Cuando Llegue me di un beso

Sede

2008-09-27T19:54:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of thirst lately. Mostly in the morning. When I arrive to the hospital, I put my stuff away and head straight for the nurse's lounge, where there is a water cooler. I find a 4 oz cup. And I drink. I drink as though I'm not going to have the opportunity to drink later in the day. I fill up that little fucking cup about 10 times. 40 oz of ice cold water. Sometimes the water is so cold I have to take a break because I don't want an ice cream headache. But once the feeling of impending brainfreeze passes, I continue to drink.

I cannot explain this morning thirst. It is a symptom with which I am not familiar. Maybe my room is hot and I'm losing water through insensible losses. Maybe I'm not hydrating well enough during the previous night. Regardless of the cause, my thirst rages during the morning and I correct it in full display of the nursing staff. I'm pretty sure they think I'm an alcoholic. If I were them, that would be the most logical explanation for my morning thirst...

Granos

2008-09-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Ever since I've arrived to Buenos Aires, I've been breaking out in pimples like a nerdy adolescent. I have no idea why this has been happening. My skin hygeine is still excellent. I'm advancing in age, which I think should decrease my risk for pimples. But no. This has not been the case. My T zone has been the breeding ground for a number of angry pimples. When I first started in the intensive care unit two months ago, I had a ferocious pimple on my nose. It hung around for so long I thought it was infected with a superbacteria that I had caught in the ICU. Now I have one on my lip, unfortunately a common landing zone for these pimples.

I've hypothesized two reasons for this outbreak. Uno, the change in the climate. Not sure what the scientific basis for this theory would be, but correlacion=causation??? Also, along the same lines, it could be the food. But the food here is generally less greasy than the food in the US. I have been eating a lot of chocolate — that could be it. Que se yo...

Agotado

2008-09-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

Speaking and listening to Spanish is exhausting for me. Obviously I have to pay much closer attention to Spanish than I pay to English because if I miss a word — bam — the entire story someone was telling no longer has any chance of making sense. The only days which I don't come home exhausted are the days when I don't do a good job paying attention and am therefore not tired from the normally-exhausting processing I'm doing while listening.

I imagine myself to be like a video game character when I'm attempting to endure hours upon hours of Spanish. I start out with a certain amount of life in the beginning. When people speak Spanish to me, I gradually lose life. At the end of the day, I don't have any life left. Little things can restore some life — lunch, naps — but son pocos.

I'm convinced that the bilingual center of my brain, located somewhere between Wernicke's and Broca's areas, is underdeveloped. The constant insult of Spanish has been sending massive amounts of blood to this area, which is clearly accustomed to minimal blood flow. Yes, that is what's happening.

Pimped: Parte 2

2008-09-05T16:58:00.001-07:00

I suppose for this story, I wasn't actually being pimped as the question was directed at the general population. The question was what condition does Eikenella Kingella normally cause in the context of a fantastic lecture given by an ID specialist about common manifestations of rare bugs and rare manifestations of common bugs. Anyway, after a few seconds of silence followed said question, I blurted out the answer in my shitty Spanish: endocarditis. It's a HACEK organism.

The lecturer signaled that I had gotten it right: bueno. And even asked me for my name because I'd been so quiet in the last few lectures that I hadn't really existed until now. Then he told me felicitaciones. Pretty funny stuff — especially beacause it was me and 4 residents in the room, one of whom said, "huh?" when the lecturer mentioned the name of the bacteria. Anyway, on the flip side, these residents know more than me so it was nice to take advantage of some special secret trivia knowledge.

I'm still feeling stupider by the day, but the rate at which I'm feeling stupider has slowed down. You follow me — you gotta know derivatives and shit to understand that. I'm a dumb nerd.

Intoxicacion por Alimentos

2008-09-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

I abruptly awoke at 3 AM this morning with painful cramps in the tummy and a powerful urge to go to the bathroom. As well as farts. I got out of bed, put my sandals on quickly, and rushed across the patio into the kitchen and reached the bathroom. Upon making it to the toilet, I had diarrhea. The same story repeated 2 hours later. And then 2 hours later, when my alarm went off. I texted one of the residents to tell him I would be late to work. He responded with the following text, "Estamos igual. Todos con el mismo problema. Fue el pollo seguro." In other words, the lunch we ate yesterday was the source of our food poisoning.

Upon arriving to work, after the runs had settled down enough for me to be sure I wouldn't crap my pants on the bus ride to the hospital, I learned that the staff of the entire hospital had suffered from this same diarrhea. Secretaries, nurses, doctors. There was a debate about whether it was the rice or the chicken in the lunch. There was another debate (of course, we're in a hospital) about the identity of the causal organism. Top candidates were S. Aureus, B. Cereus, and E. Coli. Anyway, it was probably an toxin-producing bacteria since everyone improved after 10-12 hours. And btw, everyone ate the lunch today. Ravioli, salad with carne (yikes!) and fruit salad. Probably the unluckiest person was my friend who was on call. Upon just falling asleep at 4AM, he was awoken by a torrent of diarrhea. Pobre.

Mullet

2008-09-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

Without realizing what was happening, I grew a mullet. That is half true at least. Here's the story... I got a haircut a few weeks ago. It was a pretty good haircut. Hair was even — there were only a few hairs I had to cut myself to even things out when I returned home and looked in the mirror. I'll admit it — I realized that the back was a little longer than it normally is. Anyway, when it was first cut, it was not a mullet. Over the past few weeks, it has grown into a mullet. How do I know?!?!?! Because my hair curls when it reaches a threshold length. The hair on the back of my head is curling. Front — straight hair. If I were to listen to what the hair on the back of my head were saying, I would get a haircut tomorrow. The hair on the front of my head tells me that I can wait at least of month before a return trip to the barber.

On another note, there are obviously many words that don't translate precisely in terms of meanings in English and Spanish. One subtle example is bueno. In many cases, bueno means "ok" and not "good", it's primary definition. A subtle, yet important difference. For example, today a nephrologist was discussing with a cardiologist how a patient was pretty much fucked. When the conversation ended in the mutual agreement that the patient was in a futile situation, the nephrologist said, "bueno." He did not mean "good".

Confidence

2008-09-01T18:37:00.000-07:00

Okay — now for the first serious post of the blog...

I learned a lot about myself during third year of medical school. It was a year full of emotional swings for me. I can remember certain points where I rode highs of confidence and plenty of times where I considered myself subhuman. From all of this, I realized that my self-confidence is largely decided by how I perform academically — I guess now it would be considered professionally. I can distinctly remember days where I felt as though I had performed well in the hospital — when I returned home and did whatever or if I went out that night, it didn't matter what happened — I felt good about myself.

Upon discovering that my self-confidence was inextricably linked to my professional performances, I searched to see if others derived their self-confidence from school/work as well. I learned that I am probably in the minority. When I feel smart, I feel good. For others, this relationship does not hold true.

I knew before I came to Bs As that my confidence would take hit for reasons I've already explained above. When you don't understand the language and when ppl don't understand you, it's tough to get a sense of feeling smart. Also when you're bad at learning languages in general, that's another problem. However, I've tried to do some things so I can retain at least a minimum level of confidence.

Step 1 is to have already done third year and succeeded, which I did: i.e. build up a reserve of self-confidence for cold winters when there is sure to be a shortage of opportunities to feel smart. The second step is to break the connection between self-confidence and performing well professionally because for at least the first 3-4 months that I am here, there is little chance of performing in a way that I would consider successful. Anway...so far, it's not going so well — there are days where I get really worked up and just want to speak english and explain that I actually understand what's going on (although these occasions do not occur often). But I don't — and I don't know if I should consider the inner-explosion of frustration as a lapse into bad habits or the successful bottling of the frustration as a victory, working towards a steadier sense of self-confidence.

The funny thing about my connection between intelligence and self-confidence is that it doesn't matter if I am smart, e.g. have a high iq y cosas asi. What is important is that time in and time out, I prove that I am smart. It seems strange to write and even if this idea is more common that I think, I definitely have a little embarassment admitting to it. Why couldn't my self-confidence be derived more from being nice to ppl? That's a good things to do and relatively easy as well. Pero no es asi.

The reality is that I'm not here to improve my self-confidence. That's a pretty ridiculous reason to do anything. Also, you don't move to a foriegn country where you don't know the language — away from an environment you feel extremely comfortable in, — to feel smart and in control. Por lo menos, life is not all about self-confidence and I'm hoping that I can find other personal characteristics(??), characteristics which have in the past been pushed aside for the sake of self-confidence, to cultivate while I am down here.

Man, that post was really self-absorbed. I promise, no more of those. Sheesh...

Jaime

2008-08-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

Today I was doing my usual observing in the hospital when something odd happened. We were in the middle of examining a patient — the attending was standing on one side of the bed and I was standing on the other. He removed the oxygen mask from the patient and asked me to put it in a secure place — "Jaime," he said, "pone la mascarita ahi." Considering that I'm still not understanding the majority of the Spanish I hear, I thought maybe he had said something else and ignored the possible equivocation. In the next patient's room, he called me Jaime once again. I was about 50% sure at this point. During a lecture on cardiac insufficiency in the afternoon, the same thing happened a third time — this time I was positive, so I corrected him. Needless to say, laughter ensued. One resident laughed for no joke two minutes straight. It was pretty funny...

I thought he felt a little bad, so I attempted to make him feel better by telling him that my hebrew name is Chaim, so really he wasn't that far off. Though calling a jew chaimie might be considered racist. Anyway, I like this doctor a lot so it's all good.

Samwell

2008-08-21T16:46:00.001-07:00

Perhaps the most intelligent thing I've done so far in Buenos Aires is use my full name: Samuel, pronounced Samwell in Castellano. First of all, I like the way that name sounds. Second of all, Sam would sound rather feo in Castellano — it's too short and would not even be able to compete with the multi-syllabic beauty of other male names here such as Javier, Ignacio, and Fernando. Finally, when people are speaking quickly, having an extra syllable in my name gives me a second chance to respond when someone addresses me. Sam is easy to miss, but Samwell is unmissable!

