Technical Difficulties

So, here's the deal...I now have very limited internet access since the internet connection I was mooching off of at my grandmother's house has thus been disconnected. So I will try to update tomorrow some where, some how and fill in the blanks on what I've been up to.
Until then, everyone have a lovely New Years and be safe.

Open bar and hot cousins

Last night was my Great Uncle Erwin's 80th birthday party. He is rich and lives the rich live, so this party was out of a Disney princess movie. There were about two hundred people of which I knew probably fifteen at the most. This was the most ritzy thing I have yet to attend and I sucked it up like there was no tomorrow. I could totally do the rich girl thing. Five course meals, opera singers and dancing? Bring it on.

In preparation for the party, I had to do my mom's, aunt's and cousins make-up. My cousin ended up taking it off and then getting in a bad mood because she didn't like how she looked. Regret? I think so. Well, we arrived at the party about two hours late so we missed all the hour'derves which was a big bummer, but upon the discovery of an open bar that served things that looked like slushees, a grabbed one up and began a-sippin. Ends up this is a dacquiri. Big whoop. We headed upstairs to the main dining hall where my cousin and I were seated near the main table, but not at it. I took a picture of my mom (who was at the main table) so you can somewhat see what kind of a room this was.

That's my uncle talking to one of the waitresses and my grandmother Ines next to him. Now lets discuss food. The first course came, which was a shotglass full of cold soup. I was not super into it. Second course was a freakin quail. Need I say more? After totally annihilating this dish, my cousing Barbara and I left the table to go get another drink. Dacquiri number two (but in a different flavor of course)! After the quail came dessert, which is what I live for. Now in my excitement to eat it, I forgot to take a picture of the dish so my whole idea on having a picture of each course got ruined. Well, dessert was brownie cake a la mode with a little pitcher of chocolate sauce that you pour and hardens on the ice cream. There is a God. In between all this nonsense there was jazz dancing with Jew songs thrown in because, well, this side of the family is Jewish. Here is my mother dancing with what I think may be a zombie. After dessert, my younger cousin and I went to get more drinks. I told the bartender to mix it up and he gave me something which I have no idea what was called. Well it had vodka with mushed up lime, some kinda of seltzer thing, ice and sugar. I could easily become an alcoholic if someone made me these every day. Considering I don't drink, I thought this stuff would be hitting me harder but it hadn't and barely did throughout the night. The only moment where I felt a slight buzz was after I downed a glass of champange in between some of this other stuff. My cousin and I decided that for entertainment purposes only, we would befriend all the waiters and bartenders. They, to put it bluntly, really wanted to bang us. Now this is not me being egotistical or anything like that; my cousin and I were the only people under 40 but above 10 so by process of elimination we were "fertile" and everyone else was not. After some flirtation and another mystery drink and half a dacquiri, Bar and I headed up stairs to look at the fourth course which was a long table full of cakes and ice cream and mousse and other delicious suggary things. I got a thin slice of cheesecake which I couldn't finish because I was ready to throw up quail legs all over the place.



At our table sat a group of really cool people minus one creeper dude who wanted to penetrate my cousin and I, preferrably at the same time. He made us take pictures with him, thankfully not on his camera, and tried to coherse me into dancing with him. I politely refused and hid in the bathroom for a little bit in order to escape the madness that was bubbling outside. Apparently one of the most insane looking old ladies said that her fan had been stolen and was going to call the police. She had also fallen earlier in the night much to my delight. My goal of the evening was get to get picture with her in it or of her directly but in between the bartenders, my drinks which caused frequent tinkling parties, and stuffing my face; I forgot to do so. After this table of cakes came a little meat sandwich. I ate mayonnaise on accident and almost literally threw up all over the place. I absolutely fucking hate mayo to the point where it being near me makes me gag. I saw it smeared across my finger and thought to myself, please god let this not be mayo. I sniffed it and gagged so hard that my ribs are probably bruised now. This was after I ate the sandwich too which made it worse because I could feel the weight of its creamy eggyness sitting in my stomach. Ugh god just thinking about it now makes me nauseous.

