Last Thursday (2/17), I had my first online meeting with the AAUW Voices Project. Someone spoke to us about the ins and outs of writing op-ed articles and how exactly the project would work. AAUW is teaming with another company (I can't remember the name) who has a network of over 10,000 media outlets, so they guaranteed we would get published! I'm so excited.
Friday, we were delighted to meet one of Anna's friends from home, Maddie. She is staying with a host family in Mendoza this semester but came a week early to visit Anna and Buenos Aires. While the other girls were all at Anna's finishing their homework for the week, I got bored and decided to try a new look. One thing I love about Buenos Aires is that it only takes about 30 minutes to get ready. No one wears makeup, and I wear my hair naturally wavy EVERY day. That being said, I wanted to do something different and decided to straighten my hair with an iron. No, not a CHI, a clothes iron. Checking with the ever handy "pros" on YouTube first, I proceeded to straighten my hair with a towel in one hand and an iron in the other. It's probably a little extreme considering I really don't care how my hair looks or not, but it was great. I'd forgotten how much something so small can make such a big difference in the way you look in feel. But of course with my luck, the second we got out the door it started pouring. Glad I spent an hour for nothing. At least we got pictures!
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| new hair and new friends : ) |
We walked around Palermo in the rain until we happened upon a restaurant, Mandala. It was delicious and cheap, our kind of place. There was cool artwork and definitely a hippie feel. They were also playing the Beatles, but that can be said of almost everywhere in Buenos Aires. Maddie and I shared crépes with squash accompanied, of course, with a bottle of wine. All of the wine we've had here is from where Maddie will be staying (and where we plan to visit), Mendoza. The typical kind is called Malbec, which is high quality red wine/vino tinto made from French grapes grown in the mountains of Argentina. Yummm.
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| Be welcome in our humble kitchen and sit as in your house. Enjoy the food and be happy. |
After dinner, we walked to Club Niceto a couple blocks away. It has two sides and is considered different bars on different nights. That night it was Club Invasion, and we were on the list! No cover and a free tequila shot upon entry. The best part was no trance music! It was like 50's jive music for lack of better words with some Hispanic music thrown in. People were literally doing the twist. It was fantastic. I had so much fun dancing! Not jumping, not fist pumping, not grinding, just good ole fashion dancing. Then, to our surprise, there was a live band! They probably had 10 people including trumpet and sax players. I wish I knew how to describe the ska-ish? music. The female lead singer sort of reminded me of Gwen Stefani.
Saturday 2/19
My baby brother's 19th birthday!! I was really sad I couldn't be there to celebrate with him. However, I gave him his present for I left in January. I can't believe it's his last year as a teenager. In the afternoon, we went to Plaza Serrano in Palermo. It's another plaza/square of shopping, except it has a lot more clothes all made by local designers. The designers set up shop inside the many restaurants surrounding the square. I got a lot of great things including presents for friends and family back home. We also had fun trying on harem pants. No one was brave enough to actually get them. I think it would totally catch on in the States.
Saturday night was one of the strangest nights of my life, not just the trip. For a girls' night out, we planned to meet up with Yani, Kylie's friend from work. Since she had met all of us, that was our chance to meet her friends. The bar we planned on visiting, Sugar, was shut down. Passersby told us it's because it was often caught exceeding capacity and frequently closed for 3-6 months as a penalty. It's a shame, because it looked great online. Once again, it started raining. We walked for what seemed like forever until we finally found another bar Yani and her friends thought would be fun. Apparently, the rest of BA thought it was fun too, because it was one in, one out. The rain was now pouring. We waited in line for probably 45 minutes, huddling VERY close under the awnings of buildings when there were any. FINALLY, we got inside. With just enough time to get the bartender's attention and have one drink, the power went out. Oh well, we just waited forever to get in and it's raining cats and dogs. Bars are dark anyways. Before too long, the chandelier in the main room started dripping water, and we were quickly escorted out for fear of electrocution. Perdóname? As everyone was herded out the door like confused sheep, the rain was now coming down so hard you could barely see across the street, meaning no empty cabs. Not knowing the area, not having our trusty maps, and no cabs to be found, we put our full trust in Yani to get us home. She must have been miserable leading around the Americans in the rain. As we got onto a main street, it was underwater. Most of BA had begun to flood. There is absolutely no way to describe the madness of trying to walk/trudge/swim 30 minutes home after a couple drinks with a large group. There were a few times I thought cars might come drifting towards us. When we were most of the way home, we finally found a taxi, except Libertador, the main road, was closed because of the flooding. We sat in traffic miserable soaked racking up the meter because there were no other open road. Then we noticed water in the cab. I'm still not sure whether it's from people before us or if it was leaking. Either way, I have never been so happy to be home (barely before the sunrise). We were exhausted.
Sunday 2/20
Due to the hysteria of the night before, Sunday was very lazy. We didn't wake up until 2:30 p.m. and never made it out of the house. I feel no shame; we were still processing the events of the previous night. We searched all day for news and pictures, but there were none to be found. Come on, Argentina? You can't tell me, torrential floods like that are not breaking news. Back in Columbia, some low-on-the-totem pole J-schooler would have been swimming through the streets with a camera to get a story like that. There's culture difference for you.
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