che boludo

Sory about the title but I just became hip to it though, its local slang. It's not really appropriate to say to people you don't know very well but it is fun to say.

Savina is the name of the new spanish tutor. She has flaming red hair. She came by yesterday to give us some schooling. She stayed for a couple of hours. In addition to drinking strong coffee and conjugating verbs, there was much cultural talk about everythying from Borges translations(its a sacrilege according to her) to their beloved Che Guevara and the economy. She is coming by again today. At 6 dollars an hour its quite a bargain. We attempted to make her Mate which is basically a yerba buena tea. However the drinking gourds we bought had not yet been cured for 24 hours. She laughed at the total tourist Mate package we had purchased. Anyway she seems pretty cool. She lives in San Telmo which is known for the big Sunday market, with antiques and tango etc. She is going to show us here neihborhood tommorrow as according to her Sunday in San Telmo are not to be missed.

Every Thursday for the last 30 years the Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo have marched in protest at the Plaza De Mayo in the front of the presidential palace. The group is comprised of Mothers of the various 30,000 sons who "disappered" during the dirty war. I was looking foward to seeing this prior to coming. I have been informed though that the march has stopped as the current administration seems amenable to loooking into the atrocities(operation condor) with the possibilites of war crime trials. My loss, their gain.

Had a great meal last nightat a restaurant here in Palermo called Lo De Jesus. We came on the earlier side and had a table outside under a heat lamp. After devouring a subperb medium rare filet, the manager an Italian named Roman who spok some english joined us at our table, he also introduced us to his friend Al Pacino who looked like a Porteno version of Don Henley Fry from the Eagles and his other friend affectionately known as "payoso" or clown. The clown had a bad habit of sticking his hands in the air ala Rickard Nixon doing his V signd. Pacino bore no resemblance to the actor but seemed to have cultivated that internation man of mystery thing pretty well. At one point the clown had to be restrained from throwing a plate after I started quoting lines from Scarface. I guess you could say he was very excitable. Anyway we drank wine and talked for a couple of hours. I don't imagine it will be tough to get a table there from now on.

Dinner time in BA is at 10:00. A cab driver gave us the breakdown on meal times. Breakfast is sometime before noon, lunch is between 12:00 and 2:00 and dinner as I mentioned is at 10:00. When he was asked what people did when work ends at 6:00 and dinner at 10:00 he casually replied "we make love." Ha ha ha ha. No wonder the city has a population of 14 million.