let the sunshine in

One thing I will say about the weather in Seattle (which has been particularly abysmal so far this Spring), when it does get nice for a few hours, we don't let it go to waste. Saturday was gloriously sunny and everyone was out and about and in good spirits. You know you're in Seattle when you see people in their bikinis when it's 65 degrees. I also got the happy news of more than on friend's engagement this weekend; it was like the universe knew I needed a little pick-me-up (since the weather and other peoples' engagements are totally about me).

My roommate and I hit Pike Place market for lunch and shopping and when we got back to our building we ran into the cool girl who'd shown us our apartment and the three of us went to meet up with her friend for some margaritas at our local. Her and her friend had been out salsa dancing for the first time the night before and oh my God, did we know about this? It was so much fun! Listening to them reminded me of when I'd first started in New York and how it saved me from the massive funk I was in: lonely in a new city with no friends. And in truth it's saving me now; it's the one place I know I can go to feel better, where I will see friends and have fun and laugh but not have to talk too much. I think everyone needs a place like this; whether it's the beach or the bookstore or the dance floor, we all need a sanctuary.

Where is yours?

the world according to Julianna

I got an email last weekend from my dear Brazilian friend Julianna with a much-needed infusion of her uplifting worldview. She said she’d been thinking of me since Carnival had been going on there and we have big plans to go next year.

I’ve talked about Julianna before; I had the good fortune of meeting her about two days into my Argentina trip. She is the kind of person you know you want to be friends with just by looking at her. She could land on Mars and befriend the natives in one day flat I’m sure of it; she’d have learned the native language in three. Not that she’s all sweetness all the time (who wants that?); for instance, jokes about Brazilians not wearing any clothing and partying all the time will not go over well, trust. Since I can’t share the actual Julianna with all of you, I thought I’d share a few of her thoughts on things to help get you through the weekend.

On time:

Julianna has worked internationally so she knows that it’s a big deal to be on time in the Northern Hemisphere. She would run late every time we met up and I could tell she was worried about me thinking she was being rude. For my part I was trying to chill the eff out about time since I was a- on vacation and b- in South America and trying to go as native as possible; I’ve spent enough time south of the equator to know that it’s useless to expect people to regard start times as anything more than a suggestion but it was Julianna who finally explained to me the reason for this difference. ‘If you show up right on time,’ she told me ‘ the person you’re meeting might not be ready for you yet or they might be late and then they will be embarrassed. Better to show up fifteen minutes after and give them some time to prepare.’

On love:

One day in my Spanish class I learned a completely fabulous word that I wanted to immediately share with the girls and import into American slang (kids at home, get on this) ‘amigonovio’. It means literally ‘friendboyfriend’ and is used to describe someone you are more than friends with but not quite in a relationship with; this basically describes most of the romantic interactions I’ve ever had. I discussed with Julianna and Ninna. Why did we have no words for this in English? Why were we left with the ’guy-I’m-kinda-sorta-dating’ or the dreadful ‘friends with benefits’? This conversation lead Julianna to share with us a whole lexicon of terms for romantic entanglements: there is ‘amigo con colores’; friend with colors which is something a little more serious than the American ‘friends with benefits’ and a little less serious than the Argentine ‘amigonovio’; people living together but not married are ‘enamorados’ and my very favorite, ‘el arroz’ or ‘the rice’. In Brazil rice is served with every meal, it’s always around but it’s never the main dish. This is basically the Brazilian way of putting someone in the ‘friend zone’; ‘Oh James? Nah we’re not dating, I just see him when I’m bored; he’s the rice.’ Of course once in a blue moon, the rice can become a risotto but the rice probably shouldn’t hold his breath.

On Sadness:

In general, Julianna is very upbeat and positive but she believes in giving sadness its due. During one of my first long talks with her, I remember she said ‘life is beautiful, even when it’s terrible. You have to appreciate your sadness as well; it’s how you know you are alive. And it is always better to be really alive.’ In talking about heartache she said she disagrees with the song that says ‘owner of a lonely heart is better than owner of a broken heart.’ She said she’d rather have a broken heart that is alive and full of experiences and memoires, better to have sadness than not to have memories.