Pimped

2008-08-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

Today I was pimped in the ICU. It was undoubtedly my worst performance ever as a pimpee. During this session, I guessed wrong so many times that toward the end, I was convinced that no matter what I guessed, it would be wrong — which it was. No language barrier could explain how poorly I performed. My performance was so poor that, afterwards, when I had to meet with the director of students at the medical school to discuss changes in my schedule, I feared that I was going to be expelled. Fortunately I wasn't. Oh, additionally, my resident, who I think is cute, was laughing at how bad my performance was. I couldn't fault her because I would have definitely done the same if I were in her position. I'm not gonna lie, I almost started laughing because I was doing so badly.

Good times. At least I killed the boards last month— that confidence boost should at least get me through the end of August. Guess I won't have to start succeeding until then. Dale...

Yanqui

2008-08-12T16:50:00.000-07:00

I've learned to be comfortable in my role as the Yanqui or Gringo — I go by either here. I'm not gonna lie, it sucks... It's very for me to be embarrased because I don't know what's going on half the time. And I'm not a hard-ass or anything — I like for people to have fun, even if it is at my expense — which it pretty much has been for the past few weeks. The nurses at the hospital in particular have taken it upon themselves to make me feel welcome by joking "with" me and not sparing any sass.

One of the first days I was at the hospital, one of the nurses asked me if I knew what the word cachucha meant. I didn't, but continued to loudly ask the nursing staff what it was. Once they started laughing, I realized what it was — vagina, pronounced baheena (btw, Georgia, the country is pronounced Heorhia — trippy) Anway, I still wanted confirmation that the meaning was in fact vagina, so I kept on asking.

Anytime I saw this one nurse for the next few weeks — she's still doing it now — screams the word cachucha at me whenever she sees me. Laughing ensues for all people within earshot of the greeting.

Then today, one of the nurses told me that the nursing staff all felt that I had a nice pompino, which she explained to me involved the gluteos. I was pleased, I suppose. They all had a good laugh...

One strange thing about the buses here is that they don't always take the same route. Today, my colectivo was in a big jam, moving about 100 meters in 10 minutes. So it took a turn and bypassed the jam. Cool.

Mierda

2008-08-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

One thing which I'm probably never going to get used to here is the inadequacy of the toilets. After taking a shit, it is necessary to look down at the bowl post-flush to evaluate whether or not there is a residual stain on the bowl. If there is a stain, which there almost always is, you have to clean it out. This entails getting some tp and scrubbing the crap off the bowl. If you’re going to do a good job, you have to go pretty deep into the bowl and the tips of your fingers inevitably become wet with toilet water. Not really sure why they haven’t designed better toilet bowls. Ok, that was pretty disgusting. Sorry.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve picked up on a few key words here in Argentina. These words are of equal importance to the phrases “like” and “you know” in the US. It is crucial to know these phrases because they often frame sentences or indicate a subtle sentiment.

Dale, pronounced dahlay- literally mean give it to him. It is used most often in two ways: (1) let’s go and (2) okay.

A ver, pronounced habayer- literally means to see. It is used for the phrase “let’s see” which I never realized is said so frequently.

Digamos, same pronunciation- literally means we say, which is also how it is used. It is used frequently as an interrupter when you’re explaining a concept and are looking for the words to describe something — a word to say during a pause.

Monedas

2008-07-30T19:49:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty sure that I wrote about this same subject when I was here two years ago. Anyway, it deserves a second go.

Monedas are coins. They come in the form of 5, 10, 25, and 50 centavos, as well as the coveted one whole peso piece. At that point, the money turns into bills, with 2 peso bills being the smallest denomination.

There is a shortage of monedas in Buenos Aires. According to the owner of where I live, Pat, the bus companies, who are the main acceptor of monedas, horde the coins in Buenos Aires and create the seemingly insane demand for these pieces of metal. There is a saying in Buenos Aires that a peso coin is really worth two pesos.

And such has been my experience for the past couple weeks. I take the bus to and fro the hospital every day. And every morning, I pass by the kiosk on the corner and ask the kioscero, who is always the same old man, to buy a little dulce de leche candy bar. This is the only way I can get some coins in my hand because there is a sign on his store, the same sign that every kiosk has, which declares "no hay cambio". So I buy this little candy bar, he always proceeds to ask me if I can pay in monedas, and then I get 1.20 in change.

At least that used to be the case. Now I buy the same candy bar, and without my consent, says "A Caramelo!", places a caramelo on the counter and gives me one peso. This has happened three days in a row — with the one twist that he gave me an orange fruit candy instead of a caramelo today. So I'm basically paying double to ride the bus.

Monedas are really no laughing matter. A bus drive was stabbed to death last week — I'd post the link I wasn't too lazy to look for it — because the ticket machine in the front of the bus "swallowed his monedas". As a result, there has been a strike by bus drivers which means that what is normally a 24 hour bus service does not run between the hours of 10PM and 330AM.

Otra Vez...

2008-07-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

He regresado! This one's gonna be a little boring cuz it's the intro. But look forward to page turners in el futuro. Also, this was posted a week after it was originally written...

I’ve been in Buenos Aires for three nights thus far. Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve done so far.
I took a 7AM flight to Panama City on Copa Airlines — very nice service and food, movies could have been better although I was able to enjoy some parts of Be Kind, Rewind and Drillbit Taylor. From Panama City, there was a 6 hours flight to Buenos Aires. I arrived at 9 at night, which turned out to be a bit of a problem.

My plans for that night were extremely poorly-thought out. I thought that when I arrived, I’d just go the hostel I stayed at for a month when I was here two years ago. When we got there, it was closed. Luckily, the hostel was located in Palermo, which is home to a monton of hostels. All closed. Hotels were available, but the minimum price of those was 50 dollars a night — not a good prospect in a cheap town, especially when I have four bags to lug around and wasn’t sure how many nights I’d need a place to stay (didn’t yet know where I was going to be living).

Finally we found a hostel in the ritzier neighborhood of Recoleta which put me back 34 dollars for the first night and what would be 14 for the next night. Pretty sure I got ripped as my roommate the second night paid less than the total that I did and was staying for twice the time.

I awoke my first night and travelled to the CEMIC (Centro de Educacion Medical y Centro de Investigaciones Clinicas). Unfortunately, there are two main locations for the hospital and I went the wrong one. Thankfully, there was a one peso private bus that travelled between the two. I got there and met with my contact person. Got everything squared away except health insurance — I need to buy a plan. Still figuring out exactly how the healthcare system here operates. This may take me a while as I am working in a private hospital. I also figured out exactly what I’ll be doing. I’m going to be in a class of sixth-year medical students (that sounds funny to me, even though I assume all the students are going to be younger than me) — the last year of medical school is called the internship. I’ll find out exactly what that entails in the next few weeks.
Once I got that figured out, I walked to the house/apartment of what was my best housing prospect — the place of a woman named Pat who I’d been emailing with for the past couple weeks. It was in the neighborhood of Belgrano, which was walking distance from the CEMIC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgrano%2C_Buenos_Aires

The place is great and not to ruin the surprise, but that is where I am writing from now. We had a nice conversation — first impression is that she is a stand-up, laid-back, extremely nice woman and landlord. She explained to me that her unit is called a P.H. I forget what the P stands for, but H is horizontal. The terms means that the apartments in her complex all originate from the first floor. Hers is located in the back and opens up into the main patio, the patio from which my bedroom opens into.

I left Pat’s place thinking that I was going to live there even though I was going to check out another apartment (which I never ended up doing because I couldn’t get in touch with the landlord). I returned to the hostel and hung out a bit with my roommate Matt, an English fellow who just finished his doctorate in World Geography (which to me sounded a lot like anthropology even though he felt as though there were some key differences between the two). I heard about Buenos Aires Pub Crawl, a pub crawl organized by American guys, which was happening that night. Matt was game for checking it out with me.

Pub crawl that night was meeting in San Telmo, a neighborhood in the southeast of the city which is home to many university students as well as many bars. We paid our 60 pesos for the pub crawl and enjoyed an hour’s worth of unlimited pizza, empanadas, and beer. Turns out no one else showed up to the pub crawl besides myself and Matt so the organizers decided to cancel the night’s activities and give us a refund. Sweet. Matt and I headed to another bar, each had a beer, and then decided to call it an early night.

When we returned, we found Alvaro, a Chilean guy we’d met earlier in the day, at the hostel watching the end of 40 yo virgin. Alvaro started talking about how Argentinians were cheaters, and I brought up the subject of Alvaro’s own living situation. He’d told me earlier in the day that he was going to be living in the hostel until this December. I questioned to financial judgment of doing that — he said it was 1500 pesos a months, which he felt was a good deal — or at least that’s what he’d been told by the hostel workers. I showed him the deals on Craigslist to prove to him that there were in fact much better deals out there, some half the price. He seemed really upset, busted out his own laptop and starting scouring the rental section of the site.

The next day, I left the hostel and moved into my new place. I hung out with Pat for a little while once I got there, got my stuff unpacked, and walked around the neighborhood a bit.

My last day before work started, Pat invited me to spend the day with her and her friends — who were coming over to celebrate what happened to be Friends’ Day in Argentina. Not having friends day in the U.S. is kinda like not putting sugar and fat on top of a croissant — it’s easy to do and makes like a little sweeter. One of Pat’s friends, Sandra, made a dope polenta bolognese. Pat had worked on a mousse the day before which turned out to be excellent as well. Okay, lo corto. This is getting too long...

Tomorrow I start Argentinian medical school. Loco.

Later Argentina

2006-08-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to inform the audience of this blog that I have returned to the United States. I hope you all have enjoyed the blog. I had some interesting experiences in Argentina. Some good, some bad. Overall, I'm glad that I went. I'm not anywhere close to fluent in Spanish, but I've certainly improved. If you all have the opportunity to visit Buenos Aires, take it. The city is incredible — lots of intersting people, lots of energy, lots of culture. And very cheap. If you visit for a week, you can eat extravagant meals every night without busting your wallet. Oh, and if you end up going, drop me an email so I can give you some travel tips. Chau.

Giramondo

2006-07-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

So now that I´ve been staying in the hostel for a few weeks, I feel qualified to give the readership of this blog a little peek into what life is like in el hostel.

