Birthday and Bicentenario!

Seems I'm always a day behind with this, eh lol?

Well, yesterday was my 21st birthday!!!!!!!!! So we went to the cemetery. Hahaha, well that wasn't *why* we went, but it was as good a day as any to go! There was an art museum (Museo de Arte Bella, was the name?) right by so we hit that up too. But in chronological order...

On the way there, we stopped to get change for the bus (it's really almost scary how sacred one must hold their change to be... nigh impossible to get any anywhere and the bus ONLY takes coins). They had oreos, but I'm not in Buenos Aires to have American junk food. So I bought these SUPER AWESOME OREOESQUE THINGIES!

Super delicious and just as addictive, lol. More importantly, though...

Outside the cemetery:

And there were SO many stray kittens in there. Cats and tombs just go together I s'pose, eh?

*so adorable!*

Here's a taste of what inside looked like:

Yeah. It was a legit necropolis (I actually forgot that word existed until I saw it in the pamphlet...). As for individual tombs...

There were a lot of legit statues, too:

But not every part of the Recoleta Cemetery was so well kept:

All the same, there were a lot of really beautiful things to see there. Take this, for instance:

This was dead center of the whole place. Really gave a physical manifestation to a general sense of connectedness, ya know?

I'll wrap up this section with some other random shots:

On the way to the art museum, I saw a pretty little red robin sitting atop this:

Buuuut he flew away before I could capture him. Still looked like a nice shot to me, so I kept it. Anyway, there were TONS of street merchants a little ways past the cemetery (think micro-San Telmo). A small branch of the massive tree of merchanty goodness:

There was SOOOOOO much beautiful art in the museum, and it looked like there were quite a few originals too (ie: I saw some Picasso's that said "donated from"). It was a pretty large museum, at that. Two very expansive floors. The room that had these babies was playing some creeptastical music (made for a solidly good effect, though):

So then we came back home and on the way in I snagged a picture of this guy:

This little bugger has been sitting outside my doorstep the entire time. I thought he'd like to say hello, lol.

Anyhow, that night we went out with Alejandro and Mariel for some partying at this place called The Alamo. If that sounds cheezily American, it's because it is. They were playing straight runs of The Killers and Red Hot Chili Peppers (which was fine by me, what with those being two of my favorite bands) and 95% of the people there were Americans, lol. Let me continue by copy/pasting my facebook status from earlier today

"All I'm sayin' is that the cover charge + 5 pesos gets you a pitcher of beer. A PITCHER OF BEER. *PER PERSON*, MIND YOU. Just to give you an idea how wonderful last night was and how unhappy waking up is right now lol XD But all that said, Happy Bicentennial of the Argentine Revolution!!!!"

So um, yeah. Excellent night lol. Would you believe it, I talked to another random girl? Not to be a terrible person who judges bananas by their peels, but I'm preeeetty sure she was a lesbian. I come to this conclusion by way of her haircut, the fact that when I put my arm around her shoulder she kindly removed it, and that it's a bit more comforting to think that she wasn't into guys than that she was just that repulsed by me, lol...

Still, making good progress with being a sociable individual.

I'll end this with how today went, since it's a pretty short post. I woke up with my first actual hangover, which felt like something of a milestone lol. But more importantly, for some reason I had convinced myself that no real festivities would be going on until tonight for the Bicentenario. At around 9pm I decide to Google up some info and see that the last event started at 8pm. Obviously there are probably people partying still, but official, organized events finished long ago. I'm kinda really upset at myself for not checking this beforehand. Talk about missed once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, ya know?

On the upshot, it's been an extremely chill day that's been wonderful for recovering and just generally gathering my bearings. Also, I changed my return flight to the 7th. Apparently I booked myself here for an extra week. BsAs is absolutely lovely but I do miss home lol. It's $175 extra if I want to chill with my dad's side of the family for a week while I'm in FL, but I'm not sure how finances are gonna be at that point. I've spent a LOT on getting here/set up here/my first half month and first actual month's rent covered when I get back (this is what happens when your college screws you out of on-campus housing...), so I'm down to roughly half of my stipend already. The only real worry from here is the next cell phone bill since I've been using it quite a bit more than I should, abroad. I don't expect it to be more than any given month in Italy, though. That said, I think I'm still ok for now. The difference, I figure, is now that instead of having to try really hard in order to spend all of my stipend money in Argentina, I'll have to make some small to moderate efforts to refrain from spending everything here. It *is* phenomenally cheap to live here if you don't have rent to worry about, so I'm not terrified or anything.