Readers, I cannot disagree.

tell me something good

Is it is me or is there a bad moon rising? This past week has been an inundation of terrible news, both on a global scale, in my own personal life and the personal lives of my friends with news of breakups, ailing family members and other Bad Things coming from all sides. Even my favorite industry blogger seems majorly down in the dumps.

What gives?

I did have a much-needed boost today as my brand spanking new column appeared on my very favorite website The Gloss.

Go check it out and in the meantime, please tell me one good thing that's happened to you in the past week.

vacation. home.

I know, I know. You hate me for posting yet more pics of palm trees on this omg-is-it-REALLY-still-winter Friday.

We were trying to figure out yesterday how long my parents have had their place down here in the desert; I have memories of being here way back into my teenage-hood so it's been a long time. I went to college about an hour from here so my memories of this place range from picking oranges from the trees with my sister and getting my first really good kiss by the tennis courts when I was sixteen to cramming for my college french final at the kitchen table to coming out here when I was strung out and exhausted from living in New York. The last time I was here, I spent hours on the back porch revising my first novel which my agent and I were planning to send out to publishers a few weeks after I returned. How long ago that seems now.

I love this part of the desert: there's something dreamy about it, something that makes you think things will turn out alright, even if you have all sorts of really solid reasons to think they might not. This place is a second home in the most literal sense; all manner of family members, friends and boyfriends have joined us here over the years and we've been here more than once when bad news from home came right out of nowhere like lightening in a clear blue sky. This place goes way further back in my life than the house my parents currently live in and so in some ways, there's no place that feels more like home to me. Being here I think about friends I've lost touch with, my grandparents who've left us and all the dreams I've had that have come and gone and come back again. Mostly it just makes me think of my family, all we've been through over the years and how strong the ties between us are.

Heavy thoughts for vacation, I know. Good thing the pool bar serves margaritas.

Where do you go when you need some perspective?

oh for the love

                                                                    actual self not pictured

Most of what I really needed to know about life, I learned on the tennis court. 

I  flirted with a couple of other sports as a kid: swimming (which I was both terrible at AND hated) basketball, etc but from about the age of ten on, nothing did it for me like tennis.

I played as a junior and all the way through college where almost all of my best friends were other players.  It was an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world and a six figure book deal but after college I moved to New York where playing tennis (like everything else) is expensive and a huge hassle; besides which I was burned out after four straight years of four hours a day.

But after a much needed break, I started to miss it. The smell of new tennis balls, the comradery, the competition, the adorable outfits. And now that I’m back in my hometown, there’s no reason tennis and I need to be apart!

And so, number 28: join a USTA league team.

Luckily for me tennis is one of the few sports that you can play seriously on into adulthood. The USTA bestowed me with a rather terrifying 5.0 rating which means I get mixed in with people who played division 1 and are 6 feet tall and like teach other people to play tennis for a living. But I am rising to the challenge readers- shin splints and all! I am super stoked about being back in the game and have that familiar OMG-I-want-to-do-nothing-but-play-tennis feeling.  

Since we love a list over here at 30 Things: here are five life lessons I learned on the tennis court.

Be a team player

      

Tennis was mostly an individual sport growing up but once I got to college it was all about the team. As you can imagine with a group of 18-22 year old women, there was A LOT of drama on the team but it was also the most rewarding social experiences of my life. Very rarely do you share a common purpose with other people the way I did with my teammates; we shared the good the bad and the ugly (and TRUST there was a lot of all three) of life as college athletes.  There’s no empathy like that you have for your teammates because whatever happens to them, good or bad, directly affects you as well. There is almost no area of life where knowing how to play well with others ISN’T helpful: from work life to romantic life to social life.  The day my team won the regional championships my senior year (which meant we were heading to Nationals for the first time in the program’s history) was one of the best days of my life—partly   because I got to share it with my teammates and best friends. Sharing really is caring y'all.

Always  play to win

Winning is awesome. It really is. Few things in life give you the pure shot of unadulterated joy that victory does. And losing, conversely, sucks. But you can’t fear losing so much that you tighten up and play like crap. Life is like this too: if you let your fears take your head out of the game, you’ll never be at your best. As long as your risks are calculated, you're better off concentrating on the possible good outcomes than the bad ones; letting fear rule is never the way to go. 

