New Year.

I hope everybody has a great (and safe) New Years eve and fun New Years Day tomorrow.

I was playing tourist yesterday and I went down to Plaze de Mayo (pictures up sometime soon) and as I was standing by the Casa Rosada (Pink House, which is like their White House) I saw people throwing paper out of their window out onto the street. I went to go take a picture and I realized that this was not a solitary event. I don't know it its a purging tradition/new years celebration or if everybody just got the same memo but pretty much all of the downtown area that I saw looked like this or worse.


It's interesting to see how differently things get celebrated down here. I think it being warm prompts some different celebrations than if it were freezing cold like in the states. Of course you also don't see thousands of people packing into a city block to watch a ball drop here. That's rediculous.

Merry Christmas.

Though to be honest it feels a lot more like summer break than Christmas break.

The fireworks aren't helping.

Late night operation.

About two weeks ago some gringo friends of mine and I went on a "photo excursion" at 2am on a Tuesday. Here are some photos:

More here.

Lawsuits waiting to happen (pt 1).

I definitely walk around down here with very North American standards of safety. There are times where I am just in awe of the total lack of concern over safety of the general public here, especially in construction areas. I hope this doesn't sound patronizing because that's really not my intent. In fact usually I just find it humorous as I step over the sidewalk vent with a piece of plywood laid over it 6 inches narrower than the hole itself. But these are things you would never see in the US so I thought it was worth mentioning. And what makes these, and the examples that will follow, notable is the fact that for the most part this city is very modern and urban that it's easy to forget you are in a third world country until you see these.

Please note the elderly lady making her way around this gravel pit in the middle of a sidewalk. This is extremely common to see here.

Part 2 coming later.

From Change in the US to no change in Argentina.

Sorry for the pun.

An interestng/extremely frustrating aspect of living in Buenos Aires is the fact that there is a chronic shortage of coins in the city (and from what I hear, the entire country). Slate ran a great article discussing this problem here: "Yes We Have No Monedas!" (spotted via here). It's an interesting read even if you aren't afflicted by this like I am. I have to say, living with this problem forces you to become very creative and resourceful, especially if you need to catch a bus (coins only).

The other day a bartender gave me two 1 peso coins as change instead of a 2 peso bill and I almost dropped my drink.

I never thought I would say this...

...but I actually kinda miss the Seattle winter. Or maybe it's just throwing my senses off to have two summers in a row. Or maybe it's just some homesickness kicking in. Either way, for some reason this looks appealing to me:

(photo not by me. via here)

Am I just crazy?

The rain here.

The rain here is so different.

It's never the Seattle gray.
It's never the Seattle drizzle.
It doesn't stay for weeks on end.

It comes-It dumps-It leaves.


And there's been a lot of lightning and thunder for the past few days.

Things I'm still not used to. (part 1)

So this being my first time outside of the US not involving Canada, there are a lot of things that still catch me off guard about Buenos Aires, even after three weeks now. Here is my first installment:

Things I'm Still Not Used To

1. Everything coming in plastic bags (Detergent, mayonnaise, milk, etc.)
2. Sidewalks covered in dog crap
   
3. Kissing guys I don't know on the cheek
4. Every male under the age of 40 having a mullet
5. Everything in this city dripping (I think I'm going to do a whole post on this)
   
6. The voices of cartoon characters when they're dubbed in Spanish
7. Not being able to tell whether a girl is 14 or 40 (plastic surgery is popular with everybody here)
8. That coins are virtually non-existent but required to ride the bus, which results in everybody trying to scam everybody else out of coins
9. Being able to get a large pizza and 1.5L soda for $7.50
10. Bidets in every bathroom
    

I'll probably have more next week.

Creamfields.

Wow. I'm not off to a great start here, but I'll try to be better. I'm calling in sick of going out so I thought I would take this Saturday night to catch up.

So I need to back up about three weeks to one of the first really cool things I got to do down here. Since it is spring down here, it's music festival season again. Creamfields is an international electronic music festival that happens to have a franchise (or whatever) in Buenos Aires. It starts at 3 PM and goes until 7 AM. Yep. This city loves to party all night.


