Today I ate McDonald's for lunch.

Refer to title.

The last week or so...

Bit of a longer entry this time... There's few things...

The first is about the rains that BA has been having lately. In two hours on one day last week, according to Santiago, it rained more than the average level for the whole of February. Whole blocks in certain areas of the city were without electricity for days. Our hostel in Palermo lost electricity at least twice.

A friend of my new landlord (i'll get to that in a sec), showed me this video. Take note of the people holding umbrellas.



Santiago also took us to see a football game. River played Arsenal (not the English one). We arrived pretty early, and got to see the spectacle of the home team arriving for the match. It was pretty awesome. They wait until about 5 minutes before the players run out, and march in with drums, and chants, and huge flags, filling the stands from the bottom up. When the away team comes out, boos, and hisses and whistles abound. It sounds terrible. And when the home team comes out, the chants are incredible, deafeningly loud, with in-time fist pumping from the whole crowd. The WHOLE crowd. I've never seen anything like it. They continue chanting for the entire game and when there's a goal scored (depending on which team it's score for), they react accordingly. I took some video, but it doesn't do it justice, so i won't upload it. Boca Jrs play River Plate in about a month and we're going to try to get tickets... It's supposed to be one of the best sporting events you can ever experience.

From an Australian perspective, there's three unusual things about going to a soccer game in Argentina. The first is the riot vehicles which are parked out the front, complete with water canons. The second is that they don't sell any booze at the game whatsoever, and your bag is checked before you come in. The third thing is that if you're supporting the home team, you have to wait until the away team's supporters have left before you're allowed to go. These three things appear to be interrelated and it's probably quite good that they're in place; don't let people drink so they don't get rowdy and want to fight, don't let supporters physically meet, so they can't actually fight, and if these two procedures somehow fail, use the water canons.

I've also found a place to live. It's on Sarmiento, between Parana and Uruguay in San Nicolas. It's a good spot, with a big room, surrounded by subway lines, with a supermarket next door, and about 15 blocks from Uni (i can walk it in about 25 mins), but i can't help but feel i'm paying a little too much for it. The landlord also tends to let himself in without knocking. I came out of the shower this morning to find his mum sitting at the shared computer (apparently she's really good at fixing television reception). I already have two house mates from Canada (Quebec), and another from Germany who will move-in in a couple of days. They all speak English, which could be bad for my Spanish, but we'll see how it goes. The Canadians speak good Spanish also though... Yasmin is staying here until she can move into her place.

For Uni, we've been going to orientation this week. There are quite a few international students (about 150 or something), heaps from France and the US. We did a Spanish placement test on Monday, and i've been placed in intermediate level two, of four intermediate levels. If you're in one of these, you MUST take Spanish while you're here, but there are other subjects too, tailored to international students (the lecturers speak more slowly, and are more willing to answer stupid questions). Some of the easy ones include cinema, photography, and contemporary art along with others that would be more challenging, like Peronism, history of Latin America, and various literature subjects. I still haven't decided what i'm going to take, but i'll probably end up being at Uni for about 12 hours a week.

Ok... that's all for now.

Things I expected to be different about BA.

Before I arrived, I thought that there would be more shit-box cars on the road. There are some, but most people drive newish Volkswagens and Fiat hatchbacks.

I had the idea that everything single Argentinean person looked like a model. While it’s true that there are a number of people who look like models, Buenos Aires also has its fair share of ugly people.

I expected more beggars, but there aren’t many. Probably even less than Sydney.

I expected the night-life to be good, but I didn’t realise just how many things there are to do at night, and how many people go to do them.

I didn’t expect so many high rise buildings. But there are heaps.

I didn’t expect the subway system to work as well as it does. You never wait more than 3 minutes for a train, and you can go most places in the city within 30 minutes. For AU$0.30.

I was slightly concerned that Argentineans might live up to their arrogant reputation. But they have been nothing but kind and helpful, and patient if you try to speak Spanish with them. Except for one cab driver who was a bit of an asshole.

I had heard about the steak in Argentina, but I didn’t actually expect it to be amazing, especially with the amount of good steak we have in Australia. But I had a steak the other night, and I can’t remember one I’ve ever had that was better.

I expected the beer to be cheap, but not as cheap as it is. It’s less than a Pepsi sometimes. I bought three one-litre bottles for 11.50 pesos the other day. That’s about AU$3.50.

