beautiful.  I like the Latino emphasis on music (several of my Spanish teachers have taught Spanish through music and it is a common subject in conversations with the natives).  I like that the word for smile sounds like sunrise. It's a beautiful language.

Paulo, our strange companion for part
of the hike.  Anna's face says it all

A view from the top of Cerro Alto

Tasting wine at Masi
By far the best wine of the day

Tasting at Giaquinta
Small, family run place that actually
caters to locals (which is rare)

Lunch at Tampugato Divino

The beautiful Salentein
Winery  . . .  but none of us
liked any of the wines

Salentein hosts benefit
concerts in their cellar

Carin and me in
Carrefour
right before I left

My partner in Spanish class all week was Carin.  She is the mother of 3, including Calvin who joined us for class for at least part of every morning.  Carin and Tom have just started a 6 month sabbatical and moved their 3 kids to Mendoza.  Their kids will enroll in local schools when the schoolyear starts in February.  Until then, the whole family is Spanish lessons at Intercultural.  Carin, Calvin and I were essentially beginners while Tom and their two daughters were more advanced students.  I think it’s so cool that Tom and Carin made this work!  Apparently it wasn’t easy to get their jobs to agree to let them go for 6 months, much less convince their kids (Calvin was the holdout) and to find a place in the world where they felt like their kids could safely experience another culture.  The two older girls are already speaking Spanish with ease.  I think they will all enjoy Mendoza– the people here have been so welcoming to me that they should have no problems making friends.

One example of Argentine hospitality: On top of being generally very nice people, my host family included me almost all their social events.  Juan invited me and Jeff to the intercultural exchange one evening (which was basically a bunch of expats drinking wine together with a few locals), or inviting me to go swimming with him and his friends at the pool down the street.  Lucio and a friend begged me to take them to the huge Parque San Martin where he and his friend caught fish with makeshift fishing devices.  The entire family gathered Saturday evening with extended family and friends for Asada, an Argentinian tradition.  At this point, Betty’s other son Geranimo had returned from summer vacation and Lucio went home to his mom, and we were joined by a Swiss girl also named Julia.  The group also included Eric: the very first student who they hosted 3 years ago.  Eric came to study Spanish in Mendoza for a semester during college, fell in love, and so came back after he graduated.  He has been living in Mendoza for 2 years and is now considered part of the family. Eric won me over by immediately offering me Fernet with coke.  

Juan cooking Asada

Asada is loosely translated as BBQ, but it is more than that to Argentinians.  It is a ritual.  It’s a social gathering.  It’s a source of pride and competition for the men who cook the meat (because only men cook asada in this masogonistic culture).  It’s a feast for everybody involved.   Argentinians only use wood to cook their Asada – Facundo and I discussed this at great length (more on that later).  I even overheard Juan referring to cooking with charcoal with disdain.  The family gathered and drank wine and beer together until almost 2 in the morning when a thunderstorm chased us inside.  Juan, Eric, Louis, Julia and I continued our Saturday evening after asada with another Argentinian tradition:  partying until the sun comes up.  As is typical in Argentina, the clubs don’t open until 2:00 and we pre-gamed at Eric’s until almost 4:00, which included Spanish lessons for me and Julia.  The timing also worked in our favor because we dodged the brief hailstorm that downed treebranches all around the city.  Then it was off to the massive outdoor club to dance to electronica until the club shut down.  We rode home in a taxi with a beautiful view of the mountains out the back window.  It was a little surreal.

The view from the taxi on the way
home at 8 in the morning
Other people looking at the mountains
waiting for a cab

Juan, Julie, Julia, Eric and Louis
Overlooking the club at dawn

Maria and I on the deck while
the boys cook dinner

Another example of Argentine hospitality:  One of my Spanish teachers, Maria, invited me to have drinks one evening.  Thursdays and Saturdays are usual going-out evenings here in Argentina, and I find it strange that everybody drinks beer in this country full of very good wine.  (Their loss is our gain though because you can still get a very nice bottle of Malbec for $15).  Maria said we had to get to this place really early on Thursday because it was popular, which meant 9PM.  It turned into a little bit of a setup because it was just 4 of us: Me, Maria, her fiancé Javier, and Javier’s friend Facundo.  Then Maria and her fiancé left the 2 of us alone for half an hour on some excuse Maria swears was legit.  She had to reset some card at a bank before midnight??  Facundo gave her a really hard time about this (justifiably) and I get the impression it will be a running joke for years.  Still, we had a good time, and everybody involved was very patient with my halting Spanish.  I eventually chickened out and started speaking in English just because I felt so bad holding the conversation back every time I tried to say something.  Towards the end of the evening, Maria mentions Asada, and it seems to be taken for granted that I must experience a proper Asada while in Mendoza.  (I didn’t know at this point that my host family would be throwing one), and so the conversation turned to who would cook/host.  Facundo was the lucky winner.  When a good looking Argentian man asks if you would like to join him and his friends at his mountain home for Asada . . . there really is just one correct answer.

Facundo leading the Asada ritual at his place

So I find myself riding with Maria and Javier to Facundo’s house Sunday evening.  It turned out to be a total bachelor pad . . . with an incredible view overlooking the Mendoza River and the mountains behind.   At one point, his dad stopped by (because they live next door, and his brother lives the next house down).  The rest of the gang left us to talk while they busied themselves in the kitchen for what felt like forever and probably only lasted 20 minutes.  It started out very normal – What’s your name?  Where are you from?  And then dissolved into questions like “Do you want kids soon?”  (How the heck are you supposed to answer that extremely personal question with a stranger, in halting Spanish??)  It didn’t help that he had to repeat himself several times before I understood his questions.  I grew redder and redder.  Finally they saved me by coming back outside and shooed him away while we sat down to eat a fantastic array of grilled meat.  Maria assured me the next day that these types of questions are unfortunately very normal in Argentina.  To this day, I don’t know if either he or Maria were hinting at anything or just being typical Argentinians.  Facundo turned out to be a gracious host and poured the best Malbec I’ve ever tasted at dinner.  He enjoyed showing off his asada grill and the art of burning wood to obtain coals that are then cycled under the meat for the perfectly cooked but not burned meat.  He often pulls branches from mesquite-like bushes that grow everywhere in this desert climate.  Conversation at dinner was comparing and contrasting cultures, which is a subject that fascinates me.  Drinks made from honeydew melon and a swim in the pool and the night was over.  All because they wanted to make sure I enjoyed my stay in Argentina. 

I did enjoy Mendoza.  I literally did not meet one person there who was not kind and inclusive.  The rafting and hiking and wine excursions were all great.  I debated spending another week there, but am anxious to get down south to see the lake region in the Andes.  It is one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Argentina and I don’t want to cut it short.  I can always come back to Mendoza.

Next stop: Bariloche.