Tall South African Twins and Argentina v. Uruguay

I have literally been out every night since I've been here until at least 5 am so I decided to stay in last night and work on this blog and upload pics. Lame, I know. A lot has happened since the last time I posted. For one, I found myself a place to live. Pretty juiced about that. My initial thought was to get a one bedroom apartment or studio but after thinking about it, I realized that since I don't really know anyone here, it might make sense to try to live with other people. Not only is this going to be more fun but it cut my rent in more than half. Tomorrow I move in to a house in the Congresso neighborhood which is kind of on the outskirts of downtown. It's a five bedroom, very old, interesting house with maze-like features. I was getting lost when I was getting shown around. The room I'm moving into isn't that huge but it has plenty of space for me. The major upsides of living there is the fact that everyone that lives there now is from a different country (Argentina, Uruguay, Denmark and Germany). This is going to be a great test for my espanol skills. The other major upside is that it has a HUGE rooftop terrace that they use every week for parties and asados (Argentinean BBQ). It's also directly next to a tennis club with clay courts. I just gotta find someone to play with. I don't actually move in until tomorrow because my reservation at the hostel goes through tonight. Once I'm actually in there, I will definitely be taking pics and videos and posting them up!

Aside from the housing hunt, my days have been generally stress-free. Since you go out so late, I usually don't start my day until about 2 pm. I think this has been the case more so because I've been in a hostel full of people that have literally no obligations. So far I've been hanging out with people from New Zealand, France (there's a guy here who grew up in Angers), Sweden, Tennessee, Mexico, Brazil, England, etc..I've been eating a lot, wandering around the city a lot, and going out a lot. It's a good life. Specific stories are failing me right now but the funniest thing I can remember from going out this week was on my 2nd pub crawl (still waiting to hear if I got the job). There were two twins from South Africa who were not only blatantly identical, but at least 6 ft 5. I had a hard time keeping them apart. Anyways, this really drunk, typical American ditzy girl walks up to us and looks at the twins and after a couple minutes of the usual pub crawl small talk, asks them how they know each other. I don't know if all unusually tall South African twins are comedically inclined, but they were. They played off this whole story about them being distant cousins, one from Alberta, the other from South Africa for about ten minutes before saying in a very deadpan fashion, "actually we are obviously identical twins". The girl then says, "Oh, I had no idea, cool!". Classic.

The highlight of the week however, besides finding lodging, was the Argentina vs. Uruguay World Cup qualifying match at Estadio River Plate. The hostel keeps a bunch of tickets in reserve for people that want to go so I was able to get on board for it just a few hours before the actual match. The match was awesome, totally what you would expect of a South American rivalry. The chants weren't very clever but they were to the point. "HIJO DE PUTA! HIJO DE PUTA" was one, "PUTA MADRE! PUTA MADRE!" was another. In any case, it was a very spirited, surprisingly competitive game (Argentina won 2-1). We traveled to the game with a Diego Maradona look-alike who had to be escorted around with probably the largest man in Argentina. Everyone was taking pictures with him. Apparently there are over a thousand of these look-alikes.



http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/buenos_aires