Twist & Shout!

This gym by my apartment....is like a hampster cage. They close the front with a garage door at night (like most every business here) and have crammed 100 machines in a plot as wide as my finger. But it's enough for me--fancy dancy gyming is a scam anyway! Give me a mat and i'll be okay. What i really joined for is the cycling class you get for 10 pesos extra a month (that's less than $3). And it has already been worth it. The instructor hopped on his bike at the back of the room about 10mins late (classic Argentine timing), flipped off the lights, and flipped on the tecno version of "Twist and Shout" complete with siren sounds. He kicked our asses for an entire hour without one break. This guy was actually insane. When i didn't have sweat dripping--no, flowing--into my eyes, i had to blink anyway because the 2 spinning disco balls blinded me anyway. When we slowed down he held up a paper sign taped on the end of a yard stick that yelled "VAMOS!!!" at us (that means Let's get goin!!!) Or he turned off the song musical-chairs style and made us sing the chorus. The class rocked. It was the weirdest, most invigorating, wettest exercise i've had in a long freakin time.

I came back to shower right when Luisa (host mommy) was walking in. (She was probably relieved to see i was ready to shower, she has been asking if i want one all week.) We had a sweet conversation and i got to see her very equal-power perspective of the world. She told me the thing she tells all her "alumnos," (friends): "La independencia economía es igual a la soberanía política."

Some brilliant friends of ours were eating pizza in a parlor and saw that the back wall of the building was missing. The discovery: the entrance to a huge indoor soccer complex plopped in the middle of the block. It's 100 pesos to rent out a field for an hour (the equivalent of about 30 bucks), and with 20 friends playing that's basically nothing. We played for 2 hours today on the ghetto, sandy field and it was one of the best times here yet.

Walking out of the parlor we saw a group of people gathering in the middle of the street. A man in a gray and pink sweat-suit was lying deathly motionless. We waited around a few minutes, assuming the attentive people had done all they could to help, (only later realizing that was probably a bad assumption). A woman poked the guy in the belly. Nothing. Ten minutes later the police showed up, bending over him and shuffling around in his jacket for ID. They looked pretty clueless. 2 ambulances and 20 minutes passed before we decided to leave and saw a third coming up the street. Hope that was the one, even though there was no hope for him. Cars and taxis and people scuttled by going on with their business for the night. I don't know how long he stayed there, a spectacle of the fragility of life. His fingers were still holding a lit cigarette.

I told my host mom about it at dinner. She said "Oh," and kept watching TV. I asked if death in the street was common, and she said "Oh yes." That was the end of that. I am still a little hurt and mad by her flippancy, but I get the feeling more and more that you need to have "piel muy dura" to live here. Thick skin. Whatever, I don't think i could ever adopt Argentine-unaffectedness at the sight of a lifeless body in the middle of the street i'm about to across.

We had Polenta with dinner again tonight--oh my gosh i have found a new love. Luisa just asked me if i want to shower cause "i was running around for 2 hours." No Luisa. No no, i don't do that sort of thing. Are you kidding? I just showered this afternoon. Give it at least a few more days.