Oh it’s been a while.

My apologies. The truth is that I’ve been encountering fantastic things in Argentina. Things so fantastic that to turn them into blog posts would taint the purity of my memories and take me at least 45 minutes, so I was like heeeeeeeeeell na.

But I certainly owe anyone who is still checking this link a story.

Last thursday mabel woke me up at 9 and told me that I had to quickly get up, hide my valuables and leave the house. Groggily imagining that the SS was turning down apartments in central buenos aires and rounding up jews, I obeyed. But then I realized that it was because the cleaning chica was over.

The poor cleaning chica. Not that i judge her or her work, but because one time Mabel announced to me that “you have to hide your nice things from her or she might rob them” and that “you must avoid her in the house because she knows how to watch the clock and charge more.” The chica was standing in the same room at the time, of course. 

So, while exiting the apartment, I shared a compassionate glance with her. Our eyes met and in hers i read the same dostoevskyan fantasies about our land-lady that I no doubt betray in mine.

Trying to pull a Galileo and turn my expulsion into a positive, I decided to walk around a part of my neighborhood that I hadn’t seen much of before. It was very cold out and all the argentines were walking with purpose, their faces dug into their overcoats like french celebrities avoiding paparazzi. I came across a nice book store, a nice tea store, a nice pet store, and a nice thrift store. But the one that really got me excited was a small restaurant store i found not 10 blocks from my house.

The building was a brick cube. It wasn’t unlike Mill Creek for any philly readers, but with nicer windows. On the wall, a sign proclaimed that i had found ‘snack bar.’ I looked through the door to see the most i-don’t-give-a-fuck-i-came-here-for-the-price-and-for-habit diner i have seen yet in this fair continent. Muted tv stuck on the news? check. Walls, tables, and chairs made of wood? check. No music? check. bar full of mysterious old bottles that were probably discontinued? check. fat old dudes coughing and reading newspapers and watching some other old dudes play chess? check.

I entered and sat, wanting a hamburger like Wile E. Coyote wants roadrunner. Franco my waiter told me he didn’t have hamburger. (At least that’s how it translated. Weird.) So I ordered a stuffed pepper with papas naturales and an agua con gas. It came on a big plate, it was banging, and it set me back 9 pesos, $2.25.

Or at least it was set to set me back 9 pesos. This is actually the story of how I got that plate, that agua, and much more for free.

You see sitting next to me was the aforementioned fat old dude who had now gotten over his newspaper to concentrate more on a flan and a small cup of alcohol. Nostalgic for an era in which i never even lived, I asked Franco what alcohol he would recommend to wash down my meal (it was 12:30). Franco suggested what my companion was sipping, a cognac. I agreed and as he walked off, my neighbor peeled his gaze from the flan and tapped my shoulder.

“es muy bueno. Se llama San Luis, el mejor cognac de la Argentina. Y barato”

“Si? Wonderful.”

“Where are you from?”

“Los estados unidos”

“En serio? I have a daughter that lives in Aht-Lawn-Tah Jiorjia and another that lives in Cleev-Eh-Lawned Oh-Hay-Oh!”

“Oh what a coincidence. I’m from far from there.”

“(obligatory attempt at English) I…have…English bad…(back to spanish) haha to shit with it! Here, join me at my table. Now I will tell you why—I have bad (points to ears).”

So i joined and we started talking about his kids. He had 6 and they all live in distant countries. Such a mass exodus did not bode well for his ability to get along with young people, but maybe they never had cognac with him because I rather liked the guy. His name was Oswaldo. He served as a pilot in the army despite having to memorize the eye exam because he had bad (points to eyes). If I ever meet his wife i am not to tell her that i met him at ‘snack bar’ because it is his escape, and if she knew he was there drinking cognac she would kill him. And he once traveled ‘the whole US,’ driving a rental car from Phoenix to California. The story of this climaxed with him falling down a hill and ‘almost dying’ in ‘that park in california with the tall trees’ (‘the redwood forest?’) ‘no’ (‘yosemite?’) ‘no, the one near Los Angeles’ (‘Joshua tree?’) ‘no the first one you said.’

I listened to Oswaldo’s life story, a process facilitated by his ordering me another cognac, and another, and another. But it wasn’t like he was trying to shanghai me because he matched me glass for glass. By the time I had had 4 and he 5, we were both knocking over the napkin stand on the table with some frequency. He was hiccuping.

He asked ‘what are you?’

‘How do you mean? I am many things.’

‘Your religion.’

‘Ah. I’m Jewish’

‘Oh! I have many friends that are Jewish! I will introduce you. You see I am catholic, but i am open. Now I will tell you why—I am a mason.’

‘En serio? There are Masons in Argentina? and masons still exist?’

‘Oh yes, there are many of us.’

‘You know what, my grandfather was a mason and I have great respect for them’ (i lied twice).