So hopefully we can go out tonight for a bit. I wanna get up really early so I can finally get a sim card for my phone and get people's numbers (particularly people I'm friends with and work with). Heres to the morrow!!!!

La Boca, San Telmo and Epic Thunderstorms

So yesterday Chirag's friend/co-researcher, Andrea, and her husband, Martin, (GAAAH TOO MANY COMMAS!) showed us around BsAs for the afternoon =D (note: I really like how trying to pronounce the abbreviation for Buenos Aires can come out as "besas" lol). Unfortunately, both Chirag and I forgot our cameras, and Martin forgot the battery to his camera, lol... All the same, it was a most splendid time, indeed. La Boca is basically a ridonkulously touristy part of the city, but one that's touristy for a reason, ya know? Tango dancers at every (overpriced for the quality of food you're getting) restaurant, and lots of little street vendor setups (not nearly as many as in San Telmo, but more on that in a bit).

On the topic of Tango dancers, though, they actually had us dance for a little bit with them, teaching us the super-rudimentary steps of the graceful foot-whirlwind that is Tango. That was legit fun times ^_^ The upstairs of the same place had a three-wall sized photo of the stadium in La Boca, too. It was pretty legit, if I do say so myself. The upstairs had an astroturf floor and everything, lol.

Also, I'm not sure if it's just the places I've chosen to eat steak at, but... Argentine steak just isn't that great, in my humble opinion. Overcooked every time. I'm gonna give it a go at a fancier restaurant before I relegate it completely to the pits of super-amateur-food-critic-hell, but it only gets one more chance. That said, THESE PEOPLE KNOW HOW TO MAKE THEIR CHICKEN!!!! For real, the chicken here is simply too fantastic!! No matter where you get it, at that =D

Ah, so La Boca is famous for two things, really: it's futbol (soccer) team and it's whimsically colored houses. Seems the Italians who landed here way back in the day used the spare paint from their ships to do up their houses, as well. The houses themselves are mostly vacant/just for show, now, but some are used for shops, too. You go to the third or fourth (segundo o tercera, by Argentine or European terms, though) floor of some of them and get pretty sweet views of the area. Completely worth going back in the near future with a camera! (On the upshot, the day we went was pretty cloudy, so going back another [sunny] day might be for the best, anyway)

After all that was done, we hopped a bus over to San Telmo. What you need to know about San Telmo is that it is legitimately a barrio (neighborhood) of street shops. Especially down this one road... get to the right height/sea level on that road, and it legit looks like a river of people (awesome photo will be posted of it when I revisit).

While we were there, there was this beastly awesome top hat. 160 pesos (40 dollars - CHEAP as far as top hats go, and it was actually of very legitimate quality), but brown. If I can find a black one, I'm totally getting it. Also, I think I want to buy an accordion. Don't ask me why, I just have this urge to get an accordion lol. Seems there's a road not far up from Avenida Corrientes where there are tons of music shops. That'll open up on Wednesday, when everywhere else does (including the cell phone stores - tried Chirag's sim card and it looks like my phone is already unlocked, oddly/pleasantly enough).

Side note: I'm going to be extremely sad when I get back home and can't find empenadas down every road.

The streets of San Telmo were also riddled with Tango dancers. It was really quite a fun sight (though you couldn't really make eye contact or else they'd approach you and try to make some money off of you). Good times, all the same.

So yeah, Andrea and Martin were absolutely angelic with us the entire day. Super, super nice people, they are!!

Anyway, I'm late for a skype-call with the family. Peace!!

Weekend!!

