Pictures from the Day (June 30)

pictures are of us + laura getting helado (ice cream) that was delicious - picture of markham and me with our teacher - and some shots of the sweet bookstore "el ateneo" where we got some books and read today.

Update: Laura = super cool

So she loves lord of the rings, harry potter - she read all the books the night they came out and was psyched we did the same - loves disney movies and songs and michael jackson - especially the jackson five. we (markham and I) did a streetside rendition of "can you feel the love tonight" for Nikki and Laura. Anyhow, dinner was a lot of fun and delicious - sadly my iphone (camera) turned out to be dead, for which I am sorry. I will charge it tonight and upload pictures tomorrow.

Ordering Pizza and Other things

On Sunday I ordered pizza in spanish for the first time - I forgot the word ninth (our floor) and I didn't know how to say breadsticks at the time. Stickos de pan doesn't really work (neither does un vaso de tap water as andy, will and I learned in madrid.) Markham and I both did well on our exams, and moved up to level B1. We have 4 new people in our class, three of whom are girls from brazil, the other is a guy from england. They are all pretty cool, but it's very different having 8 people in a class (as opposed to 4).

Today went well though and included discussion of invisible dragons, midget thieves, women of the night, and much more - all in spanish. We also talked about the elections - supposedly the Kirchners party (who were the incumbents) lost a ton of seats in their congress which our teacher is psyched because she doesn't like them - they are pals with Chavez - and she said they are all about controlling media and various evil things.

Also Laura, mentioned in Nikki's post, is muy guapa (very beautiful) and our teacher teased Markham about her. Anyhow, we are about to go meet her for dinner, and I'll take pictures and post them here later.

Highlights from the weekend:
1) Learning to dance like a brasileira
2)seeing our brazilian classmates partying really hard
3) more to come

elections

Article on yseterdays Argentine elections:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/world/americas/30argentina.html?hp

From what I've heard Argentines say about the elections, Nestor Kirchner's bid for re-election to a position in Congress was really the only important/interesting thing that was happening in this election.

second week of school

so our class has eight people in it now. me, nicky, german guy, brazilian girl from last week, swine flu girl, two more brazilians, and an british guy. everyone is about our age and the class was a little raucous today because we have the same teacher. its easier to focus and speak spanish when class is fun, so doing skits and making up stories helps alot. we had a fight with all the brazilians about the soccer game. also i think nicky weirded them out a little at one point, i guess even though a good amount of humor is universal, that some jokes just dont make sense.
we planned on going to the casa rosada (pink house), its a really famous landmark around here, but the weather was bad so we are going to go later. going out to dinner tonight and doing some homework
somebody besides my let me know whats going on in nashville!!
seriously though

class started at 10 today, which was great. in spite of that, we still managed to be late (Nicky needed his beauty rest). our classes all have new people, which is cool. one of the new girls in my class is a very attractive and nice 19 yr old brasilera named Laura. Markham made me invite her out to dinner with us tonight (he was too scared to do it himself in spite of us all having spent time together at lunch). but seriously, she's legit and seems pretty cool - dinner should be fun.
siesta/snack/work time

brasileras

Ok so I'm being coerced into posting ("but you have the pictures on your computer"). We had a pretty good albeit lowkey weekend. The above are pictures from our excursion to some of the parks in Palermo. You need to really zoom in, but if you can I recommend checking out Markham's expression in the picture of him reading on the park bench. He has a pretty goofy reading face. Anyway, we did lots of things. We went to the parks (above) on Saturday, and they threw the frisbee around (no injuries), and read and enjoyed the weather. Headed out Saturday night to dinner and then a party some people from the school were hosting. Today was election day in BA, stores stopped selling liquor at 8 pm on Saturday, and bars stopped serving at midnight, hence all the clubs were dead. Apparently they wanted people voting sober. So, we ended up at the student party. Swine flu girl was there, and must have been feeling much better, since she looked on track to finish about a 5th of vodka all on her own. The other girl in their class, Kelly, was also there, and was trying to teach them dances of sorts to Spanish songs. Nicky, for his participation, was told that he was an awesome dancer. Given how much she'd had to drink at that point, her judgement is debateable. We ended up leaving circa 3 (early by BA standards) because Markham was tired (not enough siestas :( Sunday was spent recuperating and in my case baking and doing work. In Nicky and Markham's case it was spent eating and reading. And of course, watching some GG. Nicky also braved the ordering-in experience and took it upon himself to call a pizza place and order delivery of pizza. We ended up with a different pizza than we expected, but it did show up at our apartment, which was a win.
We also met up with Maddy and her friend Jordan sometime in the past week, for dinner and drinks. Lots of GG discussion ensued.
Also I'm pretty sure Argentinian MTV hasn't played anything other than Michael Jackson music videos for about 3 days straight. Apparently he was well loved here.

