re 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...
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