Practice, practice, practice

You know how you get a great serve? Spend hours upon hours serving. Hitting a jillion baskets of serves isn’t really that much fun but having a serve that's good enough to ace an opponent on match point is SUPER fun. There is extraordinarily not-fun legwork involved in becoming good at anything and developing the focus to stay motivated enough by what you want to get you through the drudgery is vital to success. The aspect of daily discipline involved in becoming good at a sport is especially helpful in learning how to be a writer (for further reading on this connection, do yourself a favor and read Murakami’s excellent What I Talk About when I Talk About Running).

If the match is still going, there is time for a comeback

I was never the most talented player but I was always one of the most tenacious. I never gave up on a match. Never. Even when I was playing crap tennis, even when one of my myriad overuse injuries was hurting, even when I really just wanted to get to the post-mach celebration/commiseration with my teammates already--I always wanted to win more than I wanted to walk away. This alone got me further than anything else about my game.  Desire for something is powerful and being willing to stick around until you get it—no matter what happens—can make you unstoppable. Marilyn Monroe once said of being a movie star that she wasn’t the prettiest girl or the most talented, she just wanted it more. Word, Marilyn, word.  

Losing happens, learn to deal

I hate losing. HATE it. But losing is valuable. When you get a big juicy overhead on an important point and you flub it right into the net, you’re going to be mad at yourself but if you keep dwelling on that flubbed overhead for the next five points, guess who’ll win those? Not you. When you lose a close match, if you let it destroy your confidence for the rest of the season, you might as well not even show up. One of the most important lessons in sports is how to use a loss to your advantage, to learn what you can from it and then move the hell on. Just as it’s a million times easier to be a gracious winner than a gracious loser, your real mettle shows when you’re faced with coming back from one of life’s big disappointments. 

 Who or what taught you what you know about life? 

Julianna y Ninna

Sometimes people come along exactly when you need them to.  

The idea of taking this trip alone both worried and excited me as I was planning it. I like spending time on my own and need very much to have time to myself but the balance is delicate because I’m also very social and susceptible to loneliness. Someone who knows me well once told me that I am an introvert who masquerades as an extrovert and I think she had it right.

Ninna I met first in a tango class. I thought she was American from the look of her: blonde and blue-eyed with that cheerful openness in her expression that I have come to recognize as a trademark of my compatriots. She turned out to be from Denmark but her English is so good it took a few moments to notice she wasn’t a native speaker. Ninna wins the language contest hands-down with seven of them to her name. Seven! Perhaps it’s this black belt in language arts that allow her to use the word ‘lover’ and actually pull it off  (as of press time she is the only person I’ve ever met who could do so).  

Julianna is Brazilian and mistakenly took me from one of her countrywomen the first time she saw me; on the second day of my classes at the escuela she sat down next to me and started talking to me in Portuguese. She too has a remarkable facility with languages with three to her name and in fact I have so many bon mots from Julianna that they are getting their own post.

Though we live in three very different countries we have a lot in common. I suppose we were a bit of a self-selecting population being that we were all thirty-ish women who’d decided to come to a foreign country alone for a month or more. All of us are unmarried, well traveled, passionate about our work and excited but overwhelmed by all the decisions about our futures that we find ourselves contemplating. And we were all having SO much fun in Buenos Aires: it seems it was the cure for what ailed each of us in our disparate but similar lives   

We spent long dinners together drinking bottles of wine and telling intimate stories about our own lives: all the tales of loves, losses, tragedies and adventures that you would usually never share with people you hadn’t known long. We talked long into the night about languages, about travel, about friends and boyfriends and family. Caught up in the headiness of the trip we even planned next adventure (Carnival 2012- it’s not just a vacation promise people). We talked about our lists: of what to do in the next year, before we married, before we died.

As much as I loved meeting people who actually live in Argentina along the way, it was these two girls I felt I shared my trip with. They were right there with me for the good, bad and ugly of my foreign adventure.

Who have you bonded with while traveling?

and then we came to the end

Since Friday ended up being my last full day in Mar del Plata, I decided I had better go out and do something fun or risk letting the weariness I'd been feeling morph into a full-on funk.

