RIP... more pics from Recoleta

My Own Dia De Los Muertos Festivities

November 2nd- without any formal traditons to attend I ventured to the Recoleta cemetery for a little Gravedigger's dance of my own. This cemetery is expansive, it is a city within a city, though in habited by ghosts, skeletons and cob-webbed statues. Evita Peron is buried here as well as many of Argentina's presidents, poets and artists. It is almost entirely mausoleums, though not all of them in appropriate repair for the memorial of the deceased. Good for me though- peeking through the broken glass and viewing a very ancient and very real coffin- creepy enough to make my skin crawl! What I found most interesting was the extensive effort that some visitors were giving to decorate their loved ones graves. Painstakingly winding individual flowers around the window and bars of the mausoleums and in the end creating beautiful murals of color.

A Few of My Favorite Things- Galleries and Halloween

So this Halloween I missed out on the debauchery and multitude of costume changes and traded them for a bit of art and culture. Well, truthfully, Halloween is a very American holiday, not celebrated in BsAs, except in tourist bars and clubs. Even Dia de los Muertos isn't a tradition here... that made me very sad. (It is however celebrated November 2nd in Brazil and parts of Uruguay, just in case any of you morbid partiers out there are planning a trip to hang with the deceased!)
This is not to say that I didn't dress up... I had full intentions to go to the drag bar (but where else to party on Halloween?) and party like nobody's business but on the way there I experienced one of those very cliche chick moments- broke the heel of my shoe. Cinderella can't go to the ball with only one shoe can she? So instead went a very laid-back, locals typical bar and felt like a complete arse being the only one obvisiously dressed up.
(Oh well, its nothing that a few Jim Beam's can't fix!)

The art scene here in Buenos Aires is phenomenal- so many different
and expressive styles abound. From fashion designers with emerging boutiques to instillation artists creating full room pieces that
evolve with the addition of its observers. There is very
limited, if at all, creative censorship in the artistic community
here. Anything goes, and for many art is more about the process
than the finished piece. In fact there is one gallery here that all of the 9 artists involved share the rent to for a space in which they all contribute a drawing a day, every day without plans to sell any
of the drawings. An exercise in deligence.

Another gallery here in San Telmo exhibits their artists in a
backstage style- meaning there are a few pieces on the wall though much of the work is stacked against the wall so you have to search through it. Like rumaging through a thrift store and finding a fantastic vintage ski sweater. Here is also where there is
an instillation that recreates tea-time in an old folks home complete with

moth balls, faded institutional green walls, and old movies replaying over
and over. The viewer is invited to partake
in tea and cookies, share in a smoke while
thumbing through fabric patterns from the 40's and 50's. The remnants of this experience is left until another patron adds to the piece, to partake in the surreal reality/fanatasy recreation.

There are so many more galleries to explore, I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the major museums that are housed in the city, so much more to come...

Point to ponder

How does one exactly read a Chinese menu in Spanish?

I have been craving Chinese for weeks now and have scoured Buenos Aires for a decent restaurant, by the way there are is, in fact, a huge Asian population in South America, especially BsAs, and even an emerging Chinatown in the Recoleta nieghborhood.

So back to my culinary penchants...

My espagnol is coming a long, not well persay, but nonetheless I know a fair amount of food words. However, while parousing the 3rd Chinese menu I have found there are words that I can't even begin to try to interpet. Mongos? Que signifigance? Oh what to do... go for the dish with not recognizable ingredients (probably most tasty) or the one I can figure out (most likely the most bland.) Hmmmm....