Future Plans

I spend a lot of time reading my Lonely Planet guide (thanks Sue!) and finding stuff to do around the city. In fact, just about every weekend I wake up, read about something, and then go see it. To date, this approach has yielded great results, and I rarely venture downtown without having plans hatched that day, with the help of my ever-present guide. While I have not yet checked out many of the museums around town, I have seen many of the restaurants, cafes, bars, monuments, parks, streets, and fairs. I´ve even started to get a little bored with reading about the city, because I have already seen most of the main attractions in Recoleta, Microcenter, Palermo, and the other nice, safe neighborhoods, and as a result I have started to focus my reading more on the other parts of the country.

There is a lot to see.

I am tentatively planning on taking a week off of school right after midterms and taking a few bus rides around the hemisphere. I want to go to Mendoza (¨the land of sun and wine¨) and the Lake District, which is just above Patagonia, at the feet of the Andes.
I have talked to RJ to try to get him to join me in my journey, and the tentative outline was taking a bus to Mendoza and spending a day or two looking at some grapes and mountains.

And then going down to San Martin de Los Andes, one of Che Guevara´s favorite cities on his famous motorcycle trip. It´s a beautiful lakeside down with a lot of cool stuff to see, and a nearby park, with Volcano. Itinerary: A day in the city and a day hiking around the volcano.

City:

Volcano, Park:

And then, into Bariloche, northern Patagonia, a famous Argentine getaway that was originally settled by Germans and Austrians. It´s mostly a ski resort now, but has a lot of really cool stuff, and I would like to do some white water rafting there before coming home.

In a couple of weeks I will reassess my funds and schedule, and try to talk RJ into joining me on this trek.

¨The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."— Chris McCandless

A Tale of 3 Mikes and a Sunday at the Fair

I spent most of this past weekend settling into my new neighborhood and getting to know my new roomates better. Before I forget: I left out an interesting statistic about my new home. If you live in this house there is a 30% chance that your name is Mike. Or your name was Mike, because now, for the sake of clarity, it is either Mike 1, 2, or 3, depending upon when you arrived. This makes me Mike 3, or Mike Tres. So on Friday the 3 Mikes went to go play soccer in the park and walk around the neighborhood, and then that night Mike primero and Mike tercero (me) went to a Black-and-White party.
Or not. We got to the boliche where the party was supposed to be, Mike 1´s Argentine friend called up someone, and we all found out that he told us the wrong day, and that the party was scheduled for Saturday. It was already about 1:30 or 2:00, perfect time to watch some sports action live from China, so we went to a bar with a projector playing the game, and saw Argentina win the gold in soccer.

On Sunday I went to a fair in Recoleta with one of the other roomates. That was fun, but the key part happened when we left to go get a late lunch afterwards. Recoleta is a really nice part of town with a lot of cool places with outdoor seating. I have been before, but had never realized that the main strip outside the Cemetary is a lot longer than I realized. It turns out that Buller Pub, a pretty cool place I read about last semester in Oxford when looking online for pretty cool places, is on this strip, and so we accidentally found it and sat down to eat. Buller Pub is not just a pub, but also a brewery with 6 unique brews: a traditional lager, a dark stout, and an IPA, as well as their ¨special ones¨, the Honey Beer, Heffeweissen, and October Fest. For about 7 bucks you could get a sampler with 100cc of each, so we sat down and enjoyed our tasting along with some phenomenal onion rings and the best Tex-Mex (a heaping portion of mixed fajitas) that I have encountered in South America.

The presentation of the onion rings was unbelievably enticing. When I walked in I saw a wooden contraption, basically a stand with an arm, rising defiantly above all of the other food on its table. And on this arm were many big, fat, greasy, golden rings. So I ordered them. Obviously everyone else saw the same glorious stand, because by the time we left there were 5 or 6 orders of onion rings in our section, and all the tables without them were kicking themselves for passing on such a tasty treat.

Spring is definitely getting closer here, and we have already made plans to go back for a pitcher or two when the weather gets warm. We stopped in for some ice cream on the way home, and it was, all in all, a Sunday afternoon very well spent.

New Beginings

I arrived at my new home yesterday after a scenic taxi ride -- the driver, doubtlessly, took a couple of wrong turns only so that I could see the entire neighborhood and not because he wanted to jack up the fare a little bit. Not that it was a big inconvenience, because it only cost me about $6.50 U.S. and it saved me the trouble of lugging 50 pounds of stuff 30 blocks. I think Thomas and Mr. Guo would agree ... this is econoooomics?
Inside joke.