With some minimal instructions from my hotel on how to find the place, I headed in a cab outside the city to a huge park just off the beach to do some horseback riding. When I arrived in the park, there were stables and an arena and horses everywhere but no people. Not one. I wandered around for a while hoping I was not in fact experiencing the rapture at such an inconvenient moment. Finally I saw a woman and her daughter who directed me to someone at the sables who told me the only such place he knew of was all the way across the polo fields. I crossed the field on foot alternately cursing my hotel for not giving me more specific instructions and reveling in the fact that I was traipsing across a giant polo field in a foreign country alone  (well not completely alone, one of the ubiquitous stray dogs followed me out there and kept me company).

When I reached the other side of the field the gate was locked but fortunately there was an easily hoppable fence (if that doesn't take you back, nothing will). The white building in questions was surrounded by miniature horses and once again no people.

When at last I found the right place some ways down a long dirt road, it was just a bunch of horses tied to trees, a man called Juan who was about my age and a gaggle of kids who seemed to work there in some capacity.

'Hi," I said to Juan, the only grown up in the bunch, 'Can I ride horses here?' "Of course,' he said, 'do you know how to ride?' Interesting question, that. I know how to ride about as well as I speak Spanish right now which is to say, more or less, depending on the day. I realized as I steadied my feet in the stirrups that I hadn't actually been on a horse in nine years (which didn't go so well). Huh. Well.

There was one really tall beautiful horse who whinnied at me and rolled his eyes back as I approached. This turned out to be the horse that Juan rode, it was only the second time he'd been ridden he told me, he didn't even have a name yet. How sad, I said, and wished my Spanish was good enough to make a horse-with-no-name joke.  Juan rode with me and we made a couple of laps around the large park, it was a beautiful day sunny but not too hot. I told him about my grandmother who raised Arabians.

                                                                          trusty steed

My horse's name was Carlito (I mean how can you not have confidence in a horse who shares a name with an infamous fictional drug lord?) and though he had an uneven gait, he was a steady ride. I'd forgotten quite what it felt like to ride a horse across a wide open field and soon enough my nerves had abated and I remembered why I'd loved it so much growing up.

I'm still a little saddle sore three days later, which is unfortunate because I am about to get on a plane for a unmentionable number of hours. I feel sad and happy all at once: so ready to get home and yet not at all ready to leave. I'm beyond exhausted as my final weekend in Buenos Aires couldn't have been much more epic without causing some sort of international incident. I spent most of it with Julianna who I said goodbye to today; she's promised to come visit me in Seattle (and not a vacation promise either, she assures me).

Julianna will be heading back to Brazil on Wednesday, she told me she that she feels like she is leaving with a lighter spirt and a fuller heart. Does that make sense in English? She asked me. It does, I told her and I couldn't have said it better myself.

lost weekend part II

On Sunday when we finally recovered from our mighty Saturday night excursion we headed to San Telmo for the famous open air market. While there we discovered yet MORE people dancing in the streets.

Speaking of which, I consulted Julianna (my new expert on all things Brazilian) about what the hair flipping dance from Saturday might have been. She said it sounded like Lambada. Lambada! The forbidden dance, people! I couldn't have made that whole scene up if I tried.

In San Telmo we shopped a bit and then lounged around in Plaza Darrego drinking wine and watching beginner tango dancers stare at their feet as they followed a lesson being held there under the lights. After the sun had set we headed to dinner.

A word about steak before I tell you about our dinner. I don't really eat it at home. I don't think that I have ever in my life actually ordered a steak in a restaurant before coming to Argentina. It's one of those things that I just got it in my head that I didn't care for and now can't remember quite why. Even though red meat is not a big part of my diet at home, you really have to have a damn good reason for abstaining while you're here. To not eat the steak here is as unthinkable as suggesting that tango was actually born in Uruguay (or you know, vice-versa if you're in Montevideo).

La Brigada came recommended to us via a lovely, savvy friend who used to live here. Now readers, there is good food and then there are the steaks at La Brigada. The steak here is so good it's primal; each time I took a bite I could feel my brain flooding with endorphins. It was so good I'm not even sure I can keep it PG if I go into any more detail. Everywhere in the restaurant you could see people with the same expression, the rapturous look of someone who knows they are eating one of the best meals of their life. We ate until we couldn't eat anymore. And then we ordered this:

Knowing that we were unlikely to top this even in the land of a thousands parillas (that's BBQ in Spanish y'all) we ate our final dinner at Osaka which was some of the finest sushi I've had in a long time and afforded Maya and I the chance to join forces to decipher the menu which was in Spanish and Japanese.

