Finally... it rained!

It rained for the first time (that I can remember) here last night. My host mom explained that every year at the end of August they have a big storm and it has a name, I just forget it at the moment. My classes are still for the most part incredibly boring but I like reading for them because that's where I do most my learning, I believe.

Yesterday we went to MALBA, the museum of Latin-American art (definitely, definitely not to be confused with NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association). It was a really cool place and it didn't have as much art as I thought it would but I've overheard cultured people speak with eachother and I'm pretty sure it is the quality, not quantity of art that's important. That's hearsay, though- completely inadmissible.

Friday we go to El Tigre, and if there isn't atleast one tiger there I'm going to be dissappointed. I can't imagine there won't be atleast one, though, so I'm excited for the day trip. And football starts Saturday (actually, Thursday night. I'm on top of it). This week will be busy with the trip and my first solo attempt at working for the PR Firm Colombo-Pashkus, but it'll all be worth it when I'm chilling in the bar watching Georgia beat Okie State... I hope.

I'm going to try and start to write some postcards that I found yesterday at the Museum. Yeah, postcards are definitely outdated but I think they're probably a little more effective at showing people you care about them than Facebook Chat (again, just something I overheard from other people).

Be easy!

Museo hoy

Today we're going to the Latin American Art Museum here. I'm pretty excited for it because it has some pretty big-name artists. Everything has been good, but it's getting a little hot for my liking. Between tonight and tomorrow it's supposed to rain one or two inches and the weather will cool down again after that- can't wait.

Some links for the doubters

Japanese Men with Body Pillow Girlfriends

South Carolina "Gypsies"

Engineering the Weather

Buenos Aires has been beautiful, like always.

And it's only a week until college football, but it still seems like forever. Here's a picture of A.J. Green- a quarterback's best friend.

Busy

Yesterday, the Argentine Supreme Court officially decriminalized (I feel like, by definition, "decriminalization" is unofficial) the possession and use of marijuana in the household. I expected to walk outside today and see people smoking joints on every street corner but it seemed to be business as usual. Hmm, what does this tell you?

Today we learned to tango. Kind of.

Tomorrow, I'll take more pictures. I just got my camera up-and-running today. It took a while. Above is a picture of my street.

Nice lake, guys!

Yesterday we went to los Lagos de Palermo (Palermo lakes) on what was probably the prettiest day since we've been here. It felt like walking around in a mixture of New York's Central Park and Washington, DC's Tidal Basin. There were tens- if not hundreds- of thousands of people out rollerblading, riding bikes, or attempting to body surf on skateboards being pulled by others on bikes or rollerblades. To save the embarrassment of riding in a paddleboat, my group chose to row. I'll tell you from experience it's actually much harder than it looks in the Olympics, but that may just be because our equipment wasn't state-of-the-art.

Afterwards we ate empanadas at a cafe then visited an Irish Pub... for a while.

Today I had linguistics class in the morning and then my first Universidad de Palermo class: "futbol argentino y mundial." I'm pretty sure I'd have a hard time understanding the guy if he spoke English, but he doesn't, so I understand it less. I'm going to be patient and just try to get better everyday at this Spanish stuff.

Oh yeah, and we had our orientation at Colombo-Pashkus, the PR firm I'm interning at while I'm here. It seems like a really well-run, connected company and I'm going to enjoy working there even if it doesn't exactly sync up with my major back at UGA. Plus, they have accountants and financial analysts there just like any other company, so maybe they'll teach me some tricks. Also, we'll basically start out in the "clipping room," meaning we go through papers and magazines and find things written about the companies clients and clip them out. I like reading and it'll help my Spanish, too. I'm just worried they won't have left-handed scissors.

I played basketball with the UP team tonight from 10-12 and I'm really tired now so I'll stop.

QB of the Future

Of Jason Campbell's performance in the Redskin's second preseason game against the Pittsburg Steelers, Jason Reid (with Barry Svrluga) writes: "Campbell appeared shaky throughout three series in a 17-13 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, stirring more concern about the team's unproductive first-team offense and No. 1 quarterback. Although it's only the preseason, Campbell completed one of seven passes for 10 yards."

I don't know all that much about football, but I don't think there's another starter on the Redskins that could have produced as sparingly as Jason Campbell has over the last 5 seasons and still be "the man." I wish my teachers used the NFL in school to illustrate or exemplify Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection because desperate, violent competition and job insecurity, by definition, produces the best starting lineup possible given your roster.

So, when the starting quarterback can only lead the offense to three points in two games, then he says, "I don't worry about numbers. A quarterback would like to get in a rhythm, but tonight is just about trying to take shots," you have to wonder if the right pressure is being applied.

Anyways, that's enough of that. Buenos Aires is still great. I ate some really good pasta at a restaurant called "il Gatto" (the cat, in Italian) last night. The wine we ordered went well with the meal, too. I almost left the restaurant at first, though, because I was worried every time a dish was followed by "il Gatto" on the menu it had something to do with the meat being from a cat. Needless to say, it was a relief when we decided it was probably just the restaurant's signature on certain meals (... I think).

I didn't go out last night because I've had a rough week as far as that goes. I won't publish my batting average, but it was akin to the first week of any semester. Friday night we went, at Maryella and Karolina's suggestion, to a bar called Wherever Bar. The people they had already met on the trip were really cool when we met them, and the bar was really fun. The bartenders also liked me because of my "curly W" Nationals hat that was the exact reverse of the bar's "W" logo. I'm still going to wear baseball hats no matter how American I look.