wow

that annoying brazilian in my class came back after not being there yesterday.
but wait, she came in late, during the exam. and guess what, she had a fever. and a cough.
this girl freaking had swine flu. she was coughing and laughing, and we left. i took my exam into the other room and asked the teacher if we could leave afterwards. she was more scared of the girl than we are so she was fine with it. i really hope she doesnt come back next week.
i mean... honestly. dont come to school when you have the two main symptoms of swine flu, or atually any contagious disease.

You know it's thriller, thriller night

The small brazilian girl (who i dont like) didn't show up today and class was so much better.
This other brazilian girl (who is pretty cool but i dont know her name) in our class of four missed the back of one page of homework and we were all joking around about it, me the most. And then twenty minutes later when we were checking other homework i realized that i too had not seen it! I was caught quickly attempting to complete it and got my fair share of chistes.
Tonight we are about to go eat with maddy and co. in Palermo and afterwards go out. Apparently thursday is the best night to do so. We shall see.

i couldnt find a good version of the best jackson five song 'i want you back' but if you find one listen to it.
not his most famous, but solid - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zpTQCQEFhg
En paz descanse

kelly and class

There is a cute brazilera named Kelly in our class who might have a slight crush on markham - our teacher proclaims that he loves her a couple times every day, because he messes with her calling her la mascota de la professora (teacher's pet) and telling on her if she hasn't done her homework or little things, its all joking in good humor. Also markham and her share views on the brazilian soccer team.

When you get tickets here you are assigned a seat. We, having bought them right before the movie, sat at the very front for transformers. the seats were really big and comfy though, which was nice. McDonald's is a place you take a girl on dates here which is kind of silly/awesome. The burgers here are better.

We have a mini exam tomorrow to move up in to level B1, and we are about to go out to dine and dance with maddy and her friend in palermo. Nikki and I made some food that involved potatoes, onions, peppers, and pork today which turned out to be quite delicious. Siestas all around, that's about it for now.

Also our teacher is not a fan of Nikki - whenever nikki is around and can't see her she silently screams no at me. I'm not alone though, she also harasses Frederic, the german guy in our class.

t2 and hw

today was a good day, except for two things

1. the girl in our spanish class of 4 (without her) came again. when she didnt show up for the first hour and a half, i was hopeful. but she arrived late and thought it was funny and totally sucks. she doesnt understand grammar and pronounces everything wrong, she gets by in the real world because she is familiar with the language (from brazil) so thinks she should be will us but she should be in a lower class tbh. also the other 4 (me, nicky, german guy, girl) move at very similar pace to eachother and are dedicated. its not that she isnt fit to work either, I dont like her because she doesnt try and slows the class down like crazy because she doesnt care. hopefully she fails out. im not even joking.

2. transformers two was not that good. i was not expecting an improvement on the first but this one was definitely worse. i love jon tuturro though, solid acting and gave the best performance. megan fox is also rediculously good looking. sadly they did not bring back the australian techie. the movie was worse because it was so streamlined instead of having multiple lines going at the same time.

good things
1. weird hot chocolate
2. crazy big mcdonalds (two storied and huuuuge)
3. siesta
4. megan fox

homework time

Akward Pubcrawl

Updates - We went to the place for the pubcrawl and there were nearly no girls and the set up was really bootleg so we decided to leave. Unfortunately the guy welcomed us while we were scoping it out and offered us some beer. There was an awkward pause where none of us said anything because we hadn't decided whether or not to stay at that point. We ended up telling him that we needed a minute and then bouncing.

We found a pretty cool bar/restaurant in the area that was very, very red - the couches, the lights, the bar. They served some mexican food that was decent (the states definitely have the best mexican food in the world) and we ordered una jarra (pitcher) of quilmes.

It wasn't easier to wake up this morning so we ended up taking a cab to school (which costs ~11 pesos so roughly 3 dollars, and split between the three of us it becomes a tempting option). My class with Markham went pretty well until the irritating girl showed up an hour and a half late. She just makes everything go very slowly, and butts heads with the teacher. Anyhow Sandra, our teacher, told me to stay away from Nikki because she has a cough and therefore swine flu.