Today I'm on my way to Colonia to meet up with the Uruguayan host family I stayed with nine years ago. Besos from the Buquebus!

you always remember your first

                                                           tango singers making tango face


Oh Flavio. I'm glad it was you. You were commanding yet gentle; firm but kind. I was afraid but you showed me what to do. We had a moment you and I. We laughed. We cried. Well, I cried on the inside anyway for my disastrous amateur tango. Yes, tango. What did you think I was talking about?

The milonga was not quite what I had pictured. I had been lead to believe that it would be full of older, mercifully slow-moving, heavily aftershaved men who would communicate via some subtle code of lingering glances and eyebrow raises. But in fact, the milonga that Nina and I ventured out to last night was full of attractive, hip looking young people who were all gliding around the floor like they'd come out of the womb doing the tango.

Up until then I'd been feeling pretty good about my progress in tango. I had killed it in class that afternoon; I was nailing my ochos, my camina was on point. I had taken a private lesson earlier in the week and I was able to follow the instructor perfectly. I kept glancing at myself in the mirrors and thinking 'hey! Look at that- I'm totally doing the tango!' 'Muy bien!' my instructors said, 'you must do other dances as well'. 'Why yes,' I said, 'I salsa,' and I beamed.

All that misplaced confidence lasted about five seconds once I did get asked to dance last night. Some tall, rather handsome porteno came over to ask me and I was so nervous that I was shaking a little bit. I danced with my eyes closed not so that I could feel the music but so I wouldn't have to see the snickers I was imagining on the faces of the many, many people watching. When you dance with someone in a milonga, you stay with them for four songs. Four songs! Do you know how long that is? What a commitment that is? Poor Flavio. But he was so nice, 'you have the idea' he said. The idea maybe; the steps, the posture and the rhythm not so much.

He graciously stayed with me for all four songs and then returned me to my seat. 'Was it as bad as I thought?' I asked Nina. 'I thought you looked pretty good for a beginner.' Reader, she was being kind. By 'good' I'm pretty sure she meant 'you didn't actually fall down, there's that.' Then a little while later, like a gift from God a set of salsa music came on. Flavio came to collect me and we tore up the mostly empty dance floor. I felt a little bit redeemed in the eyes of the crowd who had just watched me stumble through the world's most awkward tango; I'm also pretty sure I might've flashed them a couple of times since I was not wearing a dress appropriate for salsa but I'm at peace with that.

The important thing is that I have now danced the tango in an Argentine milonga and I had a blast. Watching the other dancers gave me a lot to aspire to.

Tell me about your first time.

Tango

The Tango doesn't exactly look easy but it can look simple in some ways to a novice's eye. The dancers can appear to not be doing very much at times. I'm used to dancing salsa which involves constant movement. There is none of this in tango, the back is always straight and any movement above the waist must be subtle and precise as anything. All dances need good communication between partners but none as much as tango.

My dance classes here are a mix of people typical to what I see in the US, that is to say a group of people who would not likely be found in a room together for any other reason. I love to speculate about what brings people to join these classes, are they trying to breath life back into a marriage? Meet someone? Get some exercise? Did they OD on Dancing with the Stars? Or do they just have a list of things they always wanted to do and this happens to be the moment. So in this way my classes have a comfortable familiarity; the students are all ages, all nationalities with all kinds of different lives outside of the classroom. There are still those men I know well by now, the ones who have NO idea what they're doing but don't hesitate to instruct you or let you know when they think you've made a mistake.

Even though I have had to break myself a little bit of some of my salsa training, having some dance training at all is incredibly helpful. Both Tango and Salsa can be said to be sexy dances but in exactly opposite ways. Salsa is cheerful and quick, a dance of happiness and parties; the connection is light and flirtatious--kind of like the best first date ever. Tango is a dance full of longing and romantic desperation; a dance of people who have either missed their chance to be together or know they will never get one at all. You don't know the meaning of dancing together 'as one' until you've done tango; you must be close enough to the man to know what he will do before he does it. Salsa is like a public makeout in the street between two people too enamored of each other to care and Tango is an embrace in a dark alley between two people who are being separated by forces beyond their control; a dance of mistresses (well, originally of prostitutes).

