Corrido de cabashos en la veesha

While waiting to play futbol with the kids today (which didn't happen because none of them showed up) there was a random local horse drag race going on down the street. I'm guessing people we're betting on it but I'm not sure. Here's a video of one of the races...



Note: Corrido de cabashos en la veesha is the phonetic pronunciation of corrido de caballos en la villa in an Argentine accent meaning "horse race in the shantytown".

L.I.F.E. Argentina

To keep myself busy during the week I have been volunteering with an NGO called L.I.F.E. Argentina. The organization goes to the villas (pronounced vee-shas), or shantytowns, surrounding Buenos Aires and does work with kids. Most of the work is school support stuff like teaching english, math, etc..but we also set up birthday parties and play futbol with the kids. For the most part the kids are great, but because of the hard homelife situations that most of them come from there are some real out of control kids too. Another great thing about working with this group is that the people that are a part of it are all really cool, it's been a great way to meet people. I will be adding photos from our work here on this portion of the blog.

Notable story from my first day on the job:
On my way to the office, my colectivo (city bus) broke. Straight up. Everyone had to get off the bus and wait for a new one. I have no idea what happened. So anyways, I finally get to the office and get set up with the bus/van thing that will take all of us to the villa for the day to play futbol. Funny thing happened. About 30 minutes into the ride as we're getting off the freeway we hear the worst sound I have ever heard any sort of motor vehicle make. This time we found out what happened: the drive shaft fell off. Once again, everyone had to get off the bus and wait for another one. Welcome to the 3rd world. We made it to our futbol game eventually, 2 broken busses later.

Protest

There's always some sort of protest in front of the Congreso Nacional here on Wednesdays. Here's a little video of the one going one yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what it was they were demonstrating against, but there was a lot of anti-Kirchner (the last name of both the current President, and her husband, who preceded her) stuff.

Rosario: Asados, Owl Fights, and Caipirinhas

On Thursday, November 13th I got on an "omnibus" at Retiro Station in Buenos Aires to Rosario, a city of about 1 million people 4 hours to the northwest. My friends Mike and Scott Read from the U of O are both living there right now. Mike is a junior and is finishing up his semester abroad up there and Scott is basically doing the same thing as me. He graduated a few years before me and is now trying to work and live in Rosario. I arrived at about 7 pm, checked into my hostel and met up with Scott to go buy meat for an asado. Vacio and chorizo for me of course. This city is located on the banks of the Parana river and it seems to dictate where all the fun stuff goes down. All the asados I've been apart of have been relatively small, one parilla (grill). In Rosario, there is a spot down by the river where there are roughly 50 or so parillas and people freely come and go with meat. Essentially what ends up happening is you have about 200 people grilling and drinking from separate groups which eventually turns into one large party. The smell is amazing. Mike invited people from his AHA program, the same organization that I did my study abroad program through, and we had about 30 people at our asado. Very randomly there was a girl in his program that I was really good friends with at school but had lost touch with, Corrie Burdett. It was really awesome seeing her and I'm pretty sure we'll meet up next time she comes through BA. Another random event of the asado was the hour long owl fight that went on in the tree above our table. 2 or 3 owls, not sure, were fighting one another and screeching right over our heads. Strange. After the asado, we went to this club called Berlin, had a Fernet and Cola and took off after an hour and hit the sack. My bed in the hostel by the way was even more uncomfortable than my bed in BA, didn't think that was possible.

The next day I went to lunch with Mike and his friends Dane and Alex, all U of O kids. Their program has a deal with a really good restaurant where they can get free food. I'm all about free food, especially when it's good. I had chicken for the first time in a restaurant here. It's good but it's not beef. After we went to lunch we walked to the Newell's stadium, one of the two soccer teams in Rosario, so they could get tickets for the game on saturday (which I didn't go to btw). The highlight of the day was La Florida, one of the most popular beaches on the river. After an unnecessarily long busride (we took the wrong one) we finally got there. It's unbelieveable how fine and white the sand there is, you forget you are on a river. We chilled there for a few hours, went swimming and basically just lounged.

Rosario is an unexpectadly international city. I'm not sure if it's every Friday night, or if I just hit the right weekend but there happened to be a massive international fair type of thing called colectividades where community groups organized by what country they claim heritage to set up stands with food and stages with typical music and dancing. Scott lived in Peru for a while so he was pretty much obsessed with the Peruvian section. The food was awesome, it was nice having something with some spice for once. If you put pepper on your food, Argentines will look at you with utter amazement as if you just doused your food with puree of habanero peppers or something. Most of the night however we hung out in "Brasil". Not surprisingly, this was the most energetic and fun place to be, probably because they sold 6 peso (less than $2) caipirinhas. This video is an example of what happens to you when you have about 8 of these things and think you can sing (that's Scott singing with our new friend, the jolliest Brasilian lady I've ever met):



The colectividades came to an unexpected end however when a huge downpour ensued. Argentines are also unusually scared of rain, once it started, people started screaming and running for cover. All of us who had spent so many years in Eugene were not the least bit phased. The night then of course ended at a boliche, a pretty fun one too. Wouldn't you know it, it was located on the RIVER! They love that thing here. At about 5 or so, we headed home and I went back to my uncomfy bed.

Before I left to go home to BA, I had one last thing to check out: the Che Guevara mural. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed in it because I had this idea that it was some grand monument or something, but it wasn't. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool. Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born and raised in Rosario, everything seems to be some reference to him. Here I am at the memorial,
and here is a picture of his childhood home, which has been turned into a hostel:








I'm back in BA now, I have my first day with my volunteer program this afternoon. We're playing futbol with the kids, it's gonng be rough...