‘Well if you have family that was masonic you must see the lodge. I will take you.’

‘Me encantaria.’

So Oswaldo and I made plans to have dinner together and then maybe check out the headquarters of the Argentine Illuminati. (By the way if I die suddenly down here, it’s because I successfully infiltrated and stole all of their secrets about the new world order, and they got wise and assassinated me. Or it could mean that I joined them and staged my death so that I could become the grandmaster and rule the world. Let the conspiracy theories begin…in the hypothetical case that i die suddenly down here.)

As I told him that I had class (another lie) and excused myself, my friend insisted on paying for my lunch and my cognacs. I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then he offered to drive me to the Universidad Catolica and I took one look at my plastered companion before turning the tables by insisting that he not. I stumbled over a chair and left the restaurant, laughing at how an old man had gotten me so drunk and clutching a business card that mysteriously includes no business details.

Back to the present. I just heard a great song, ‘things fall slowly’ from ‘once’ coming from the TV which mabel is watching. I entered the room, hoping to see the movie but instead found that the song was the soundtrack to a bathtub sex scene in a telanovela. Mabel was seated in her robe watching, her legs crossed. Uuhuhghhghghguh.

Que hora es? 10:30 on a Tuesday. Ay! Time for me to drink a stella artois that was essentially free, try not to listen to the stray cat orgy taking place outside my window, and wonder if it’s worth it to go down the block and get an ice cream that’s better than anything you’ve ever had in your life unless you’ve been to italy.

I’m gonna miss this place when i’m gone.

Argentines do things late.

Sorry for not bringing much enthusiasm to that declaration. It’s just that they seem oddly proud of the whole thing—always grinning and asking me if I’ve adapted to their schedule yet, making fun of me for eating dinner at 9:00, calling me ‘el yanqui aburrido’ when I yawn at a bar at 4 AM—I don’t want to build their egos any bigger than they already are. I also might lack enthusiasm because these bastards kept me up until 7 this morning.

Here are two quick things I saw this week while being up late.

Trash pick up:

Imagine what a garbage man does for a living. Really think about the details. Really gross and kinda depressing, isn’t it?

NOT IN ARGENTINA!!! No, judging from how I watched two men collect bags of trash from the sidewalk, this is the most fun job in the country, like our ice cream taste-tester or monster truck driver. Basically two men ran through the street yelling to one another while they picked up bags of trash and tossed them (all in one fluid motion) into the back of the garbage truck which they were chasing. The truck never fully stopped, but it didn’t matter because these dudes were on point. One sack full of waste was still soaring through the air when a filth-ridden glove was grasping a second bag. They were also remarkably accurate. They were on fire. I was shocked a few years back when Argentina upset the USA in the world basketball championship, but now imagining a team of 5 particularly spry trashmen, i totally get how they won. By my count these two guys got 12 of the 13 bags they tossed in the truck, the lone miss coming when the compactor came down and rejected a shot, ripping open the bag and spraying used napkins and orange peels onto the street. The two men laughed, one yelled “CHE BOLUDO!” and then they shared a disgusting, unsanitary high-five.

Pipe fight!

A couple early mornings ago I found myself in a part of town they told us not to go to in orientation. They said it would be bad to go during the day, that is. They probably figured none of us would be dumb enough to be there at night. But serendipity led me, and I couldn’t be happier. You see as I was waiting for the bus with a local friend, I heard her sigh and say “ay, they always fight…” I looked up to see one man in his 20s and one in his 40s punching the living daylights out of one another, yelling very loudly. I couldn’t quite get all the words, but my grasp of spanish allowed me to discern that there was some sort of conflict and that these men were rather upset with one another. Three young ladies stood to one side, yelling “AY! AY!” and throwing donkey-kong clobber punches at the older man. Regardless, old guy was kicking ass. That is he was kicking ass until he stopped abruptly, walked away, and briefly disappeared behind the nearest newspaper stand. Young guy stood up, surrounded himself in the loving arms of his lady companions who were still screaming at the departed opponent.

But then old guy reappeared with a pipe in his hand. A PIPE! An honest-to-god, home depot, super mario brothers pipe.

Sensing old guy’s new enhanced position, the women stepped back. They must not teach that pipes are hard in schools anymore, because young guy did not run away, instead he walked towards old guy and put his dukes up. A daring tactic, but fortune does not always favor the brave. It actually usually favors the pipe. Old guy whacked young guy in the head with the pipe and young guy fell. But he must have done something really bad earlier, because old guy then threw the pipe to the side and resumed punching him. One girl grabbed the discarded plumbing tool and began smacking old guys butt.

My bus came. The last thing I got to see before I heroically boarded the good old number 103 with my friend was a motley crew of old men with jean jackets and limps hobbling their way over to get in on the action. I am definitely going back to that neighborhood as soon as I can fit it into my schedule.

