Trip to Buenos Aires III -Found, Bought and Gifted-

One of the reasons I like going to BA is a materialistic one... the low priced and varied stuff!

Found on sale: scraps of fabric and cooking books!
Bought: self healing cutting mat and wooden frame.
Bought in fairs: antique silver pin, jade necklace, porcelain bowls (for me and a set for my brothers), gems (for my mom and a friend, not pictured) a multi tool thingy and a thingy with a mirror and magnet which is very very useful when sewing... I drop a lot of pins on the floor and this thing makes it easier to catch them all!
Gifted: my aunt Ana gave me one of her pretty embroidery hoops and a small rotary cutter!, which makes me think I've never blogged about the rotary cutter I bought on Etsy last year!

My set of bowls, all greenish to match my China (Hah! I just had to say that, I don't think people use that word anymore, like disco or cool)

Trip to Buenos Aires II -Recoleta Cemetery-

 In this trip I visited Recoleta cemetery with my cousin for the very first time, and I have no idea why I've not gone there before, it's so beautiful and full of art and history! and cats! lol

I was about to take a pic of a kitten in a bench but then people sat next to him so I turned and saw this cutie naping behind me.

We took a guided tour throughout the place, it's huge and as I said, rich of history and rich, the guide told us it's not just "any" cemetery, high class families are buried there so tombs and mausoleums are fancy. Some of them are so big that got me thinking about the power of those families... more than power, love...

And talking about love, we have heard many sad and tragic anecdotes in the tour, but in my humble opinion none of those are as touching as the one I found out by myself.

When the tour was completed, my cousin and me stayed and kept on walking around... then I saw a cute kitten staring at me, it was kinda creepy but when I got closer, he ran so I followed him and found them:

Her name was Liliana Crociati Szaszak and her dog, Sabú. It's the only pic I took of a tomb, I don't know why and also I stayed there for a while... I felt really touched. The tomb didn't say how she died, nor if the dog was with her... there was a poem written by her dad that I didn't want to read because I knew it was going to make me sob.
 The statue doesn't look sad, she looks kind of calm, I've seen all kinds of statues in the cemetery but this was so simple.

When I got home I started looking up information about her, and I found many sites.
Turns out she died "recently" in the 70's, while she was in her honeymoon in Austria, she was really young, 24 (which somehow saddens me because I'm turning 23 next week). It is said Sabú passed away the same day she did. I found many myths about her, one being that a mysterious man visits her tomb with flowers on a specific day. other that the dress she is wearing in the statue was her wedding dress.

Anyways, I think these sites explain more:
· Afterlife: a blog with plenty information about the cemetery and the stories behind it.
· Cementerio de la Recoleta: Historias y relatos
· And I was surprised I found Liliana's tomb in Wikipedia.

 Leaving the sadness aside... after staying a while at Liliana's tomb, we were heading towards the exit when for some reason we stop to listen to another interesting tour which is about the love stories behind the tombs,  that is when a woman asks me with a slightly Portuguese accent where Evita's tomb is, and I still don't know why I talked back to her in Spanish, and I did study Portuguese, I guess I didn't want to act like a fool because she was speaking Spanish, I thought she wanted to practice :p.

Anyways, since the place is huge I forgot where the tomb was so I pull out my cemetery's map and start looking for it, and I kept saying "you can look for it if you want, I'm in no hurry" in Spanish and she was just looking at me and staring at the map, then I hear a 'click' and I slightly glanced out of the map... and turns out the other two men who were with the woman were taking pictures with professional cameras! In my mind all I was thinking "oh no, my hair, I'm not wearing make up, my face is going to look huge from that angle". After a few minutes of reading the entire list of tombs and not finding Evita's, my cousin and I told them to look around where we thought it was, which was near where we were, so they left.

 And then I kept on looking because I felt really frustrated, when I found it on the map, we went after them, and I tell the woman "hey I found it" (in Spanish again! I don't know why!!) and then I say "es la número 26" -pointing in the map, and they start mumbling and then one of them says "oh number twenty six", and all I could think of in that moment is "*facepalm" lol. I finally ask them where they are from and the woman says: Belgium!, and then I apologized for not speaking English before and told them to keep looking because they were sure going to find the tomb, in English, finally!, but I walked away because I was so embarrassed, years of speaking English... and I just comfortably stayed in Spanish.

 I had many opportunities to practice my English this year, a cousin who came from Lebanon who happens to had lived many years in London so his English was really good and then a Swiss guy my brother and sister in law met in Ecuador,  who came to visit for a few days, his English was not really good though, in fact I had to teach him some words, like cupboard.


Back to my cemetery experience, I wonder what the pictures are for, I wish I asked them, I was wearing my Copper-Chloride Flame Scarf so if anybody who reads this and lives in Belgium and happens to see me, please, let me know!

Trip to Buenos Aires I

 I go to Buenos Aires once or twice a year, I just love the city, there are always new places to visit.