After that, one of our new Beatles-addicted friends, Kiki (sp?), got us into a club called Roxy Live where a band was playing American songs with Spanish lyrics and doing a good job of looking like rock stars. After they finished, the place turned into a dance club and the rest of the night is a blur of sober fun.

Today we're going on a boat or something!

Derice Bannock: Sanka... you dead?

Sanka Coffie: Ya, mon.

I could do that

We went to see a contemporary ballet (or something) today. Intermittent applause ruined my sleep, but I'm glad I saw that kind of thing once. I learned two things: dancers are strong and they apparently don't sweat.

A bunch of UGA people went to a bar/club called Shamrock last night. I doubt it'll ever fail to amuse me seeing Argentinian dudes trying to book out-of-towners. To their credit, the girls were loving it (maybe because they had the perfect opportunity to practice Spanish? I don't know). I practiced mine by talking with two guys outside that the bouncer wouldn't let in, and by the end of the conversation I had learned that in two weeks there will be a party in a museum somewhere with Argentinian girls who are crazy but not as crazy as Brazilian girls. Oh, and that it gets hot here in November.

After the ballet, we went to eat deep dish pizza at a place whose logo portrayed the nearby obelisk (think: mini Washington monument in middle of 10-lane road) rising out of the center of the pie. I laughed, and I hope you understand why because I'm definitely not writing about that any further.

In conclusion (the next paper/essay I write will have a conclusion paragraph starting with this; at this point it's probably pretty unique), I will give you a quick sampling of the pizza toppings our group ordered.

Ham slices
Tomato
Blue cheese
Onions
Olives

Ok.

What the hell is linguistics?

We had our first class today: Spanish Linguistics. There's really nothing special to say about it. We started the class by listing in groups of three Spanish words commonly associated with a university setting. Examples include: desk, pen, computer, etc. Yeah, it was fun.

After that we went to eat in Palermo Viejo (that might be wrong) which was even cooler than my neighborhood, Recoleta. It had a bunch of really cool houses and restaurants. And when I say cool, I don't mean as far as South America goes. I mean they would stick out as nice in Georgetown. It only took us a couple of seconds to describe mimosas to the waiter and then only a couple more moments to convince him we actually wanted to drink champagne at that hour. They were strong.

We wandered around that area for a while, finding a little art gallery to explore and a leather shoe store... for women (awesome!). Someone spotted a winery- or whatever a store with a lot of wine is- and we talked to the owner who invited us back whenever we wanted to do wine tastings for a pretty good price. He didn't say whether or not he'd provide cigars also, but I'll keep you posted.

A sports store displayed way too few basketball shoes.

"Blogger" must rake it in.

I read the sports page from La Nacion, which I understood surprisingly well. So what's happening in Argentine sports?

-Maradona is really short.

-They spent $500,000 pesos modernizing the stadium in Rosario where Brazil will come to play Argentina on September 5 in World Cup Qualifying. The coolest addition? HOT TUBS IN THE CLUBHOUSE!

-Argentina soccer is to Brazilian soccer as Wizards basketball is to Cavaliers basketball.

-My host brother disagrees that an NFL team should sign the World's fastest man, Usain Bolt, to play wide receiver. He told me that I don't understand, because once you train for a sport, that's the sport you know and you just don't change. I don't know how to explain, in Spanish, what goes down in college football recruiting, especially in the Southeast. Basically, though, there are plenty of runners that can be taught to catch the ball. I probably lost the argument when I said, "Well, if I owned an NFL team..."

OK, that's all. I'm going to try and go out tonight because I don't have class until 11:30 in the morning.

Peace and love.

Blogging?

Hi, this is the first blog I've done on the internet so listen up. I'll basically just be talking about my experience living and studying and doing whatever else in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

So far? A lot has happened. I arrived to Ezeiza International Airport Monday morning and was brought by van to the Recoleta neighborhood where I met my host family- Ignacio, an 18-year-old aspiring sports writer I'm going to try and turn into a modern, Argentine version of Hunter S. Thompson and his mother, Alicia, who plays golf and is better than most of my friends back in DC or Georgia.

Yesterday my roommates and I walked around for a long time. We saw Universidad de Palermo, our host university, and the famous Recoleta cemetery, where Eva Peron was buried. The weather here is a welcome change from the hot and muggy East Coast. Buenos Aires is probably the busiest city I've ever visited and it's incredible to see thousands of people walking, driving, or taking buses who knows where. DC is cool, but I like chaos and there's a lot more of that here.

Today, I woke up after way too little sleep (sad to say, because most Argentinians my age were probably up way later the night before) and got to go on a bus tour of the city. A headache and general fatigue definitely made me uncomfortable, but if I wasn't uncomfortable I would've fallen fast asleep on the bus and missed what was a pretty good tour of the city. My favorite place is the stadium in the La Boca neighborhood. I've always liked large sports stadiums and this one looks like amazing. It's more intimate than American stadiums with stands at almost dangerously steep angles leading down to the pitch. Maybe like a cooler version of Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium? My host brother says the Boca Juniors are poorly run but whoever is designing these 100,000 seat stadiums on American campuses could learn a thing or two from this place. I almost cringe when people brag about how many people a stadium can seat- that's definitely not what it's all about. The season here starts next week, though, so I'm going to get to a game as soon as possible and try not to be killed in a riot in order to better report on the experience.

Well, enough about a stadium I've never even been inside. But I don't have much else to write now.

To clarify, I feel awkward writing a blog about this trip, but I think it'll serve as a good way to organize my thoughts and a fun thing to look back on. Also, I think journals are tedious and outdated... for the first time in human history.

Check back for more...