Graaaaaaaawr freakin' power outage last night. Meh, worse things could've happened. More on that later, for now here's some delicious copypasta out of what I typed up while the internet/power was down!

Ahhhhh, sweet, delicious weekend!

So Friday night I chilled at home and caught up with the northern hemisphere via facebook lol. It was good to relax and bs with home-people ^_^ But yeah, not much else to say there, lol.

Saturday, we got up around 2pm. Gotta love sleeping in lol. Unfortunately, I didn't think to bring my camera then or today, so I've got no photos for ya =/ Sincerest apologies, but I'll definitely me more camera-conscious from now on.

Anyway, we went to 9 de Julio, where there was epically epic celebration of the bicentennial anniversary of the Argentine revolution that led to its independence, 6 years later. Now what you have to understand is that 9 de Julio is a maaaasssive highway in the city, and it was closed down. Haaardcore jubilations, man... parades and concerts (EPICALLY AWESOME CONCERTS) and

Oh!!! Chirag had his camera and let me copy over the pictures, so I have photos after all!!!! Here they are!!!

Seriously, do you SEE the size of the screens? DO YOU SEE IT?!?! There were some crazy psychadelic, windows-media-player-esque backgrounds going on, and the band (Gaunchos?) was insanely awesome.

We met up with Olivia and Lenea (I have *no* idea how to spell her name, so we're going with that for now) when we got there, but Lenea had to peace out pretty soon. Anyway they're obviously the two girls in the picture with Chirag and I. Cool people, indeed (before you ask, they're both taken). The three of us (well mostly Chirag and I, lol) picked up a few souveneirs, and I got a giant Argentine flag =D Fun times, waving that around! At one point we were in this huge croud that a camera was panning over a lot, so we were waving said flag around hoping to catch ourselves on the enormous screen on stage. I think we did see ourselves at one point =D Awesome times, indeed!

We also grabbed soooooome what was it called... pallito? There were international food thingies going on ("celebrating our diversity" was a theme they were driving at), and we hit up the Greek desk/station. It was kinda funny 'cause while I was waiting in line (tangent: "line" = crowd of hungry people and getting to the front was really an upstream fight), some guy was asking for food. It looked like he was trying to use a coupon or something but it was a weird lookin' coupon. Eventually it dawned on me that he was begging for food. One of the people serving finally gave up and gave him something, and then he legit stole two meatballs right in front of her after he was handed food. Couldn't help but chuckle at the absurdity of it, lol.

We wrapped up there around 8:30 or so, but clearly the night hadn't even begun at that stage. Olivia wasn't feeling too great so she pretty much went to bed, but Chirag and I went out for the night. Hit up some awesome pubs in Palermo. To start with, we went to Congo. When we got there, a couple of people next to us in line were like OMG HI YOU SPEAK ENGLISH TOO AWESOME YEAH! No, really, with that much (drunken) excitement. It's always a little hilarious being on the sober side of that sort of conversation, lol. The one girl was definitely hitting on me, but was.... "old" definitely is not the word, but "older" is. The real problem was that she was a mom and the combination of older woman and mother is just, well, blegh. I lack the Freudian complex necessary to go for that lol. Anyway they left pretty early 'cause her friend was peacing out of the country tomorrow (here on vacation).

So we got in for free, lol. That woman rushed us into the bar to show us this apparently hot waiter who definitely resembled the guy who plays Jacob in Twilight. The short story there is that she thought I was gay, lol. (note: getting hit on followed fairly immediately after I corrected her). But anyway we went back outside to say by to her and her friend, and when we went back in the lady at the door was saying something I couldn't hear that involved the words 30 pesos, but Chirag didn't really hear her either, so she just kinda said "ya, esta bien - entran" (it's fine, just go in). Hell yeah no cover charge!