Markham and I ordered chocolate milks at a cafe during the break and received hot milk and a bar of chocolate. It was alright - you drop the chocolate bar in the hot milk and then stir it until they mix. Nikki made us scrambled eggs and country potatoes which were pretty delicious.

We are about to go see Transformers 2 and hang out with Maddy Hamilton and her friend.

to crawl?

last night we went to dinner at a restaurant on Santa Fe. I decided to get all the vegetable that i havent been getting and ordered a massive salad. Nicky is going all buenos aires and got the steak and a bottle of wine (to share with us). The meal was great and slow but not annoying, everything here is just slower. The only time the lack of organization/efficiency has been annoying was yesterday when we went to the grocery store and i bought what i thought was an eight dollar baileys but it ended up being a little under fifteen because it was mislabeled (still not that bad though). at dinner the wine was a little heavy so we had to start doing toasts to incentivize ourselves to finish it (as nikki does not enjoy the taste as much). toasts went to: safety, hucks and headshots, will spiva, guillermo, there were some others but i cant remember.
today at school i moved up a level into nicky's class and out of nikki's. The teacher was hilarious. She made fun of anything and everything that was not from Buenos Aires. All the spanish speakers especially brazilians, and constantly was correcting our pronunciations into the form spoken here. She actually got a little mad when i joked that kaka was a better footballer than messi. But she liked me because i was the only single guy in the class, and according to her, the only smart one. Surprisingly she was not a fan of siestas, and right after class we walked back and took one. I woke up after about and hour and a half and have been eating and reading around the apartment. Nicky woke up and took a second siesta (its getting out of control).
We are probably going to go on this touristy pub crawl tonight but we arent sure yet.

here is a picture of my dog

siestas

today was the first day of school so we (nicky and I) woke up at seven thirtiesh (five thirty central time) and walked to class. School usually starts at nine, but the first day you have to go at eight. Sadly enough, my spanish was so bad/rusty at the test that I got put in level two of six. We spent the day learning things i already knew but had not looked at in a while. So I dominated all the games and felt like a badass, and the chicos destroyed the chicas doubling their score in all the games. I talked to the teacher and am going to switch into a harder level tomorrow.

Despite the fact that walking around this city can be unfortunate as the motorists love running over people and weaving in and out of one another, the walk to school was very nice (30 min). The main road 'Ave 9 de Julio' is a sixteen lane road split into four sets of lanes. So the open space there is huuuuge. And its nice because I had only seen pretty cramped roads/areas for the first few days. We could actually see the skyline and a sweeping view of the sun and old school big architecture.

I just woke up from this siesta during the 10 minutes where there is not much light around right before sunset but you can still see very well. it feels really good to not wake up in total darkness (to avoid feeling lazy and see the sunset).
Sadly, the level of girl attractiveness at the school could improve.

Personally I want to keep our siesta to fiesta ratio below five but i dont think Nicky is having it, he is all about the siesta (Andy do you have any tips on how to control that).

rules of the apartment
1. wash hands upon entrance/exit and food (no swine flu/illness)
2. fully clothed in the main room (Nicky is the only one who breaks this rule)
3. 30 second cleanups randomly
4. keep siesta to fiesta ratio low

currently listening to "christmas 2008 mix" song "pinch me" . oh the 90s

Counterfeiting and 1st day of School

So after the game last night I tuve mucho hambre (I was really hungry) - Markham and Nikki were less so - but Nikki agreed to go out to dinner with me while Markham opted for the ice cream (strawnilla of course) + chocolate sauce route, a respectable choice. Anyhow, Nikki takes me to this sweet little place without any tourists where there were a bunch of portenos our age eating argentine food. They had a cool tablecloth that you could draw on, and most everyone was drawing. The empanadas were pretty delicious (they are like big dumplings with stuff inside; the one with mozzarella was quite heavy) and because they were out of tamales we got a calzone. They brought out the biggest calzone I have ever seen in my life. Skip to the end of the meal and I try to pay with a 100 peso bill I got at the airport and... it's FALSO! fake, anyhow the waitress was super nice (and attractive) and she showed nikki and I how to tell if bills are counterfeit - and I have a picture for you all of the bill. Anyhow - I think I'm going to have difficulty unloading it on anyone here because they all check - but I plan to get the airport back when I leave and change money to American dollars.