Sitting on the bus, dying for sleep and thinking about what i’d just seen, I finally saw the wisdom in Benjamin Franklin’s famous old saying:

“Don’t show up to a pipe fight with less than one pipes.”

Brilliant man…Brilliant man.

Through all of my studying, partying, and spanish speaking of the past month, one question had haunted me, possessed my mind in school-room day-dreams, kept me awake at night counting sheep in vain:

When would I see Luciano again?

My loyal blog followers will remember Luci as el mas picante of Mabel’s grandchildren. Upon our first meeting this little tyke threatened to kick me in the head were I hypothetically to call him a brat. I immediately came to the conclusion that he ruled.

This weekend the time finally came. I arrived home one evening to find the table set for four with a white linen table cloth and the smell of better food than we normally eat wafting through the air. Clearly there were some 6 year olds that Mabel wanted to impress. This gesture reminded me of the episode of the Simpsons where Homer wears a tie to breakfast because they have a new, really well behaved dog. At 8:30, an exhausted looking 30 year old woman came through the front door toting 2 children.

‘Ma! Take them already. Juan is mad at me because he didn’t want to come.”

She set them free and left with the sort of gasp of relief you make when you’re alone and that piece of popcorn you were choking on finally goes down. Lil Juan turned his head from me with a fierce shyness. Luciano screamed “ANTONI!” and ran over to give me a kiss on the cheek. Perhaps Mabel sensed a threat in these pleasantries because she came over to nip them in the bud by telling him he couldn’t run in the house.

But during dinner I buttered the boys up with promises of teaching them how to play guitar. After the 2 foot tall Juan finished somehow eating about 12 tomatoes and dinner ended, they ran into my room. We kicked it and shot the shit about different types of animals. Eventually Luci and I got into one of the realest discussions i have ever had.

‘Luci, do you believe in fantasmas?’

‘NO!’

‘Por que no?’

‘Because if there are fantasmas, then why can’t I eat them?’

‘That’s a really good point.’

‘What is the grossest thing that you have eaten?’

‘Me? An elephant’s trunk.’

‘Oh yeah? well I’ve eaten the stripes of a zebra.’

‘oh yeah? well I’ve eaten the teeth of a hippopotamus.’

‘Well I’ve eaten the bones of a giraffe.’

‘Well I’ve eaten a family of skeletons.’

‘Well I’ve eaten the wings of bats!’

‘Well I’ve eaten the skin of a witch.’

‘Well I’ve eaten my own poop with glass in it!’

‘Oh, Luci, that disgusts me a little bit. But only because I only drink pee with glass in it.’

At this point Luciano laughed so hard that he spit on my cheek. He then apologized an followed me to the bathroom where he slapped his knees as I washed my face. We spent an hour looking at cool places together on google earth, and he repeatedly tried to trick me into thinking that he had swallowed my guitar pick. Luci ended our geographic adventure when he told me that he eats dish soap. I laughed and he ran off. I followed and found him in the kitchen pouring a little bit of dish soap on his hand and licking it off.

‘Luci that’s bad. Don’t do that.’

‘No it’s fine! I do this all the time!’ And he ran over to the TV where Mabel was watching the animated Robin Hood with Juan. ‘Abuela! Are bubbles coming out of my mouth yet?!’

My first assessment = dead on. Homie kicks ass.

Over dinner tonight Mabel told me that Luciano called this afternoon to speak with me. So for all of you out there who said a 21 year old American who still has problems distinguishing the numbers sesenta (60) and setenta (70) when he hears them in spanish and a 6 year old Argentine who eats soap and wears soccer cleats to his abuela’s house couldn’t be friends, my boy luci and I just have one word: Scoreboard.

Luciano + Anthony: 2     Haters: 0

Every once in a while in La Argentina an estadounidense like myself sees things that are culturally befuddling enough to make him scratch his head, raise an eyebrow, drop his jaw, or complete the exaggerated expression that denotes surprise of his choice. The great thing about them is that you have no idea when they are coming. Sometimes you just walk around a corner and BLAM—you run right into a 10 year old smoking a cigarette. I have a few tales to share, as my past week was to these occurrences what the ending of the ice age was to mammoth sweat.

Believe it or not, all this happened in the same day.

No, that’s totally fine. You don’t have to believe it. I gave you that option.

Alright. These took place over two days. I just wanted to put them together to make my story a little more interesting, but i guess I can’t do that any more. You happy?

So one evening at dinner, Mabel tried to relate to me by letting me know that a starbucks had just opened about 10 blocks from our apartment. Normally that’s the sort of thing that I would smile and nod over and then ignore, but for whatever reason, that night I was missing the states pretty badly and (North)American coffee sounded divine. I promised myself that I would check it out on the way to my class which was to start at 8:30 in the morning. Anticipating this reward made my tepid-shower, icky-jam wake up routine tolerable. I left the door as light-footed as Fred Astaire on cocaine. 