Anyways, the taxi ride was also interesting because the driver and I had a profound conversation. At first we talked a little bit about soccer, or, should I say, he lectured to me -- the uncultured American-- about soccer, as often happens when I engage the natives in discussions about sports, at least until they realize that I too can wax poetic about the intricacies of Riquelme´s game. And that I, unlike Mr. Driver, know that the game started at 10 in the morning, and not 6, although I didn´t point that out as he continuously made excuses for not actually ¨watching¨ the Brazil game.
This conversation was cut short as we drove past an Angelina Jolie billboard and he asked me if I had seen her newest movie. I haven´t. He told me that she was a ´jamon´, which literally translates into Ham, but most have a connotation similar to ´babe´. He then told me that she was ´desmasiado sexy´(too sexy), and had both a sexy face and a sexy body, although she could put on a little weight, because she is becoming very skinny. I arrived at my new home knowing a little too much about my driver´s preferences in women, but he helped me with my luggage so I let him keep the change.

My new family seems really nice, and there are 10 people in the house instead of 3, so it is a bit different. The house mother is young, and everyone goes out together to listen to live music and go to the clubs, apparently. Dinner is a very social event. Everyone gathers around the table to eat and talk, and afterwards drinks either a coffee or tea and talks some more. It´s pretty nice. We eat at 10 every night, too, which is later than my last home, but I´m sure I´ll adapt. I´ve been told that Sunday lunch is also a big meal, and her older son who doesn´t live in the house comes over, and they usually barbeque. The only downside to the new living arrangement is that I am in a less-hip residential neighborhood, and much farther from the center of town. The plus-side of this is that the homes must all have backyards, because there is far less dog crap on the streets.

On the way over to school today I bought a few things I needed, like towels, shampoo, and 3 Dave Matthews Band tickets, so that should be exciting. Well, the concert should be exciting, the towels and shampoo are pretty ordinary.

I´m going to go grab lunch and take care of the rest of the stuff I need to today. My indoor soccer league starts tomorrow. Take care folks, I´ll try and check in this Sunday or Monday with the cooler pictures from this past weekend and another update.

Fiebre

So I´m still feeling sick (I had a 38.5 degree fever yesterday, but I have no idea what that translates to) and I don´t feel like writing much, but I´m going to put up some pictures. We had an exra long weekend, but aside from this day I spent the rest of it in bed. Secret Window, with Johnny Depp, was better than I expected.


I´m also moving in with a new family in about an hour and a half, so I have to wrap this up and finish packing. The doctor told me in order to get better I need to eat rice or polenta, chicken without the skin, and drink lots of Gatorade (¨sabes que es Gatorade?¨) or Seven Up Light, preferably Gatorade. Anyways, the pictures.

I´m missing some of the better pictures, but I´ll try to put them in with the next batch. Peace.

Thursday

Thursday: The first day of my four day weekend, and the first day of the week where I generally accomplish nothing. Today seems to be keeping with that trend, despite my best efforts to make it otherwise.

I still need to get the ball rolling in the process of aquiring my residency. I called to make an appointment but all the lines were busy. I still need a phone, so I went to the mall, where I thought there was a phone kiosk, but it was in fact a bank kiosk, and therefore no help at all, since the banks here won´t let me open an account. And then I went to ask the Front Desk people how to get a phone, but they are on their two hour lunch break. That´s the way things generally work here; the whole country conspires to keep me from getting anything done.

No matter. Yesterday I learned that there is a festival starting in 3 weeks with The Hives, Motley Crue, Stone Temple Pilots, Dave Matthews Band, one of the lesser known Marley sons, and a bunch of other bands from all over the world. It is stretched out over a couple of months, but I think I am going to buy some DMB tickets today or tomorrow, once I figure out how many Uruguayans RJ is going to bring with him. Exciting news.

Even more exciting yesterday was my encounter with Persicco, the Hagen-Daaz of Buenos Aires, if you will. It wasn´t cheap, especially by local standards (about 3 bucks for a cone), but it was undoubtedly the best ice cream I have ever put in my mouth. I got crema mascarpone, and I forgot to tell you, but the second best ice cream I have ever put in my mouth is the one I had last Friday, from another local place. I´m not exaggerating. The ice cream here, as far as I have experienced at least, is unreal. The coffee is really good too. So are the empanadas, which, as far as I am concerned, are everything a Hot Pocket aspires to be. When done right they are the perfect college-kid food because they are quick, cheap, absolutely delicious, and the portions are small enough that you can get anywhere from 2 to 6 and end up completely satisfied, depending on your level of hunger. I might have to take to Empanadas de la Abuela about getting a franchise right outside of The Levee. Who wouldn´t want to spend 3 or 4 dollars on a handful of steaming hot steak turnovers at 1 in the morning?

Ponder that while you wait for my next update, I´m going to try and get some more pictures on here after my weekend adventures.

Pictures

Here are some of the pictures, the rest are on Facebook.


Botanical Garden:Botanical Garden, 2:
Florida Avenue:

Casa Rosada (Pink House ... like the White House, only in Argentina)


Obselisk:

Bridge in Puerto Madero:


River Plate Stadium:

Me in the River Plate stadium:

You´re going to have to wait for the pictures

Alright guys, I have been snap-shotting for the past few days, but, unfortunately for you, I loaned out the fancy neon-green device I use to upload my pictures and the fella´I let borrow it went out of town for the weekend. So use your imagination and then come back on Monday or Tuesday and see how accurate your collective mental images were.

