the very sad week of farewells is over. i am on the camino home, despondent and very, very tired and dazed. i landed in santiago chile today for a 10 hour layover. i had to pay US $100 for the visa just to go for the day. i took a bus into town and here i am...the money is all confusing, it's 600 pesos to the dollar, and i don't know where to go or anything.
my flight here was nice, air france, so everything was in 3 languages with a french accent. edgardo sometimes speaks in a french accent and makes me cry with laughter, i was thinking of him on the flight. god it was awful to say goodbye to everyone! i feel i am in a daze. i guess nothing has sunk in yet. in any case i'll be in DC tomorrow.

this week is breaking my heart. i'm so sad. today i had lunch at the cafe where i take cooking class and had to say goodbye to everyne, practically broke down in tears. then i saw a really sad movie about the bombing of AMIA called 18-J. it was made up of 10 shorts and was excellent, except the part that was an interpretive dance.
last night there was a big march about the AMIA court decision. i didnt go. i met up with the parents of a guy i dated in washington (dino feigelstock for those of you that know), and we had dinner at a kosher parilla. it was fun, they were lovely people.

That pretty much sums up my year in Argentina right there.

shabbat this week was absolutely amazing. the synagogue in belgrano is exactly what i have been looking for here all year. i almost cried when i walked in there friday night. i stayed at the rabbi's house. he has a canadian wife, esther, and 11 kids. it was alot of fun. there were like 20-some people at the meals. i made alot of friends. the synagogue is very, very religious, maybe a bit too much for me. but it's the kind of place where everyone feels comfortable, like kesher israel in DC. they have classes for women there practically every day! all the young people i met were so, so nice. they were all the people who would have been my friends, if i had found the place earlier. i sat with 2 girls at lunch saturday, and afterwards we walked to their house for coffee. it was a good 20 blocks, and it was a warm, sunny afternoon. i was burning up in my coat, but they wouldn't let me take it off, because there's no eruv in buenos aires and you can't carry on shabbat! in any case it was a wonderful experience. i have so many invitations for the high holidays. i haven't had one invitation for a jewish holiday in my entire year here. i really, really want to stay and spend the holidays here in this community.

i'm going back next friday for a shabbat dinner at the synagogue. the tables for men and women will be separated with a big divider, so that is sort of annoying. i'm going to need to review the merchandise, if you know what i mean.

my trip is coming to an end. these last 3 weeks are just a whirlwind of goodbye lunches and dinners, and one more trip to all my favorite places. i want to try every kind of wine before i leave. it is passing really fast. it's all good except for the panic of how i will transport home all the things i have collected here.
this weekend should be a fun one. this shabbat will be great. sunday night is the latin grammys. (anybody remember my latin grammy party last year?)
epicurious did a great website on argentine food, be sure to read the thing on wines and mendoza.

URGENTE! beep de beep beep dede beep beep
civil unrest in the capital!
some protesters are getting out of control down by the casa de gobierno. (wait, am i in NYC?) rubber bullets and tear gas.
luckily my jobs are all in my barrio this week, i'm not going downtown again until thurs.

and my brother is still in thailand!

wow! after a year in the desert, religiously speaking, i have been inundated with jewish love and sunshine! shabbat was awesome, awesome.
mariela and i met up on friday afternoon. she is in her last year of residency, and we became good friends. i was working friday afternoon doing my weekly cow and rawhide report, and i happened to be on the same block as her house. also this is her last shabbat before a three-month trip to the US. she was convinced that hashem had sent us to each other. and she told the story to each and every person we met over shabbas! ha!
the people were all absolutely lovely, it was the nicest community. they were all shocked that i had spent so much time here and never found any shabbas love. the weekend was filled with conditional verbs....if i had known that you were here, i would have invited you antes....if we had met before, i could have taken you to this synagogue, and that class, etc. etc. it is a very difficult tense to conjugate in spanish, si hubiese sabido que estuvieras aqui, te habria haber invitado...complicated.
anyway, the important thing is that i did find them, and i won't leave BA thinking that the jewish community is cold and unfriendly. i already have rabbis calling me for the next two shabbats. next week i'm going to spend it in belgrano in a synagogue that sounds like what i left in washington...very young, friendly, hospitable.

oh and the family of the five brothers...they weren't out of some jewish fairy tale, there were just 5 siblings, but in spanish it's "hermanos" and that can mean males and females both.

this weekend i got two count them TWO invitations for shabbat. i had a choice!
i'm going with the cousin of my favorite english student, she's my age and a doctor, who is taking me to her sephardic synagogue tonight, then to dinner at the house of 5 brothers. tomorrow there is lunch at the rabbi's house, and a shiur. i'm really excited about this.

last night i had dinner at the casa de queso, and today my stomach hurts.