SO OMG I ASKED FOR BAILEYS AND THE BARTENDER WAS LIKE GET THIS INSTEAD IT'S BETTER AND COSTS THE SAME AND HOLY ARGENTINE DRINKS, BATMAN, IT WAS PHENOMENAL!!! Anarula, I believe it was. It really did tastes like Baileys but with some crazy fruit in it (today we determined said fruit is called kaky) and mostly fresh-squeezed magic. So incredibly delicious! The beer here is also exteremely fantastic. Also had a Red Bull with vodka (drink swapped 'cause Chirag didn't like it so much). On its own, Red Bull isn't much better than piss, to me, but the vodka just lets it bloom into a beautiful little flower that you just want to hold in your hands. And then in your tummy.

After that we hopped over to another nearby bar. Cover was 50 there (today we found out that was a ridiculous fee and they probs just noticed our accents and charged us what they felt like). Many more drinks than you really need to worry about into the night I actually walked up and talked to a couple of girls. The conversation lasted about 30 seconds, but I still actually managed to crawl far enough out of my shell to do it. My general plan right now is to try and make it to 45 seconds lol. For real though, I do want to become a solidly confident and good conversationalist so I can actually *meet* people at bars when I get back to Jersey. If I can do it in Spanish, I should be a regular Don Juan in English, right lol?

Ok, battery's dying and the power's out (typing this in notepad). More on that in the next blog, but peace for now!

The weekend is nigh and the lasers are charged!

Haha, so I ended up going out last night and didn't get to bed until like 3:30 or so. You know when you've had just the perfect amount to drink such that you end up waking up all chipper and bushy-tailed and bright eyed? Yeah, that was Chirag and I this morning ^_^ Anyway, the party itself was good times until the landlord called the police (in our defense, we weren't being crazy, just loud). 'Course it's impossible to end a good party in Buenos Aires, so we just apartment-hopped down the street. Oh and they had this ridiculously awesome wine that was basically alcoholic Pepsi Blue done right. Don't ask me why they called something so soda-tastic a wine, but they did lol (and the bottle was definitely one you'd expect wine to have come from).

Work was ok. I'm definitely all over the theoretical stuff, things are going excellently on that end. I'm still learning how to do stuff with the experimentals, though. Slowly getting my hands dirty there. Very slowly, but it looks like things are picking up for me now. I'm collecting 9 blocks of data today (by block I just mean doing the same experiment but with different parameters). But yeah, different parameters, which means I get to touch stuff!!! Just the time delays on some of the controls, but hey that's something, right? Besides, there's the potential for epically messing up (there are 2 channels I need to play with and 2 channels I NEED to avoid), so it's good to feel trusted enough in my abilities to do this =)

Ah, speaking of the experimental lab, I took photos! Behold!

Here's the back room where most of the controls are - hence the three monitors... the middle one is the main one we use, the one on the left is a connection between the main one and the equipment. Don't ask me why we can't just connect directly to the instruments. I think it was an issue in upgrading from the left one to the middle one. The one chilling out on the right lets us know if everything is hunky-dory in the molecular beam apparatus' chambers. If there isn't a sufficient vacuum going on (like, 10^-6 normal atmospheric pressure sufficient), then the 3 kilovolts per plate in the mass spec and deflectors can spark and the entire room becomes a miniature replica of the big bang. Those power controls are at the bottom right of this pic:


It always feels epic turning up the voltages a-la-Dr. Frankenstein. You'll also note just how steampunk-esque the whole thing looks, as I mentioned before. What else... ah, here's the table we use when we need to make something else:



And the whiteboard:


AND THE LASER!!!!!!:


Yeah well it hurts to look at lol. That's what those plastic plate thingies on the side are for, after all....


.........


K it was totally worth the lights in my eyes for the next ten minutes. I think lasers are pretty much the best note I can end with, so peace!

And so began the work week

Monday! And Tuesday... and yesterday! (note: I wrote this yesterday night, so it's written in that tense. Hence, today = Wednesday)

Monday my refund check *finally* came in. That news hit me at a pretty good time. More on that in a bit, I'm just really excited to finally have large, steady funds again, lol.

