Roberto Jeremías Bútler on Monday, January 14, 2008 at 6:49pm
I can't believe I've already been here for 4 days.. in 3 days that will make one week!! Time is flying by but I'm definitely trying to make the most of it.
So last night, after writing my blog I realized I was kinda drunk. Since we had spent the entire afternoon chilling out and drinking champagne, I was buzzin a bit. I texted Lucas, and he came over so we could head out to Emilio's house together. Lucas arrives and we decide to take advantage of the 4 peso 1 liter beers at the hostel. Before we went out, we ended up drinking 3 and were good to go. The British guy in my room finally fixed the ping pong table at the hostel, so Lucas and I played a few games before we headed out.
We walked and walked and tried to find emilio's house.. Emilio texted me and told me that he lived in Calle Arenales, but stupid me looked on the map and saw Calle Arenal, so I was headed there instead. Thats ridiculous that there's a calle arenal and a calle arenales.. How confusing is that! Anyways, we just said fuck it and hopped in a taxi to Calle Arenales. The taxi driver didn't seem to mind that we were chugging 1 liter beers in the back of hte taxi, he didn't say a word. Nice.
Anyways, we meet up with Emilio and all of his friends and they decide to go to a wild gay discoteca called Amerika. I've heard about Amerika before, it used to be a big gay disco but most of the week its mixed. We got in for free because we got free passes, so that was nice. Literally, about 5 minutes after I arrived, I went up to the bathroom and one guy grabbed my shoulders and was like, "Che, morocho, tengo una chica afuera que le gustas mucho, habla con ella, es morocha como vos!" (Hey, black guy, i've got a girl outside that likes you alot and she's dark like you!"), I'm like, whatever, so I go outside with him to see what's cookin. He presents me to her, she's acutally not black at all, just dark hair and he leaves us to talk. We start chatting, but this girl is extremely forward and within 5 minute sof talking, she grabs me and kisses me. Word of wisdom for all my African-American readers: There aren't many blacks in Argentina, at all, so alot of them believe that we are exotic and it's kind of a fantasy for people to be with a black person... I definitely get alot of looks on the street and quite a bit of attention which is pretty cool.. Anyways, this girl tells me about her black fantasy or whatever and we go back in the club and start dancing.. WHen i get in the light, she's acutally not that cute so I decide to ditch her but at this point I lost Lucas and friends. She keeps following me around and when she finds out I'm from the states and not Brazil, she freaks out and so does her gay friend.. They are like grabbing me and are like, wow you're so cool. So since I wanted to get rid of her after realizing that she was more like a 5 instead of a 8, I promised her I would take her to a nice dinner the next night and I gave her my number... I hoped that would take her away from me, but she continued to follow me around. As I got drunker and drunker, I got a little easier and so she got more and more as the night progressed. Anyways, I won't go into details on our conversation because I'll probably get kicked off facebook, but I've never met a girl like this before. I finally got rid of her for a sec because two more black guys came out of nowhere and she was all ove rthem, so I got my opportunity to escape. I went upstairs and of course, there's a strip show going on. Since the crowd is kinda mixed instead of strictly gay, they had one male performer and one female performer. And when I say striptease, I'm not talking like panties and bra, I'm talking everything.. guy and girl. They just don't give a shit here. And the craziest part, everyone was snapping pictures and no one really cared. Argentina is wild. Anyways, I lost LUcas and Emilio and I texted them and they told me that they had already left... So i'm kinda stuck with this random not cute chick and a few hundred drunk belligerent Argentines. I finally made my way out the door and I bolted for a taxi. By the time I got back to my hostel, it was 6 am but I was soooo hungry, so I started asking people around the street if there was anything open. I got recommended to go to one place to eat empanadas (similar to an English pasty). I got there and they were so cheap, I ate soooooooo much. Each empanada was 2 pesos, rougly 60 cents. My greedy American ass ordered 3 empanadas, big big big empandas stuffed with chicken, cheese, ham, everything. Delicious. ANd to top it off, I ordered my first Choripan,a HUGe delicious grilled sausage sandwich for less than 1 dollar. This is better than whataburger kids, and eating like a king for $2.80 makes me think twice about returning back to the States. I was so full I could not finish my last empanada, so I started trying to offer it to strangers on the street (drunk) but no one took me up on my offer. The guy at the front desk at the hostel took me up on my offer and gobbled it down after I gave it to him (later I found out he was completely stoned so I'm sure he was happy). As usual, I passed out.
