Chukker Up

By Louise

We have a friend who claims to have hung out with the Argentinian polo team. On horseback. Shoeless. Standing. Apparently, she was showing off her skills by riding bareback barefoot while standing. Uh-huh. But enough about her. We just returned from our first polo match and let me tell you, those taco-wielding caballeros estan muy fantastico! I'd stand on a horse for them, too! Smacking that little plastic white ball while moving at extreme speed....que impressivo! Very exciting to watch. Had no idea what was happening. Couldn't keep track of the ball or who was who — the red and white team lost by a lot, but it was okay. No one seemed to care. It was just a very nice Sunday afternoon at Polo Argentina in Palermo.

Un Poco Nada de Empanada

By Graham con la familia

The empanada is a pastry
That I find mighty tasty.

With more fat than a Big Mac
It's a golden heart attack.

Meat, chicken, vegetable,
All so delectable.

Crunchy, munchy, golden brown,
Sure to stop a sullen frown.

Moist, rich, very sweet,
Bound to be a super treat.

Comiendolos es muy bien
Until I come to the end.

Then I want una mas,
With a little agua con gas!

I Love Empanadas!

By Graham

My favorite food here is the empanada. They are a type of pastry. It looks like a golden brown half moon. On the inside there is a filling of meat, chicken, or vegetables. I like soft-crusted empanadas. My favorite kind is dulce de carne, which is meat, sugar, and raisins. Mom says I should not eat an empanada every day because they have more calories and fat than a Big Mac. Even though they are tempting, I've decided not to eat them anymore (well, sort of). Last night I was chowing down on mini-empanadas. I had three huge helpings. I was sure by morning I would be fat as a hog, but I wasn't. I am still the same. Turns out they really weren't empanadas. They were Italian raviolis shaped like empanadas.

A Race to Feel Good About

By Katharine
Sunday morning we ran in a race for ice cream. It makes people who eat ice cream feel good about themselves. When we got there dad told us it was a 3K race and we had to hurry to sign up. They gave us wicking T-shirts that were white and blue and had a picture of an ice cream cone. Also we got numbers to identify us in the race. My number was 1588.

To get started we had to stretch. First we had to touch our toes. A man was counting down from 20 until we started. I went with Mom. When we saw a mother pushing a stroller, my mom said that we had to beat her. Then we saw a group of kids, I suddenly told my mom in a strange voice that I was going to wipe them down. So I started running. I left her in the dust. After that I had to run back and get her. We decided to walk and run but we ended up running all the way.

We saw people holding up signs at the finish. Then we saw Dad and Graham they gave us water and Gatorade. Then we got free ice cream. After that we rode around in a 4-person bike and took a taxi home.


Because running wasn't enough...We rented a bike and cruised the park for an hour.

Corriendo por Helado

One reason why Andrew keeps stepping in stuff: All the trees are in bloom, it's really beautiful.

Pre-race stretching while waiting for our taxi.

By Louise

Even though my Spanish is coming back to me at great speed, when I spotted a poster for the 2 da Maraton del Autentico Helado Artesanal, I was certain I had read it wrong. An ice cream marathon? For real? First, it's bakeries on every block. Now, it's running for ice cream? What kind of nirvana is this? On closer look I discovered that it wasn't really a marathon, but rather a 3K/8K race. Even better.

Having had my first tastes of Argentine helado (FYI: The ice cream mugging scene created by Katharine was just a tad exaggerated. There was no screaming. I had clamped my hand firmly over her mouth.), I knew that we needed to be at the place where there were bound to be buckets of the rich creamy, dreamy stuff. So I pointed the sign out to Graham and suggested that maybe he might want to run it while I cheered him on with a spoon in my mouth.

As race day grew nearer, Graham started saying things like, "Mom, don't you think we should start training?" and "Come on, mom, let's run." Graham has known me for nine years. He should know that I'm not a runner; I just like to talk about it.Yet thoughts of dulce de leche would not leave my mind. I figured just this once I could get over myself and run.

When Sunday arrived I pulled on my sneakers. I ate a light breakfast, knowing that in no time I would be headfirst into helado.

I called us a taxi (this being my job now that Andrew has flustered himself out of it by confusing nombre with numero one too many times) and told the driver what park we needed to go to. I suppose it was sort of like saying, "Take me to Central Park," because his response was along the lines of "OK, but that park is huge. Where do you want to go?"

I tried to explain in Spanish that we were going to the big ice cream race. He still didn't get it. So I said, "Corriendo! Helado!" The driver looked at me as if I were crazy. I couldn't figure him out. We were heading to a big race and festival. There were posters all over town. What gives?

The driver, obviously coming down from a busy Saturday night, ignored my continued attempts at communication and got us to the park on time. We registered and joined the other ice cream lovers at the starting line. There was something odd though: Where were all the ice cream booths? I brushed the thought aside, assuming that by the time I finished running things would be set up and spoons set out. Now was the time to focus on the race.

We prepared with a little stretching while sizing up our opponents. I spotted a woman with a stroller; bending down, I whispered to Katharine, my running buddy, "We must beat her." Meanwhile, Katharine counted up her victims. Graham, on the other hand, was focused on the fastest path to the front of the pack. He would not stop running until he crossed the finish line. Andrew's plan: stick with Graham.