So the actual work day was pretty good. I got a crash course in quantum molecular dynamics from Damian (one of my advisors, the theoretical chemistry one of course) and a fair bit of reading to do to get basically brought up to speed on how the calculations actually work at their most fundamental levels. Lunch time came around and I was invited to eat with the group, as well as most of the physical chem department, actually. Turns out they all go to lunch at noon every day. Once we got back from lunch, I went over to Ernesto's lab to start learning how the experimental side of things work. Got a general overview of how the molecular beam creation, ionization, deflections, and mass spectrometer data collection processes work. On a good side note, he bought cookies and let me have half of them! =D

On another cool side note, I'm slowly realizing just how steam-punk'd out molecular beam setups are. Pics to come soon, but you make EVERYTHING yourself, and it's all out of iron/steel and looks very crude until you realize just how much work went into making it all, and it actually does all work and get some serious science done. You'll see what I mean (the molecular beam apparatus in Italy looked quite similar, for the record).

Oh, so the high vacuums are really cool, by the way - you use a cooling and heating process involving water and, get this, MOLTEN SILICON! Molten silicon rises up, spits out, catches air, hits the water-cooled sides within the vacuum, and the air bubbles out of the bottom through an exhaust, and then the silicon repeats the cycle. This is an intense enough process to bring the pressure to 1/10,000,000 atmospheric pressure when combined with the mechanical pumps (which in and of themselves can drop a chamber to 1/1000 atmospheric pressure). Seriously, it is bamftacular.

Monday night, rolls around. Chirag and I try to get on the same bus, but literally in the time it took me to find a 2 peso bill in my wallet of 10s, the bus he got on left without me. Seriously, the traffic/driving/buses in Buenos Aires are freaking CRAZY. It works because everyone is equally crazy, so it all boils down to normalcy somehow, lol. Anyway, I ended up getting off like 10 stops too early. I got waaaaay lost in the process, admit to myself I was lost after half an hour of walking, and then resorted to turning data back on, on my phone. I'm quite afraid of next months bill, but I was at least able to GPS myself a half-decent path to home. Now, by "home," I mean I walked 2 blocks, realized the rest of the walk was 15 or so, bussed another 5 or 7, then taxi'd my way home. Hey, it worked.

Tuesday rolls around and it's basically a repeat of the previous day, but more in depth and I had gotten some reading done. This time, Chirag and I got on the same bus and everything, lol. We decided that yesterday night (today being Wednesday and all) was a good go-out-to-eat night. We cross-referenced between our handbook guide of BA and some random locals in a pharmacy to figure out where to go for food. Apparently Florida Avenue was a prime place for tourists in general. We found a really legit little Argentine restaurant that served us some riDONKulously flavorful food. Sooooo epicallly good!!! Chirag got this superchicken in a marinara-esque sauce on a bed of fresh-baked potato chips, and I got this I-don't-even-know-what but it had ham and tomato and spices and cheese inside this dough-thing. It was essentially puré of of magic.

Then today! I ended up spending a loooot of time in the theoretical lab, today, which was really cool because I had a really strong foundation from last summer's research adventures. I felt bad though because I ended up being epically late for the experimental lab. I got to turn on the vacuum earlier that day to at least set up for them, and at the end of the day basically just watched them go through stuff. Sifted through some numbers in an excel file of some data we got, which was good. They were also able to use some numbers I'd collected on Tuesday, so I haven't been completely useless.

I don't feel incredibly bad about focusing more on the theoretical for the moment, because Damian is gonna be out for a few weeks soon. Once he's out I'll likely end up focusing a lot more on the experimental side of things.

So then there was tonight, lol. Guess who got lost again? But also guess who didn't pay for a taxi, again! I got off at the right stop, but here's the thing: so to get to work, you turn the corner and then cross a street to get to the bus stop. I just walked down the same street the bus stop is on instead of walking one street ahead. Went down that road for abotu 10 minutes before I realized it was wrong, then headed back up a parallel road and got some ice cream. Pineapple ice cream and banana split ice cream are good, but the mix should just never happen, just so you know. Oh, and when I was walking back up with my ice cream, I kinda danced around a bit of it that was falling off my spoon and some chick 30 or so meters up the way was imitate-mocking me. Kinda funny but kinda mean. I guess all in good fun at the end of the day, right?

