Raison d'Etre

  Buenos Aires, Capital Federal District, Argentina
Saturday, January 17, 2009

It is super-hot here.  High of 97F today.  And, yes.  There IS humidity.  Africa was hot, but at least there was no humidity.  This is, well, you can imagine a city of asphalt and concrete near the water during summer.  Yea...

Anyway, it's my first weekend here in BA.  I had the apartment to myself last night, which was lovely.  It was the first time that I've had "Kristin-time" in over a month... probably since before I left Durham. 

With the exception of last night, I've gone out every single night I've been here.  Which has been super nice.  My roommate, Anna (from Germany--here for 6 months on an internship and learning Spanish--she's quite good now!), always invited me.  How sweet!  See, people don't eat dinner here until 10/11 at night.  So, it's been as late as 3:30AM that I've gotten home.  Which, if you know me, is pretty late for me.  For Argentines, however, not so late.  Typically, BA clubs get going around 3AM and don't close until 6AM or 9AM.  I want to try one of those sometime.

So, Tuesday night, I went out with Aye and her friend, and Anna and her friend-- but the first bar was closed-- so we ended up somewhere else in Palermo for drinks.  It was fun, nice to go out.  And amazing that so many people were out until 'so late.'  But, I have to keep in mind that this is the equivalent of August here... so many people are not in the city, and it was on a week day, so, again, the numbers were fewer.

Wednesday night, I went to dinner with Anna and 3 friends she met from "Couch Surfing".  Now, if you are like me, you might not know what "Couch Surfing" is-- well, it's like "Meet up", only where you are either looking for a couch on which to spend the night when travelling (saving hotel/hostel costs) or you have a couch to share.  The underlying assumption of course is that you are open to meeting a bunch of different people from a bunch of different places.  So, two of her friends are actually porteños (the name of Buenos Aires-ites), and one was a girl from Holland--who spoke my level of Spanish-- who was here 'Couch surfing' for 7 weeks.  Crazy!  It was an eclectic group, for sure.  But it was fun.  I talked to one Porteño who even has his own blog about alfajores.  http://losalfajores.blogspot.com/  It's in spanish.  But apparently, Alfajores are:
An alfajor (Spanish, in IPA:  [alfa'xoɾ] ; plural alfajores) is a traditional cookie of Argentina, found also in some regions of Spain and in countries of Latin America like Mexico, Uruguay and Perú. Its basic form consists of two round sweet biscuits joined together with dulce de leche or jam and covered with powdered sugar. In most alfajores there are two layers of cake, and a filling in between.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfajor

Thursday night was interesting.  It was Anna's last night here... So, we met some of her friends in Belgrano and ended up at a Parrilla called "Jackie O"-->  I'm sure that was oh-so-touristy, but I swear I didn't see any 'tourists' there.  OF course, it was about 10:30PM too.  So, a "Parrilla" is like an Argentine barbeque...  And, since we had a group of 9, we did a group barbecue grill thing-- (Clearly, I  can't remember the name). This is where they bring out a TON of meat.  All parts of the cow.  All parts.  I don't even know what parts.  But it was a lot.  OF course, I started with this WONDERFUL piece of beef (from a 'normal' part of the cow) and thought I was going to die it was so good.  But it was a big piece, so I thought I'd give part to someone else, and try other things.  Ooops.  Won't do that again.  It was all fine, but that first piece was definitely the best!  HA.

We were an international crowd, again-- 4/5 Porteños, me, Anna, the girl from Holland (who is--get this--a professional bridge player.  I'm not making this up.), a girl from Peru. So, of course it was full immersion in Spanish.

After dinner, we went to a german-themed bar.  I was sooo sooo tired, so I really wasn't fun.  But, someone in the group knew someone else who was in the bar (we'll call him Max).  And Max came up and was super super obnoxious.  I can't even tell you...  He wanted to know my opinion of George Bush.  And when I replied diplomatically that "he's leaving in a few days"-- he continued to push, wanted to know if he was "tonto o loco"-- I don't know! How do you discriminate between stupid or crazy or anything else if you don't personally know a person.... And, then, how do you explain that in a language you barely know, and to a boor no less??
Whatever you may think of "W", I am annoyed because this is the second time (at least), the second continent and the second language with which I've had to defend "W".  Thanks, buddy.

Anyway, a Porteña I was sitting next to was getting annoyed with this guy too and she started defending me (I think), or at least telling him he was crazy.  So, I'm sitting between these two people who are literally yelling at each other very loudly and quickly in Spanish.  I have no idea what they were saying, but it was hilarious.  And I was trying SOO SOOO hard not to laugh!!

Finally, it died down and the conversation moved on... and I got to go to sleep a little before 4PM.

And, so, it was from this-- and much much social interaction-- that I greeted my Friday night of solitude.