The Last Two Weeks

Since I only spoke of the Campo Strike last week I intend to bring everyone up to speed on the last two weeks here in Buenos Aires.

Campo: A thirty day truce was arranged between the Government and the Farmers, allowing supplies back into the city. Even though this occurred at the beginning of last week, meats have slowly been trickling in and some shelves still appear barren. Prices have increased drastically, especially on the effected produce, and inflation numbers for March (which should officially come out at the end of April) are forecasted at a minimum of 3%. Although this truce brings hope to a peaceful resolution the conflict itself highlights mistrust and ill will amongst social classes and between some social classes and the government.

Futbol news: Apparently my friends and I picked the right game to go to. The following River Plate game ended in a riot and at least one man in the hospital in critical condition. Apparently there has been a massive increase in futbol violence here as of late, and this happened to be one of the most violent outbursts in recent memory. Those of you that know futbol, and futbol hooligans, probably don't think much of it, but there are two things that stand out that I can't seem to wrap my mind around: 1) River Plate won, so why were they rioting? 2) The fight was between two groups of River Plate fans, so why were they fighting? I'm still trying to fix my link connector on this blog so if you want to read more, just cut and paste
http://wwwr2.goal.com/en/Articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=641044

Mike and Andrew: Mike Brennan and Andrew Pearsons made it into town for a little over a week in the end of March and we had an absolute blast. They came in right after Semana Santa (holy week) so things were a bit more subdued than usual but we still managed to make quite a week out of it. I'm slowly starting to realize that Buenos Aires, as amazing of a city as it is, is somewhat limited in its nightlife choices. There's eating, drinking, and dancing, and that's about it. Don't get me wrong, I love all three, but it's a tough adjustment coming from LA where a night at the bars was the backup plan. Nonetheless, I tried my best to show them some of my favorite spots, and we even tried a few new ones. Too much steak was eaten, too much vino and cerveza imbibed, and too much fun was had.

Classes: The last week of March was also my last week of Spanish classes, which I was happy about since now I feel like I can actually start to learn Spanish again. Although that concept seems bass akwards, let me explain: not only was my Spanish school lacking, but due to several errors I was committed to a situation where I was taking too many hours of class each day. That led to stress and frustration and me being a not so motivated student. Since I wasn't motivated and the school was lacking, my Spanish has pretty much been in a holding pattern for three weeks. This last week was my first without and it was absolutely fantastic. I spent most of this week just resting as I felt like I've been on a seven week binder. I've also started taking Portuguese and French classes, both conducted at an introductory level and in Spanish. That brings my course load up to 12 hours per week and I'm starting to realize that I'm going to need to find many new hobbies in order to keep myself from going insane. I do like both my Portuguese and French classes though. Not only am I learning two additional languages, but also meeting new people. The problem with most university classes here is that they are generally very large and you usually don't end up having more than 2 or 3 of the same classes with a person ever. In sum, it's much less of a community and it's much harder to meet people. These language classes, however, are much smaller and everyone is on the same level of vulnerability since they are new to the language.

Social: This week was actually pretty sedated as I spent about a four day span in complete detox. It's very hard, however, to teach an old dog new tricks. Friday night was one of our friend's (Michaela) birthday and we had to go out and celebrate. We went to bar Jobs which appeared to be somewhere in between a dive bar and a nicer bar, in other words, my kind of style. The highlight of the evening was Foosball. Not just any old Foosball my friend, HUGE foosball. These tables were massive and fit three people on each side. I didn't bring my camera out that night (like most nights) so I'll have to go back sometime soon just to take a picture of this table. Saturday was spent in the park. Parque 3 de Febrero is massive (think Central Park) and has several gardens, a horse racing track, tennis club, polo club, and various other novelties. Since the day was amazing we just found a nice hunk of grass and passed the day with tranquility and bliss. After over-indulgence the previous night I was looking for something a little more low-key on Saturday night. I planned an evening at Shoeless Joe's Alamo, an expat bar that was playing the Final Four. My intent was to go have a couple beers, watch some good basketball, and make it an early night. UCLA's loss, however, changed all of that. After meeting some other expats, drinking too much, making my way to another bar, and getting lost, I'd had enough. I learned a few things that night: 1) I think I've just about hit my capacity for expats, 2) I no longer desire to drink for drinking's sake. I'm not sure if I'll follow through on either of these realizations, but hopefully so.

Blog update: One of the things I'm really going to try to work on now (and in the future) is writing more. After two weeks it's hard to remember some of the amazing things I've seen or done. I'm going to start bringing my journal with me and writing more in hopes that I can better summarize events gone by.