Anyway, I then went to find the street I was supposed to turn down, but couldn't for the life of me find it. I then realized that I never saw a street sign at the corner I'm supposed to turn, so just headed down some familiar looking road. Wrong again. Then I somehow ended up at the intersection with the subte. I literally went down all 4 paths before I realized I had the right street but the wrong direction. I took that same road back and walked for infinity until I got back....ish. Actually I skipped more than a few got-lost-directions, but you get the idea by now.

I hit up the empenada place once I was on the right street, and there are two things you need to know: humitas is the BEST filling an empenada can have, and THERE IS THE CUTEST (stray?) KITTY THAT CHILLS OUT THERE AND IT IS MY NEW AMIGATO!!!! Get it? Amigito + gato? I thought it was clever, lol. So here's what my amigato looks like.






Needless to say, I washed my hands *very* soon after getting home. That call was alllll up in mah grill. Seriously, friendliest cat (stray or otherwise) ever!!! So cute lol... his eyes were pretty scary but they were so big that you can't help but disregard that and just go Awwwwwwwwwwwwwe!! I seriously can't get over what a cuddlebug my little amigato is ^_^

But man, I'm soooo excited about both projects and being in Buenos Aires, Argentina on top of all that!!! Also, my illness is steadily dropping. Wo0t!!! Honestly this happened at the beginning of last school year (the one that just passed), and it took a week to clear out of my system, too. Guess this is just getting to be a regular thing in the Fall (wherever Fall may fall where I am, lol). Ça va, no?

(I'm also extremely glad that I was able to catch up on my adventures thus far, blog-wise lol)

Rest of the weekend (sans photos, unfortunately)

So onto Saturday night, right? I was feeling ok when we were out, but relapsed once we returned. Honestly I think part of the problem is that it's 60-70\[Degree] outside and there's no heating system (don't worry, we went during the week to ask about what to do for that and the landlords - husband and wife pair - gave us a little but powerful heater).

Anyway, it was Teresa's birthday party that night. There weren't un montón de gente cuando... sorry lol. Everyone in Buenos Aires says "un montón" (a mountain) whenever there's a lot of something and I just kinda lapsed into Spanish mode from there. Anyway, the population wasn't exactly copious when we got there, but it deeeefinitely filled up as the night went on. Good music, little alcohol, lotsa people, good times. Well, good-ish. Stupid nose was acting up so I peaced out for the night later that night. Used the time to blog, which was good, but of COURSE they blast Lady Gaga when I leave lol... Little Katy Perry and some other good stuff in there too. At least it was good music blaring form the ceiling, lol. Chirag went out after that and apparently hit up a club where *everyone* was supermodel beautiful. Coupled with the Lady Gaga not blasting until I left, EPIC jealousy on my end, lol.

Sunday. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, what did we do on you? OH I know what!! Ok yeah I was still feeling crappy so I stayed in. During the day. I made plans with Evelyn to meet that night. No, no, I mean meet, meet. Evelyn is a cousin of mine, but I didn't know about her until I found out I was going to Argentina, at which point my mom was all OMG YOU SHOULD SEE COUSIN EVELYN! and I was all LOLOK BUT WHO'S THAT? Explanations ensued and yeah, I have family in Argentina, of all places lol.

So um, yeah. Funny story to that. The original plan was to take the subte till I was near enough that a taxi was an acceptably cheap alternative. Chirag had tried to go out a little before I was facebooking/calling Evelyn about seeing her that night, and had returned pretty quickly. Turned out the subte line by us is closed on Sundays. So I tell Evelyn this and we're trying to figure out the path of least resistence that ends with finally meeting. I get her address during all this, google maps it for shiggs, and wouldn't you know she's but a couple blocks down from Exactas (the campus I go to in the University of Buenos Aires). So I tell her I can just hop a bus down there and the plan becomes that + going to a public concert that happens to be that night.

(I just realized I'm mixing tenses. This affords some mild discomfiture to me, but I'm a bit too lazy to bother fixing it).