The count down began. Graham shot off with Andrew trying to follow. Katharine, holding my hand turned to me and said, "I don't want to drag you the whole way. Get a move on!"

The woman with the stroller turned out to be a little quicker than she looked, but we passed her. Then Katharine spied her first victim: a small boy running with his dad. "I'm going to wipe him down." And so she did. Next up: two girls about her age, their ponytails bouncing as they skipped along with their parents. "Let's go!" Katharine snarled and took off, leaving me in her dust. The two girls sensed a challenge and tried to keep up with Katharine, but I cut them off and charged forward. We crossed the finish line to cheers from Graham and Andrew, and were handed an ice cream in a cup with one of those pressed on lids like you get in school. What the heck? I'm lactose intolerant. I'm not going to waste an upset stomach on pre-pressed helado! I felt my muscles tightening. Oh well, there's always the Queso y Queso 2K run next Sunday.




Attempting to psych out the other runners by showing off our muscles.



The other runners cleared out, they were so scared.


We kicked butt!


The point of running 3K: Ice cream!

Write or Wrong

by Andrew

I have worried lately that our kids are not learning much Spanish in
Buenos Aires because they have not met any Spanish-speaking children. Imagine my surprise--and delight--when I glimpsed something that Katharine had written and saw that she had sprinkled her work with Espanol. "Hora of pane" stared up at me from a short piece in Katharine's notebook.

My heart went out to her. Although my little scholar didn't know the Spanish for breakfast, "desayuno," she had used her imagination, describing it instead as the "hour of bread." The fact that she had used the Italian for bread, instead of the Spanish "pan," did not bother me in the slightest. My cosmopolitan little daughter, breaking free from the scrapple of the Eastern Shore, had become a linguistic sponge. A burgeoning citizen of the world. I was so proud.

Imagine, then, the depths of despondency to which I sank when I read the full essay. "Hora of pane" wasn't Spanish. It wasn't Italian. It wasn't even English. It was instead the desperate yearning of a child whose parents felt they could homeschool their children.

Katharine had wanted to write of the "horror of pain" she had experienced when a beautician had attacked her cuticles. Instead, stunted by the selfish wanderlust of her parents, she had managed to scratch out her emotions the only way she knew how--in a mutant language that makes the Rosetta Stone look like pidgin English.

If our kids are ever to return to Broadwater, I have an awful feeling we're going to have to endow a new technology wing--or, at the very least, a language lab.

Chicken Electrolysis

by Andrew

I spent the week screwing up the courage to get a haircut. This may sound like a trivial chore, but I still carry the emotional scars from the last time I tried to get a trim in a foreign language.

La ultima vez was in Italy, during a semester that I spent in Rome. It was early in the term, and my Italian--which never fully blossomed--was non-existent. In fact, the only words that I had learned came from ordering food at a local rosticceria. Seeking strength in numbers, I dragged my friend Tom with me to the local barbershop, in a residential neighborhood near our convent (yes, we lived in a convent).

We stood on the sidewalk outside, practicing our spiel. We had eaten at the rosticceria enough to know that a half chicken was a mezzo pollo. If we asked for a mezzo, surely the barber would understand that we wanted a simple trim?

With this surefire plan in hand, we marched into the shop. Tom went first (I'm stupid, but not that stupid). He took his seat in the chair and waited as the barber wrapped him in a cloak. When the barber finally looked to him for instruction, Tom pointed at his head and confidently requested a "mezzo pollo."

Tom's first signal that he had committed a fatal error was when he saw me roll off the bench in uncontrollable laughter. And when he realized that he had described his head as a half chicken, he too began to giggle, his head bobbing up and down, making the barber's job all but impossible.

I hesitate to describe the barber as a humorless man, but I suspect that he last laughed during Italy's 22nd post-war government and we were well into the 40s by now. He took our giggling as an insult to Italy, to his manhood, and to his ability as a barber. And he punished us accordingly, giving us haircuts that truly made us look like moulting pollos.

So you can imagine my angst as I prepared to undergo the clippers yet again, this time in Buenos Aires. History must not repeat itself, so I prepared. I studied. Louise has this handy little widget on her computer that acts as a translator. Type in what you want to say and--hey, presto!--it turns it into Spanish. Louise had expressed some doubts about the widget, but I had used it a couple of times with good results.

I typed in "I need a haircut," and received in return "necesito un corte de pelo." It looked good to me, so I pressed on. I entered all the instructions for how I wanted my hair cut, and wrote the translation down on a piece of paper.

Satisfied with my preparations, I went to put on my shoes, leaving my crib sheet on the dining-room table. When I returned, Louise was gasping for air on the couch, laughing much as I had done two decades earlier in Rome.

"Do you realize what you are going to ask the barber?" she wheezed, stabbing at my paper between gusts of laughter. Bemused, I scanned my opus. And there it was: "I want my hair short" had suffered slightly in translation. I had been 10 minutes away from asking to have my head short-circuited.

In a land where depilation and electrolysis rule supreme, I have no doubt that the barber would have strapped me to a gurney, hooked electrodes to my scalp , and removed my last precious follicles. I owe my wife one. Plus, I'm growing my hair out.