In Holland, They Have Drugs and Free Love

Buenos Aires is going great – I’m struggling a bit with the theoretical justification for my study, but I’m meeting new people all the time and really getting a kick out of every day. The language is still a constant challenge, but I get better with every conversation and can see myself improving all the time. I’m starting to pick up a lot of new slang, and I’m finding that the more different people I can meet and get to know, the better I am at fielding new random encounters. I’m really learning a lot and thriving pretty well in the new digs.

I met a lot of new people in a lot of different places this weekend, so I’m going to give a little rundown. On Thursday, I went to this conversation hour called “Spanglish” (a word my mom thinks she invented) at a hookah bar about 15 blocks from me. The idea is you go, you pay to participate, get a free beer, and speak Spanish for five minutes with a native speaker, then switch to English for five minutes. Then you move to a new person and on and on it goes. Yay, everybody learns. It was my second time going and I actually had a really good time both times – I think the alcohol kind of loosens everybody up, and you end up with a really fun crowd of people from all over the world and all over Argentina.

Inevitably the tables all get mixed up and everyone stops switching around after about an hour. I ended up at a table with two Dutch girls (sisters) in their 20s and an Argentine from Mar del Plata (about four hours south of BA). As the conversation program wrapped up, we were really getting along and I wondered aloud if you could actually smoke the hookahs (as nobody was doing it). So we wandered over to where there was a pipe sitting by some couches and asked the waitress about it, and the next thing you know we’re a few beers deep and smoking hookah (something I used to look for a lot in Argentina, but could never find!).

The Dutch girls speak perfect English, and I end up talking to one of them, Kim, about everything in our lives. We talk about stereotypes that people apply to our respective countries (“Yes, Holland, we have drugs and free love, wooo”, she laughs) and at some point get to our love lives, when I correctly stereotype that as someone from Holland she must be socially liberal and down with gays. We talk about our ex-boyfriends and ideal boyfriends for a bit, and she tells me that she sees something unique in me and that life is going to work out for me. It was sort of a deep moment. She says she wasn’t expecting to stay at the bar long, but after we’d talked for a few minutes she knew in her gut that it’d be a good night if she could get me to stick around (as I had almost left earlier). We talked about St. Patty’s Day and my parents’ annual party, and when she asked what we did in particular to celebrate – um, we get all of the fun people in Ashburn to show up at our house and drink a lot – I almost wasn’t sure what to say. Then I went into a somber explanation of the only really unique thing about the party (aside from it being a gathering of fun people in Ashburn): my dad’s toast around midnight to family and friends who have passed away. The retelling came out solemn – as it is a serious thing – and I actually felt a little sad and proud of my family for a moment. (I know, you can’t believe it, somewhere inside my asshole-center I do actually care about you all.) I do miss you guys, though I know there will be plenty more St. Patty’s parties to come. Kim thought it was a thoughtful tradition.

After about four or five hours at the bar, the night finally wound down, and we all parted ways. Kim was only in town for the week, visiting her sister, who lives here for the year with her Argentine boyfriend. Kim was super generous and covered the cost of the hookah (after we’d both taken turns buying each other drinks in a who-can-be-more-generous competition, since apparently the Dutch are rumored to be cheap and, therefore, go way out of their ways to prove that they’re NOT cheap) and said that anytime I’m in Rotterdam, Holland, I have a free place to stay. It was a great night, and though she has already left town, I’ll hopefully be meeting up with her sister, Tamara, on St. Patrick’s Day. Really won’t forget that one.

Friday I headed into the office, ran into one of my professors, who introduced me to a third professor who specializes in the informal economy. I’m going to meet up with her on Tuesday to discuss some of the theoretical problems I’m having with my research. Then I ended up being introduced to a few of the other profs in the office, and solidified my status as a member of the group by participating in the “Can I get you a little coffee?” ritual when I got up to get my cappuccino. I knew that I was officially accepted when someone else offered the same to me later on. (The anthropologist in me watches for these things . . . )

On Saturday I wandered way out to a part of the city I really don’t know, near a soccer stadium, to join some people who do ultimate Frisbee pick-up games. I had to wander between soccer fields for a while and under some highways (not as sketchy as it sounds, but still mildly adventurous) before I finally found the field. The people were all really friendly, the whole endeavor was really laid back, and I got to run around for the first time in forever. You forget how much fun organized sports can be after you completely stop participating in them. I hadn’t really done anything like this since high school, more or less, but it was fun. I met a lot of Argentines and a few Americans, and will be back next week.

Saturday night I met back up with the Argentine we’d been smoking hookah with, Emanuel, and we went to this party in a little rowhouse-type place that I’d heard about. It was a slow night, but I talked to this guy nonstop, getting him to explain as much slang as I could (he wanted the same from me, in English). Later in the night, an Argentine played some acoustic guitar for about a 45-minute set, with bangos as backup, which was pretty cool. The crowd in the place was very hipster-like. Ended up running into this Argentine girl I’d met at Spanglish (very rare to randomly do that in a city of this size) and agreed to hang out on St. Patrick’s Day. Apparently at night there are parties in the streets downtown near some Irish pubs, so it looks like that’s where I’ll be.

And that was my weekend. This was the longest post ever, and I am now exhausted. I’ll be sure to write some boring stuff about my research troubles in a day or two. I’m working through it all, doing a lot of sitting around drinking coffee, listening to music and brainstorming new angles for how to go about this thing. I’ve been putting a lot of time into just thinking and writing (and re-writing, a lot), and I usually get a breakthrough or two if I put a few hours into it. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for my current theory problem, but I’d still rather be getting my hands dirty with actual on-site observation than sitting around trying to solve things that should have been solved a long time ago. But this is the nature of research – constant revision to get things as sharp as possible. Just being on the ground with professors who have expertise in the subject matter should do a world of good for me.

And I’m out! Thanks for reading, kids.