Now it gets a little crazy. The bus stops early, and this is the first time I've actually had to get to Exactas/anywhere near there on my own, so I don't even know exactly what stop it is to begin with. I'd been told it's an hour ride and I was on there for 30 or 40 minutes, so I figured I couldn't be too terribly far. The reason it stopped early was because of a roadblock. Of course instead of detouring around it the bus driver just went OK GET OFF EVERYONE K THX BAI! I saw something resembling a concert in the not-too-far-off distance and literally everyone else was walking towards it. I first thought we were all just detouring to a connecting bus stop, but soon realized they were all just going to chill out at the concert we landed it. I eventually put two and two together and realized that this was the concert Evelyn mentioned.

So I give Evelyn a call, but her son picks up instead. She was out with her husband and other son taking care of something or another (I'm at fault here, too, because I ate before I peaced over to Evelyn's but that literally took an hour longer than I predicted. BEST (really enormous) SANDWICH EVER!!!!! But that coupled with a good long shower, I'm at least as much to blame for the mis-matching scheduling, there). So mind you I'm still lost in Buenos Aires, a relative eternity from home base (even BA home base), with no idea where to go or how to get there. I tried telling him (in Spanish, of course) where I was via the intersection, but one of the streets was two words, both abbreviated. Me not knowing what in all hell that could've stood for, the intersection was made pretty useless to us. But the other street name was easy enough to recite, and I told him I was at the concert, too. He then asked exactly what I was near so I walked around and eventually found some stores that looked like good landmarks. While I rattled off their names, he stopped me at La Taquera, so we were to meet up there. The plan was for me to wait by the door.

He passed me like 10 times before we realized who each other was, lol. I called him after 45 minutes or so and he asked if I was wearing a hat (I always am these days), and that's how we eventually recognized each other, lol. His voice was mad deep on the phone so I expected him to be a lot older than he actually was. He's 16, for the record.

So he takes me to his (family's) apartment, which is literally a 5 minute walk away from the concert. Apparently the bus stopped even closer to the destination than I imagined. Evelyn was a little late coming back, so her son (Jonny's the name, by the by) and I bs'd around during the interim. My Spanish is apparently pretty up to par. I didn't have to ask what a phrase meant more than a couple of times in the hour or two we hung out, and we actually understood each other and everything. He's a pretty cool kid.

Well, Evelyn got back and in the first minute of our conversation she mentioned that everyone in her family is fluent in English. All I could do was laugh, honestly ^_^

So Evelyn made this ridiculously awesome pasta and she and I caught up on life and families and everything. She's a really cool person - apple didn't fall far from the tree, there. We continued to speak in Spanish, by the way. A couple of sentences were exchanged in English, but really not too terribly many. Ah, her husband and other son, Lucas, are also cool people, for the record. Didn't get to talk to them as much, though.

When the end of the night rolled around, Evelyn and her husband offered to drive me home (I'm a terrible person for it but I just don't remember his name right now... he may have facebook friended me, actually, but my internet is down so I can't even check that - for the record, I'm typing this up in Mathematica at the moment). I happily accepted this as an alternative to the bus, lol. And obviously because it's always good to be with family =) We had some trouble getting my street to show up on their GPS, but we eventually got it to work.

So that was my Sunday. All in all, good times!

Oy oy, much to catch up on!

Let's see, where were we last? Guess I was dying via snot suffocation. That's basically peaced out of my system, but now I'm refraining from dying by coughing up too many lungs. Better, but not good. Such is life, right? I'm at least happy about getting out of bed again, lol!

Anyway, I guess the best course of action is to start with the pictures. Haven't taken any since the beginning of the week, but I haven't blogged since before that, making this a pretty decent starting point. I do need to bring my camera with me more, just been a bit paranoid about carrying it around. I think there's room in my laptop bag now that I'm not carrying 4 small textbooks, anyway. More on that later, lol.



So there's the via from my balcony in the morning. I'd also like to comment that the university internet is INFINITELY faster the one in my dorm. Taking this opportunity to upload all my photos for this post right now....

...aaaaaand I just discovered that you can upload 5 images at a time. Sweet!!!!