The facilities are pretty nice. The bathrooms are a little strange, but generally clean. All of the walls to the bathroom are metal, including the stall doors. So when someone shuts the bathroom door con fuerte on the first floor, you can easily hear this event from the third floor. There are rooms for living on the first and second floors. On the third floor, there is a room which has a couple computers that connect to the internet, another room for the tv, and a the kitchen, where free breakfast is served every morning.

I suppose the best way for me to explain what it´s like to live in the hostel would be to give you all a rundown of the different personalities that you´re likely to run into in the Giramondo.

1. Diego - this guy is from Peru. He takes it upon himself to play host to every female who comes to stay at the hostel. My roommate, Andres, tells me that he will have sex with anything that walks. So that´s awesome. He´s also an artist - he plays the guitar. In some ways, he kinda reminds me of Ethan, though with less intelligence, less ambition, and less tact.

2. Alejandro - for a long time I couldn´t figure out what this mid-forties Argentinian was doing in the hostel. My roommates informed me that Alejandro recently divorced his wife and received a rather large settlement from his former spouse, who was apparently pretty rich. My roommate also informed me that Alejandro´s role in the hostel is to smell bad, which I can now confirm is true. This guy, from what I can tell does nothing. I´m serious when I say that I don´t think that he´s left the hostel since I´ve been here. He enjoys watching soccer and other television program. I now anticipate the feeling of disappointment of knowing that I won´t be able to control the television channel before I even enter the tv room because alejandro will be watching something. Though, yesterday he was watching Hook in Spanish, which I enjoyed. Apparently, when I was gone in Bolivia, Alejandro passed out on the stairs and peed down all of the stairs. The owner of the hostel threatened to kick him out, but I think some sort of deal was cut allowing Alejandro to stay. Despite everything I say here, he´s a pretty nice guy.

3. Jam(?)- Jam arrived in the hostel a few days ago. I was proud of myself for being able to recognize that Jam was a transvestite within the first five seconds that I met him, or her. I´ll call him her. We had quite possibly the weirdest introduction conversation. It was a mix of Spanish and English and it went like this. First, Jam told me that her name was like the english word for jamon. Ham? I asked. No, that can´t be right. What was you name again? At this point, Jam realized that her name was not in fact the same as jamon in English. She repeated her name again to me. It sounded like gem, so I asked in Spanish if it is like the stone, you know, gem. Jam had no idea what I was talking about. Finally, I pronounced her name correctly, at which point I was relieved that this ordeal of figuring out Jam´s name was going to end. At this point, Jam informed me that she also goes by Paloma. So Jam seems like a pretty normal transvestite. One of the workers at the hostel showed me the little information card that every resident in the hostel has to fill out filled out by Jam. In the space for sex there are two boxes, M and F. Jam created a new box on her card marked with a T. I´m not gonna lie, I´m not used to being around transvestites, so at first, I was a little uncomfortable. But I´ve adjusted and Jam seems alright to me.

4. Stereotypical American guys- many of these guys have come through. They might as well all belong to the same frat. They are in Buenos Aires to party and try their luck with Argentinian women. They generally don´t stay too long, which is preferable to me. But, whatever, they´re nice and we´re usually friendly.

5. High schoolers - there is a group of high schoolers staying here. They are all part of some creative writing program. Holy shit, I know people are always saying this, but was I like that in high school? I´m pretty sure that I wasn´t. I seriously don´t remember doing things for the sake of being cool, but who knows. Anyway, these kids generally annoy the hell out of me with the things they will say to appear awesome. These kids make me feel very old and very uncool, but I guess I just have to concede coolness to them because I´m just not willing to try to be cool anymore. Why is that such a foriegn concept to me? Oh yeah, and these kids generally ignore me, which I don´t take personally because I realize that being unfriendly is part of being cool. At least I think it is. I guess I can´t really know since I don´t know how to be cool. Also, one of these high schoolers lost her purse the other day. I felt bad for her. I did find it interesting though that she was carrying 2000 dollars in her purse. Not really sure why you´d be doing that. That really sucked.

6. My roommate, Andres - this guy is awesome. Originally from Spain but grew up in Chile. Speak English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Spent a few years in Paris before coming to BsAs. Draws comics. We´ve enjoyed many nights of pillow talk about life and such. Andres doesn´t take much too seriously. He´s generally just a nice guy. He´s also the clean roommate, whereas I am the slob (this should come as no surprise to anyone). He is also a doctor´s son, which means that he has a little pharmacy in his personal locker, which has come in the handy a couple times (don´t worry, I haven´t taken anything too dangerous). I also visited Andres´ studio, which a nice little apartment. I´m hoping that Andres draws me in comic form, though I don´t want to ask because I know he has a decent amount of work.

Okay, not really sure what I´ll do now. I was going to watch tv for a little bit, but that´s not an option now seeing as Jam is passed out on the couch.

Billares

2006-07-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

For the past couple months, I have frequented with marked frequency a Bar in the Jewish neighborhood where I used to live. I play pool for a couple hours each time I go. Occasionally, I order a cafe con leche with tres medialunas. I believe that the coffee they serve here is the best I have ever had. The medialunas are pretty awesome as well.

This bar is pretty ridiculous. It´s full of retired old people. They are all playing cards or dominoes. I´ve become friendly with a number of people there. Perhaps the most interesting character is Oswaldo. Oswaldo and I began playing pool against one another about a month ago. Oswaldo is a little better than me, but for the most part, our games are pretty even.

Over the past month, I have grown increasingly suspicious that Oswaldo is part of the mafia here. First of all, he´s not all that old. I would say that he is about 40 years old. You will notice that although Oswaldo and I have built our relationship around pool, there is not much more to our relationship besides this game. I am fearful of asking him questions because I am scared he will kill me if I know too much. So I don´t know where he works, though he always seems to be wearing clothing from the federal ministry of health. So for a while, before I realized he was pretty much always at the bar in between the hours of 11 and 5, I thought that he might work for the ministry of health. But I realize now that this is pretty much an impossibility.

Anyway, Oswaldo seems to know everybody, and I have noticed that people are often coming to him with their problems or stories or such. I can´t be sure of this, but there seems to be money riding on a lot of these card games. It seems Oswaldo has a hand in this action.

It´s also possible that Oswaldo is not in the mafia, but rather I am just judging him by the stereotypical appearance of mafiosos (he looks like he would be in the mafia - greased back hair, leather jackets, etc.). Anyway, he´s a really nice guy and I enjoy playing pool with him.

There are a handful of other interesting characters. The guy who occasionally plays pool against me and has a squeaky voice and who I think may have early stage Parkinsons because he shakes a lot. This plump dude named Fernando who likes to speak in English with me. Siro, who is always wearing a marroon sweater under a sports coat. Lito, the guy who works behind the counter. Eduardo, the sole waiter in the joint. Samuel, an old dude who used to work in perfumes and who likes to wear jumpsuits. Some dude who knows a lot about pool and who likes to teach me some things, which I appreciate.

Okay, well I´m gonna grab some lunch and then meet Oswaldo for a bit of pool.

En Vuelta (pt. 3)

2006-07-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

The Asuncion terminal was a little bigger than Santa Cruz terminal. It wasn´t nearly as busy though, which may have been due to the fact that it was near midnight. Like I mentioned before, there was a good number of people, like 6 or 7 of us making the connection. Most of the others were heading into Brasil, Sau Paulo or Brasilia. I only had five more hours to ciudad del este; they had more than twenty until they arrived to their destination.

Anyway, the Bolivian boy, Victoria, my twin, some others, and I waited for not more than fifteen minutes outside at the terminal before boarding the next bus. The leader stayed with us until we safely boarded, taking it upon himself to make sure that we made the connection. He seemed to be friends with a lot of people in the terminal, as I saw him run into two terminal workers who were his friends.

I also bought some bottled water for my traveling companions. Oh, I forgot to mention that the leader was pretty drunk. At the last rest stop, he had purchased a liter of beer. He slowly finished the beer as we approached Asuncion, and therefore became slowly more drunk toward the end of the trip. I offered him one of the bottles I bought, but he turned it down, saying that it would have an undesired effect on him.

So we boarded the bus. Sitting in front of me there was a guy about my age who had actually been sitting in front of me in the last bus. But for some reason, we hadn´t really talked at all. So we talked for about twenty minutes. He told me that he had started his trip in Lima, Peru, where he had lived for a while even though he was born in Asuncion, and that he was continuing on to see his father in Sao Paulo. He would be on a bus for almost three and a half days straight. I forget his name but I´m sure that it began with an ¨n¨. He was twenty one years old, and was working as an auto mechanic in Lima before traveling. He was looking forward to seeing many, dark-skinned women in Brazil. I couldn´t blame him.

We stopped talking as soon as the bus left the station. I slept for the rest of the trip.

I was awoken by the azafata a few minutes before we arrived in ciudad del este. I mentioned before that there was a guy I´d met who was traveling to Puerto Iguazu from ciudad del este. Once I got off the bus in ciudad del este (at a street corner- there was nothing resembling a bus terminal), I could not find this man. Great. I would have to fend for myself. Luckily, this was not too difficult.

A man standing on the street corner told me that I could take cab across the corner. And there was a cab less than 20 meters from where I was standing. Easy. I hopped in the cab. I realized that in my wallet, I had a 50 dollar bill, and a small amount of pesos, bolivianos, and guarinis. I wasn´t sure that I´d be able to pay him with this money, so I told him we may have to stop by an ATM at some point, especially considering that I wasn´t sure if there would be any fees at Paraguay or Argentina immigration. We stopped at two ATMs in ciudad del este, only to find that both only accepted mastercard bank cards. I have a visa. I decided to risk it and told the cab driver, Enrique to push forward across the border, hoping that if I had insufficient funds after immigration, that we could stop at an ATM in Argentina.

