el fin de semana largissimo

saturday was a full day, as was sunday, as was today. there seems to be a trend. la vida dura.

saturday morning, we went to visit ph15, a foundation in a slum here called "la ciudad oculta". this is a slum where the poorest and most marginalized people in the city live. the group meets on thursday afternoons and saturday mornings with as many children as they can. each kid who makes a commitment to participates receives a camera of their own to take pictures with. everyone has one roll per week and they come together on the weekends to develop and talk about their photos. the best photos are put up for sale at auctions and shows as well as on their website. (definitely check out the website that is in my links list) half of the return goes to the budding photographer and the other half to the taller-or workshop- to help pay for the equipment, etc. it was a great experience, absolutely opposite what we saw earlier in the week.

i talked with about five of the teenagers who have been at ph15 for varying amounts of time. each of them showed me all of their best fotos and told me about where they took them, how they took them and what they like best about photography. i brought about ten of my best shots from the year that i´ve had a camera and shared those with them as well. they were fantastic. each one had a distinct style, a personality that showed through the photos, and a passion for their work that was beautiful. they had pride and ownership in it.

one little boy that i talked to was tiny, but already twelve years old. he was very excited to show me his pictures, literally sitting on the edge of his seat the entire time. he told me all about his family, his neighborhood and how he prefers to take pictures alone so he can concentrate and get the best shot. he was incredibly smart for his age. he had a lot of pictures of the hospital that is in the neighborhood. it must have ten floors and is a gigantic concrete structure built some time ago to serve the neighborhood. he explained to me that not long after the hospital opened it was abandoned by all of the doctors and now it serves as a home for hundreds of people, up to the fifth floor. the building, from what i could tell has broken or no windows, clearly no running water or electricity and is a sitting dump. my heart broke hearing this boy tell me candidly about his neighborhood and how interesting it was to be around the hospital. he showed me pictures of the many clotheslines hung outside the hospital. another girl who was a few years older had many pictures of her house after the rain, when the streets flood with over 8 inches of water. This happens whenever there´s a hard rain in the neighborhood for lack of proper engnieering. later i met maria, a very young girl who took photos of all of the animals on farm the group visited out in the country, it´s a great series. i just fell in love with every kid that i talked to, i wanted to stay all day, to give them my camera and all my money. it was just so obvious that they work that they were doing with these kids gave everyone hope, something concrete to work on, beauty to appreciate and a voice to reach others about their situation. i bought a book of their pictures for less than ten dollars before we left, a little treasure.

after a long trip back i met up with my older brother, javier, and went with my friend nico to the evita museum. i´m sure that some of you have heard of the movie evita with madonna and antonio banderas, well this was the real thing. i finally found a good metaphor for who eva duarte peron was to argentina- princess diana, margaret thatcher and marilyn monroe altogether. she was a model in her youth, the most famous in argetina and went on to marry juan peron, who later became the most famous president in argentina´s history with eva acting as vicepresident. their stay in office defined the glory days of argentina. she´s hard to describe. even for me now, her smile and face seem very empathetic yet regal. she seems to be both beautiful and real and clearly argentine. her charisma clearly lives on as does her influence on style.


whew, what next. well, saturday night was the night of all nights. the entire group of robertsons decided to experience the argentina night life together. we first gathered at a bar called the shamrock, a not so argentinian name, to kick off the evening. from there we went to find a boliche, or a club. mind you, we had to wait until 2:30 am to leave to dance because "no one gets there any earlier". we ended up going to el museo, or the museum a boliche with three floors, around fifty discos balls, a racing car, multiple bars, and a gym sized dance floor. it took me a while to realize that it was real. the second and third floor opened down to look at the main dance floor where hundreds of portenos and extranjeros rocked out. unfortunately, the music was all techno. fortunately, next weekend, i think we´re going to go to a more truely latino boliche. i let you know if it´s as grand and ridiculous as museo was.

ahem, next is sunday. well, seeing as we didn´t get back from the boliche until the early to bed time of 6 am, i didn´t rise until 2:30 pm. i only got up then because my family was having our weekly lunch with our grandparents downstairs. in order to take advantage of the daylight, i rushed back up to shower and go out to explore the barrio recoleta.

my brother and sister, as well as nico, took off for recoleta and first went to the cemetery. this may sound strange, but this is the most beautiful and unique place i have been in the city. i´m definitely planning on going back before we leave. the cemetery of recoleta is where casi todo, almost all of the important, rich, and famous people in the history of argentina are buried. what this translates to is a city of mausoleums. literally. rows upon rows of unique structures, with scattered angels and other statues on the roofs. it was absolutely incredible and absolutely gorgeous in a ´there are dead people everywhere´ sort of way. it felt other wordly because everything had a gray tone and everywhere you looked there was another heavenly figure or crumbling wall of old names. on one end of the block stood a wall of drawers, each holding a casket stacked ten high and twenty wide. some had glasses fastened outside them, which my brother told me was because those people were drunks. not true, but funny. we also saw eva´s burial place here, whish she reached after more than a quarter century of fighting over her body. (i forgot to mention that one video in the museum showed the damage that literal tomb raiders had done to the decomposing body of evita, complete with gooey descriptions of her rotting feet, my favorite.) all in all, unbe-freakin´-lievable.





The rest of sunday was stacked. we went to the museo de bella artes, one of the bset art museums in argentina. there was a great fair in recoleta as well. (quick side note, here at fairs it is popular to have a bag with a fake cat inside with a tail sticking out. the person holding the bag rolls it around or steps on it. while they do this, hurting cat meows are being made from a little gadget in their mouth. if someone could explain why this is entertaining, that´d be helpful to me.) then we went to the jazz festival of buenos aires. not satiated still, we watched the movie volver at my friend nico´s house in spanish. (side note number two, i didn´t understand most of it) of course, this was all before dinner, which i ate prime time- midnight upon my arrival back home.

alas, i cannot describe all my weekend in one sitting. i will have to leave what i did today for tomorrow. (side note number three it was freezing here today, not literally, but like two degrees about 0-yikes!)buenissimo. besos.