So one shady bus ride out into the shady nether regions of BA later and we're at the Autodromo. I don't think we got there until about 8 PM and we went straight to watch the Gorillaz Soundsystem (which is not quite the Gorillaz, but it was still pretty good).


Other people who we got to see (for those who care):
Simian Mobile Disco
Crystal Castles (more on this in a second)
Eric Morillo
New Young Pony Club (thought this was a show and it was just a DJ set
Modeselektor
Boys Noize
and UNKLE

And it only cost about $50.




&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The story with Crystal Castles:::

It already wasn't looking too good when they were about 15 minutes late starting their set. Then finally Ethan the keyboard/programmer dude walks out onto stage and every body starts clapping and he just keeps walking all the way across the stage to talk to the sound guy. It looked like they were having issues with the synthesizers. Finally they get it worked out and Alice Glass (the singer) and the drummer comes out. They start playing and Alice's mic is not working at all. The finish the song and the sound guys come out and start messing with stuff. The band walks off stage and the break DJ comes back out and it looks like they might just be leaving. After about 5 more minutes the band comes back out. Alice's mic still isn't really working but she's still running around the stage. At one point she goes off the front of the stage onto a table that has a couple turntables on it and the sound guys run out there and start trying to pull her off of the expensive equipment. Then she just jumps out into the crowd and everybody goes crazy. But unfortunately it doesn't look like her mic cable is long enough and so the sound guys are trying to keep it from getting tangled and security is trying to pull her back out of the crowd. Then either a sound guy or a security guy pulls the pic away from her in the middle of the song and she flips out and shoves the guy. Then Ethan jumps off stage and starts fighting with the security guys that are trying to hold Alice and they end up dragging him off stage.

One and a half songs- game over.

Here's a vid:


At least it gave us a chance to go see Simian Mobile Disco.

The trip down.

So I realize I'm a little late since I've been down here for a week and half, but better late than never, right?

So my trip started out with my mom coming with me to the airport. She had been staying with me for my last few days in Seattle and was flying back to the Tri-Cities at the same time I was leaving. It was nice having her there to see me off. It's a little bit easier to leave your entire life behind when you have your mom to hug you right before you get on the plane like like you're heading off to your first day of kindergarten. :)

From SeaTac I had a pretty quick flight down to LA.

LAX

Then the crazy 14 hour flight to São Paulo. It could have been way worse but Korean Air knows how to treat you. They had this great personal entertainment system where you could watch movies on demand or listen to radio or whatever else you wanted. I didn't get a picture of it because I would have felt pretty fobby taking a picture of of my coach seat.

They also hooked us all up with toothbrushes and toothpaste, eye masks, extra socks so your feet wouldn't get cold, and two meals which weren't half bad. It was also nice having 8 feet between my seat and the partition for Business Class (exit row) and nobody in the seat behind me so I could recline all the way and not feel guilty. I know I sound geeked about this, but I'm used to being crammed into a middle seat with two fat people and given a dixie cup full of Coke so being treating with the slightest amount of courtesy was very remarkable.

Airport in São Paulo

From São Paulo to Buenos Aires was actually pretty quick and easy. I had a pretty quick layover and then I was back on a plane. I ended up sitting next to an Argentine guy named Julian and we talked for most of the flight. The flight attendants keep trying to talk to me in Spanish and so he helped clear some things up for me with regards to paper work for customs etc. After we landed and got through customs we found out we were both taking the same bus up into the city (the airport is outside the city like SeaTac). So he showed me where to to get tickets and helped me find a place to change my money over. He was a very nice guy and my first 30 minutes in Buenos Aires could have been a lot more stressful than they were if it wasn't for him.

Once we got into the city he caught a shuttle and I had to go catch a cab to a different part of the city where I'm staying (called Palermo). I think the taxi driver took the longest way possible to get there, but I guess that's to be expected when you get into a cab with a bunch of crap and a thick accent.

This is a beautiful city in a couple different ways and I noticed in just in the ride out to Palermo. I'll go back and catch up on everything else that has happened in the last week and half as I can.

Thanks for reading...