Day 4:
Woo hoo! I acutally woke up today before 3! I woke up today at 12, and since that's ridiculous in Argentina, I went back to sleep until about 1. Today was so hot in argentina, it makes it so hard to get motivated to go outside. I sucked it up, and got my shit together and left out the house. First stop, bakery for some more empanadas. I could eat these things for breakfast , lunch and dinner! This bakery next to my house is the fuckin bomb, there's so much offered and its so cheap.. I went in and I told them I was taking pictures for a newspaper article in the states and got their permission to snap a bunch of pictures. It's impressive what they offer at that bakery. Next stop: Pharmacy for these blisters on my leg. The guy at the pharmacy told me that everything was cool, it was probably an ant or a spider bite and I should be fine. They sold me some good medicine and I'm supposed to apply it to my leg 3 times per day. If they don't go down by next week, I"m definitely going to the real doctor. It looks like a vampire took a bite into my leg. gross.
I ran into one of the guys from the hostel on the street and we decided to go shopping together. WE went up to the little mall/grocery store and just did some shopping. It was pretty nice, I got the best ice cream I've ever tasted in my life, it's called Dulce de leche.. Jesus christ. Wow. Too good. At the grocery store, I bought my first bag of Yerba mate to go with the mate gourd I purchased eysterday! I didn't know which to buy but with the help of some nice people in the supermarket, I got a huge 1 k ilo bag of mate. Awesome. Too bad I left my gourd at Lucas' house after drinking champagne , otherwise I'd be drinking mate right now. I parted ways with Ralph (the guy from the hostel) and took a tour of my beautiful neighborhood, Palermo.
I did not realze how amazing my neighborhood is. It's ridiculous how many rich and beautiful people live here. It's unreal. It's acutally really sad to see the disparity of the rich and poor, but I guess this is life. One one side of the street, you see a beautiful argentine couple leaving their loft wearing Gucci and Prada, and on the same street corner there are little children running around with no shoes, dirty and asking people for money. Sad. My neighborhood is definitely one of the trendiest ones in Bs As.. outdoor cafes, a HUGE park with all kinds of stuff, the zoo, and the best shopping malls. I went into a real mall this time and this is where I finally realized that Argentines are the most beautiful people on this earth.. Even over Swedes, and that's hard to beat. Jesus, you would not believe your eyes walking in this mall. The mall is called Acosta (i think) and it's kind of an upscale mall, hence all the beautiful rich people. Every time I turned around, I seriously couldn't believe my eyes. If you have been to Argentina, you know exactly what I'm talking about becuase this is what everyone has told me... i just didn't realize it until i arrived.. it's absolutely sick. After coming out of Armani exchange, I turned around and I saw the most beautiful woman I've ever laid my eyes on. Tall, olive skin, red dress, perfect hair beautiful smile and the guys around her knew that she was bad ass, because when every guy walked by and stared at her, her male entourage gave that cheeky smile like "yea, this woman is mine". The mall experience was too much to handle actually, and I seriously had to leave. Wow. Walkign back home, I almost got killed several times by traffic. Traffic in Buenos Aires is wild and crossing hte street is one hell of an experience. They have really wide streets here, like 10 lanes and crossing the street in one traffic light is very very close to impossible. The worst part is there are no medians in some of the streets so you have to RUN everything you cross. Pedestrians come DEAD last here on the road.. Buses are first (which travel VERY fast), then cars, then motorcycles, animals (argentines love their dogs), and then human beings. If you're crossing the street and there's a car coming, instead of slowing down, it honks and flashes its lights, but continues going at the same speed. Even worse, at night some of the taxi drivers don't turn their lights on so you can barely see them coming until they flash their lights at you and you have to make a decision whether to run for it or jump back onto the curb. It's acutally kinda dangerous. Anyways, I made it back home in one piece.!
