In Review

I got back from Montevideo last night, and I couldn´t have been happier to be on Argentine soil after all of the stress I had endured during the previous 10 or so hours; more on that later. I do want to say that Montevideo was awesome, and that RJ showed me a really good time. We managed to find something to do just about every night, and everything we did was really fun.
After putting up my last post, I went to RJ´s soccer game. His team lost, but it was pretty cool because the teams were better than I expected and the atmosphere was nuts; the other team´s fans were chanting, banging instruments, and shooting fireworks throughout the game. We got home around 12:30, showered, changed, and went to a party for all of the exchange students. We got home at around 3 or 4, slept about 4 hours, and met up with some Spaniards, to take a bus to Punta del Este for the weekend.

Punta:

The first night was rainy, but the second day was much better, and we walked around the entire peninsula and took a bunch of photos. One side of the peninsula is the river and the other side is the Atlantic Ocean, so that was pretty sweet -- the Atlantic side seemed nicer, and had much bigger waves.

RJ had class a few times during the week, so I spent that time walking around the beach in Montevideo and reading a book, The Miracle in the Andes, about a rugby team that had their plane crash on the way to Chile and had to find a way out after several months of living in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. Nuts. We also spent some more time hanging out with the Mexican girls; we went to play pool a few nights ago, and for my last night we cooked some Daddy´s BBQ and went out salsa dancing. I think it should go without saying that as Mississippians we were at a huge disadvantage on the dance floor, but the girls were nice enough not to laugh too much. There were some guys out there who were nuts, and the club had closed-circuit tv showing the band and the front of the dancing area, where all the bad-asses seemed to be, so it was fun to watch that.

It would be impossible to write about everything that happened during my week in Uruguay, but it really was a blast, and I know RJ and I came out of it with a lot of good laughs, many of which came from trying to translate idiomatic expressions from spanish to english and from english to spanish (dos triquis?). That´s always fun.

Salsa night at Azabache:

Oh, I almost forgot to write about my problems leaving Uruguay. Well, the first problem was that I realized I had left my keys at the house, walked back home, couldn´t find them, and then head to run to the bus station, a good mile at least, uphill, in flip-flops and a button-up in 80 degree heat. With a backpack stuffed full of stuff. I ended up missing my bus, covered in sweat, and having to pay $10 more to switch to the next available one. When I got to the boat portion of my trip I was forced to raise my voice with the customs agent, which probably wasn´t a good idea, but the guy was an idiot.

Guy, showing me the receipt from my ticket to Argentina: Do you have this from when you came?
Me: Nope.
Guy: Well, you need it to get into Argentina.
Me: Nobody told me. What can I do.
Guy: Look for it.
Me: I don´t have it.
Guy: (demanding) Look for it.
Me: Are you kidding? I came 7 days ago, how am I going to look for it when I am positive I don´t have it?
Guy: Go ahead, but they aren´t going to let you into Argentina.

So, I was a little worried the whole way over, but when I got there no one even looked at my passport or receipt or whatever, I just ran my bookbag through security and walked to the subway. The guy was seriously an ass, and he didn´t seem to have any idea what he was talking about.

Anyways, I´m heading home tomorrow, and while I´ve been looking forward to coming home for the past few weeks, I´m starting to feel more emotional about leaving. This has been my home for the past 4 months, and while I know I´m going to be glad to see my family, Karma, eat American food, etc., I´m going to end up missing a lot of the stuff here. That being said, I will be back in March, and it has been an incredible learning experience. It´s hard for me to gauge objectively how much my Spanish has improved, but I know for sure that I have learned a lot by travelling and living in a completely different culture, and I don´t think there is a better way to really get to know yourself than by distancing yourself from just about everything you are used to for a third of a year. Not too get too deep, but there are a lot of chances for reflection when you are on your own, and outside of the influences and pressures of Gulfport, Oxford, Mississippi, the South, the United States, the Northern Hemisphere, etc., etc., and I certainly don´t regret having come here.

I look forward to seeing everyone when I get home, and to seeing Buenos Aires again in the Spring. As Adam Kendrick once said: It´s been real. It´s been fun ...

Uruguayan Update

So far so good in Montevideo. I just wolfed down my first Chivito, the "Canadian" Chivito that RJ mentioned on his blog a while back: steak, pepper, onion, lettuce, egg, ham, cheese, bacon, and a bun that was way too small for all of the aforementioned ingrediants. It was legit.

Yesterday we went out with the Mexican girls and ended up meeting some of RJ's other friends at a club. I cleaned house playing poker. We went to the beach today, and I'm about to go to see RJ play his last game of the season.

R's family is really nice, and they have a hoss dog. Gonna run for now..

Election, School

4.0, suckas! I finished the semester with all A´s, which is a good feeling, an even better feeling, in fact, than finishing the semester during the first week of November (which is a pretty good feeling on its own).

Now, uh, excuse me while I climb onto my soapbox.

This really doesn´t have much to do with Argentina, but I think the election results are pretty exciting. I wasn´t a die-hard Obama or McCain supporter, but it´s obvious that the rest of the world is --that is my insight from abroad. Argentines everywhere, and really non-Americans around the globe, from what I´ve read, are excited about the results, and it would be nice to see the U.S. return to being the respected and admired country that it has been.

Now from the soapbox: I´m not sure how many of you non-adolescent or non-Mississippian readers have been exposed to this, but there has been a terrible amount of (for lack of a better word) bitching on Facebook since last night, and if I have to read another comment about our ¨terrorist¨-¨communist-¨socialist¨ future president ... well, it will be one comment to many.

It shouldn´t have to be said, but we live in a democracy, and if you can´t take it when your candidate loses there really isn´t much e-whining can do to help you. You can continue to vote for whoever you want, but moving to Fiji, México, Canada, New Zealand, or whatever other country you are going to threaten to move to isn´t going to matter to anyone but you, so we don´t need to hear about it. Furthermore, you might want to rethink that move if you are trying to get away from Obama supporters, because most countries have indicated they would vote about 80 to 90 percent for Barack, far more than the U.S.

From the reactions these people are having you would have thought Barack had rode into Washington on a Panzer, with Osama Bin Laden as his VP and an exhumed Fidel Castro as his Secretary of State, and forcefully imposed his crazy ideas of ¨redistribution of wealth¨.

If you are one of these people: take a deep breath. You´ll have another chance in 4 years.

I´m going to leave it at that. I figured my own blog would be a better place to get that off of my chest than contributing to back-and-forth facebook bickering. Moving on:

Tomorrow I will be going to Montevideo to see RJ and his friends, so that should be a blast. Expect pictures to follow.

Until then..

Almost the End

My time in Buenos Aires is quickly coming to an end, so I figure I should probably write an entry looking back on my trip. I´m not ready to do that yet, however, so I am gonna just put up a few photos that I have taken during the past few weeks, and a couple of brief explanations.

Halloween, my Mike 2 costume:




La Boca, with a llama.

Serious steak dinner. This place was pretty nice, and while we had to wait thirty minutes they passed around ¨free¨ champagne and grilled sausages outside.

Drinking Mate in Recoleta on Saturday afternoon

Glorious American lunch

Another trip to Recoleta Cemetary.

Alright folks. I´m going to see RJ soon, this Thursday if everything goes as planned, and I´m going to spend about a week over there. School is all but finished, I only have one Spanish exam to go.