Oh, I should mention something about ciudad del este. I didn´t know this before traveling there, but my spanish teacher informed me that ciudad del este is very dangerous. It is know for two things, both of which are kinda connected. The first is that many Argentinians will go to ciudad del este to get good bargains on dvds, electronics, and such. The reason for the this is that these goods were stolen, which brings me to the other interesting fact. Apparently, there are strongholds for Hezbollah and al Qaeda in ciudad del este. There were some bombings on a Jewish building in Argentina in 1994. It is believed that a lot of the logistical support for these terrorist attacks came from groups in ciudad del este.

So we make our way to Paraguay immigration. This takes about a minute. It would have taken less time, but the dude who stamps my passport stamps the wrong date at first (July 21st instead of July 12th). So he has to cancel a stamp and apply the correct one.

Don´t have to pay anything. Nice. We drive through Brazil, which you have to do to get to the Argentinian border. So I was in Brazil for a little while even though I don´t have the passport stamp to prove it. Getting into Argentina turns out to just as easy getting out of Paraguay. And minutes later, Enrique and I are cruising through Puerto Iguazu, which is Argetina´s version of a tourist town. We arrive at the bus terminal- I want to buy my ticket home to BsAs before I see the cataratas. Unfortunately, I don´t have money to pay Enrique. He would have accepted the 50 dollar bill, but then I would be losing a lot of money. So we look for another ATM, which turns out to be very close to the bus terminal. Luckily, this one is functional. I take out some money, pay Enrique, and he drives off. I then walk back to the bus terminal, buy my ticket for a bus that leaves at 2 PM. It´s a cochecama. I´m pretty excited for this because it seems as though it will be my most luxurious travel experience during the return.

It´s 7 in the morning at this point. The park opens at 8. I stop off at a cafe, enjoy a cafe con leche and a tostado (ham and cheese melted on toast). I then find a cab to the park. My cabbie is nice enough to walk me into the park.

I had the impression that I could just walk around the park for a little while. Well, when I get there, I find that there are tours, one of which takes you on a boat into one of the waterfalls. Having spent so much time traveling, I have the attitude of what the hell, I´m here so I might as well go all out. So I take the boat tour. This turns out to be pretty awesome. The motor boat is really fast. Going into the falls is quite exciting. A bunch of my clothes get soaked, but that´s no big deal. And I´m able to get some good pictures

The falls are pretty incredible. Very beautiful. Words won´t really do them justice. So I hope that anyone reading this gets a chance to see my pictures when I return. After the boat tour, I walk around the park a little more. I take this little train to a set of falls called garganta del diablo. It´s pretty awesome.

At one oclock, I take a cab from the park to the bus terminal. It turns out that our first bus is not a cochecama, but that we will board a cochecama after four hours on this normal bus. I´´m a little upset since I was under the impression that I was buying a ticket for a 16 hours trip on a cochecama. I think about trying to get a little money back from the bus company, but decide that my Spanish is probably not good enough to argue. And I would probably only be able to get back 10 pesos or so, so three dollars didn´t really seem like it was worth it.

The trip back was incredibly uneventful. The time in the cochecama was nice. I was able to lay nearly horinzontal, and I drank wine with dinner which was adequate though not as good as what I expected based on the stories I´d heard from others. I didn´t really talk to anybody because I was sitting in a row of single seats. I was actually sitting in the last seat on the second floor (it was a double decker). If you even get the chance to take a cochecama, do not take seats toward the back of the bus. The engine is very loud, which makes it impossible to hear the movie which was playing. On our bus, they showed the Da Vinci Code, which I wanted to see but was not able to due to the noise.

So the bus ride turned out to be 18 instead of 16. But I arrived back in Retiro at 8 in the morning last Thursday and was able to make it to class by 9. All in all, a great trip. An experience I will not forget. Hope you all enjoyed the stories from it.

En Vuelta (pt. 2)

2006-07-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

So we make it Paraguay. Done with la tierra. Back on smooth highway. As soon as we enter Paraguay, our bus is inspected by a Paraguayan soldier, the first of probably 10 searches.

Soon thereafter, we make our first stop. We are directed to take all of our bags out the bus. As we exit, we are told by a Paraguayan soldier to form a line and drop our bags in front of us. One by one, one of a few Paraguayan soldiers searches our bags for drugs and verifies that we are on the passenger list. As soon as I am done, I buy a bottle of water and brush my teeth. I have to change some Bolivianos into Guaranis, the Paraguay currency, to make the purchase.

Oh yeah, as I´m standing in line, I make a couple friends. The first guy is quite a talker. I don´t catch his name, but he gives me his business card and informs me that he is on his way home to Asuncion, Paraguay after traveling South America for a month. He runs a small cell phone business in Asuncion and Buenos Aires, which he told me he had recently visited. He was disappointed to learn that I would not be spending even a day in Asuncion, as I was just passing through. For the rest of the trip, he would call me ¨America¨, which was a little funny, slightly embarrassing and mostly annoying. But he was nice and seemed to like me. We had actually spoke a little bit before, during the tierra when I spotted an insect near me and swatted it away. This guy, who I will refer to as ¨the leader¨ for reasons to be explained later, was seated behind me, and informed me that I had missed the bug, but spotted it himself and told me to try again. This time, I swatted with my book and connected. Avispo (wasp), I asked? Si, he told me.

The other guy I met in line didn´t say too much. But he informed me that he was headed to ciudad del este and then Puerto Iguazu, the same route as me, and said that it was okay if i followed him to puerto iguazu after we got off at cuidad del este.

Oh, I also had a short conversation with the azafata, who informed me that when it rains, that same stretch of la tierra that we drove over, can take more than a week. I felt very lucky.

We reboarded the bus and started up again, only to stop a minute later for gas, and then another five minutes later at Paraguayan immigration. As we made our way to the little office, we were greeted by a bunch of poor little kids who were asking us for food and money. There were some nuns on our bus who were handing out bread to the kids from a basket they had brought. I thought that was nice. But it was really sad to see these kids, a couple of whom looked really sick.

Around this immigration office, just as there had been around the Bolivian office, were a collection of animals. There was a goat, a couple roosters, and some dogs, one of which only had three legs, which I couldn´t stop staring at. I finally made it into the office. When the Paraguayan official asked me for my visa, I knew that I was in trouble. I definitely did not have this. I assumed that I wouldn´t need such a document and that my US passport would be sufficient. Wrong. He asked me what I was doing in Paraguay, and I informed him that I was just traveling through the country, on my way back to Argentina. He said, okay, I would be able to get a transport visa, which would cost 70 something dollars. Luckily, I had that 100 dollar bill in my wallet. So I pulled it out and paid the man. He handed me back a 50 dollar bill, stamped my passport, and I was on my way. A little scary.

We reboarded the bus and were back on the road.

Another passenger on the bus was an expressionless Bolivian boy, somewhere in between the age of 15 and 17. I had first seen him with his father at the bus station in Santa Cruz. But this boy was traveling alone, not with his father. I would later learn that he traveling for the first time in his life to see relatives in Sau Paulo. He had a folder full of different papers that he would need for the trip. He made it through immigration in Bolivia and Paraguay. But for some reason, we were later stopped in Paraguay and this boy was pulled from the bus by a Paraguayan soldier, who was asking to see one of the boys documents. He took the boy into an office, which was clearly visible from the bus. We watched as the Paraguayan soldier was unrelenting in letting this boy get on. After about five minutes of this, the leader got off the bus and started negotiating with the soldier. After a couple minutes of talking, the leader pulled out his wallet and handed the soldier some money. The soldier let the boy go, and the leader walked back with his arm around the shoulder of the boy, who remained expressionless, though was also clearly shaken by the experience. And we started up again.

Not too much happened in between the Bolivia-Paraguay border and Asuncion (capital of Paraguay). I talked for a bit with a cute old Bolivian woman named Victoria, who´d lived in Santa Cruz all her life and now worked as a seamstress. When I asked her if she wouldn´t mind talking for a little bit, she said okay, but as our talk went on, I could tell that she grew a bit wary of me; I´m not sure if this was because she was wary of strangers or if it was because I was an American. But I feel as though she warmed up to me as the trip went on. Oh, she was also on her way to Sau Paulo to see her daughter, who had apparently married a Brasilero. And it was her first time out of Bolivia. I imagine, she must have been 65 years old.

At the last rest stop, I also met this other dude, who I will call my twin. I first spotted this guy in the middle of la tierra, when the bus stopped so that everyone could go to the bathroom (women behind the bus and men in front). He was also wearing jeans and white lacoste polo shirt, just like me. I would spend a good portion of the trip trying to figure out if his shirt was also a knock off. He would later tell me that it was. But he had bought his for 80 bolivianos (I got mine for 55). He was impressed with the deal I had gotten. We met as we were both eating empanadas at this rest stop. I asked him what kind he was eating. Carne, just like me. I laughed, we are twins I said. Same clothes, same food. As we walked back to the bus, I asked what he did for a living. He was a medical student in Santa Cruz. Ridiculous, right?

After the rest stop, the leader got up in front of the bus and informed us that the boy who had been pulled off the bus before was in need of some money in order to pay for his connection to Sao Paulo. So he walked down the aisles, collecting money from the passengers. I gave him 20 Bolvianos. The leader gave all the money, which was a pretty good amount, to the boy. Victoria then yelled at the boy to thank the people who had given him money. The boy then got up in front of the entire bus and gave his thanks. It was incredible really. He remained expressionless througout his speech, though you could tell he was very grateful. He was very brave talking in front of everyone. He did a fantastic job, and when he finished, the whole bus gave him a well deserved and proud round of applause.

Four hours after the rest stop, we have been on the bus for 25 hours. Oh, an azafata would tell me at some point, that my trip would consist of 24 hours from Santa Cruz to Asuncion, and then five more on a different bus from Asuncion to ciudad del este. So that was awesome. The bus to ciudad del este would leave at midnight from the Asuncion terminal. At ten oclock at night, we were still on the bus. We had been on the bus for 25 hours total at this point. I started to get a little worried that we weren´t going to make our connection. Luckily, were entered the city of Asuncion a little after 10. I swear that in the last hour before arriving to the bus terminal, we were stopped by at least four military officials, verifying that everyone on the bus was on the list and searching the bus for something.

Asuncion was pretty nice. Seemed like a pretty happening city. Some parts nice, other parts kinda run down. Pretty much just what I expected. I wasn´t too upset to only be passing through.

But eventually, we made it to the Asuncion terminal, and the six or seven of us continuing on to the connection were directed to our new bus...

En Vuelta (pt. 1)

2006-07-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

Before I begin this post, I would like to point out that yesterday was my half-birthday and no one congratuled me on turning 23 and a half. So that sucked.

Also, I thought I´d mention something which I think is kinda funny. So my Spanish has undoubtedly improved. My speaking skills are still way behind my comprehension skills. That being said, I´m still pretty horrible. I´m not going to be anywhere close to fluent by the time I return to the US. But still, I have improved, and I have figured out how not to tip people off to the fact that I am an extranjero. The fact that my appearance allows me to blend in makes this a little easier. What I wanted to mention is that now, sometimes, when people who don´t know that I´m a foriegner talk to me for short periods of time, a lot of them don´t quickly figure out that I am a foriegner. Instead, they just think Í´m weird because I don´t talk a whole lot and when I do talk, it sounds off, intelligible, but off.

So back to the story...

To prepare for my return to Buenos Aires via the South American bus circuit, I washed my clothers (thanks for the suggestion Melissa) and bought some things. I also took out a hundred american from the ATM, which decided it would be best to give me all of the money in the form of a 100 dollar bill. I went to the Hipermaxi, Bolivia´s answer to Walmart, and bought a fake Lacoste white golf shirt for six american and mantequilla de mani (peanut butter) as gifts for some people back in BsAs - peanut butter for some reason does not exist in BsAs, something which I cannot figure out since I have seen peanuts a number of times in the city.

So I go to the bus station at 7:15 and find Javier. I pay for the rest of my ticket, and then wait until the bus leaves, which actually turns out to be an hour later that what I had thought.

Eventually, I board the bus, to find that semicam(semi-bed) is not casicama (almost-bed), but just a regular bus, just like the chinatown bus. Great, so I have 24 hours in this thing. I meet the person sitting next to me, Kita, a 50 or so year old Bolivian physical therapist who has lived her whole life in Santa Cruz. She is visiting family in Asuncion for the first time. The bus leaves the terminal, and after Kita and I exchange in a little more smalltalk, we are served our dinners. So we stop talking and begin eating.

We are served our dinners in tv dinner type trays. We also receive a sodss. The dinner contains the following: friend yuca, chicken milanesa (fried chicken), some rice, some bread, and a couple little candies. Now, as I´m looking down at my dinner, I´m torn. I don´t want to have diarrhea, especially during a 24 hour busride where your not allowed to use the bathroom on board (at least that´s what i´ve been told, even though it turned out that it was acceptable to pee in there). But I´m hungry. I decide that I´m on an adventure, and so I delve in. The yuca is delicious, one thing about Bolivia I really miss since I ate it at pretty much every lunch and dinner. The chicken is also very tasty. The bread is awful (I could taste the preservatives, which was both reassuring and gross at the same time). The rice is acceptable. I drink a little bit of my soda, and then decide I´m full enough. So lay back and fall asleep.

When I wake up, the azafatas (stewards) are informing us that we have to get off the bus for immigration. So we all get off the bus and make a line. The sun has not quite risen yet - I estimate that we´ve been on the bus for about seven hours. So we form a line which leads up to this Bolivian military dude, who is the only person sitting at this table, using candlelight to make sure that everyone who is standing in line is on the passenger list for the bus. I show him my passport, let him know what number seat I´m sitting in, and then am free to go somewhere- where I don´t really know. I just walk 200 meters down this dirt road, following the person who was in line in front of me.

I find that I have arrived to the Bolivian immigration. I wait in another line outside this bulding. I look around and see that some people have set up a little makeshift kiosk to sell fruit and sweet to bus passengers passing through. There is also a little cafe in a dilipidated building. And there are also a number of animals walking around. Here, I remember seeing dogs, a pig, and some roosters. The rooster kinda freaks me out because it comes to within a few feet of me. So I finally make it to the building, show this other guy at a table my passport. He asks me a papelito (little piece of paper). I tell him I´m not sure if I have it as I am digging through my backpack. I finally pull out a piece of paper which he grabs from me while informing me that this is what he needs.

I wait outside for the rest of the group to get througb immigration. I take an awesome picture of the horizon, which I hope to post on the blog later, but haven´t downloaded from my camera yet. And then I reboard the bus and we are off.

Starting at the immigration office, it seems that the quality of the road has really taken a turn for the worst. Up until that point on the trip, we had been traveling on paved road. Now, it was readily apparent that we were traveling on a dirt road, la tierra.

La tierra was ridiculous. We would spend five hours on la tierra, all of which were pretty awful. For some reason, there were two adjacent but different levels of this dirt road, and I think that our muy bueno chofer had been directed to use each level at certain points. So we would constantly drive diagonally up or down a small slope to change roads. Oh my god, la tierra was awful. Five hours. It was just so bumpy. Seriously, I wouldn´t advise a subaru outback to drive on la tierra. It was absurd, absurd, that a bus was taking this route. A number of times the bus driver took the wrong route, which meant that we had to do la tierra in reverse. There were some bumps where the bus tipped a lot, and I would wait for the next bump in the road, hoping but certainly not sure of the fact that it would realign the bus. So how can you pass the time on la tierra? Sleep? Yeah right. Read? I can always read in the car, but when I pulled out my S-E dictionary to look up a work during the la tierra, I had to put the dictionary away before I found the word because after I had spent thirty seconds trying to keep the book still and focus on the word that I was looking for, my head hurt. Watch tv? Oh yeah, so when the bus pulled out from Santa Cruz, there were a couple tvs in our bus. When Kita asked the azafata when a movie would start, he laughed in her face while informing her that the tv did not work. After an hour on the tierra, we passed another bus and for reason, gave them our tvs. So for the rest of the trip, there was nothing in the two little containers which used to hold the tvs. For the majortity of the time on la tierra, I just sat there, watching the road, trying to anticipate bumps, praying that I would live to see an asphalt highway again.

And the polvo (dust) was also out on control. The bus kicked up so much dust, which of course made it´s way into the bus. The windows in the bus were open (Bolivis is tropical, remember) during la tierra. At one point, when the sun shone at a certain angle, it seemed me as though the air was 50% polvo. I could tell that the mucus membrance in my throat were working extra hard to keep my airway clear. Seriously, by the end of la tierra, I felt as though I had la tierra-induced asthma because it really hurt to take a full breath. Also, my whole body was covered in a thick coat of dust. My white polo shirt was now a little brownish, and my hair had become immovable, protected by a coat of polvo.

Well, when we arrived in Paraguay, the road turned from la tierra into asphalt road again, and I was proud of myself for having endured la tierra.

Oh yeah, and during la tierra, we were served breakfast, which was a juice box of chocolate milk and a little cookie.

Santa Cruz

2006-07-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

In this miniseries of blog posts about my trip, this one will be the most boring. Sorry to disappoint, but at least it can only get better after this one.

So I´m on the plane to Santa Cruz...

I pass out for the first hour because I´m so exhausted from the past couple hours of running around. When I wake up, we´re receiving our meals and a drink. For the rest of the flight, I don´t really do much besides go over in my head how I´m going to contact my friends once I arrive in Santa Cruz. I check to make sure that I brought my little book that has their home phone number in it. Don´t have it. Must have left it in the hostel. Great. Luckily, I remember that I have their number in an email, so now I have to find an internet cafe (which I correctly figure will not be tough to do in the Santa Cruz airport).

Interesting sidenote, elections were held in Bolivia last week in which the people voted to give greater autonomy to various parts of Bolivia. They also voted that the government draft a new constitution. Well, on the plane ride there, I was sitting next to two Bolivianos, both of whom were connecting in Santa Cruz to continue on to La Paz, the capital. Well, the man sitting to one side of me was reading a book in Spanish. The title of this book, and this is a semi-rough translation, was ¨How to Write a Constitution¨.

So we land in Santa Cruz, and I´m through immigration in ten minutes. I change some money into Bolivianos (the name of the citizens and the currency of Bolivia), find an internet cafe and my friends´ number, and call them. When I shout surprise in Spanish to my friend Melissa on the phone, I can tell that she is less than thrilled to hear that I´ve arrived. But she´s nice and doesn´t want to make me fend for myself in Santa Cruz and gives me directions to their place.

Before I get into a cab, I realize that I don´t have a return flight back to BsAs as of yet. I look at the receipt to my ticket and figure out that I have an open return. So I decide it would be smart to book this return trip now and walk over to the AeroSur window. I talk with the woman and ask for a flight back in the beginning of the week. She informs me that there is nothing available. Shit. She puts me on waiting lists for Sunday through Wednesday. My best chance of making a flight is on Tuesday, where I am 4th on the waiting list. The other days, I am no higher than 20th.

So I get in a cab and arrive to my friends house. It is completely understandable that Melissa is pissed. Melissa and Ben live in someone else´s house. They are guests. So it´s weird for them, as guests, to have guests. I arrive to find that Ben is pretty sick with a sore throat. Damn. I can tell he´s a little upset that I just popped in, but also that he´s happy to see me (so is Melissa). So we have dinner, which Niko, the woman who lives in the house with her daughter and also cleans the house for the owner, makes for all of us. Over the course of the next few days, I was very grateful to share meals with Melissa and Ben(when he was up to it) and the rest of the Americans staying there, which were cooked either by Niko or Flores, the cook in the other house.

I´ll be honest, the next few days were pretty uneventful. Melissa and Ben will tell you that there´s not a whole bunch to do. I think at one point, Melissa said that she was making tasks for herself to do so that she wouldn´t be bored. But she was also going to classes about diabetes (which is a huge problem in Santa Cruz) in the morning, so I thought she was being pretty productive.

We watched the world cup final which was pretty fun. We went out to the main Plaza in Santa Cruz, which was pretty. Santa Cruz is a strange city. Like Buenos Aires, it´s a mix of the first and third worlds, expect there´s a shit-ton more third world and a hell of a lot less first-world in Santa Cruz in relation to Buenos Aires. The cab drivers are more insane in Santa Cruz. The majority of intersections don´t have stop signs or stoplights and so they´re pretty much a free for all and are very scary to pass through.