Tonight, I don't really have any plans and I'm acutally a bit sad. I'm feeling good , I want to go out but I don't think it's happening. I texted the girl with the boyfriend but she never texted me back, and I' m not resorting to calling the one from last night. NO one from my hostel is going out, but I really want to go down to the river and eat a nice steak by the waterside.. We will see what happens, but I have a feeling that there will be no wild entry tomorrow about tonight :( Monday is a day of rest in buenos aires, so I'll be back into full swing on Tuesday. I guess it's ping pong and empanadas for me tonight! I'll see if I can manage to get some wine action in there somehow.. rob always finds a way.
Peace,
Rob
Weird Moment of the day: I'm walking down the street and I see a poster on a street light that's advertising a sex hotel. Apparently in Argentina, there a special kind of hotel that exists only for sex. They are called telos or love hotels. You go in and you pay by the hour, and you do your deed and you go away. So I definitely wanted to get a picture of this, but something weird happened on my quest for my picture. Ok, In argentina if someone is checking you out, they are not discreet, at ALL. THey make it VERY known. I'm walking and I cross paths with this like 50 year old man, who's obviously checking me out HARDCORE and so I'm a little creeped out. I keep walking, and he's following me a bit, but I see the love hotel sign and I want to snap a picture. When I turn around, he's right there and I kinda give a nervous smile and I walk over to the love hotel sign. I'm staring at the poster and I quickly realize that I'm giving him the wrong signals. I'm pretty sure he thought i was interested in the love hotel. I snap my picture, turn around, and he's now walking in direction I need to be going. I start walking behind him, and now it looks like I'm following him. EVerything I do I keep giving the wrong signals and I don't know how to prevent it! I did a bold move and darted across the street in a break of traffic, and scurried my way into the mall. So creepy!
So last night, after writing my blog I realized I was kinda drunk. Since we had spent the entire afternoon chilling out and drinking champagne, I was buzzin a bit. I texted Lucas, and he came over so we could head out to Emilio's house together. Lucas arrives and we decide to take advantage of the 4 peso 1 liter beers at the hostel. Before we went out, we ended up drinking 3 and were good to go. The British guy in my room finally fixed the ping pong table at the hostel, so Lucas and I played a few games before we headed out.
We walked and walked and tried to find emilio's house.. Emilio texted me and told me that he lived in Calle Arenales, but stupid me looked on the map and saw Calle Arenal, so I was headed there instead. Thats ridiculous that there's a calle arenal and a calle arenales.. How confusing is that! Anyways, we just said fuck it and hopped in a taxi to Calle Arenales. The taxi driver didn't seem to mind that we were chugging 1 liter beers in the back of hte taxi, he didn't say a word. Nice.