To change the subject I will talk about my hot cousin. Gross right? Whatever fuck you! He is not related by blood (look back at my frog-baby statement). He is my great uncle's, new wife's daughter's son. Got it? No? Reread it. He's into his far away cousin too, I can tell. My younger cousin is absoultely pissed at the idea of him and I hooking up because she, "saw him first!!!" to which I respond with, "You're a minor and hes 35, fuck off." Anyways he's kinda nuts and beat his ex-wife. When my cousin told me this, I said "whatever she probably deserved it," and she just called me a pendeja. Anyways, he's a DJ or something and invited us to some party on New Years. In the car, Bar and I had an aggressive chat about who would get to talk to him, etc. I win because I am older and foreign. Ha!

Tomorrow I'm meeting up with the guy from the plane. Didn't think it would happen and I still have my doubts that it will actually work out but we will see. Tonight I'm going out to dinner with my mother, Greta and her boyfriend Santiago who I've yet to meet. This is going to be a crucial meal because I have to see if I approve or not. I still have not eaten enough meat for my standards and am pretty upset. This needs to happen asap.

I will end this post with a picture of my cousin and I in the bathroom at the party taking glam shots.

When it rains, it pours

The streets are absolutely flooded in this city. Rain comes and goes suddenly here, very inconsistently. But what is consistent is how heavily it falls. All of a sudden you are drenched and car tires are only half visible. But the nights remain hot and the humidity only adds to the heaviness that is this climate. I usually associate rain with cold and cuddling up under a blanket, but here all I want to do is stand outside and let the water seep through my clothes.













Yesterday, I accompanied my uncle Mariano to buy his girlfriend a Christmas gift and to pick out a few other things for the family. We stopped at his friends auto shop for empanadas and so I could meet "the guys". Oh and what guys they were, filthy and foxy, with sharp tongues to match. While one complains about something, another is "putando" about another. I met a cousin of mine (grandfather's sister's son) and had to stop to think a second if it would be ok to flirt or if frog-babies were a possibility. Seeing as how webbed feet could indeed be produced, I avoided batting my lashes and focused my attention elsewhere. I did although meet a friend of my uncle's who was not related and was attractive. Upon telling Mariano to so to say, hook us up, he just pointed at his eye again while saying "ojo" and told me if I talked to any of his friends, he would have to run them over with his car. What a jokester... Speaking of cars, my tio and I got into a potentially volatile situation that night. I've mentioned that everyone in Argentina drives like an asshole, but what I haven't mentioned is that my uncle is probably one of the biggest ones. Himself and another driver hit eachother which resulted in the other driver's right hand mirror becoming dislocated from the body of the car and a scratch from head light to tail light. When the other guy pulled over, my uncle parked infront of him and exited the car with the best intentions of exchanging insurance information. A short, fat, greying man burst out of the other car and began yelling at him, calling him a boludo (insult), pendejo (insult) and other things that aren't very nice. My uncle told him to calm down, that it was just as much the other guy's fault as it was his own. When fatty wouldn't shut it and started nearing the car with two other dudes behind him my uncle stands at full attention and tells him, "Don't disrespect me." After a few seconds of this, Mariano gets back into the car and drives off, absolutely pissed. Now, this is what he explained to me and I will explain to you so that you can see why nothing happened. My uncle is a police officer here. Cops are nationally hated and given shit, which oftentimes they deserve. Argentina along with all of South America is very politically corrupt and instable so citizens have more than enough reason to detest the police here. Anyways, as I've said before, my uncle is a big guy, huge infact. This other man was relatively small, and even though he had two men as back-up this is no real threat to Mariano. So why was there no fight? One, I'm there and my uncle does not want anything to happen to me. Two, if he hits this guy the man will end up hurt. My uncle being a officer of the law will lose his job and could potentially go to jail. Three, it's Christmas and he's feeling jolly. Showing a bit more of his reasonable side for once, he decided to drive away instead of losing it. After all, his car was fine.

Last night being Christmas Eve and my grandmother's birthday, I celebrated it with my father's side of the family. I don't realize how crazy the Reys are until I sit at a dinner table with them. For one thing, there is literal insanity present. My younger cousin Sasha is bizarre. He has a history of stabbing and choking classmates and has always creeped me out. His mother and father, Virginia and Mariano (not the same Mariano that is my beloved cop) have their fair share of problems between themselves but I try not to get too involved. Then there is my aunt Greta who wears a black slip which shows all her tits, to the dinner table. Her defense is that I wear nothing at all on a daily basis so it's ok for her to do this once in a while. She is the clown of the family and later puts on a sparkly purple hat with a neon green ribbon to prove it. Besides my Uncle Mariano, Greta is the other family member that I am closest too. She has never judged me and has always defended me against my father and other disapproving people. Her boyfriend was not at dinner with us because there is some kind of situation between him and Mariano that isn't pretty but I did not feel like asking about.