When I think about Santa Cruz, the one thing I can´t get out of my head is the odor that permeates the entire city. Burning trash. Why does it smell like this? Because people burn their trash. It´s an awful odor.

We also went out dancing a couple nights. I drank a decent amount of Pacena, the number one beer in Bolivia. Dancing in Bolivia is weird. There´s mostly Latin music at the clubs and bars, in contrast to Buenos Aires, where you will find mostly American music. And there´s pretty much no freak-dancing. People dance in lines across from one another hear. Strange.

So during my stay in Santa Cruz, I kept calling the airline Aerosur to see if I had moved up in any of the waiting lists. Turns out that I had somehow moved down all of them. Not really sure how that´s possible. Oh wait, corruption mixed with poor organization. Okay, now that makes more sense. On Sunday night, I was no higher than 30th on any of the waiting lists. Seems like if I want to get back to BsAs reasonably soon, I´m going to have to buy another ticket from another company. If Santa Cruz was more exciting and if I didn´t feel bad intruding in someone else´s house for longer, I might have wanted to stay in Santa Cruz. But that was not the case.

So when one of the other Americans was heading over to the bus terminal, I decided to join her to see if I could find a ticket to Puerto Iguazu, a city in Argentina which apparently has incredible cataratas (waterfalls) which I had wanted to visit.

So we go to the bus terminal, which is fucking loco. So many people running around, so many people selling things, so many bus companies trying to get your business. After taking care of my friends ticket, we head over to the international section of the bus companies. A woman directs me to a company which sells tickets to Puerto Iguazu. At the window of the Yacyreta bus company, I am greeted by Javier Fernandez, and plump, energetic Bolivian man who is wearing a red button-down shirt. Upon first glance at Javier, I realize that this is a man who will say anything to get me to hand over some money. So I listen.

Javier informs me that their company can take me as far as ciudad del este, a city which is in paraguay, but is right next to puerto iguazu in argentina. He informs me that puerto iguazu is located at the tres fronteras (three borders) of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. There are cities in each of these countries right at where these three borders meet. He tells me that the trip in 24 hours, and will cost me 480 Bolivianos (60 bucks) and includes two dinners, breakfast, and lunch. The bus leaves on Monday, the next day, at 8 in the evening. He describes the bus to me as very comfortable and tells me that the seats are semi-cama (translated as semi bed). Sounds pretty sweet to me. He also tells me that the driver is a muy bueno chofer, which for some reason I find reassuring at the time, and for some reason I would continue to find reassuring during the actual trip.

I don´t have 480 Bolivianos on me now, and I´m not yet sure if I want to sit on a bus for a day, so I agree to put down a little deposit of 100 Bolivianos (12 bucks) to reserve my seat.

On the taxi ride home, I decide that I don´t really want to stick around Santa Cruz for much longer. And I feel as though even though the bus ride is so long, it will be an adventure. So I decide I will return tomorrow night and make my way toward the tres fronteras.

Sorry this post sucked so much. I promise things get more exciting from here on in.

Making the Flight

2006-07-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a six day excursion away from Buenos Aires. I´ve showered for the first time in a few days. I´ve brushed my teeth with a faucet, the first time i´ve done that in a few days.

As some of you know, my emotional state has not exactly been what you would call stable as of late. So when I make decisions, I should probably sleep on it or at least give it some time before I act on an impulse. Well, I haven´t really been that logical recently.

On Friday, I decided to visit my friends in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. I made this decision at 2:15 in the afternoon. I knew there was a flight leaving EZE, the airport in Buenos Aires, at 4:00. As many of you know, once I make a decision, it´s tough to pry the idea out of my head. So I gathered my things(I brought a small backpack that I had purchased here in BsAs), asked that the attendant at the hostel retrieved my passport out of the lockbox, and was on my way at 2:30.

I immediately waved down a cab. I asked him how long it would take to get to the airport and how much it would cost. 45 minutes he told me and 40 pesos. I told him I would give him 50 pesos if he could get me there in half an hour. He turned off his meter and we were off.

I made the decision to try to go to Bolivia this weekend because I wanted a chance in Buenos Aires of putting together some semblance of a life, of continuity, for the next month. I had originally scheduled to go to Santa Cruz next weekend, but I was concerned that by doing this, my time in BsAs would be too fragmented, and that I would never have a fair shot of having something of a life here. So I tried to make it.

Mind you, there were a multitude of reasons that going to Bolivia was a bad idea. (1) I didn´t yet have a ticket. (2) There was a good chance that there either wasn´t space on the flight or that I would not make the time of departure (3) My friends in Bolivia didn´t know I was coming, and there was a possibility they wouldn´t be there. (4) I hadn´t gotten any vaccines and I´m pretty sure that the goverment or some health organization recommends that you get at least a yellow fever vaccine before you enter Bolivia. So all in all, not my best decision. But that didn´t stop me from going. Like I said, I´m in a very emotional state.

So the taxi zooms through the streets of Buenos Aires then along the highway on our way to the airport. As we´re about 5 kilometers away, the taxi driver informs me that the gas meter indicator is below empty. I ask him if there are any gas stations around the airport. He says he´s not sure. I figure there must be.

We end up arriving to the airport at 3:10. I ask an airport worker where the counter to Aerosur (the company of the flight) is located and I am off. When I arrive, I see that the check-in for the flight to Santa Cruz ended at 3:00. I ask a worker at Aerosur if there´s any chance I can buy a ticket for the flight. He tells me no. I ask again, and he tells me to run over to some office to see if they will permit me to buy a ticket. I run over to where he directs me, but can´t find an office. I run back to the man I spoke to before, pleading with him to let me on the flight. He talks to someone else who finally informs me that there is space on the plane and that he will consult with his boss to see if I can buy a ticket.

Remember, this is Argentina. No rules are unbreakable. Buying a ticket for an international flight and boarding the plane inside an hour of departure is not as bad as the same would sound in the US.

So the guy consults his boss, and finally he lets me buy a ticket. He informs me of the price. Pretty expensive, but the same as I would pay if I had bought the ticket a month in advance. All in all, not that bad. Roundtrip.

The guy gets my information, prints out my ticket. It´s 3:30. I get my ticket and then rush to the gate. Security takes a minute. Paying a tax to use the international terminal is another minute. Glad they take credit card.

I board the plane and am sitting in my assigned seat by 3:35, less than 90 minutes after I had made the decision to go. Feeling pretty good.

As I´m sitting in my seat, I think about if I paid for the flight. I used my credit card for the tax, but never gave the airlines that information. They told me how much it would cost, but definitely never collected said amount. Hmmm. Nope, I definitely didn´t pay. And I´m sitting in my seat. Should I tell anybody. No.

Didn´t really matter, because apparently the airlines realized their mistake and a stern-looking airport official ordered me to deboard the plane and hand over my credit card, which I did. He told me that I could reboard the plane when it turned out that the card went through and he went off running, and I waited at the gate outside the plane.

3:50. Still not back. Shit, I might not make this flight now if this guy doesn´t return soon. Finally, at 3:53, this guy returns and informs me that my card went through. He makes me sign the receipt. He then informs me that there´s another tax that I have to pay to the airlines for an international flight and that this must be paid en efectivo (cash). I have pretty much no cash on me. No American money (I realized during this trip that not having American money on me was a huge mistake - it would save me later on). 12 pesos. This tax was 40 pesos. Mi falta 28 pesos.

At that moment, it seemed as though i might not make this flight, very sad after all that i had been through in the past couple hours. There were no ATMs around, and it seemed as though there were no options for me.

Then, something incredible happened. One of the airport employees, out of the goodness of his heart, felt sorry for me, and pulled out his wallet and paid the 28 pesos that I couldn´t. Bless this man´s heart. Taken aback by this man´s charity, I tried to thank him as best I could in my Castellano (Spanish) and asked him if he would be here on Monday when I returned so I could pay him back. He told me yes, and to get going or I would miss my flight. So at 3:57, I reboarded.

Minutes later, we were off to Bolivia...

Vivo

2006-07-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

There´s a key concept in Argentina known as vivo. This concept is essentially the same as swindling someone, getting something out of someone else, or taking advantage of someone else. To vivo someone, you screw them. The prime example here is with the cabbies, who will do all kinds of tricks in order to give you incorrect change or fake bills as change.

I paid 700 pesos, which is roughly 230 dollars to live for a month in an apartment owned by a woman named Marianna. Marianna was an okay host. She wasn´t really around that much, so it´s kinda a stretch to call her a host. She also did hard drugs. So that was cool.

Last week, I asked Marianna if my friends could stay with me (I had two friends from med school visiting me this week). I assumed that it would be okay since I´m renting out the room. I kinda assumed that I could do anything I wanted to in the room, including keep people in there. Well, I shouldn´t have made these assumptions. Marianna started going off about trust issues with extra people in the house and how she already doesn´t like having so many people in the house because it doesn´t make her feel as though she´s in her own home. Apparently this also means that I´m not allowed to have guests over. This pissed me off. She continued to say that if I wanted my friends to stay over, I would have to pay extra. You have got to be kidding me. I knew that I was right in the middle of a good ol fashioned vivoing. And there was no way I was paying to squeeze my two friends and myself on a couple small matresses for four nights.

Well, that got me thinking. My month of rent is almost up. Am I really happy in my apartment? After thinking about this for a ratito, the answer was an obvious no. It´s pretty lonely in that place. The only person who is ever around is this Polish girl who is pretty nice but also very annoying because she likes to teach me about alternative medicine. And then her roommate, another Polish girl, likes to blast 90´s hip hop in the morning, which wouldn´t be so much of a problem if there was a real wall and not a makeshift shade separating our rooms. PS, I cannot stand the sound of Polish. When those girls would speak Polish, I felt as though my head were repeatedly being hit with a hammer. Then there was their friend, who told me that I shouldn´t rehydrate with cold water when I exercise, but hot tea instead. When she explained that the physiology behind this idea was that it´s bad to shock the body (which is warm durante exercise) with something cold. I almost socked her in the face. Anyway, the point here is that I didn´t think it would be very difficult to find a living situation that would be more pleasing to me.