Well anyway, that was my first day of dying from my cold. Like I said, though, getting out of the house always helped out significantly. To the point where I didn't remember I was sick, actually. We decided to explore a bit that day... oh! It was Saturday. Yes, Saturday, definitely.

So before heading out we decided that food was an excellent idea. We found this great little place not too far from the subte that served us some fantastical meals. For my drink, I had no idea what "pomelo" was but remembered hearing it somewhere before (earlier in life, not earlier in the week). Thought I'd give it a shot, but it turned out to be grapefruit juice... mind you, I loathe grapefruit. Lesson well learned, eh? Chirag, on the other hand, had ananá, which he was none too fond of but I loved. (note: at the time we had no idea what they were but having just Google'd it for the sake of the sake of the accented a, it appears to be pineapples. I thought it'd be that because Flight of the Conchords taught me that ananas [with the s] is French for pineapple). Still, the meals were, as I said, pure amazing.

Here are the aforementioned om-noms with a pic of the place:

So from there we proceeded to the subte. While waiting on one of the trains we found this little gem. Untainted, tainted with me chilling out next to it, and then with Chirag doing his patented Chirag photo pose:




So about the trains, actually. Some are very similar to what we've got back in NYC, but then there are these wooden interior/metal exterior ones. Super-nostalgic stuff going on, I liked it a lot.


Anyhow, we ended up in theeeeeeeeee Retiro district? I actually don't recall at the moment, nor does Google reveal anything too quickly. The important thing here is that the subte let us off at the dead center of all the pretty things in that district. It was pretty fantastic in my opinion, but see for yourself...


The last couple of pics are shots of the exterior of La Casa Rosada. To my knowledge, it's the presidential office, and to wikipedia's knowledge is the "official seat of the executive branch" of Argentina. Good stuff. The interior design is pretty breathtaking, especially when you look at all the subtleties that went into it. I organized it all into collages by topics/genres/categories, more or less, so here's what I got for ya.

Here we have some of the rooms in La Casa:


One of the halls had a ton of supersized photos of significant women of Argentina:


Along the same theme, here are some paintings of previous mayors/gov't officials of Argentina:


Similar-esque in theme, here are a bunch of busts:


Right outside the room with the busts there was a pretty snazzy view of the area, Argentine-flag-billowing-in-the-wind included, of course:



Going back in, here's a view of one of the courtyards:


So let's get to the artsier stuff. HERE'S A MAN ON A HORSE THAT WAS MAYBE 100 METERS AWAY FROM LA CASA ROSADA!!!


Sorry, that horse just really excited me, lol. But here are some more statues (inside La Casa, this time):


Vases:


Some paintings inside:


They had some really rockin' Chandeliers, too:


Some of the design aspects (not that I know what I should *actually* be calling these, but I liked them a lot):


And some of the more subtle details that lied within...:


So after that, we figured home needed to happen soon, due to a party that was happening that night. There was still an hour or two left before we really needed to head back, though, so we checked out the cathedral nearby. It had this pretty bamftastic genie-style lamp outside (actually lit with fire):


Inside was absolutely gorgeous. It definitely had some European (I dare say Italian) influence, but maintained a very modern design that resonated well with that more traditional style, I thought. Anywho, the walls had these little alcove-ish things, if that's the right word:


Near the front of the cathedral (by the alter) was pretty awesome, too:


(I'm pretty happy about the light shining on the statue of Mary with the shadow standing so prominently behind her, from an artistic point of view at the least).

The shots of the stained glass windows were a little on the blurry side:


And some other random shots - ceiling piece, floor piece, first statue on the left when you walk in:


So once we left I really liked this tree we passed lol:


Also saw this little bugger:


...in Soviet Argentina, boat is on YOU! (ok, there's nothing soviet about Argentina as far as I can tell, but just let it slide)



One last note on that day (blog of that night is immediately incoming) this guy was way too serious about recording lol. For real, if he wasn't making a documentary on Buenos Aires, he simply has no excuse for how ridiculous his camera is, lol: