the gay cowboy, exotic uruguay and the southern cross
im finally settled into life in buenos aires. i have some friends in town, a place to live, a regular school schedule, and a gym membership. im taking 4 hours of spanish class a day, which is great for learning spanish, but tedious sometimes. my spanish teachers are both young and hip. juiliana is an enraged liberal lesbian who complains about argentine apathy about the insane government corruptions. pablo is a all shaggy guy in school studying literary theory, and he knows good places in the city to see at and live music. love them. im taking classes with one other girl, who is french, and insane, and wonderful. she has bright red hair and wears a ton of makeup and tells me that she cant wait to age so she can start injecting herself with botox.
i moved out of the hippie dome because it had no heat, and i moved in with a friend of the owner who lives in the same neighborhood. my roommates now are an insane english girl and this big ol israeli pot head. we live on the 6th floor of an apartment building. our place features, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, heating, couch, 3 bedrooms, and a jewish-adjusted dali print on the wall in the living room. alons friend gave him a big dali print (i think it is called elephant-giraffe) with jesus holding up the cross to defend himeslf from the elephants--, but alon bought white paint and blotted out the crusifix. oh alon.
it was aazing weather here, like 60 degrees, but today it´s cold and rainy. last night there was thick fog and the city looked like a scene out of a1930s gangster film. i went to my first drag show lastnight. it was ivans last night in town and he, myself, andniko went to a bar called searches and saw some amazing drag queens (all in spanish, naturally). then this man came out in a cowboy outfit and hat and stripped (we were al l quite surprised by the gay stripping). i was already losing my shit in drunken amazement at the surprise of the gay spanish stripper dressed up in texan gear, when he lept from the stage, pulled his little gun from his holster and strutted over to our table and wrapped his big muscular arms around my (straight) friends neck and then rubbed his gun up and down his chest and THEN strutted back to the stage, wripped his pants off, and hung his cowboy hat on his dick.
but buenos aires isnt all gay strippers! theres every type of bar or club you could ever dream of, and of course there is the food. since my dad got to town we´ve been going out to eat for lunch and dinner. there are more fashionable delicius restaurants here than you could ever manage to patronize in 1 summer, but im working on it. and a meal that would cost you 30 or 40 dollars in the states is about 10 bucks here. and the wine.
on sunday my dadand i went to a little town in uruguay called colonia. uruguay borders argentina and is only a 1 hour trip from buenos aires. the town we went to is tiny and quite, and after we got our passports stamped and observd the uruguayan scenerey (which looks shockingly like the texan scenery, pretty flat with lots of trees and shrubs), we didnt have much to do, but we were stuck until the boat came back at 8pm. so i hung out in a cafe with my dad all afternoon in uruguay ,and then when we were walking back to the port i realized that it was the first time id been outside of the city at night and therefore could see the southern sky. amazing. i saw the southern cross for the first time and alpha centuri and a lot of other stars i cant identify.
so, this trip has been a lot of fun. my spanish really sucks, but i know a lot more than i did 2 weeks ago. i can communicate with cabies, people in restaurants, washetaries, etc ,and i can express myself very slowly. but my friends here who are americans are all fluent in spanish, so when we go out everyone speaks spanish and i feel confused, and when people tell stories if i can even decifer what they are saying it takes me 5 miutes to mentally tanslate it. id never been particularly motivated in learning a foreign language before, but now i want to become fluent in spanish. but that´s going to take more than 2 more months, so maybe i will go down to mexico for a while next year.
in a few days im going up to the border of brasil to see some cool waterfalls and go hiking. i think me and my friend here are going to try to go to Rio together in a month or so to visit ivan, so i need to look into getting a visa. alex and taylor are coming to visit soon. so much to love.!
i moved out of the hippie dome because it had no heat, and i moved in with a friend of the owner who lives in the same neighborhood. my roommates now are an insane english girl and this big ol israeli pot head. we live on the 6th floor of an apartment building. our place features, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, heating, couch, 3 bedrooms, and a jewish-adjusted dali print on the wall in the living room. alons friend gave him a big dali print (i think it is called elephant-giraffe) with jesus holding up the cross to defend himeslf from the elephants--, but alon bought white paint and blotted out the crusifix. oh alon.
it was aazing weather here, like 60 degrees, but today it´s cold and rainy. last night there was thick fog and the city looked like a scene out of a1930s gangster film. i went to my first drag show lastnight. it was ivans last night in town and he, myself, andniko went to a bar called searches and saw some amazing drag queens (all in spanish, naturally). then this man came out in a cowboy outfit and hat and stripped (we were al l quite surprised by the gay stripping). i was already losing my shit in drunken amazement at the surprise of the gay spanish stripper dressed up in texan gear, when he lept from the stage, pulled his little gun from his holster and strutted over to our table and wrapped his big muscular arms around my (straight) friends neck and then rubbed his gun up and down his chest and THEN strutted back to the stage, wripped his pants off, and hung his cowboy hat on his dick.
but buenos aires isnt all gay strippers! theres every type of bar or club you could ever dream of, and of course there is the food. since my dad got to town we´ve been going out to eat for lunch and dinner. there are more fashionable delicius restaurants here than you could ever manage to patronize in 1 summer, but im working on it. and a meal that would cost you 30 or 40 dollars in the states is about 10 bucks here. and the wine.
on sunday my dadand i went to a little town in uruguay called colonia. uruguay borders argentina and is only a 1 hour trip from buenos aires. the town we went to is tiny and quite, and after we got our passports stamped and observd the uruguayan scenerey (which looks shockingly like the texan scenery, pretty flat with lots of trees and shrubs), we didnt have much to do, but we were stuck until the boat came back at 8pm. so i hung out in a cafe with my dad all afternoon in uruguay ,and then when we were walking back to the port i realized that it was the first time id been outside of the city at night and therefore could see the southern sky. amazing. i saw the southern cross for the first time and alpha centuri and a lot of other stars i cant identify.
so, this trip has been a lot of fun. my spanish really sucks, but i know a lot more than i did 2 weeks ago. i can communicate with cabies, people in restaurants, washetaries, etc ,and i can express myself very slowly. but my friends here who are americans are all fluent in spanish, so when we go out everyone speaks spanish and i feel confused, and when people tell stories if i can even decifer what they are saying it takes me 5 miutes to mentally tanslate it. id never been particularly motivated in learning a foreign language before, but now i want to become fluent in spanish. but that´s going to take more than 2 more months, so maybe i will go down to mexico for a while next year.
in a few days im going up to the border of brasil to see some cool waterfalls and go hiking. i think me and my friend here are going to try to go to Rio together in a month or so to visit ivan, so i need to look into getting a visa. alex and taylor are coming to visit soon. so much to love.!