Anyways, we meet up with Emilio and all of his friends and they decide to go to a wild gay discoteca called Amerika. I've heard about Amerika before, it used to be a big gay disco but most of the week its mixed. We got in for free because we got free passes, so that was nice. Literally, about 5 minutes after I arrived, I went up to the bathroom and one guy grabbed my shoulders and was like, "Che, morocho, tengo una chica afuera que le gustas mucho, habla con ella, es morocha como vos!" (Hey, black guy, i've got a girl outside that likes you alot and she's dark like you!"), I'm like, whatever, so I go outside with him to see what's cookin. He presents me to her, she's acutally not black at all, just dark hair and he leaves us to talk. We start chatting, but this girl is extremely forward and within 5 minute sof talking, she grabs me and kisses me. Word of wisdom for all my African-American readers: There aren't many blacks in Argentina, at all, so alot of them believe that we are exotic and it's kind of a fantasy for people to be with a black person... I definitely get alot of looks on the street and quite a bit of attention which is pretty cool.. Anyways, this girl tells me about her black fantasy or whatever and we go back in the club and start dancing.. WHen i get in the light, she's acutally not that cute so I decide to ditch her but at this point I lost Lucas and friends. She keeps following me around and when she finds out I'm from the states and not Brazil, she freaks out and so does her gay friend.. They are like grabbing me and are like, wow you're so cool. So since I wanted to get rid of her after realizing that she was more like a 5 instead of a 8, I promised her I would take her to a nice dinner the next night and I gave her my number... I hoped that would take her away from me, but she continued to follow me around. As I got drunker and drunker, I got a little easier and so she got more and more as the night progressed. Anyways, I won't go into details on our conversation because I'll probably get kicked off facebook, but I've never met a girl like this before. I finally got rid of her for a sec because two more black guys came out of nowhere and she was all ove rthem, so I got my opportunity to escape. I went upstairs and of course, there's a strip show going on. Since the crowd is kinda mixed instead of strictly gay, they had one male performer and one female performer. And when I say striptease, I'm not talking like panties and bra, I'm talking everything.. guy and girl. They just don't give a shit here. And the craziest part, everyone was snapping pictures and no one really cared. Argentina is wild. Anyways, I lost LUcas and Emilio and I texted them and they told me that they had already left... So i'm kinda stuck with this random not cute chick and a few hundred drunk belligerent Argentines. I finally made my way out the door and I bolted for a taxi. By the time I got back to my hostel, it was 6 am but I was soooo hungry, so I started asking people around the street if there was anything open. I got recommended to go to one place to eat empanadas (similar to an English pasty). I got there and they were so cheap, I ate soooooooo much. Each empanada was 2 pesos, rougly 60 cents. My greedy American ass ordered 3 empanadas, big big big empandas stuffed with chicken, cheese, ham, everything. Delicious. ANd to top it off, I ordered my first Choripan,a HUGe delicious grilled sausage sandwich for less than 1 dollar. This is better than whataburger kids, and eating like a king for $2.80 makes me think twice about returning back to the States. I was so full I could not finish my last empanada, so I started trying to offer it to strangers on the street (drunk) but no one took me up on my offer. The guy at the front desk at the hostel took me up on my offer and gobbled it down after I gave it to him (later I found out he was completely stoned so I'm sure he was happy). As usual, I passed out.
Day 4:
Woo hoo! I acutally woke up today before 3! I woke up today at 12, and since that's ridiculous in Argentina, I went back to sleep until about 1. Today was so hot in argentina, it makes it so hard to get motivated to go outside. I sucked it up, and got my shit together and left out the house. First stop, bakery for some more empanadas. I could eat these things for breakfast , lunch and dinner! This bakery next to my house is the fuckin bomb, there's so much offered and its so cheap.. I went in and I told them I was taking pictures for a newspaper article in the states and got their permission to snap a bunch of pictures. It's impressive what they offer at that bakery. Next stop: Pharmacy for these blisters on my leg. The guy at the pharmacy told me that everything was cool, it was probably an ant or a spider bite and I should be fine. They sold me some good medicine and I'm supposed to apply it to my leg 3 times per day. If they don't go down by next week, I"m definitely going to the real doctor. It looks like a vampire took a bite into my leg. gross.
I ran into one of the guys from the hostel on the street and we decided to go shopping together. WE went up to the little mall/grocery store and just did some shopping. It was pretty nice, I got the best ice cream I've ever tasted in my life, it's called Dulce de leche.. Jesus christ. Wow. Too good. At the grocery store, I bought my first bag of Yerba mate to go with the mate gourd I purchased eysterday! I didn't know which to buy but with the help of some nice people in the supermarket, I got a huge 1 k ilo bag of mate. Awesome. Too bad I left my gourd at Lucas' house after drinking champagne , otherwise I'd be drinking mate right now. I parted ways with Ralph (the guy from the hostel) and took a tour of my beautiful neighborhood, Palermo.
