I'm on a boat

My roommates and I were invited to a birthday party on a boat, a booze cruise if you will. Well my mind had conjured up different images of where we were going, a large boat perhaps, maybe some outdoor space to get some nice fresh air? Well the boat was like a ferry boat with the inside chairs taken out and replaced with strobe lights and disco balls straight from a cheesy night club. At 1:30am we got to the dock to get on the ferry, er, boat and headed up the river. Entering the boat we were all initially panicked about being trapped below deck till 5 in the morning because they wouldn't let us on the top deck while moving. We also asked our friend if it was an open bar because we paid a hefty 50 pesos to get on. "Of course it's an open bar. Why wouldn't it be?" He told us before we agreed to this party. When we asked him again as the boat starting sailing out to sea he said that the bar was open over there and pointed in the direction of the bar. He was confused why a bar wouldn't be open at a party. Thus another cultural misunderstanding. We ended up enjoying ourselves and the game of trying to stand up as the boat rocked turbulently beneath us. But I think we were all pleased when the boat docked and we could head home. 

Polo

Polo is the most posh sport around. Not only are the players deceivingly good looking they look like they walked straight out of a Ralph Lauren catalog, with shaggy naturally highlighted hair and bronzed skin and often times bright blue eyes polo matches are also fun to watch. I like admiring the strong horses and the swiftness and control in which the players handle them. But more than anything I like going to watch the people. The extremely elegant, put together people that I only thought existed in the movies.

These are the people that television shows about high society people are based off of. A friend of mine was telling me that each polo player owns at least 25 horses and that each horse costs roughly half a million dollars, sans sponsorship. So basically polo is a sport that the elite can play because they love it and are willing to fork out the dough to compete FOR FUN.

A Big Fat Argentine Wedding

The last wedding I went to was nearly 10 years ago when my mom and step-dad walked down the “aisle” in our back yard. Luckily in my awkward glory there was no dancing or young people mingling for that matter, just a simple, lovely dinner in my living room. Everyone has been telling me about how fun weddings are but I am still at that age where my friends haven’t yet decided to take the leap into wedded matrimony. Well this past weekend I went to my first “grown up” Argentine wedding. Actually, I didn’t go to the wedding or the dinner, in fact I didn’t even show up until 2AM for the “celebration”. You see in an Argentine wedding there are many parts. First there is the civil ceremony where the couple gets married in the court and there is a small ceremony attended by friends and family followed by a fiesta, of course. Then the following weekend or a few weeks later is the big deal wedding. The wedding starts in the church at 8 pm followed by a dinner which starts at around 11ish and then the festivities that last until daylight. Here they don’t have bridesmaids and groomsmen nor do they spend thousands on an engagement ring (very high chance it would be cut off your finger by a thief).

My Argentine friend invited me to his good friends’ wedding (the third part). I showed up at 2am, just as dinner was being finished. I guess what happens is that different friends are invited to different parts due to cost so at around 2am tons of young people came rolling into the banquet hall. Initially it was very reminiscent of a middle school dance, boys were on one side and girls on the other. I spent a good part of the night dancing with my friend’s girlfriends as the guys put the married couple on their shoulders and tossed them like bean bags into the air. At around 3:30am the music quieted down and the lights came on so the newlyweds could cut their cake. Then we all moved into another room outside lined with tables filled with every variety of cake and dessert imaginable, I call it heaven. Nearly everything had some form of dulce de leche…yumm. Then the music resumed and the party continued only to be interrupted again at around 4am to hand out colorful hats, Jack Sparrow hats (hair and all) along with other pirate garb, glow in the dark bracelets, and goofy costumes similar to those provided at Bar Mitzvahs. My favorite memory of the night was seeing the bride’s parents sitting atop someone’s shoulders with the father wearing a white beard and a king's crown and her mother decked out with huge carnival beads. I could never ever ever imagine my parents staying up and partying that late. So alas, at 6:30 am we bid everyone goodbye and I mean everyone. We went around to practically every person at the party and kissed them goodbye…such good manners. And that was my first real wedding, kinda.

