Argentina | Monico Family Travels | Page 2

Category: Argentina
- La Vida en Palermo
  
  Posted at 9:42 pm by Charlotte, on September 27, 2018
  
  Term started 2 full weeks ago, and we have settled into a new stride. We are staying in an AirBnB in Palermo Soho (Buenos Aires) which is a district so hipster there is even a vegan dog food store round the corner. It feels a bit like we never left Camden, except the local (human!) food options are a vast improvement and we don’t understand the profanities embedded in the street art.
  
  A good weekday goes something like this: cuddles and cups of tea/hot chocolate in bed while I read aloud, followed by a healthy leisurely breakfast, and then the girls get dressed, tidy their room, make their beds, and get to their ‘desks’ by 9.
  
  Lessons run from 9-1 with Robert, our amazing teacher. The girls are following the St Christophers curriculum / smushed with the national curriculum for maths / english / science, and are drawing on local inspiration for history / geography etc. We are ALL trying to learn Spanish using Duo Lingo and practicing on the taxi drivers mostly. I haven’t quite yet managed to weave in my favourite Duo phrase ‘the cat is in the fridge’, but bingo points please when I do!
  
  Each week the girls spend the last hour of each school day working on a project which they present to us over G&Ts on Friday. Week 1 was focused on South America. The girls made a map ‘puzzle’, and we all did time-trials to see who could put it together quickest:
  
  Next up: quizzes based from fact files on the countries that we have visited so far:
  
  Then some artwork was presented, inspired by the sunsets at Jericoacoara:
  
  Lastly a quiz about evolution (inspired by our trip to the Galapagos) which required Robert, James and I to pick animal ‘traits’ out of a hat, and then pitch for which of us would survive various ecological changes using Darwinian principles.
  
  This weeks project took a completely different track. Dragons Den! Bella and Emily created a new household product based on local ingredients: MAS the More Avocado Spray that has magical cleaning properties. They put together a marketing plan, all the financials, made a TV advert, registered a trademark for their recipe, created packaging, mocked up posters (in English and Spanish), and then were ready to pitch to us for £10k of investment. James and I were reasonably tough on our negotiations, but the girls ultimately secured the financial commitment they needed for a full launch. Keep an eye on your local supermarket shelf!
  
  The project bar has been set REALLY high (despite Roberts protestations that this really is child-led learning!), so we can’t wait for what next week brings, and are so grateful and happy to have Robert with us for all the skill, experience, creativity, enthusiasm, and laughter he brings to Monicofamilytravels!
  
  During weekday afternoons, we either chill at ‘home’, messing with instruments, and running local errands,
  
  cook together (chicken soup is the girls latest speciality),
  
  or head out to explore some of the city:
  
  Museum of Fine Arts with Robert’s fascinating potted history of art tour, and some drawing:
  
  Museo de Fine Arts
  
  Festival of emerging technology and arts:
  
  Exploring La Boca, including a cheesy tango lunch:
  
  Alexander Calder at the Proa Foundation:
  
  Or enjoying whatever bonkers action is happening at the end of our street:
  
  We round out the school weeks with BBQ and movie night on Fridays. Week one we watched Evita (the Madonna version) which was a comprehension challenge all round, yet evocative, and a great way to introduce some local politics! Last night we watched School of Rock which made me cry….
  
  A bad day involves morning fights to get up/dressed/ready (if you are a parent, you know the ones I mean!), a steak hangover (if you’ve ever been to Argentina, you’ll know the ones I mean!), too much screen time for the kids (how can Matheletics be THAT fun?!?!), bickering, and too much screen time for James and I (its literally incredible how much time it takes us both to keep planning the next phases of our travels).
  
  Next week is our last in the city, so we are looking to make the most of the culture, gastronomy and shops before we hit the sticks for another change of pace.
  
  Posted in Argentina, Countries | 7 Comments
- One racing afternoon
  
  Posted at 8:04 pm by Millie, on September 24, 2018
  
  One afternoon we were walking around trying to find something really fun to do. We found somewhere where you could race cars that looked really cool and we went inside.
  
  There were 3 tracks. One easy, one getting harder and the last one was MEGA. We went straight for the mega one.
  
  My car was white, green and red and it went super fast around the bends. I had one of the best lanes because I was in the middle. If you are in the middle you don’t get too tight turns, but not too loose turns.
  
  The track was really well decorated with people by the side with multicoloured clothes cheering, made out of clay. There were also teepees on the fields, and a helicopter, and cars filling up with petrol.
  
  There was a big screen where you could see what scoring you would get. So red would say (for example) 33 laps, and yellow would say 20 laps. And at the end the lady would announce the scores. Although it wasn’t a race, but we raced anyway.
  
  The lady was really nice, because whenever we by accident crashed off the track she would rush to help us. When we stopped to have a toilet break,when we came back she was holding out lollipops for us to take and suck. At the end she gave us a biscuit.
  