So I decided to move out. I looked at this all as a vivo back in the face of Marianna. She doesn´t let my friends stay over, I don´t pay her the 700 pesos she´s expecting for next month. But I had to find a new place to live. I decided to live in a hostel. All of these decisions were essentially made at the same time as my friend´s flight got in on Sunday. So when they arrived, I made them come with me to look at some hostels. After looking at three places, we finally stumbled upon giromino, a cozy little place in a neighborhood named Palermo Viejo. Great location, safe, cheap. I got a room for the next night. My friends found a hotel.

So now I´m living in a hostel in Buenos Aires. I live in a four bed room with one other dude, a guy from Spain named Andres who works as a cartoonist here in Buenos Aires. So that´s pretty awesome. It´s a little scary here at times, and there are people here who are really young so that makes me feel old. But mostly, it´s more exciting than my old place. So that´s where I´ll be staying for the next month. I kinda hope that no one else moves in to our room, but if they do, so what. Anyway, I feel as though I vivoed the shit out of Marianna. I told her that I was leaving about an hour before I actually moved out. Vivo!

El Gimnasio

2006-06-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

A couple days after I arrived in Buenos Aires, I joined a local gym. The place looked very nice, and I paid 85 bucks for a three-month membership (two one-month memberships were more expensive). The gym is called Megatlon. There are a bunch of different cardio and musculacion machines. It also comes with a semi-personal trainer. Mine is a quite large man whose name is Ricardo. He's argentinian, but he might as well be German due to his uncanny resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenger. There is no question that Ricardo could kill me with one punch. Since he's my trainer, he tells me what to do. And since he's so intimidating, when he tells me what to do, I do it. Even things I would think that I wouldn't be able to do – just because he tells me so.

The gym also offers a bunch of free activities. Pilades, yoga, and a bunch of sports. The pilades and other move to music classes are relatively similar to the music video call on me, minus the fact that there are also a bunch of dudes doing the stuff. The sports are played on a mini-basketball court, which is actually the size of a volleyball court.

Recently, Ricardo told me to attend the basketball class one evening. So I came. I thought that since Ricardo said class, we would be doing drills and learning stuff. But we just played basketball. Half of the players take after Manu Ginobli and furiously slash to the net at any chance they get, often drawing a falta. Not an incredible amount of passing. I would say that I'm pretty average. It's especially tough for me because I feel as though I excel on a full court, where I can exploit my speed. So the short court kinda cramps my style. But basketball was fun.

I went to my first volleyball class a couple days ago. This was ridiculously fun. For some reason, volleyball is very popular in Argentina. Obviously, I'm not very good at jumping at spiking, but I would call myself an above average defensive specialist. I had a couple nice strings of serving as well, so that was nice. I think I will go back and play volleyball tonight. It's a good time.

Seguridad

2006-06-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

For the most part, during the few weeks that I've spent in Buenos Aires, I have felt very safe. I have not felt as though I was in any danger walking around the city by myself. Well, some things have happened in the last week to jolt me from feeling so secure.

1) Monday was a holiday in Argentina, So people had a three-day weekend and most didn't go into work on this day. Well, I had class because my program only takes days off for the really important holidays. Scott, one of the directors of my program, informed me that Argentina has many holidays — one about every three weeks. So if they celebrated every holiday, it would be a bit excessive and overly-lazy. So I got out of class at one in the afternoon and walked a few blocks the the bus stop. On the way there, some dude who was standing on a stoop talking to this woman decided to step out onto the sidewalk and stop me. He was speaking really quickly in Spanish. I could tell that he wanted something from me. Seemed like money. So I told him in Spanish that I didn't understand anything that he was saying and stepped to the side so I could walk away. Well, he also stepped to the side to block me from walking away. Keep in mind, this is all taking place in the middle of the day, in broad daylight. Anyway, I was pretty scared when he stepped to the side. I mentally prepared myself to fight him if he were to throw a punch at me. So I stepped to the side again, and was able to walk away.

2) As I mentioned in the previous post, my neighbor Enrique informed me that there are many theives around this neighborhood. So that was comforting.

3) I've walked by many paso a niveles in the past week. Apparently, sketchy ass people who will rob you hang out by the train tracks. So I have to be very careful when I'm walking across train tracks, which for some reason seems to have been very often lately.

4) Yesterday, I met with my grandfather's sister-in-law's cousin, Matilde, who lives in Argentina. An extremely pleasant woman. Anyway, she was giving me a ride home from her place yesterday. I looked out the window at one point, and witnessed a mugging. Two guys on a moto (motorcycle) fought the purse away form a woman. She was still holding onto the purse as the guys drove away and as she could not hold on any longer, she fell to the ground really hard. This sad image is burned into my memory. She they proceeded to get up and run after the guys on the motorcyle, to no avail of course. The crazy thing about this was that Matilde did not even bat an eye. She told me that it happens all the time, undistracted from her driving.

Cerrar la Puerta

2006-06-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I did some hardcore shopping for the first time I've been there. I've made many purchases here or there, but yesterday I went buckwild. I bought two pairs of jeans, two sweaters, and a pair of shoes for 250 pesos — which comes out to a little more than 80 bucks. Not bad.

I carried three bags of my stuff home. When I arrived home, I was surprised to find that my key would not open the door. I worked at it for a minute of so before ringing the doorbell in the hopes that someone would be home. Luckily, Maria, our cleaning lady (not really sure why we have a cleaning lady) was home. I was able to tell her that the lock to the door was broken. She opened the window to the door, like the ones in those cars where you can open the window to the trunk and not open the door at the same time. I was able to squeeze through a cubby-sized hole to enter our place. But the lock was still broken.

Neither Maria nor I knew what to do about fixing the lock, so I went across the street to the Parilla (which luckily was open because they have the weirdest hours — usually closed from around 6-9) and talked to this guy I know, Beto. He came over and looked at the lock and said that it was really broken and that he would call a cerrajeria, or locksmith. A minute later, this old man, Enrique, showed up at our doorstep. He started to inspect the lock and figured out what we had to do to fix it. Enrique then took off to go get his toolbox. In the meantime, I asked Maria where Enrique had come from. I assumed he was a locksmith. Maria informed me that he was our neighbor. Enrique later told me that he lived above the parrilla. I always wondered what was up those stairs.

Enrique came back with his tool box and removed as much of the lock as he could. Then he went to the hardware store to buy the necessary replacement screws while I tried to remove the rest of the lock. I was able to remove the rest of it by the time Enrique returned. Enrique tried to reinstall the lock for the next five minutes, but we both soon realized that he had purchased the wrong-sized screws. So he returned to the hardware store once again. When he got back, it was pretty dark outside, and I held a candle for Enrique as he worked to put the lock back. Finally, he was able to get it.

The lock now worked better than it had before (did I mention that the lock was already very fidgety). He told me that in order for the lock to work a little more smoothly, I should return tomorrow and scrub a part of the inside of the door (te part that makes the holes for the lock on the door-side) with a toothbrush — at least I think that's what he said. He also informed me that our lock was very old — which is why is was now broken — and that we should consider replacing it. Especially because there are muchos ladrones (thiefs) in our neighborhood. And now our door works, again.

El Colectivo

2006-06-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

The public transportation system in Buenos Aires is fantastic. I think I've discussed the system in a previous blog post. Anyway, the majority of my experience with the system is through the colectivo, aka the bus. The colectivo is awesome. Riding it is a ton of fun. I take the 106 to class every day.

The fare is ochenta pesos, which comes out to roughly 25 US cents. Not bad, especially because it's possible to ride a route for more than an hour. Each line of buses in Buenos Aires is unique because the buses are privately owned. Therefore, the buses all look different because the companies will paint the buses different colors. For example, the 106 is painted white, red, and green. And there is also a drawing of a rose on the side of the bus. Apparently, back in the 70's, the bus companies would paint the buses crazy colors, like hot pink, to make their buses stand out in hopes of attracting more customers. My guess is that most people don't choose what bus they ride based on the how the bus looks.

The buses are usually very crowded, sometimes so much so that you have to wait for the next bus to board. Open seats are very rare. On the occasions when I am lucky enough to get a seat, I usually end up getting up after one or two stops because it is good etiquette here to give your seat to an elderly woman or man.

The routes that the buses take are very confusing. I bought a little guide book for the bus system. It is ridiculously complicated. In a typical route, a bus will travel on twenty different streets. So following the routes on a map takes a lot of time.

The bus drivers here are very experienced. They know what they're doing. They always drive the buses extremely fast, I would say recklessly fast. I used to wonder how these buses never got into accidents. Yesterday, I stopped wondering because the bus I was on hit a cab. Just grazed it basically, though it made a loud thud. The bus driver was visibly upset and made a gesture with his hands indicating that the cab had just cut in front of him without any warning. So we had to stop and wait for five minutes or so while the bus driver talked with the taxi driver. And then we were back on our way. Luckily, no one was hurt in the accident. And I don't think the cab should have any trouble finding a mechanic in Buenos Aires who can fix the dent in his car. Seriously, there are probably 200 different mechanic shops within a one mile radius of me.

Argentina vs. Serbia-Montenegro

2006-06-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

This morning at ten, my teacher, Danielle, and I took a break from my studies to watch the Argentina v. Serbia-Montenegro game. We headed over to a local cafe along with Scott and Silvia, the two people who run the language school.

When Argentina scored five minutes into game, it was pretty obvious that this game was going to be no contest. Argentina continued to rattle off five more goals. This experience was much different than watching to Argentina v. Ivory Coast game the week before because I watched that game at an expat bar. The cafe this morning was nearly all Argentinian, which made the game so much more fun. The celebration during a goal is ridiculously fun. Everyone is SO happy. It's almost impossible not to laugh when they score a goal because people are really just incredibly joyous — making sounds that people do not normally make, moving in funny ways, hitting high notes that you would not expect old men to hit. Just so much fun. And you would think that throughout the six goals, the celebration would simmer down a little bit. But no. Every goal seemed to evoke more excitement than the last, even though each subsequent goal was less and less important.