Anyways, Wednesday:

I decided Wednesday was a good night to not sit at home and watch Law and Order (a seriously great show -- why did I never watch this when I lived in the U.S.?). I mean ... it has Ice-T. As a cop!

Moving on. I went down to the boardwalk area by the river. The river, as far as I can tell, has two parts: there is the poor, port area, which is more of a shanty town with rusted boats and boating equipment, and then there is the nice, well-lit boardwalk area, which has Hooter´s, T.G.I.Fridays, a frigate with Christmas lights up and down the rigging, guys in nice suits speaking English, and a ton of cops. I didn´t really want to end up with Ice-T trying to figure out what happened to me in the poor part of town, so I took the Subte to the ¨Microcenter¨, which is ironically the least micro part of town.

Mike: ¨Wow, that´s a cool series of statues with spray paint all over them, let me whip out my camera.¨
Innocent Couple sitting by said Statues (whisper): ¨Vení!¨ ... Ok, I didn´t catch the rest well enough to quote it, but what they told me, as far as I could tell, was that the gang of people that spray-painted the statues were watching from across the street and it would be a very bad idea for me to take a picture of their handiwork. Whatever they said, the ït would be a very bad idea for me to take a picture¨was the most obvious part of the message, so I got the hell out of dodge.

I went the wrong way, but I ended up finding the giant obselisk that is kind of in the middle of the city. This is going to be the easiest one for you to imagine, since just about all obselisks look the same -- think Washington Monument, but in the middle of an intersection in Buenos Aires and you´ve just about got it. After that I back-tracked, found the ´boardwalk´area, as I call it, although there were no boards, and picked out about a dozen places I want to go eat when the weather is nicer.

I ended up getting a little lost on the way to where I was supposed to find a bus, but I usually write that off as getting to know the city, and I made it home in one piece.

Thursday: Umm. I watched Hellboy. Oh yeah, and I took a tour of one of Argentina´s nicest arenas, which was a bit strange. Because the inside really looks kind of like a YMCA ... I expect Gillette is a little nicer, even the Superdome probably is, but I wouldn´t know. Actually, I have been inside Fenway, and it was much nicer. But the training facilities were very nice, and we got to go down to the field, which is really the only reason I wanted to go. We also got to go into where the President watches the games: it´s good to be President. It was like a boxed in area, with chairs, nothing that surprised me, except that the glass window could be lowered so that it was open-air and you could really get into the atmosphere of the game (awesome). The TV in the room was seriously weak though ... the stadium is in an upper-middle class neighborhood, so I wouldn´t be surprised if they bought it at a local yard sale in the mid-90´s. Gotta save money where you can, I guess..

In the case of the stadium though, a picture is worth a 1000 words.

Friday: Well, now I´m getting tired of writing. But I went to the Zoo and realized that there was a huge line of little kids (because they are out on winter vacation still) and decided to keep walking. I got to the free Botanical Garden, realized that it was full of old people instead of little kids, but also realized that it smelled like fresh flowers instead of horse poop, so I gave it a shot. It was really cool ... kind of like a really nice, aromatic forest in the middle of a really big, dirty city.

In the case of the Garden, a picture is worth a 1000 words. At least that´s my excuse, because I´m not writing any more ... I´m heading out to Van Koning, my favorite Dutch place nearby.

Hasta la vista, baby.

La Mississippi?

First things first, everybody wish a happy birthday to my sister. Today she turns 9 .. I mean 10. I hope the cake is good.

Secondly, I only have a few minutes to write this between classes, but I wanted to let everyone know that a.) I did not tour River Plate´s stadium, but still plan on doing that soon, maybe this week, and b.) there are only like 5 or 6 ads that are repeated ad infinitum (get it?) around the city. One of these, inexplicably, says La Mississippi. After walking by dozens of these ads I finally decided to look and see what it was all about. Apparently there is a band named La Mississippi, and apparently they play the blues -- I am skeptical though, because I have yet to encounter any real blues in Argentina.

I went to a music store and under ¨blues and jazz¨they had Norah Jones, Miles Davis, Coltrane, and a little bit of Ray Charles. That was about it. No blues in the blues section, which is unfortunate, because I don´t think they know what they are missing out on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UauECrCIYl8

Anyways, I had a few other things to say but I spent the last ten minutes trying to figure out a way to embed that video instead of just putting a link, so I am going to wrap this up.

We went to a really sweet fair yesterday where vendors sold all kinds of arts and crafts, and there were the types of entertainers you find at places like that all over the world ... in fact it might even have been the same guy, peddling his unicycle from continent to continent while juggling three swords and speaking into a microphone-slash-earpiece. There were also a ton of guys doing Capoeira, which I´ve always heard is a Brazilian Martial Art, but seems more like an excuse for the hippies down here who couldn´t afford a $1200 ticket to Bonnaroo to wobble around and act really high.

It was really cold this weekend. It got down to 1 degree, which is apparently above freezing, but I swear there were icicles in my bedroom. That´s all for now. Ciao.