So when I arrived there at 8:05 what bizarre differences did i find between Argentine starbucks and (North)American ones?! It was closed. A fucking starbucks is closed at 8:05 in the fucking morning? The hours hanging on the door proudly announced that starbucks argentino opens at 10. Now, pardon my Yankee ignorance, but what the fuck are people doing lining up to get coffee to go at 10 o clock? Are they going to take it back to work so they can perk up and correct all the mistakes they made in their reports that morning because they didn’t have any coffee at 8? 

Well after that embittering episode, I caught the subte to the University of Buenos Aires where my day was sure to pass tranquilly and sensibly. I arrived 10 minutes late because of my extra little walk. My tardiness didn’t matter, though, because mi profesora showed up at 9:45, a full 75 minutes after she was supposed to have. Fine. I got to do some reading beforehand. But in these situations you would kind of appreciate it if la profe would say upon entering “sorry I’m late!” or “the subway broke down!” or “I have just been fired for my gross incompetence!” Profesora Garcia-Romero gave us none of that. She just began with the lecture…

…only to be stopped 15 minutes later when a woman entered the room and said something to her that I couldn’t quite catch. The woman didn’t look like a student—she was maybe 40, fairly obese, she only had one visible tooth which hung from her top gum like Tom Cruise hung to that cliff in the opening of Mission Impossible 2, and she was breast-feeding a child—but then again you never know at the University of Buenos Aires. “Go ahead,” Profesora Garcia-Romero told her. The woman proceeded to beg for money from the students, sputtering something in truly incomprehensible Spanish about how her son was hungry. And by the way he was going at her teat i guessed she knew what she was talking about. I was too dumbstruck to give her anything, but a couple students did and then after she stood around looking out of place for a minute, our visitor left. I was left picturing the same thing happening at Penn—an image which involved Allied Barton security guards crashing through windows to get the beggar out in time before any students could BBM their fathers’ lawyers and demand tuition refunds.

When class ended I wandered off, still tired, still dazed. I caught the subte back home, and what should I find in the car i get on? A dog. There’s a dog. On the subway. Just a stray dog, taking a nap. Nobody but me seemed to notice. I couldn’t stop thinking about where he got on, and where he would get off, and if it would really matter at all if he missed his stop. I never found out. He was still chilling by the time I had to bajar.

Getting off the subte, I decided to grab some groceries. I went to Disco, the supermarket down the street from my apartment. Thinking I would just grab some produce and get home to relax, I walked through the sliding doors to find that Disco’s manager had conspired to provide me with the crown jewel of my off-kilter day. Blasting over the speakers of this family-friendly grocery store, in plain ingles, is “do me!” by Bell Biv Devoe. Latinos aged from 4 to 90 walked down the aisles, blase in the face of lyrics like “Hey, the girl is gonna do me. Move to the Jacuzzi, ooh, that booty. Smack it up, flip it, rub it down, oh, no,” either because they didn’t understand or because they were just down with it. Frankly neither would have surprised me. Really the most confusing part was that the store wasn’t projecting the wonderful music video onto the walls in the deli section: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZieygZyvw4A.

So I guess if anyone can call me and name the order of these events, sorted into the correct days, they will win a prize of a little tub of of dulce de leche. Same prize for anyone who can give me a satisfactory explanation for all of them.

But first you have to get my argentine phone number, suckas.

It finally happened. Mabel and I had our first fight the other day. We’re cool now—this morning she left the good bread out for my breakfast—but don’t let that fool you. This was ugly.

It all started last week when I hit a bad run of stomach issues. As you may know, I have a very delicate tummy. What you consider normal digestive functioning is to me a Platonian ideal that can only be approximated by the shadow my intestines cast on the wall of a fire-lit cave. And the slightest disturbance can get me sick—eating the wrong thing, not drinking enough water, using ‘el’ when I should use ‘la’…whatever. Point is, I never know when I’m going to have problemas. I have explained this as well as I can to dear Mabel to deter her from giving me milk that I have to take a pill to digest in the mornings, but she has decided to interpret it how she wants (E.G. she still gives me milk in the mornings because I can digest it if i take a pill).

So last week when I complained of a stomach ache, in typical Mabel fashion, she immediately declared herself expert on my stomach and decided that something I had eaten was the culprit. Specifically, she blamed a thai dinner that I had enjoyed the previous week. THE PREVIOUS WEEK. I guess it stood out to her as something strange, as the Argentine concept ethnic food is un hamberguesa and their spicy food ranges from yellow mustard (hot for them) to a radish (death to them). At the time I laughed off Mabel’s suggestion of the thai food as another charming example of her sweeping ignorance. But it got worse this week when I got a cold.