I did not realze how amazing my neighborhood is. It's ridiculous how many rich and beautiful people live here. It's unreal. It's acutally really sad to see the disparity of the rich and poor, but I guess this is life. One one side of the street, you see a beautiful argentine couple leaving their loft wearing Gucci and Prada, and on the same street corner there are little children running around with no shoes, dirty and asking people for money. Sad. My neighborhood is definitely one of the trendiest ones in Bs As.. outdoor cafes, a HUGE park with all kinds of stuff, the zoo, and the best shopping malls. I went into a real mall this time and this is where I finally realized that Argentines are the most beautiful people on this earth.. Even over Swedes, and that's hard to beat. Jesus, you would not believe your eyes walking in this mall. The mall is called Acosta (i think) and it's kind of an upscale mall, hence all the beautiful rich people. Every time I turned around, I seriously couldn't believe my eyes. If you have been to Argentina, you know exactly what I'm talking about becuase this is what everyone has told me... i just didn't realize it until i arrived.. it's absolutely sick. After coming out of Armani exchange, I turned around and I saw the most beautiful woman I've ever laid my eyes on. Tall, olive skin, red dress, perfect hair beautiful smile and the guys around her knew that she was bad ass, because when every guy walked by and stared at her, her male entourage gave that cheeky smile like "yea, this woman is mine". The mall experience was too much to handle actually, and I seriously had to leave. Wow. Walkign back home, I almost got killed several times by traffic. Traffic in Buenos Aires is wild and crossing hte street is one hell of an experience. They have really wide streets here, like 10 lanes and crossing the street in one traffic light is very very close to impossible. The worst part is there are no medians in some of the streets so you have to RUN everything you cross. Pedestrians come DEAD last here on the road.. Buses are first (which travel VERY fast), then cars, then motorcycles, animals (argentines love their dogs), and then human beings. If you're crossing the street and there's a car coming, instead of slowing down, it honks and flashes its lights, but continues going at the same speed. Even worse, at night some of the taxi drivers don't turn their lights on so you can barely see them coming until they flash their lights at you and you have to make a decision whether to run for it or jump back onto the curb. It's acutally kinda dangerous. Anyways, I made it back home in one piece.!
Tonight, I don't really have any plans and I'm acutally a bit sad. I'm feeling good , I want to go out but I don't think it's happening. I texted the girl with the boyfriend but she never texted me back, and I' m not resorting to calling the one from last night. NO one from my hostel is going out, but I really want to go down to the river and eat a nice steak by the waterside.. We will see what happens, but I have a feeling that there will be no wild entry tomorrow about tonight :( Monday is a day of rest in buenos aires, so I'll be back into full swing on Tuesday. I guess it's ping pong and empanadas for me tonight! I'll see if I can manage to get some wine action in there somehow.. rob always finds a way.
Peace,
Rob
Weird Moment of the day: I'm walking down the street and I see a poster on a street light that's advertising a sex hotel. Apparently in Argentina, there a special kind of hotel that exists only for sex. They are called telos or love hotels. You go in and you pay by the hour, and you do your deed and you go away. So I definitely wanted to get a picture of this, but something weird happened on my quest for my picture. Ok, In argentina if someone is checking you out, they are not discreet, at ALL. THey make it VERY known. I'm walking and I cross paths with this like 50 year old man, who's obviously checking me out HARDCORE and so I'm a little creeped out. I keep walking, and he's following me a bit, but I see the love hotel sign and I want to snap a picture. When I turn around, he's right there and I kinda give a nervous smile and I walk over to the love hotel sign. I'm staring at the poster and I quickly realize that I'm giving him the wrong signals. I'm pretty sure he thought i was interested in the love hotel. I snap my picture, turn around, and he's now walking in direction I need to be going. I start walking behind him, and now it looks like I'm following him. EVerything I do I keep giving the wrong signals and I don't know how to prevent it! I did a bold move and darted across the street in a break of traffic, and scurried my way into the mall. So creepy!
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