 This time I visited Tecnópolis, it's a huge technology fair, I was really impressed by everything, but still, there are pros and cons.
 Pros, everything was very... futuristic, a lot of touch screens, leds and fancy stands. Shows and new stuff to explore.
 Cons there were so many people that you could hardly take the time to read and inspect and enjoy it, also it was more like an encyclopedia, in my dad's words, I think it was aimed to people who are not looking for something specific, just a brief view of everything.

I took very few photos in this fair, from the few here are two which I think were worth to share here:

Teal car!! :p if I lived in the 50's, I'd had probably longed for this car.

And

Lots of books! or "books" when I got closer they were just cardboard spines, But anyways, I'd love to have a floor to ceiling bookshelf!

There is a 3rd worth-to-share pic, I took a pic of my dad playing with a huge touch screen, which was a fish bowl and when you touched a fish, it would show you the description of the fish, I think it was really really cool and even more because my dad was born in the 40's and he always tells me how when he was a kid, a tv or camera was something futuristic and also the awesome stuff I'll see when I'm his age, that's the main reason why I wanted to go with him to this fair.

I also visited San Telmo, Recoleta artisan's fair, Recoleta Cemetery and some other non so touristic places.

The obvious snapshot when thinking about BA (well not really to me, when I think of BA, I always think of  Parisian buildings and low-priced stuff :p)

This was in San Telmo, a very antique (and touristic therefore expensive) neighborhood, there is an artisan fair here in which I bought a really nice Jade necklace.

And now that I remember, when walking through its streets I stumbled upon a Danish church, my polyglot me was so excited and even more when I read Danish lessons were given, well, too bad I don't live in BA, but maybe someday I will. Skaal!

Me wants to go to Poland.

(..)Ja tańczę, a niebo, niebo gra
Ja śpiewam, prze-niebieski czas(...) - Pasażer by Coma

 So, today again I have this insanity feeling to travel to Poland, good thing my brother is cheering me up to go. But... money, is always a problem, and to make it worse, the country is joining the Euro zone in 2012 (nooo, I hate euros, the exchange with my money is pretty bad with dollars.. so it is worse with those euros) So, I have 2 years to save enough money to go as a packpacker, or a year to save money to go to work to the states as an au pair for a year, save the money and go to Poland before they change!!

 I have this little crush with Poland, I find the country really familiar to mine... economy, people, religion, and the language, which is different to mine but they share a couple of words, which I find really interesting. It's like Italy, I'd really love to go there too but it's like... it's way too popular bleh, everybody went/wants to go to Italy or France or Germany. I find it more attractive a trip to, besides Polska, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria...

....I had/have the crush with Norway, Iceland, Sweeden and Finland as well... but while my brother and I were looking up how much is a coke in those countries, I was shocked when I saw Norway's GDP per capita!!! 

Norway -> USD 54900 ... so, an average person wins USD 4575 per month? holy...
Italy       -> USD 31200
Hungary -> USD 19300
Poland   -> USD 15500
Argentina ->USD12500 (I don't care, I still love my country :) )

-Numbers from this site-

So again with "how much is a coke in Europe", we type in google.pl, the word supermarkety(s?) and after looking a while we found this cool site with lots of supermarketys, it was a relief, we were checking through prices and they are the same or near the prices here!, so it's a yay for me. Cos... today Polish currency is pretty similar to ours ---> 1 USD = 3 PLN / 1 USD = 3,80 ARG.
And while we were checking out the supermarkets in Poland, we checked the German ones, it wasn't that bad, it was actually kinda the same, but what is bad (for me) are the ones in the UK, pounds are like... 1 pound = 6 or 7 ARG o.O, so it's like a lot of lot of money lol, No UK for me!!! (although I'd love to check out those castles, but no thanks)

And I have the food checked, the accommodation too (I've been looking for info a long while ago, just in case and for daydreaming... ) the hostels are affordable and a nice way to meet people from all over the world.
I checked the legal stuff, thank God I don't need a visa, checked transportation too, same with the maps cos I like to know where I'm going to be, well, I always do that when I want to go somewhere, I did it when I was about to go to Chicago and when I did go to Brazil (although everything was already planned by the company), and this time I kinda did it too, but I don't want to be all excited cos I still have to get there, and the ticket plane is a complete pain in the ass!

This text/post is a complete mess, I'm just typing what I have in mind, and I HAD to get it out of my mind cos I have to study later and I kinda have all of this going around, and one of the purposes of this blog is to work as a "dreammmmagnet".
I've been excited about this new 3 year Polish course, and now I'm more excited cos it seems more affordable, but *sigh, I want to do so many things.. the daycare, the first aid course (for the au pair thingy that I've been looking forward since 2008)... lol and COLLEGE.
The day HAS to have 25 hours!

Edit 8/8/2011 I don't like posts without pictures so here is a funny one for this post. "In Poland all dancing is Pole dancing" lol (and it's teal <3)

Source: 9gag.com via Josie on Pinterest