I didn’t expect the shopping centres to be so modern. But Abasto shopping centre has everything, including Gucci, Prada, a surf/skate shop called Cristobal Colon (Christopher Colombus). That’s like a skate shop in Australia being called Captain Cook.

I thought that the city would be more overtly religious and conservative. But I haven’t gotten the impression that it is. Women wear tight clothes and there are a number of sex shops (some of which are advertised in the street by placard bearing 65 year old women wearing funny hats).

I expected the traffic to be much more crazy. But it’s not. Most of our cab drivers have driven slowly and defensively, and we’ve rarely been stuck in traffic anywhere.

I expected BA to be much more different than it is to Sydney, but apart from the obvious differences such as Spanish, the non-need to clean up after your dog, and the occasional broken footpath, it’s really not that different.

Hilary's new nickname.

Hello everyone,

Just letting you all know that Hilary has a new nickname. It is 'freezer'. Freeze, freezo, freezemeister general are all acceptable also.

When it rains, it pours...

We went to see a band call 'La Bomba de Tiempo' (the time-bomb) last night. I guess you'd describe them as a percussion orchestra, with a rotating conductor. They do a weekly gig on Mondays, and hold a bigger party every month. We went to the smaller weekly gig - there must have been at least 3000 people there... It was shoulder to shoulder... Can't imagine what the party's like.

You can check out la bomba de tiempo here. They're also worth youtubing.

Anyway - so when it rains in Buenos Aires it pours. Just before the show was over, an extremely heavy rain started to fall, and continued for a while. We got totally soaked and had a bit of trouble find a cab home... But it was fun, and it all worked out in the end.

Video from my phone here:

We have arrived!

After an epic 13 hour flight, Yasmin, Hilary and I arrived a couple of days ago in Buenos Aires. The ride into the city from the airport was slightly frantic - our driver was an older gentleman who liked tailgating very much. He also spoke no English, but we got where we needed to go, and even managed to ask him a few questions. According to him, Buenos Aires has a population of 3 million in the central area, and about 15 million in the greater province.

We are staying at a nice hostel in San Telmo at the moment - this is a view from the balcony:



We went for a bit of a walk around the city yesterday and down to Puerto Madero where the University is located to let them know we had arrived, and to ask some admin type questions. When we returned to the hostel jet-lag caught up with us and we had a brief snooze. We went out for a nice (but cheap) dinner of steak and red wine in a plaza nearby, with a tango show and live jazz music. Yas got her photo taken with the male dancer. We were also approached by a fellow selling "Hecho en Buenos Aires, Argentina " a magazine similar in idea to "The Big Issue" from Sydney.

Managed to buy a SIM card for my phone today. The experience in the office was quite funny and nerve-wracking at the same time - there were many very unhappy people. They had a 'take a ticket and wait' system, which was epically failing, and the result was angry people yelling at each other in Spanish. I was surprised at how long it took for them to sell us a pre-paid SIM. Once we were out of the queue, and with someone at the counter, it was still 25mins until we were issued with the cards...

We also went to the Mitre Museum (he's an old president), and back to the Uni to drop off some documents. Here's what that looks like, with Yas and Hilary in the foreground.

I've only been here a couple of days, but i'm enjoying this city so far. It's very pretty and the people have been friendly. The language is a little daunting and it's difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but i hope i'll be able to speak Spanish eventually. It's interesting when we walk through crowded areas, especially where people are trying to sell something - although we don't really look that different from the average Porteño, somehow they pick us out as tourists, and spruik their wares in English. Maybe it's the wide eyes and confused faces. But then again, it works the other way too - we get asked the time a lot.

Porteno: "Excuse me, what time is it please?"
Ben: "Er.. Uh.. Um.. The time plus hour are 4 and minus minutes.."
Porteno: (looks confused) "Um... thank you?"

Last night we went to a bar called Sugar in Palermo, and stayed until 3am (on a Thursday night). It wasn't looking like closing anytime soon. A new friend from Buenos Aires, Santiago, says that often Buenos Airians won't even leave the house until 4am, arrive at the club after that and stay until 8 in the morning. It says the same sort of thing in the Lonely Planet. I wonder how true it is, but last night helped me on the way to believing it. This should be a fun year.