FYI

I have updated my pbase photo site to make it easier for people to follow my photos from here. Whenever you want to check out my photos, all you have to do is go to this address:
http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/saa

Creamfields

Since coming back from Uruguay, life here has been pretty mellow. That is until this last Saturday, when I went to the most insane electronic music festival ever. Creamfields is a festival that started in the UK a few years back and now has branched out to various big cities around the world such as Rio, Prague, Barcelona, etc..The festival is more of a giant party with 100,000 people rocking out from 3pm to 6 in the morning than a concert. For anyone that knows electronic music, the highlights were Booka Shade, deadmau5, Simian Mobile Disco, the Gorillaz and Gui Boratto. On the bus to the event, German and I met a group of people from all the over the world also going to the show. We ended up partying with them a lot. The international crew consisted of Dutch, German, British, Uruguayan, and American people. It was a good time. Unfortunately, the place was so nuts that getting seperated was inevitable and I never managed to get any of their contact info. Oh well.



I had a blast at this festival but I'll tell you that once the sun came up and the show was over, there was nothing in the world I wanted more than my bed. After battling the other 99,986 zombie-like people for a cab, we finally made it home. How sweet that sleep was...

Coming up: Trip to Rosario to see my friends Mike and Scott Read from U of O and the start of my volunteer program at L.I.F.E. Argentina (http://www.lifeargentina.org).

Que haces, bo? Halloween in Uruguay

One of the coolest things about Buenos Aires is its proximity to Uruguay. On Friday, Halloween, my roommates Anika, Mette, German and I got on the ferry to Colonia, the nearest city by boat. We had to be there by 9 a.m. which was incredibly hard because to be honest I hadn't been up before noon since I arrived in this country. The terminal and the ferries here are incredible. Very modern, spacious and built to represent what looks like a shopping mall. The weather was nice so we hopped on the top deck and found a table to sit at by the bar, which of course was decorated with tropical plants and blaring techno music. It felt like Club Med or something. We took the slow ferry (3 hour ride as opposed to 50 minutes), which of course is the cheaper one. It's totally worth it though because you are allowed to sit outside. The trip isn't the most scenic one you've ever been on. The Rio de la Plata, the body of water you have to cross, is brown and murky. Aside from the sight of the skyline of BA you don't see anything but water until you get to Colonia. Once we arrived in Colonia we hopped on a bus to Montevideo, the capital city. Uruguay in total has about 3 million citizens, a huge number live outside of the country and about 1.2 million live in Montevideo. It's a small town compared to Argentina. But that's what is great about it. This is my first exposure of life outside of BA since I arrived a month ago so it was awesome to get some natural scenery and beach time in. Also the fact that it's quiet was pretty refreshing.


Once in Montevideo, we got a cab to German's house where he grew up. It is in a neighborhood called Malvin, really nice, near the Rambla (beach promenade) and literally right next door to a huge fruit stand. As soon as we showed up, his mom had like 50 bizillion sandwiches made for us which was awesome because I was STARVING. After socializing with his madre for an hour or so, we went on a driving tour of the city until we found a nice overlook point with a park to relax and look at the river (which is so wide, looks like the ocean). After chilling there for a while we went back and ate more food and started the night. The plan for the night was to get to this huge new nightclub called IN. German's friend (DJ Hippy, hilarious DJ name) was spinning that night so it was looking like we were going to be getting in for free since we were put on the list. Of course, to be able to use this list priority, you have to get there by 1:30 am. That's incredibly early by the standards here. So, we drank at his house with his friends till about 3:15 and headed to the club. Of course, we weren't let in. German, trying to charm his way in ended up calling the bouncers "boludo" in the process of buddying up with them. In Argentina, boludo is a not-so-endearing term (roughly meaning asshole) but is used almost in the same way we say "dude". In Uruguay, it is not so. This didn't help our case so we ended up having to pay, but it was a good time.

The way I spent Saturday in Montevideo was roughly the same as every Saturday I've spent in Buenos Aires: horizontally. Getting back from the club as the sun is coming up after who knows how many Fernet and Colas usually results in a whole lot of nothing the next day (or that day, shall I say). Aside from going to German's sister Laura's jewelry show, we laid around in the sun and on the beach for pretty much the whole day. We had a lot of relaxing to do before Pomo's birthday party. Pomo is the bass player from the band German is in and has spent a lot of time at our house here in BA. Part of the reason we were in Montevideo this weekend was for his birthday down at the beach. It's typical to rent out fisherman clubhouses for parties because of their location and because there is a lot of space. Saturday night was pretty much a repeat of Friday except there were no bouncers to insult and the entrance was free. Once again a great time was had by all.
Left to Right: German, Laura (German's sister), Annika, Maria Jose (Laura's friend)
I'm guessing this is the head fisherman...


Sunday was the day of chivito. I had been waiting to eat one of these things ever since I heard about them 2 weeks before I went to Uruguay. Another meat-lover's food. It's similar to a hamburger but the dressings they put on the sandwich are totally different. My mouth is watering right now as I write about it. Basically it's an amazing sandwich and my trip to Uruguay wouldn't have been complete without it.

=

Now I'm back in BA. I hope to make it back to Uruguay in the next couple months, the whole eastern coast (which is on an actual ocean) seems amazing. Plus it's pretty sweet how you get your tourist visa renewed for another 3 months every time you go, for free! Oh and I just woke up from what felt like a dream watching Barack Obama become the next President of the United States of America. Holy shit!

the rest of my Uruguay pics are here: http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/uruguay