Bed-bound with a cough, a runny nose, a head ache, a sore throat, and the persistent tummy ache, I decided to skip our usual 9:00 dinner on Sunday so I could rest. When I got out of bed at 10 to grab some food, Mabel was waiting for me in the kitchen. In her orange bath-robe which is the exact hue of her dyed hair, her arms were crossed and her face steeled as if I was her son who had just been caught shoplifting and brought home by a policia.

“And what’s wrong with you?”

I described my symptoms.

“Well you know why you are sick? You don’t wear socks in the house.”

I laughed. “I think i just need to sleep more.”

“Noooooo. You need to wear calcetines. You have swine flu.”

“I told you I got the vaccine.”

“Noooooo. A vaccine isn’t to stop the disease. It’s to stop from spreading it.”

Jesus christ. “Ok.”

“And your stomach still hurts because of the thai food.”

“No. I have a stomach ache, but that’s just how my stomach works.”

“Noooooo. It was the thai food. Too spicy.”

“But I can eat thai food. It’s not a problem for me.”

“Noooooo. No you can’t.”

This was getting pretty fucking frustrating. “Yea, I can. I know that I can.”

“And how do you know?”

“What do you mean how do I know? BECAUSE THIS IS MY LIFE, MABEL. I HAVE LIVED WITH THIS STOMACH FOR 21 YEARS. I know what I can eat.”

“Noooooo you can’t eat thai food.”

“OK look. I don’t eat things that hurt my stomach.”

“And what hurts your stomach.” (i use periods because her questions were made not out of curiosity, but to prove her point.)

“Uhhh…Fried food.”

“So the thai food was fried.”

“No. No it was not.”

“Siiiiiiiii. How do you know it was not.”

“BECAUSE I ATE IT. I LOOKED AT IT AND THEN TASTED IT. IT WAS NOT FRIED. AND YOU CAN’T EVEN FRY A CURRY.”

“What’s a coory?”

“A THAI SOUP.”

“AND IT WAS FRIED!”

“NO IT WASN’T.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW? They do all sorts of sneaky things in the kitchens! Did you go into the kitchen and watch them make it?”

“OF COURSE NOT BUT—”

“Then it was fried.”

“Ok Mabel, they gave me a fried soup. I ate it and that made me sick. What a boludo (jackass) I am. I’m going to bed.”

“Oh let me make you some tea with lemon!”

And thus Argentina won World War Flu. It may have been short-lived, but i think we’re all glad it didn’t have to go any farther. The next morning I woke up to an email from Mabel in which she forwarded me “10 tips on how to not spread the flu.” Subtlety is indeed her strong suit.

That night I showed up to dinner wearing socks. She still insisted that I sit one chair further away from her than is our custom, so as to not contaminate her, but the socks pleased Mabel very much. She gave me an extra piece of fruit as my reward.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my thrilling existence. I’m going to go sit somewhere and contemplate how in the name of God that woman raised 3 children with none of them dying or renouncing her.

Last night I returned from a 36 hour excursion into the nonstop freak-dance-rave-land that is Uruguay. For those of you who don’t know what Uruguay—or the Dirty U, as call it the locals—is all about, let me key you in.

Uruguay is all about cattle. It’s all about lemons. It’s all about being the first Latin American pais to give women the right to vote. Uruguay is all about grilling meat over wood and making its towns smell like a home fire. It’s all about having an accent that is much easier to understand than Argentina’s. It’s all about inflated currency. It’s all about lying to interested (North)American tourists and saying ‘no’ when they ask their tour guides if there are any ghosts in the 17th century, stone-walled, colonial town that he visited. Assholes.

An enormous group of 70 Americans from my abroad program took Colonia, Uruguay by storm on Friday morning. By ‘took by storm’ I mean we arrived on a boat that took 3 hours to go 40 Km. We were louder than anyone else. We wore shorts, flip flops, fraternity t-shirts and northface jackets that all accentuated our lumpy, pale, corn syrup-fed bodies instead of showing off any sexy honda latina. And we only spoke English, God damn it!

Now this boat ride is something I’ve always wanted to do. In tenth grade Spanish class we read some weird story about a ventriloquist taking his daughter, Gianconda, from buenos aires to montevideo on the ferry. I really have no idea what the story was about, but there was some twist in the end where the daughter was really a puppet that he kept in his suitcase, or we knew it was a puppet all along but then at the end we learn it’s his real daughter that he keeps in his suitcase. One of those for sure. At any rate the boat sounded charming, and whenever Anthony as a teen imagined himself traveling the world, he imagined himself reading a local newspaper, sipping cafe, wearing a linen coat and a panama hat while sitting on a bench on the deck of an old fashioned ferry which cut through pea soup fog on the rio de la plata.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Absolutely false. In reality I woke up on Friday after 2 hours of sleep. Dragged myself out of bed, filled myself with diet coke because mate takes too long and mabels coffee tastes like chalk-water. I took the subte to a bus to the Buquebus—the ferry—which, instead of the elegant, steamy, fog-horn blowing ocean liner of my imagination, resembled a floating public high-school. One anonymous, metal rectangular-prism, with brown stains on the walls and large windows. I got through customs, met gringo friends, and got on board. The first room everyone entered was a beautiful wood-paneled sitting area/cafe/arcade. Try as I did to shove my monedas argentinas into the video game consuls, they only wanted American quarters, which i haven’t seen in months. I tried to commiserate and share my disappointment with a six year old boy who stood moping like a stray puppy over a foosball table. Unfortunately i blew my chance to build friendship out of pain when all I could think of to tell him was: ‘So this doesn’t take coins?’ ‘I dunno.’ ‘I don’t think it does. Que lastima!’ Feeling rather worthless, I went up to the deck.

