fun fun...

spent almost seven hours in Longmont with a bunch o' friends tonight. the hosts were arn and helena. arn is a music teacher with boulder county schools and his wife, helena is a medical anthropologist from the Netherlands.

the majority of the party's attendees were fellow anthros whom i've known for about eight or nine years, when we all started a (now defunct) network of anthropologists called AnthroSource. out of the 25 or so members, a core of eight of us remained good friends and alternate hosting duties for get togethers about a couple times a year.

the gathering tonight was not only to catch up but to celebrate Helena's b-day, which was yesterday, and to congratulate them on their purchase of land in Argentina that they hope to retire on in a couple years. wow! they've decided to settle in western Argentina (San Rafael), a very beautiful valley with a mild climate...just over the Andes from Santiago, Chile.

a lotta Malbec (a Bordeaux grape that reigns supreme in Argentina) was flowing...the French Mediterranean food that they prepared was superb...and the conversation was really lively!!! Helena had also invited two of their Dutch friends, Mari and Shanti (sp?). just to hear those three women chatter in Dutch was quite intriguing...what a neat language.

since they requested that we just bring booze, we brought a bottle of Malbec (Bodega Norton...a really good buy for $7), German Spatlese (lois' favorite...kinda sweet white), and some Harrar coffee (Harrar, Ethiopia is where coffee was first domesticated probably 1500 years ago - really rich, smooth, and slightly nutty...you can get it at Pberry).

while we were winding down with coffee/tea and cake (mmm...one lemon and one chocolate), arn and ed (who's married to Shanti) brought out their preferred instruments, trumpet and electric guitar, respectively, and played for a good hour. it was beautiful...they had never played together, but it didn't show. much of the music was show tunes/Gershwin or Brazilian jazz. it was really cool! ed's sound was reminiscent of the great Charlie Byrd and arn's trumpet was soft, nothing like the craziness of Al Hirt or Maynard Ferguson and not quite as sad as Miles Davis. they made for such an awesome duo!

and yes, i'll admit it right now...we are so jealous (but extremely ecstatic) that arn and helena have the guts to walk away from everything and just start another chapter in their lives (vineyards...fruit orchards...olive groves...an apiary) AND in argentina, to boot. i feel bad for the argentines and their economy, which plummeted the instant the majority of the population figured out that their government had done an Enron on them. we're not talking about hundreds or thousands of people whose retirement funds were stolen, but millions of people whose bank accounts were cleaned out. unfortunately, the only good thing that has come out of the fleecing of Argentina is that many people in the capital have resorted to bartering since no one has money; for once, the playing field of social class and economics has been leveled. they're very resourceful and resilient; i hope things get better for the people of Argentina...and soon.

right now, it's also a prime time to visit Argentina. since the collapse of the economy, the value of the Argentine Peso has tanked. imagine prices dropping 60-70%...that's what happened. it's like getting three times the value. great for the foreign tourist, but tough on the Argentinians because they're earning the same amount of money. it's not like they're getting double or triple pay to keep up with the inflation.

this is a scenario that's always beneficial for tourists because it will be some time before the economy recovers; the same thing happened to the Mexican Peso when it was devalued in 1993. it took at least seven or eight years for their economy to make a partial recovery; the prices we were paying in 1992 were higher than those in '99 or '00; something that would NEVER happen in the U.S.

so...yay for arn and helena...but boo on the corrupt gov't officials who cleaned out their citizens. even though prices are rock bottom in Argentina, the tourist Peso sure could generate some capital for the people of Buenos Aires. it may be another five years before things start looking up for them...