What a wonderful day this Tuesday was :) Woke up nice and early, 8:30AM, ate breakfast while gazing out into the great sea of buildings and took my time gettin’ into my homework. Wasn’t at it for long before Kelsey told Jessica and I about an asado aka bbq at an Italian guys apartment. We threw some clothes on, went to an internet café because our internet has not been working, ordered tickets to a show and picked them up on our way to their apartment. It was kind of a bring your own food to bbq type of thing so we stopped at the store and grabbed steak, bell pepper, mushrooms, corn, onion, bread and some beers. Showed up and it was the apartment of Andrea (a boy and you pronounced the r all rrrrrr-y), Mark (guy from Holland in my span class) and Flavio. Synovve and Ariana showed up next, Debora from france, and there were two other Italian guys but I can’t remember their names. We trekked up to the rooftop where the boys were trying to make fire and once they did we threw the foods on ‘em! Greg came right as we were finishing our meals, I had been tardy in texting him the address and what-not. The food was simple and therefore super yummy :) I felt like I could have been in the middle of Italy though. It was like a scene from those movies where everyone is gathered around a long table, laughing and eating outside on a beautiful day. And since everyone was European it didn’t feel very Latin America. Afterwards Greg and I walked home, since our apartments are in the same direction, and promised to meet back up at the J. Hernandez subte station at 9 to go to the tango class at the melonga (I have no idea it I spelt that right) Catedral. In the mean time I did a bit of studying and more eating. We met up, not really know exactly how we should get there, usually I just follow along with Kelsey, not really know where we are hehe. We knew the cross streets and through his map we figured we’d get off at Bulnes and then walk it. Walking took a bit but it was a blast palling around as usual. When we got there at 10:10 we thought we were only ten minutes late but the guy selling the little tickets for the class said it started at 9:30. Well there was no way we’d gone to all the trouble of getting there and then not hop in anyway so we did. Andddd as we suspected it was on Argentine time so although we may have been 40 minutes late, they were running 30 minutes late. There were a ton of people and while there’re usually a fairly even number of girls and guys, this time the ladies outnumbered the chicos. So I shared Greg haha and danced with some fellow chicas. One girl was nice enough but not too talkative but the other woman I danced with was visiting her daughter, who lives here, from Brazil. Back to Greg and he and I danced the night away :) he’s a super swell dancer which is great since the guys lead so I can just kinda fumble along and still look like I know what I'm doing. We decided though, next week we’re just going to get there around 11, have a glass or two of wine and dance around 11:30 because that’s when they let you loose and play music continuously. The class can be a bit confusing so he promised to teach me what he learns in his class each week and then we’ll just do our thing from there. We grew hot and tired so called it an evening. Hopped on the bus and as I was walking to my apartment I saw the kiosco guy I always say hi to and who used to make fun of my accent when I asked for a card for my phone. Nowww I’m thinking you might not be getting all of these references. Let’s see…Kiosco = 7-11 but on the street and much smaller. “card for my phone” = to be able to use the cell phones here you buy “credit” and so you buy these cards for 10, 20, 30 however many pesos and then you scratch off the back to reveal a code number, call a number and dial in the number on the back of the card to recharge your phone with credit. Entienden? Anyway, I’ve wanted to ask his name for a while, but haven’t needed credit in a while, so that I can say “hola (insert name)” instead of just hola every time I walk past to go to my apartment. So I see him waiting at the bus stop in front of my apartment and we chat. I tell him about school etc, and he asks if I want to go out some time, drinks, whatever. He’s super nice and I want to practice Spanish so I was like YAAA let’s do it. Yay for another Argentine pal! Speaking of, I saw Juan for the first time today in a long time! It was so nice :) I feaking love him! And that my friends was my Tuesday :)))))) Oh by the way it was a holiday here and that's why I wasn't at class, forgot that detail haha swearrrrr I'm not ditching.
On the bus ride home I began thinking about how in Argentina the whole, white lines/yellow lines/ red lines, etc on the curbs on the roads don’t exists. People park wherever, whenever and however. It seems to work though. I’m constantly drawing comparisons to the US. I was wondering, in comparison to Argentina I feel like we do things more rigidly with many more rules, etc does that work better, the same, or worse than when things are more relaxed/ there aren’t as many rules. Another example: stop signs. They barely exist but I have only witnessed one accident here (not for that reason either) and all of the drivers seem to know exactly what they are doing and act responsibly. But then again I feel the question is much more complicated. We’re talking different continents here entirely let alone all the other details that proceed from there so maybe it’s not fair to say "well it works in Argentina", let’s get rid of all stop signs and no more yellow curbs, etc. Just a thought.
Wednesday was a get up and go, go, go day. Went to class in the morning, came home for an hour or so, ran 6 miles, got home with Jessica and Kelsey from the running club, the three of us took turns taking showers and grabbing some food in about 25 minutes and then we went to FUERZA BRUTA! It’s this show that’s going on in Bs. As. right now and we’ve been hearing so many good things about it. We get there and it’s this big room but it’s super dark and foggy and lotsss of people. There’s a DJ playing some music and we got there just a few minutes before it started. It goes even darker and this man appears on the side closest to us, he’s got a rope connected to his back and he’s walking in place but on a giant treadmill type thing. They move us around so that it goes in the center of the room and we got super lucky so that we were right up front and didn’t have to be peering over anyone’s shoulder. The guy’s walking at first but then picks up the pace, all the while to some really cool music, and there’s a LOUD bang, like a gun and some fake blood appears and he fumbles but keeps running. There were a whole series of things with this…at one point others get up there and it’s like he’s walking down a busy street with people passing him in the opposite directions, bumping into each other…it looked a lot like how it feels to be walking down Cabildo. Anyway, then this giant sheet of silver stuff covers one wall and two women in flowery dresses hanging sideways dance around as if the side of the wall were the ground and they’re dragged back and forth while they’re doing this. I think that part was my favorite. Cuz the music was super cool that they danced to. Then back to the first guy and his treadmill. Then we were moved once again as they moved the treadmill and he went up onto a stage type thing, set up kind of like you were looking into a house without its outer wall. There were others in there and they started dancing really fiercely to the music and came out into the audience and started bashing these things over peoples heads that exploded into a ton of little white papers and dancing all about. One of the last parts was above our heads. It looked like we were looking into the bottom of a pool but the water didn’t fill the whole thing. There was a woman dancing and moving in the water, back and forth or however the water took her. Then more women joined and eek, it’s super hard to explain all of this but it was incredibly cool. It was even lowered down so that at some points we were touching the glass and they were right above our heads. It ended with the guy and his treadmill again. After they bowed and after that they sprayed water and played cool music and Jessica and I jumped around in it for a bit with others. SUPER fun :)
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