  When I went into the Scalextrix, to myself I said WOW that is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. When you had your car on the track, whenever you overtook somebody you would feel really good inside because you had overtaken them.
  
  Posted in Argentina, Countries | 11 Comments
- Dog’s
  
  Posted at 6:45 pm by Bella, on September 18, 2018
  
  In South America I heard about rabies and I didn’t like the idea of getting bitten much, or stroking dogs, but then there was a dog at a bar we went to in Barre Grande and it was SOOOOOOOOOOOO cute. It rolled over to let you tickle its tummy and Rosalin and Emily and I cuddled it in the sand.
  
  The next cute dog which I have to write about was at a pizza restaurant in Atins. It was outside and the dog came up to us and looked at us and I knew it wanted to be stroked. So I stroked it while I waited for my pizza. It was SOOOOOOOO adorable.
  
  At lunch the next day a funny thing happened. We were sitting at a restaurant waiting for our food. Mummy got a shock and said there is something warm and soft under her feet. There had been a dog lying there the whole time and she hadn’t realised it! Emily and I laughed SOOOOOOOOO much.
  
  Mummy goes out running every morning and she passed a yoga place and the next morning she went to that yoga place to do some yoga. When she got back from yoga I was having my breakfast and she said there were some REALLY cute puppies at the yoga place if I wanted to come and stroke them. They were SOOOOOOOOO soft. They were all huddled up sleeping in a corner. Later I played with them again outside.
  
  The last of all we went to Hacienda Alegria. Mummy did a blog post on the Hacienda, and so you’ll know what we did there but there were five dogs that were SOOOOOOOOOO playful. Their names were Oreo, Snowy, Blackie, Cooee and Sultan.
  
  Blackie loved for you to throw sticks for him.
  
  Oreo loved to be stroked on the tummy.
  
  Snowy loved to join in with the sticks and to go running with Mummy.
  
  Cooee you could pick up and hug because he wasn’t as big as the others which were Border Collies, and there was no chance of you picking them up.
  
  Sultan wanted to make you hug him not any of the other dogs.
  
  I am hoping to see lots more dogs on our travels, and I can share pictures of the nicest ones with you.
  
  Posted in Argentina, Countries | 10 Comments
- Art Basel Buenos Aires
  
  Posted at 6:25 pm by Charlotte, on September 12, 2018
  
  We caught the last day of Art Basel Buenos Aires this afternoon. With limited time we picked 2 installations to view.
  
  The first was at the end of a long wooden pier: a precarious yet mysteriously resilient structure stretching 800 meters out into the Rio de la Plata. The pier has been home to an old fishing club since 1934, and as we embarked on the long rickety walk to the installation at the end we stopped to watch an old fisherman gut and scale a huge bloated fish. As we neared pier-end oblivion, we stumbled through a rather strange entrance way which comprised a blackout tunnel containing a silent man working a lathe. Bursting back out into daylight we found the main event: these revolving doors:
  
  Perspective of Absence, by Eduardo Basualdo
  
  I quite liked them, and tried to engage the girls in interesting conversation about the artistic properties of said installation and what it might signify, but they were singularly unimpressed (I’m not sure if their apathy was triggered by the length of the walk, or the actual artwork). They would apparently have been more impressed if they could have spun through the doors and landed in the ocean, or even better onto a trampoline suspended above the water.
  
  On the walk back (did I mention the pier was long?!?!), the girls decided to up the ante and offer us and the other attendees some alternative performing arts:
  
  Two Rocks on a Pier, designed by Bella Monico, performed by Bella and Emily Monico
  
  Just to keep things exciting, the rocks occasionally popped up!
  
  The second installation we engaged with was David Horovitz’s Señalamiento del cielo (Signaling the Sky) which involved the release of 200 helium ball at several different times and places across the city. His concept was to pay homage to Marcel Duchamp. Horovitz encouraged audience participation, as an opportunity for viewers to look at the industrial skyline in a different way. We found ourselves outside the Ex Cerveceria and were lucky enough to get our hands on 2 of the 200 balloons!
  
  The balloons were attached to strings that were each exactly 1 mile long. We had fun playing with them on site, trying not to get them tangled with everyone else’s balloons, then stuffed them in a taxi to bring them home to our AirBnB in Palermo. At sunset we took them to our roof terrace, and let them out REALLY far on their strings……….then pulled them back in again. Bella and Emily got a bit emotionally attached to them, but ultimately decided that they would have a better ‘end’ released to experience freedom and see the curvature of the earth, than tied to a chair to deflate overnight. So they tied the balloons together for companionship, said fond farewells……
  
  and watched Bobby and Luna dance their way to space!
  
  NB the above is a video – if you are reading this by e-mail, then the video won’t come through, so go to the website (www.monicofamilytravels) to watch. Caveat: this video is basically 2 balloons disappearing into space, so depending on how stoned you are, it is possibly a less exhilarating watch than the high-adrenalin galloping-on-the-dunes videos shared in earlier posts.
  
  Posted in Argentina, Countries | 5 Comments
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