A note: Rio de la Plata is one big son of a bitch. You can’t see across. It looks like an ocean that someone spilled a whole bunch of chocolate milk in, which might actually be kind of good if you think about it. Kind of like an egg cream. But I tasted it in Uruguay to see if it was salty or not, and it tasted of neither sodium nor jewish deli drinks.

Up on the deck, my buddies and i realized that the only way to possibly enjoy the gorgeous, sunny day, lazily ferrying across a south american body of water was to go down to the duty free shop and buy a whole bunch of imported champagne, orange juice, and cigars and have a smoky, card playing, self-made mimosa fest in the sea breeze. Spot on assessment. It ruled.

Uruguay proceeded to rock my world, but there’s not too much to tell. At one point I almost convinced friends to buy a car that we found for sale on the street. A 1980’s subaru station wagon, just like the one my family drove when we moved to Oregon 1992. Except this one was apparently driven off a cliff, looted for parts, or stepped on by Godzilla shortly after it’s Japanese birth. One of the most beat-up, jury rigged things I have ever seen. But it came at the price of 2,400 pesos uruguayos, which translates into 550 pesos argentinos, which translates into 150 dolares norteamericanos. Less than $40 apiece and we would have conquered this continent until the wheels fell off, roughly 4 blocks later.

Tonight I go to an American bar to watch basktetball, drink bud lite and feel unaccomplished. have me in your hearts and lets go blazers pleeeaaase

Argentony

Who’s dumb for going on a hastily planned trip to a totally unfamiliar region of the world where they don’t speak your native tongue now, huh?

And these are the ugly fotos.

Behind the flamingos is our goal, peninsula valdez.

Hi friends, family and creeps from the internet,

It’s been a while—principally because I took my first trip last weekend, all the way to sunny Las Grutas, Argentina, a northern patagonian beach town. Never heard of it before? No worries. You join a group that includes every english speaker in history and 95% of Argentines.

The trip was splendid. It opened my eyes to the joyful art of traveling for the sake of traveling. It’s charm came in no small part from its hasty planning. It went like this:

Mom—stop reading now. You need to sleep tonight and i promise I’ll call you and tell you a really safe sounding version of my trip.

In the past few years, thoughts of Patagonia have had some magnetic hold over me. It’s not just that I’ve wanted to go, it’s that i can sit on my computer for hours just googling and staring at the pictures. I could never really voice what’s so alluring, but i figure my best shot would be, “it’s like Montana, only with more sheep and they speak spanish and stuff.” If that can’t convince you, then what can? So when Semana Santa (a four day holiday in which Argentines honor the resurrection of Christ by traveling to Mendoza, getting crunk at vineyards and eating vast amounts of meats) hit, I knew it was time to see it for myself. I got my friend Taylor on board to go camping on the cheap, somewhere in Patagonia. 

—side note—as i write this in the kitchen, Mabel walks through and asks what my thoughts are on the flu. When I decipher this non-sequitur, I respond that this past winter break I got vaccinated, but then came down with a slight case anyway. She responds that this can not be true and walks off to the living room where I can now hear a telenovela playing. End scene.—

So on the tuesday of our trip, I went to a large wall map of la argentina at my abroad office, pointed to random towns in patagonia, and then saw how much bus tickets would be to them. The winner was Las Grutas, weighing in at an 18 hour ride, a hella cheap ticket, and recommended by the Rio Negro tourism board. I bought the tickets, rented a tent, borrowed a sleeping bag and left Taylor in charge of finding a campsite. Two days later, we’re on the overnight bus taking mate, my big annoying blue bag filled with 4 days of groceries, water, clothes and shelter.

At 6:30 AM the Rio Negro border guard wakes me up personally. “Do you own the blue bag?” Yea. I mean si. “Your entering a protected zone. Is there any fruit or meat in the bag?” No. (huge lie. Shit is full of apples, cucumbers and tomatoes.) “No fruit?” Nope. “OK. I’m going to check your bag.” (Crap. We start walking to a little house where my bag is alone on a table and has clearly already been rummaged through. About four guards are in there chumming it up.) Oh is cucumber a fruit? “No it’s a vegetable.” Ok. Is tomato a fruit? “No, that’s a vegetable too.” Great. Ay dios mio, you know what, I have some apples in there. “Yes I know.”