First day of school was good - even though we had to wake up super early (cerca 730) to take a placement exam (which was much harder than Nikki made out). Markham ended up in Nikki's class for the day, but is moving up a level. I was in a class with two other students (one owns a flower shop in Brazil, the other is from Germany) and a cute teacher (markham needs to take her out to dinner.) It was good - basically non stop spanish for 4 hours - and we took some serious siestas afterwards. (Nikki didn't nap because she has a real job.)

Anyhow that's what has been going on.

'second day'

late wakeup and adventures around. there is this incredible tree in a park that we need to get pictures of and put on later.
the soccer game started at 7:30 but before that we went into boca with the group. there was a street dance in front of the restaurant that put dancing with the stars to shame. these two dudes had a kicking dance off stomping the floor extremely loud. intense.
the boca juniors lost the game, but riquelme was clearly the best player on the field. he used to be this huge baller on argentina's international squad, but now he is old. so its awesome that he can still dominate younger up and comers. we had to wait around for an extra half hour after the game so the visiting team would have time to leave and not get beaten up. apparently things around here get a little much, so they get extra precautious
just finished gg season 1...
the back feels better and nicky thankfully didnt go natasha richardson on us

first day Struggle

so everything was going pretty smoothly - we got in, hung out, took a nap, then decided on a sweet place for lunch. It was a nice sit down pizza place about 20min walk that was very affordable - markham and i sampled the quilmo (argentine beer) and it was alright.

We get back, commence the second nap of the day, then decide to drag ourselves awake for frisbee. After a really long bus ride we get to Ciudad Universitaria and find some really nice people who we are ready to lay some pwnage upon. Anyhow a couple points of domination later we are both sidelined. I incurred a concussion - which was the weirdest crap ever, the whole day seemed like a dream trying to remember at first, and it was just weird/scary not remembering everything clearly. About 15 minutes later i remember everything, and when we get off the bus going home i am feeling solid. Nikki (EMT) also checked me out a bit.

Markham strained his back (lower back) which had been bothering him a couple weeks ago - it was bothering him so he stopped playing and nikki carried his backpack home. Anyhow we are super happy nikki is here to take care of us - and glad to be back in the apartment.

I think its gossip girl, food, and relaxation for the next couple hours before bed.

We also met this girl who is from memphis and goes to UTK with rose and notor.

atlanta and getting there

so atlanta airport we had way longer than expected. so looking back, we totally should have gone to the krystals, one last goodbye and stuff.
we walked through four gates of soldiers in uniform just hanging around everywhere. it was strangely normal in that they had laptops and were on phones and stuff. but were huge and could beat us up really easily.
the flight was not bad, no babies. watched a few episodes of gg and read this tight book 'confederacy of dunces'. slept a lot.
when we got into ba we were pretty obviously tourists and our spanish was rusty but we made it to the apartment fine. nikki had food waiting for us and the place is definitely nicer than i expected so it was just a great time to go to sleep.
now we are up and ready to run this city.

Arrival

Got to wear some thug face masks b/c of the swine flu in America - lines weren't that bad - got charged a bit too much for the taxi to the apartment, whatevers. Anyhow here are some pictures of the apartment. Also everyone loves telling this joke about things costing a lot. Like - can i borrow that pen - sure,... if you pay me a million dollars ; how much does the taxi cost? about 1500 dollars!

start

Strong start to the trip. Nicky tries to pull a fast one on Delta but they charge him $150 for being overweight. We manage to turn my carryon into a check-bag and pile clothes into Nicky’s backpack to get down to fifty pounds. No charge. The annoying part is their policy about two bags weighing fifty being better than one bag weighing fifty one. I guess its to protect workers backs or something. Honestly the machine had to have been faulty. Because one sweater that clearly did not weigh three pounds was pretending to. The guy was not nice about it. Nicky also could have just weighed his bag at home.
We consider the fast ‘expert traveler’s lane’ but decide to go the safe route instead. We both get pulled out of the slow line for small technicalities, but it was worth it because this smokin girl didn’t take the fast lane either. She was not as hot at blake lively (sadly I am watching gossip girl), but real life girls are actually real.
Nashville wireless costs eight dollars (which is insane) so we are waiting for a better option till we start the blog. We go to a soccer game right when we get in but now all we have to look forward to is the near eleven hour flight down to Buenos Aires. Shoutout to Mr. Spiva for getting us ideal seats. Now all we can do is hope a baby doesn’t sit near us. Babies are the worst.