I apparently didn't get the slip memo because Virginia was also wearing one, but it had flowers and stuff glued all over it. Clearly not in the "sexy spirit", I was wearing a very conservative dress patterned with purple plants and other nonsense. I was very misled this Christmas because there was no asado. Asado is the "South American BBQ" and is what I look forwards to every time I'm here. Mariano was also very upset by this lack of cow and had a disgruntled expression the entire night. To the right sits Mariano, and on his left Sasha.

I surprised my family and myself by drinking. I hardly ever drink because it makes me very anxious and instead of relaxing like most people, my heart beats faster and I get nervous. But on this night I forced down a few glasses of terrible wine and strawberry flavored champange in hopes of having a better night. It worked to a degree and I became less shy about trying to speak in spanish. Although I am fluent in my mother language, I'm always lacking a few words and I hate looking stupid so I shut my mouth when often times I have something to contribute since I understand everything (minus slang). Eventually though, less shy turned into me yelling obscenities across the table and demanding respect from my mom; all in good humor of course. I have included a lovely photo of me at my best, note the bottle in hand. On the left is my aunt Greta with her "tetas al aire" and on the right is my mother, very dolled up indeed.


Fireworks are legal in this glorious country so our background music was a constant drone of cars and yelling with an M-80 thrown in every few minutes for punctuation. Surprisingly, the family dog Drucila was not scared but then again I hardly saw her all night since she was locked upstairs and away from the table. After an exchange of gifts and a birthday cake presentation to my grandmother, I finished my glass of alcohol and got into my uncles car where he drove my mother and I back to Belgrano, my Grandmother Ines' barrio. Overall it was a rather uneventful night that I walked away from with a smile on my face.

Fray Calletano Rodriguez

After a hectic night of trying to find a taxi to take me to my friends house, we didn't even end up seeing "Los Cafres". Finding a taxi isn't really the hard part, it's finding a safe taxi. There are two kinds in Argentina, normal taxis and radio taxis. The difference is that radio taxis have radios that tell them where to go and normal taxis are more often than not, independent. That means they can rip you off. After a fourty minute ride across town, I arrived at Pilar's house where I was warmly welcomed by her younger brother, dad and Pilar herself. After a quick kiss on the cheek, we climbed into her mothers car and Pili got behind the wheel. We drove about half an hour to the venue where we parked in a sketchy spot and walked to the line of people waiting to get their tickets. After reaching the box, we find out that tickets cost 65 pesos which is way too much for a band I've never seen and she didn't even really like. Currently, one American dollar equals almost four pesos. But the night was nice so we walked a few blocks to a restaurant where they specialized in "chivito" which is really thinly sliced meat served on bread with cheese and ham and a bunch of other things. I had never had it but it didn't take much convincing, I love meat in all forms and shapes especially Argentine meat. After some of the worst service which included a lack of the crucial chivito bread, we left the restaurant and drove to "Caballito" which is a nice barrio here, to get some ice cream. I have eaten ice cream every single day, some times twice. At the ice cream shop, I ordered helado de dulce de leche and frutilla al agua. Argentina has some of the best ice cream in all of North and South America so if you are ever here, eat plenty. In the shop there was a crazy bicyclist with yellow glasses, plenty of lights and a retractable clip that connected his shirt to his bike. I didn't really see the logic in the last one because if he was to get hit by a car, he would go flying with his bike as opposed to apart from it which seems less dangerous. After heading back to Pilar's house and hanging out with her younger brother and his friends, we crawled into bed where she immediatly passed out. I on the other hand couldn't sleep and stayed awake for a couple hours thinking about people in other states.