So he took them, the rest of the guards laugh at my funny name and slap me happily on the back, especially when they see the bottle of fernet (the national liquor) that I have in my bag. I was presented with a waiver for 5 pesos for my trouble, given no explanation of how to retrieve this $1.25 US, and sent back to the bus, apple-less.

At 10:30 the bus takes a turn off the highway. The endless sprawl of green sagebrush over sienna earth comes to an end in the distance at a sparkling turquoise sea and a white town. Bienvenidos a Las Grutas. Taylor never did get us a camp-site, so we wander through town until we find the cheapest. It happens to be named “police camping” and is guarded by a skinny German Shephard named Ramon who just barks at everybody and is tied on a leash too far from the gate to actually harm a potential burglar. We set up camp, throw on swim suits, and head to the beach. At 3:00. It’s 75 degrees or so.

In the effort of saving thousands of words, I’ll just post my pictures.

Now Patagonia gets damned cold at night. About 35 degrees. Our tent is warm. It is our safe haven, and perhaps not coincidentally, it came with a mysterious plastic bag tied to the interior roof which, when it was dark out, was clearly shaped like a bust of Jesus wearing a seat-belt. Each night when we played guitar and took fernet, toasting to Jesus in honor of his big day coming up that sunday.

Saturday I ran out into the desert for miles. Again, pictures.

Sunday we got up early to go on an adventure. So the big tourist spot on the patagonian coast is peninsula valdez. This is somewhere south of Las Grutas and where fat (north)americans go to watch whales and see penguins. Well we could see it from the cliffs of Las Grutas, an enticing whitewashed plateau in the middle of the water. We decided that the walk would be about 6 hours in each direction and that we would do it. NOTHING was gonna stand between these two non-fat (norht)americans and their penguins. So off we embarked at 10.

Leaving LG, we’re walking in front of a super market. A beastly roar comes from nowhere in particular—there is no animal or man around us. It comes again and we look up. On top of the store is a rottweiler bearing it’s fangs, a gleam in its eye that clearly said “for no reason whatsoever, I am going to pounce on you.” So we ran away from that shit.

Our walk was breath-taking. pictures pictures pictures. I just had shorts, so I got treated to a devilish sun-burn on my calves that i’m still nursing. About 2 hours in we stopped seeing humans, houses, footprints and car-tracks. Our goal, peninsula valdez, loomed on in the distance, if anything a shade or two larger. Around 3:00 the number of looney-tunes-esque generic mammal skeletons began to truly freak us out. But then we saw flamingos and it was all better! And then we saw a dead penguin and really didnt know how to interpret that. Hours in, our water dwindling, my calves screaming bloody murder, and our goal seemingly just as far out, we decided that the only reason we would keep going at 5 would be if we were almost there, could see penguins, and could hitch-hike back to LG. Our bus would be at 1:30 that morning, it would get DARK, and the weather forecast called for it to get colder that night than Mabel is when you are trying to explain something personal.  But 5 came and we could see no towns, and we were no closer. So we turned, defeated, but kind of like in Rocky I where the loss wasn’t the point.  

Walking back it got dark at 7:30. We were about 2 and a half horas out and God knows how many miles we’d went. We were beat. But the stars were…everything you could hope for in Patagonia at night. Unreal. No pics, but just google ‘hubble telescope’ and you’ll get the idea. 8:30 we were close. We walked straight at the lights of Las Grutas. But we were now near campers and could hear dogs barking, so we decided to quit speaking english so we could glide by and not make friends with any robbers. Taylor stumbled over something in the sand. Then she screamed.

I turn around—a pit bull is running up behind us. Homie does not look nice.

“Basta!” I yelled. The dog freaked out and ran up in front. He started running back and forth between the cliffs and the ocean. We were, needless to say, terrified. The dog ran back at us. “Basta!” It went ahead and ran around again. There was really nowhere to go to wait this out and no help around, so I asked taylor for the knife I stole from Mabel’s kitchen.

So at this point we were walking, exhausted, sun burn and shorts, little water, and a psychotic dog possibly trying to kill us, and our only protection is ANTHONY’S ability to use a knife that is used to cut my milanesa at dinner. Our odds of survival seemed pretty low. Low like Rocky’s odds of beating Apollo Creed?! No. More as in low like the odds that Coke will come out on top of the cola war—I mean I expect it to happen, but wouldn’t be shocked if it lost. But the dog runs back at us a couple more times and is held off by ‘basta,’ and not by my stabbing. He runs up ahead.