Oktoberfest

I had always wanted to go to Oktoberfest but due to some poor planning and limited monetary funds I never made it there during my study abroad in Madrid. So when my friends Ilana and Allie proposed we go to Oktoberfest in Argentina I hopped on the bus (literally). We left for Oktoberfest at 11pm Thursday night taking a very comfortable sleeper bus. If only planes were as spacious as these buses. We woke up the next morning in Cordoba, the second biggest city in Argentina to the northwest of Buenos Aires. We spent the day exploring the city which is very easy to explore on foot. We stayed at a hostel that served the BEST asado (BBQ) ever.

On Saturday we left Cordoba for a village called Village General Belgrano was an extrordinary festival called Oktoberfest. For a week people came from all over Argentina to celebrate their love for beer and German culture of course. Had I not know I was in Argentina I would have sworn that I was in a tiny village in Germany with men running around in leiderhosen (sp?) and women dressed as bar maids. The actual celebration was on a few acres of land that seemed oddly reminiscent of college day drinking. We arrived at the festival at 11 AM and started sampling the wide range of beers, everything from honey beer to Duff's from the Simpsons, as well as taking in the exceptionally warm weather and folk dancers. It wasn't until we came back later that things got rowdy. The Argentine men are notorious for being pushy but when filled with alcohol they just become persistent. My friends and I would be rudely interrupted by Argentine men asking us "de donde sos?" or where we were from. For what seemed like hours we were answering the same questions of where we were from, what we do, etc. It got to the point where I started lying about what I do and where I am from just to try and ease the boredom. Overall Oktoberfest was a fun experience, a fun experience that I could only handle for one day not an entire weekend. That night we stayed at our friend's cabana they had rented and the five of us girls slept like little puppies in a row. The next day we snuck out of the packed house at 7 and walked down a beautiful dirt road surrounded by horses and watched the sunrise. As we walked down the road in our sun dresses and dirt everywhere we laughed about our adventures and got on the bus to take us back to civilization.

Subway Shopping

Tape measures, hair elastics, markers, 80’s mix CDs, stickers, comic books, freshly baked pastries, and scissors are only a few of the items paraded for sale on the “subway aisle.” In my daily 20 minute commute to school, I see people hawking everything and anything. Unlike other countries I’ve been to where people carry their passed out baby franticly up and down the aisles and wail “Por favor” (it still does exist here) people have taken to selling the most novel of items. I haven’t bought anything yet, in spite of the sweet sounds from the 80’s mix. (I still am fearful of someone grabbing my wallet and taking off.) However, I always find my commute very entertaining. On the other hand, I haven’t seen too much crime other than this one day where I sat next to a guy who was putting on his mp3 player when someone reached his hand into the window and tried to yank it out of the unsuspecting subte passenger's hand! Fortunately, at that moment the subte left the platform and the thief was left empty handed.

Land Mines

It has always been a running joke of my sister's that New Yorkers are always looking down at the ground because the sidewalk sparkles with what looks like millions of brilliant diamonds. Thus, these people become so mesmerized by the floor they forget to look up. Well, in Buenos Aires, people look down for another reason, a not so pretty reason. The roads here are covered in crap, literally. I love the irony of how America is the land where the roads are paved in gold but really quite the opposite is true for Argentina. Walking anywhere in those expansive city you have to be prepared to hop, skip, and jump at any moment. Unlike the United States there isn’t a law to clean up after one’s pet and in a city it can, well, get a little messy. The real culprits are the adorable older women walking their miniature pups, bundled up in cute sweaters and bejeweled with fancy collars. But despite the cuteness of both the women and the dogs, the dogs do their business anywhere. I’ve seen some pop a squat in the middle of the road at the cross sections. These little woman acknowledge that their dog has done what they have come to do, step over the mound and continue on, leaving some unsuspecting tourist to place their Tevas in the heap. It frustrates me so much to see this happening, because these little piles makes it difficult for runners to navigate the streets without constantly glancing down. Furthermore, I find it infuriating because it makes the city appear dirtier than it actually is. It takes all my energy to not berate these street polluters about their evil ways. Instead I smile sweetly at them, look down, and watch where I’m going.