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

Asados and Gothic people dancing to Reggaeton

Well it's been a little bit since I last updated this thing so I guess a new posting is due. I am loving it here. The weather is getting nice, summer time attitude is creeping in and there is never a shortage of people to hang out with. The house I'm living in has become even more appealing now that the water heater works. It's kind of bizarre that there have been two isolated incidents involving water heaters in less than a month. So basically what my life has consisted of the last couple weeks is sending applications to various non-profits (chances are much better of getting unpaid internship positions in cool programs than getting paid), Spanish conversation classes, going out, and eating good food. Life is pretty damn good.

Going out here is always something different. For example in the last week, I've gone to Pacha (a massive Euro style super-club), a milonga (tango house) at 444 Cochabamba in San Telmo that has probably not changed since the 30's, a small club also in San Telmo called Torquata Tasso to see my roommate Tigre's folk band play, and a huge party at my German friend Hannes' house where Gothic people were going dumb to reggaeton music. There are many faces to this city it seems.

On Sunday (yesterday) I experienced my first asado. For anyone that loves meat, asados are pretty much the best place to be. I went out pretty hard on Saturday night so chilling during the day with friends and meeting new people was perfect. Since the weather is really starting to be amazing, we're going to be doing these pretty much every weekend. Here are a few photos from the asado.


That's all for now. I have a lot to look forward to though. Playing tennis with my friend Hannes this week, going to Uruguay this weekend with my roommates, then the week after that I'm going to CREAMFIELDS (a huge electronic music festival). In between all of that, the job hunt continues. Things are really starting to fall into place here though so I have a good feeling. OK, time to go watch the Rays hopefully beat the Phillies.

more photos on http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/buenos_aires
also, have a new gallery to check out: http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/playing_with_fire

Funny Money

Hopefully this is the last time I will have to mention my money issues or dinerWOES as I like to call them. Wow, I'm even making puns in Spanish. Progress! So anyways, I got $200 transferred to Western Union thanks to the suggestion from Hana (I had no idea they were international) and the patience of my dad. Getting that actual money would of course prove to be a huge fiasco (surprise, surprise). On the Western Union website there is a tab to select "Agent Locations". This is very helpful since it shows you the location of the branch and gives you driving directions. I should say, this WOULD be helpful, if it were CORRECT. I plug in my current address and find one that is a little over 2 miles away. I figure, hey what the hell, I'll put my iPod in and go for a walk since the weather isn't so bad. I look at the map that shows up and it turns out the route is very straightforward: walk 4 blocks down Avenida Rivadavia, turn left at Jujuy and arrive at Avenida Caseros after about 10-12 blocks. Of course that didn't end up being the case. I walked for well over an hour before I even got to Caseros. I guess I should have asked someone where it was. In any case, I got to the Western Union, went upstairs and pulled a number that determined my place in line. Fortunately, there weren't too many people in front of me and I only waited about 15 minutes. Once I got called to the cashier, I gave her my fund transfer # and my passport. It seemed like all was going to be fine. I should have guessed it wasn't going to be as smooth as it should be. The teller looks at my passport and then walks off to her supervisor where they discuss something for a few minutes. The teller comes back and tells me that they can't deliver my money because their computers are only equipped to handle identifaction numbers (passports, etc..) of 8 digits or less. USA passports are 9 digits. I am not kidding. She then hands me a piece of paper with an address on it for a Western Union with computers that are so advanced they can handle an extra digit in their database. The address is 2500 Rivadavia. RIVADAVIA!!!! I live on the corner of the 2000 block of Rivadavia! I tell her where I live and she gives me this look like, aww man I'm sorry, you are not the first to get this bad news. For some reason, this branch isn't listed on the website and a lot of people have the same reaction. Fortunately, I discovered a subte line that runs almost directly from the bank to a few blocks from the Western Union I wanted to go to. So in the end, I did get my money. The actual Western Union I needed to go to was packed of course and ended up taking forever, but I got my money. It only took over four hours when it should have taken twenty minutes.

In other news, life is good here. I had an interview for a receptionist position at a hostel in the Palermo neighborhood. The guy wanted to give me the job but there was a major catch: Friday through Tuesday from midnight to 8 a.m. Not gonna happen. I've been getting to know my roommates, finally met them all. It's going to be a good time. A couple funny sports-related things to report too. I've been watching the Tampa Bay-Red Sox series on ESPN Deportes. I didn't realize that the commentators call home runs just like they do goals in futbol. Every time someone hits a home run, the commentators yell at the top of their lungs: "OOOOHLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO!!!!". It's pretty funny. The second thing that I find funny about sports here in South America is that apparently coaches smoke cigarettes on the sidelines in soccer. I watched the Argentina-Chile match yesterday and the coaches were chain-smoking the whole time. That would never fly in the States.

Casa Pasco Tour

Here's a quick video showing a little bit of my new home.

I've also posted more pictures:
http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/buenos_aires

Pasco 54 C.P. 1034, Buenos Aires, Argentina

As much fun as it's been since I've been here, there hasn't been a shortage of obstacles. The most recent issue involves my lone credit card. Between going to dinner a block from the hostel around midnight on Saturday and going to a pharmacy no more than two blocks away on Sunday, I lost my credit card. Not only does this suck normally, it really really sucks in a foreign country. I'm still not sure how it happened, but I'm pretty sure it fell out of my pocket after taking money out before dinner Saturday. Who knows? Either way, it has proved to be a not-so-fun part of my time abroad. I also managed to lose this valuable item at a most inopportune time because not only were banks closed on Monday (Columbus Day), I moved in to my new house and had to pay my first month's rent. After brainstorming and brainstorming and brainstorming, I was finally able to get some help from a really nice guy Jared I met in the hostel from Tennessee who was willing to withdraw the cash I needed to get it reimbursed through PayPal. Fhew! It turns out too that even if the banks were open, I would be totally out of luck since the only way to withdraw money from an actual teller is by showing your ATM/Debit card. Not quite sure what people do that aren't able to get bailed out by someone they met two days prior. Fortunately there are Western Unions here so I'm going to have some cash until my new card arrives. Another bullet I dodged is that I woulda been screwed had I not already found a place to live since Wells Fargo will only send you a card to a permanent (meaning 6 months or longer) residence. Had I not found a place to live before losing the card would have posed a Catch 22. No card no residence, no residence no card.

In any case, I am here in my nuevo digs. I've met three of the five roommates: Tigre (from Argentina, and yes that is his name) Annika (architecture student from Germany) and German (a guy from Uruguay who is a musician and has a mini recording studio set up in his room. He uses Reason too!). So far, the first day here hasn't been boring. Had a few hours of broken spanish conversation. It is improving already though, I'm getting excited. Spent some time shopping for food with my remaining cash. My meals today included a plate of Chef Boyardee-like pasta and a couple of sandwiches with ham and mayo on 2 peso white bread. Mmmmmm. It's been a crazy couple days though. I was losing sleep over how I was going to explain to my new landlord that, "uh sorry I can't pay you, but I'm good for it, I swear." Fortunately it all worked out in the end, as it usually does. So for now I'm just taking it easy in my new room in my version of L'Auberge Espagnol after watching the Devil Rays stomp the BoSox in the living room. Should be an interesting few months to come, I'm sure...

By the way, the title of this post is my new mailing address.

Argentina v. Uruguay VIDEO

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