Cold and scared, we made it back to Las Grutas at 10. 12 hours of walking. Done right? NO! The dog was waiting for us (I kid you not) at the entrance of the town! It was like the moment in Jurassic Park when they realize the raptors are testing the fences for weaknesses. WHO IS THIS MONSTER!? IS HE IN LEAGUE WITH THAT ROTTWEILLER FROM THE ROOF? The knife was unsheathed once more. But he actually just followed us all the way through town, feigning a limp whenever other humans passed. He was a stray with an unusual bag of tricks. Taylor and I sat down for pizza and beer at a restaurant and found out that we couldn’t stand afterwards. To finish the day’s theme of annoying dogs, Ramon gave us shit at the gate of the camp-site, which we found locked. I had to pry it open while he barked impotently.

We caught the bus at 1:30. Adios, Las Grutas.

The kicker(!) to this story is that we later looked at a map and learned that Peninsula Valdez is over 100 miles from Las Grutas, in another provincia, and there are no towns in between the two. Yikes. I’m guessing we walked 40 miles, the whole time thinking we were an hour away.

If you have made it this far, you are either a true friend of i am more interesting than i thought. Pictures to come this evening.

Love

A living, sunburned, not-traumatized

Anthony

No longer will the posts on this blog be written by an American. From this day forth, Anthony is an Argentino, a real life porten(squiggly)o. Today I had my right of passage, my baptism, my bar-mitzvah, my quinciniera if you will. Here’s the story.

Today, like most Wednesdays, I took my few items of laundry to the lavadora down the block. There are no laundromats in Buenos Aires, just small shops where someone does it for you for a fee. Essentially you hand a bag of your dirty unmentionables through the small window in a door made of iron bars to an ABSOLUTE STRANGER who does God knows what to them and the next day you can retrieve them in a different bag, folded and smelling nicely. There are a number of these near my apartment, but one is exactly on my way to the subte and bus lines, and only charges 12 pesos per bag. This has always stricken me as a suspiciously low cost. The service, however, has always been satisfactory but for one caveat—my clothes come back smelling like baby powder. I feel like a premature father walking around. Or maybe someone with hyperactive sweat glands and a cheap solution. Neither feels sexy. So during some dark days i actually contemplated switching to a different, further away, more expensive lavadora. Those days, I’m happy to say, ended today.

You see as I dropped off my dirties, the woman behind the iron bars took a ticket and was putting down my info. As per usual, she asks what my name is. But before I can answer she says: “It’s Anthony, no?”

Well I just smiled from ear to ear and said gracias, si es. I’m a regular! I am a valued customer! I am not just a tourist, I am Argentino! Let’s forget for one second that she probably only remembered my name because I’m that weird guy who comes once a week and mutters something in broken spanish that likely means ‘this items are to wet and to…hot.’ No, today we won’t get caught up in the details, because today I am porten(squiggle)o.

So I officially have a lavadora of choice. Yes they do make my clothes smell like a baby’s ass. And yes, i am proud of it. So if you ever make it down here, close your eyes when you get off the plane and sniff me out. I’ll show you around. I am—after all—a local now.

For easter break I’m going camping on the Atlantic shore of Patagonia. If I see anything interesting like penguins, gauchos or sexy argentine sun bathers, I’ll make sure to snap some fotos for you. Wish me luck.

Anthony

Today I woke up knowing that a college fantasy had been realized. You can deny my glory all you want—granted it was in the least satisfying way possible—but it’s true god-damnit, it’s true!

O? No entiendes de lo que hablo? clearly you are not one to keep yourself abreast of current events. Allow me to explain.

My abroad program is not directly through penn, but something called IFSA Butler. That would be the institute for study abroad at Butler university. I pay Butler tuition through penn, i am in a culture and language class in argentina taught by a professor paid by Butler, and will receive a Butler transcript for the semester.
You know what that tells me?
I attend a school that is in the final 4.
To all of my non-penn friends: remember all those times you woke up early on a saturday morning to wait in line for a November football game, protecting yourself from the cold with friends, a flask, and a blanket bearing your school colors? Remember all those times went to your school’s basketball games and saw someone dunk? Remember the fact that you can name three athletes at your school that you don’t merely know because you had a history recitation with them once? WELL NOW THAT GLORY IS MINE.

The day of the caveat, the historical asterisk is upon us! No longer are validity or fairness needed when we have COLD. HARD. FACTS that you can verify all over the internet. Barry Bonds IS the all time home run leader—check the books, Bush WON in 2000—check the economy, and I AM a student at a final four university!

Perhaps in the fall when I no longer attend this athletic powerhouse, and I am studying in the library while my (league champion) football team gets thrashed 2 blocks away by a tepid non-conference opponent, you can come up to me, slap a paper bag on my head and laugh.
But until then:
LETS GO WILDCATS!!!…OR TIGERS!…ok i’m googling it now…really? huh. learn something knew every day…LET’S GO BULLDOGS!!!