The next morning a took a taxi to my younger cousin Barbara's house. If there is one person in Buenos Aires who I love most, it might have to be her. She is 17 now so the age difference doesn't seem as large as when we were younger. We spent the entire day bullshitting and talking about guys, friends and drama. Of course with me working at ALDO, she wanted me to accompany her to find some shoes for our uncles birthday. We found some nice black ones that she was able to walk in almost perfectly. Our uncle is named Erwin and he is filthy rich. He started his own company called Pupient which has something to do with glasses and contacts and such. I've never been 100% sure what it's all about, I only know that his wife has fake tits and he pays for my flights to Uruguay. He is a short, penguin like man who has too much money and not enough life left to know what to do with it. This leads to exravagent parties that all the old ladies come out to, covered in their finest jewlery, make-up and drenched in perfume. This year's party will be particulary special because Erwin will be hitting the big eight-oh and will be hosted in a salon instead of his house. This night will surely end in my cousin being quite intoxicated and in me eating too much food. I will be sure to take lots of pictures.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. which is celebrated here more than Christmas day itself. My uncle Mariano will be scooping me up tomorrow and dragging me to do his very delayed Christmas shopping. Dinner will be at my Grandma Nilda's house and after parties all over the capital. I will try to write again soon.

Day One in Buenos Aires

The easiest way to begin, is by saying that this city is not the city I've known. I mean in a sense it still is and some things will never change: the smell of fuel and dirt, the heat, the skinny women. But there is a new tension so to say, a feeling of agitation. Every stranger I've talked to has told me the same thing, "Esta pesado Buenos Aires, tenga cuidado", which means literally "Buenos Aires is heavy, be careful". Three years ago, I remeber coming here and asking friends about drugs and other things. They had no idea what meth or crack was, everyone just smoked weed. But now, crack has taken Argentina's youth by the throat. It came maybe a year ago and being so cheap, created drug addicts out of kids who you never would have expected. On a related note, it's no secret that Argentines are racist. Not so much against blacks but against "negros" or, dark skinned hispanics/lations. It can be pretty awkward when the women you're sitting next to on the plane starts to bitch about the lazy Hondureans and Paraguayans who bring their kids to Argentina to beg for money. And these kids, you can't turn them down. They are so pitiful with their SOB stories and dirty faces, it's tragic. This addition of working class feeding the lowest class has poeple here on the edge. Just today my remis driver was telling me that drivers pull guns out on one another for no reason, that everyone is ready to fight and kill. Robbery is a bigger issue than it has been in the past. I walk out of the house with out even a purse. I've got my ID card (called a cedula) in my pocket, a borrowed cellphone and some cash. It's nice not having to feel straps cutting into my shoulders but it's again just another reminder that I'm not in a carefree environment.
The flight here was long. 15 hours is nothing to joke about. But I slept, and slept and slept which cut it down to maybe 5 hours tops. I met a GORGEOUS man in Panama while waiting for my connecting flight. Coincidentally, he was on the same one. Long story short, he invited me to a show tonight at a venue called "La Trastienda" to see a raggae band called Los Cafres. Upon arriving, I called my friend Pilar to ask if she would be interested in going. "Los Cafres, of course!" I guess they are a well known group. I should actually be heading down stairs at this moment to grab a taxi to take me to her house, but she can wait.
At the airport I was met by my uncle, Mariano and his new girlfriend Laura. My uncle is about 6'2, broad shouldered and a cop. That's the easiest way to describe him. I am his "pequena" (little one) and he watches over me like a hawk. When I told him I met some cutie all he said was, "ojo" and pointed at his eye. We walk to his tiny mint green volkswagon and throw the luggage in the trunk. I'm the only one to strap in seeing as how no one here uses seat belts. People in Buenos Aires drive insanely, this is no exaggeration. I don't know how people are still alive. I get to my grandmothers house, her name is Nilda and she is my dad's mom. How emotional! She cries and cries and hugs me for five minutes straight. That's a long time to be standing at the foot of a staircase., but it's nice and warm and I love her dearly. I head upstairs and the table is set with french fries, noodles and milanesas! For you non-spanish people, milanesas are thinly sliced pieces of meat or chicken that have been breaded and fried or baked in the oven if they have cheese ontop. These did. I stuffed my face and fell asleep with only a sheet covering me. I should probably mention that it's summer here and it's humid as well.
Once I woke up, I took a remis, which is a car service, to my other grandmother's house where I met up with my mother. We went out for tostados and ice cream and then I napped when we came home. I woke up to find my grandmother Ines coming home from work and gave her a hug and a kiss. Everyone left now and I'm sitting in the kitchen typing this up because I decided I wanted to keep track of what I did this winter/summer. But now I have to go get ready to meet up with Pili and say hi to some more friends.

I should also note that there will be a lack of photos on this blog due to the fact that I did not bring a cable for my camera. Pictures will be added once I am back in LA.