I admit that I don't like to be a novice at anything. It's why I don't dabble in things, I either plunge in or give it up right away. Tonight Nina and I are going to the milonga for the first time. I'm terrified naturally but I have to stop and ask myself of what am I terrified exactly? Of looking stupid? Am I really afraid of that? It is the same with speaking spanish, am I afraid I won't be understood? That I will say something stupid or offensive?

And if I'm not here to face these fears than why AM I here?

hablamos espanol aqui

When I put 'learn Spanish' on my list, I felt a little like I was cheating. After all, I'd taken two whole years in college and spent that month in Uruguay nine years ago--didn't I sort of already speak it? No, is the answer to that question. I definitely do NOT speak Spanish in any meaningful way. True, all of those conjugations of hacer, tener, estar etc in my little Spanish workbook (side note: I forgot how consistently hilarious language workbooks are with their outdated cultural references: The Spice Girls!) look vaguely familiar but I still can't get very far into a conversation without waving the white flag of 'no hablo espanol muy bien' pretty fast.

My Spanish teacher is named Paula, she is a primary school teacher during the year and is only a couple of years older than me. She's a good teacher despite the fact that she seems to always be tired (with the lifestyle and the late dinners here I'm actually not sure when anyone sleeps). She has only been to the US one time in her life, to go to Disney world when she was a little girl. Her professors of English have all been British so whenever she says words in English, she does so with this perfecty posh accent. She says 'Madonna' (a regular guest star in the workbook as well as Paula's favorite singer in the world) in the most adorably odd, breathy way that sends me into a fit of giggles each time; I cannot even try to explain to her why I'm laughing. We sit together for two and half hours every day doing exercises from the workbook and stopping to chat (charlar!) a bit about work, places we've travelled or would like to travel and our love lives; this last line of conversation gives me much to add to my vast anecdotal evidence that dating is horrible everywhere and that everyone is convinced that it must be better elsewhere.

Thankfully my Spanish skills seem to be improving at a good pace. Each day the fog of Spanish being spoken all around me clears a little more and I'm a little more certain that when I open my mouth there is at least a chance of something intelligible coming out.

I went out with some new friends from the school the other day and we talked about how we could never understand people who moved to a country and didn't try to learn to speak the native language at least a little. Beyond the fact of isolating oneself, I don't know why one would deny themselves the pleasure of being immersed in a new language. Granted I think I might feel a LITTLE differently if it were mandarin or arabic we were talking about. I am both relieved and disappointed every time I find that someone here does speak English. And I can't quite bring myself to talk to the couple of other Americans who are with the school; it just feels like cheating. How do you feel when you run into your compatriots abroad?

Buenos Aires!

I've finally made it to Buenos Aires after one of the more hellish travel fiascos of my life. I did not get stuck in the Atlanta airport for to days thank God but I did get rerouted through Brazil and spent what remained of my first day here at the mall trying to explain my bra size in Spanish and buying some not very flattering dresses because my luggage had not made it here with me. Just as I was beginning this entry my phone rang and lo, it was an angel from the airline who was calling to tell me that my bag was on its way to me now. Hurray! Lucky Delta, they will not have to endure my wrath which I planned on sharing with literally dozens of readers right here on this blog.

Being here has reminded me just how much I love to be abroad; sometimes I think it's the only thing that can get me really out of my own head. The smallest things are exciting and accomplishing anything at all-- a simple conversation with a store clerk, finding my school on the subway on the FIRST TRY, figuring out my cell phone--feels like a thrilling victory. The trick of being in a foreign country is to reframe things that you would normally call 'pains in the ass' as 'adventures'.  I have some advantages being here in that I am used to big cities which helps with things like taking the subway, not getting run over by cars, remaining stone-faced in the presence of pervy men and generally being in crowds without looking terrified. I also happen to look like everyone here; everywhere I look I see nothing but dark hair and olive skin--it's as though I've been returned to my tribe. Of course the moment I open my mouth, it's shot to hell as I so obviously sound like a total Jankee (Yankee).

Off now to grab some lunch and meet with my Spanish teacher Paola. Wish me luck!

                                       the view from my balcony in Palermo
                                                        

                                       the Galeria where I'm taking classes