Another highlight of the match was the food. I had a tostada, which is simply a toasted sandwich made of ham and cheese. Delicious. And I washed that down with a Pepsi. And while I enjoyed my meal, I think I should have ordered what Scott and Danielle got — cafe con leche con tres medialunas (croissants). The croissants tasted like heaven. They do this thing here where they sprinkle sugar on the outside of the croissant. Incredible. I don't know why they don't think to do that in the US.

Guardopolvo

2006-06-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

On my first afternoon in Buenos Aires, I was walking around and noticed that almost every child of schooling age was wearing a white coat, just like the ones that medical students wear. This seemed kind off odd to me. It didn't exactly seem like a school uniform. I couldn't figure out what the deal was. And I was definitely a little upset that all of these kids were running around in white coats. I take pride in my white coat. It makes me feel special. And then, I come to a city where every kid, even the really little ones, are running around in these same white coats. If I were to don my white coats(which I didn't bring I promise) in Buenos Aires, people wouldn't even give me a second look. I would blend in. So what's the deal. Is every kid a medical student?

My teacher, Danielle, cleared up the confusion. Apparently, these white coats are called guardopolvos. Every child who is in public school in Buenos Aires must wear one to class. The reasons for these white coats are two-fold: (1) so that the kids have a jacket to wear over their normal clothes — so that their normal clothes don't get dirty, and (2) to make the kids feel special and kinda professional, as if they were little doctors, which is in fact what they are called when they're wearing their guardopolvos ( doctores chiquitas en espanol). Where the enyay on this computer?

La Copa Mundial

2006-06-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

So obviously the World Cup is a pretty big deal in Argentina. I watched the game at a bar that was about half Argentians and half expats (mostly British and American I think) with a friend of a friend — Emily. We sat at the bar for the whole game. It was fun — pretty much what I would expect. Argentina beat the Ivory Coast pretty soundly, though a goal late in the the game by the Ivory Coast did give la seleccion Argentina a bit of a scare.

What was more interesting was that for the couple days which followed the game, I must have seen the replays of the three goals scored in the game about fifty times. I guess that's what's funny about highlights — there are so few of them. But the game was sweet. The whole city kinda shut down for two hours during the game, which was cool.

Watching the US game was a different story. The game started at 1 here, and I finish class at 1, so I ran over to a restaurant near where my class is to watch it. I was probably the only American in the restaurant. When I got there, it was already nine minutes into the game, and the Czechs were up 1-0. Great. Things only got worse, obviously. The US sucked — they just looked like they couldn't get anything going. I thought that when you were in the top five of the world rankings, you were supposed to at least look like you could compete with any team in the world. Clearly not the case. My frustration was exacerbated by the fact that all of the patrons and waiters at the restaurant seemed to get a huge kick out of the US sucking. Damn. The game was also kinda boring — I had to order another coca-cola just to stay awake. Like Zack said in the EF#1 blog, things are looking very bleak for the US. Guess I'll have to start rooting for Argentina.

some photos from Sunday

2006-06-11T12:42:00.001-07:00

view of a hollowed car from the balcony of mi pieza.

street merchants at el circulo de Serrano.

at first i thought this was just normal garbage, but upon second glance, i realized that it was in fact steaming garbage.

Some grafiti near my place.

Corrientes! the main drag by where I live

about the billionth piece of dogshit i've seen on the street

evidence that Gefilte Fish does exist!

Title of Blog

2006-06-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

My Spanish still sucks, so I may be wrong about this. The title of the blog is intended to mean, when I arrive, I gave myself a kiss. It's meant to accentuate the fact that I am solo en Argentina. Comprendes?

Gefilte Fish

2006-06-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

Last night, I had one of those experiences where, in the moment, I felt as though I was exactly where I was meant to be.

Let me set the scene for you. I went to a parrilla/cafe called Delu on Corrientes, which is the main drag around here. After I checked out the menu, I decided on a matambre of pizza with a side of batatas fritas (yam fries) along with an agua sin gas. When my dish came, the yam fries looked delicious, and they were. The pizza, however, looked kinda weird. The crust looked like something that I'd never seen before. So I dug in. Turns out the crust was the matambre, which means a cut of meat from a cow. It was okay — I definitely would have prefered a bread crust, but it was edible. Since I got a little sick of the matambre toward the end, I decided to indulge in two deserts. Flan and fruit salad. Pretty good except there were seeds in the grapes. Not awesome.

Anyway, now that the scene is set — a woman who was eating with a group of people came over and started talking to me. In my broken Spanish, I was able to tell her that I was not Argentinian (I'm telling you, honestly, people assume I'm agentinian — there a ton of white people and Jews here and I really look like I fit right in). As far as the EF#1 bloggers go, I would say that Zack and Ethan and Craig could pass as native portenos. Ben, Ian, and Jon have an offchance of passing as one. Anyway, I told her where I was from and she invited me to sit with them for the upcoming show (?). I declined since I was doing my homework at the restaurant and felt a little uncomfortable joining them. So I stayed at my table toward the back of the restaurant. Soon, klezmer music began to play from some speakers in the front of the restaurant. Interesting. Eventually, the main act, Gefilte Fish, which consisted of one middle-aged woman and one middle-aged man, come out on stage and started singing the top hits from Hebrew School. Shalom Aloehem, Havanagila, Dayenu, and some others that I forget. They were very good. It's funny to travel so far away from home and find something so familiar. Oh, and it seems that the woman who spoke with me is in tight with Gefilte Fish because they gave me, the international traveler a shout-out, during their show. So that was a hoot. The audience consisted of twenty or so middle-aged jewish restaurant-goers, exactly who I would expect to be the target demographic of Gefilte Fish. It's funny that Gefilte Fish translates to Spanish too. I would expect it to be pescado de Gefilte. Oh well. More good times solo en Argentina.

Firsts (and probably not lasts)

2006-06-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

- Ate asado — which I think is fillet mignon still on the bone and grilled. It was good — but a lot of work to eat. Also, what made it harder to eat was the dog that was standing next to me while I ate — it was just waiting for me to give it a piece I think. The dog eventually went away. Still, it’s pretty scary when you arm is the only think that stands between a dog(whose owner, if it has an owner, you can’t locate) and a steak is your arm.

- Stepped in dog poop on the sidewalk.

- Drank apple-flavored Gatorade. Tasted weird. Though I finished it in less than a minute.

- Lost to an Argentinian in pool. Though I call bullshit on this one. The guy I was playing against, Juan, and I were tied at one game a piece. He proceeded to sink the eight ball on the last shot, but also sank the cue ball. I think he was telling me that since the eight ball went in first, I lost. I don’t exactly have the Spanish skills to argue with that, so I simply gave him dos pesos (about 70 cents) and made plans to play with him again tomorrow.

- Ate dulce de leche ice cream.

- Was shot at by my next door neighbor’s children – with a play-gun of course.

- Drank by myself. Shit. It was only a small bottle of wine though.

- Was told I look Argentinian. You may think that I’m just flattering myself, but I’m starting to think that this really is true, especially because yesterday I saw an Argentinian man who looked just like me. Also, I’ve had to disappoint two Argentinian people so far who’ve asked me for directions. On a sidenote, I haven’t been around so many white people ever except for Camp Nebagamon. There’s no question that Lafayette had more people of color than this country. I’ve seen one black guy since I’ve been here. Yes, I guess that the average white person here has darker skin than the average whitey in American. But still, there are a fair amount of white, pale, white people here. I guess that’s why I fit it. Also a lot of Jews so I guess that helps my cause as well. Oh yeah, and I spotted my first Manu Ginoblli lookalike today.

- Saw a kid, must have been six or seven, smoking a cigarette as he was walking with looked to be his mother and his sister.

5 embarrassing moments

2006-06-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

1. I order noquis or gnocchi at a restaurant today. The waiter brought a dish that I thought looked vaguely like gnocchi. The dish was two bites big, and I finished eating it in approximately fifteen seconds. I was under the impression that this was my main course, so I reached for the menu and started looking for something else to order. I motioned to the waiter, and when he came over, I asked him a poorly-worded question about the types of ravioli they offer. After thirty seconds of not being able to understand my question, he realized that I was trying to order another dish, puzzled because the noquis had not yet come. He explained to me that that little dish I had in the beginning was fried cauliflower or something like that — that it was nothing — and proceeded to laugh at me as he walked away. I also was chuckling because I was such a fool!

2. I was playing pool or billares today(by myself — isn't that sad), which by the high volume of places to play pool in the city makes me think that pool is the second national sport of Argentina behind futbol. Anyway, I scratched on a shot, and the cue ball never came into it's little hole. I had to inform guy behind the bar in my broken Spanish that I had lost the white ball or el pelota blanco. Then some guy came over and reached his hand in one of the pockets and grabbed the ball. I guess that one's not all that embarrassing.

3. I was walking in the street by myself in Buenos Aires for the first time last night. According to my host, Marianna, the streets of the city are very safe, even at night. Didn't really matter to me. I was scared shitless. There are dogs who belong to no one running around. There is poop all over the sidewalk. There are areas where there is a lot of pedestrian traffic and areas where there is very little. There are cars careening through the streets. Let's just say that I was on edge. My breaking point came as I was walking by a storefront, and something coming out of the door but behind a wall so I couldn't see it scared the snot out of me, and I jumped. Turns out it was a child on a tricycle.

4. Today I signed up for a gym membership. The woman who was instructing me on how to fill out the membership form told me to fill in the telephone number. She then asked me to for an emergency telephone number. Didn't have that either. She was baffled. I actually do have an emergency number — the number of my host — I just didn't have it on me at the moment. Anyway, that's kinda crazy to think about. Mom, do you think they'll make an international call in case of an emergency?

5. Apparently we have a housekeeper, Maria. She was cleaning up our place from noon to 9 today. Nice woman as far as I can tell. And she likes me too, I think. She was telling my hostess today that she thinks I'm guapo. Esta bien.

Intro

2006-06-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

I'm here in Buenos Aires for the summer with the hope of learning a little bit of Spanish. I've only been here for two days, but the amount of bloggable material I have so far is out of control. I don't have much to do at this point, so unless that changes, expect a quality and quantity of posting that will make Down in the Domo look like a piece of garbage.