Barullo: remember how i said i'd write from bs as?

Yeah, so turns out that was harder than I thought, what with the high demand for the hostel's lone free computer and also the absolute lack of free time. So, in lieu of that, here's a synopsis of the trip:

Left just about six hours after I wrote my last post, as expected. Everything about getting on the bus went off without a hitch, except I was sitting next to some old, fu-manchued, tight-lipped Chilean who was convinced that he had the aisle seat, even though there was an almost stupidly clear diagram above all the seats showing which was which...you know the one: person obviously standing in the aisle because there sure as shit isn't anyone floating outside the bus, seat 15, seat 16, window. I was in 15. Moron. Anyhow I ended up spending most of the time sitting next to Rosie anyway, reading some Bruce Chatwin, watching bad movies and trying to sleep. I bought some sleeping pills, given my history of difficulty with falling asleep without being able to get totally comfortable (i.e. anything but a perfect bed), but they didn't help much. I only slept about 4.5 hours total out of the 24-hour ride over the Andes (quite spectacular, I'll add a pic at the end) and then through the incredibly flat Argentine countryside. We got to Bs As around 11 on Thursday morning and went straight to our hostel, El Cachafaz (the lamplighter, I think) Youth Hostel, to check in. It was a nice place, GREAT people, all very young, okay beds, well-kept. One drawback was the death stairs leading up to the third floor, where our room was. They reminded me of the stairs in the bell tower in Siena, but falling apart and wooden. But no one fell, thank goodness. About two minutes (literally, maybe even less) after we got there, who should walk up the stairs but Julia! I seriously haven't been so happy to see anyone in...well, in I don't know how long. We went out for a bite to eat while Rosie and Amalia showered (the other kids were in a different hostel for space reasons). She had a meeting and I went back to the hostel, from which we walked to the Casa Rosada and Plaza de Mayo, where the famous Mothers of May march every Thursday afternoon. They have been around since the disappearances, starting as a small group of mothers whose children had been abducted by the government marching in protest of that and ending up, today, as a huge organization running schools, a bookstore and even a university. And, of course, still marching. Then we walked around the old docks for a while, which are no longer used but now have upscale apartments and restaurants and whatnot. Rosie had never seen the Atlantic Ocean, so after a little MORE lunch (and a Guinness for me! Yay, Guinness!), we tried to go down through a park to the big body of water that ran off the edge of our maps. But the park that leads to it was closed and, we found out later, it's not the ocean at all but the River Plate. So Rosie still hasn't seen the Atlantic Ocean. Oh well, her time will come. That night we ate pasta and then went to a bar near Julia's house. It was fun, and a couple of Rosie's friends from school joined us, and they were both really cool.

Friday was amazing. We woke up, ate a very (even by South American standards) spare breakfast and walked to the Buenos Aires cemetery. After walking around the whole thing trying to find the entrance, we ended up in a beautiful old church complete with a museum of artifacts from the Franciscan (?) brothers who used to live there. At last, we went into the cemetery, which was staggering. Row upon row upon row of beautiful, wildly variable, majestic, ugly, black, grey, blue, white mausoleums. Again, a sample picture or two will follow this post but they won't do the place to justice, the sheer packed-ness of it and the grandeur. Really one of the strangest places I've ever been. After that we ate a steak lunch served by a very strange waiter at a restaurant across the street from the cemetery and went to the very impressive Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Very cool place, some really interesting stuff, especially by a modern Spanish/Argentine painter who goes by a Portuguese name that escapes me at the moment. Leix...something. Anyhow that night we went out to a club where everyone on the first was, get this, doing line dances! So weird, all these kids know dance after dance after dance. Anyhow upstairs there was just regular dancing, so I spent most of the night dancing, mostly after rescuing my friends from sketchy Argentinians.

The next morning we went to the Plaza Italia in search of some gardens that Julia really likes. It wasn't that nice a day and we ended up only staying in the first one we found for a few minutes before hitting up a small feria. I bought Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Marques and Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, used. I'm excited to start them. Then we ate lunch, where they had an item on the menu called a "Maryland special"!!!!! I took a picture of the menu but couldn't bring myself to order it because it sounded gross. Julia and I walked back to her apartment, which was a few blocks from the restaurant, and everyone else walked to bigger feria to do some cheap Buenos Aires shopping. We walked there ourselves and sat and talked for a while. It was a great conversation. I am still thinking about it. Then we went and did a little looking around. I bought a new, genuine Argentine leather belt to replace my beat-up vinyl one and a t-shirt that cracked me up so much I couldn't resist. It was a strange feeling for me...the belt I knew I needed but the shirt was just an impulse clothing purchase, which I can't remember ever making before. Mom and Dad, maybe you know better, but I really can't think of anything. Maybe during the Jnco phase...Saturday night we had a very delicious steak dinner with a very competent waiter; altogether a much better experience than our steak lunch. Also the restaurant provided us with a huge baked Alaska and free champagne because it was Julia's friend Ian's birthday (he had tagged along for the dinner). Me and Tim went with Julia, Ian and one of Rosie's friends (both named Alex, this was the shorter one) to a "board games bar" that sounded super cool but was jammed. We walked around the corner to a little dark bar, where I was mostly just tired, and Tim and I went home after not too long.

On Sunday, we woke up and went to yet another feria, this one mostly full of antiques. But Rosie's stomach was giving her crippling pain, so after a few minutes she and I went to sit down and then she said she wanted to go back to the hostel. So I ran to find someone else (we had planned to meet up about 45 minutes later) to let them know we were leaving, found Tim and Esther and ran back to Rosie. We took a cab back, got an empty bed for her to lie down in, but she was feeling so bad that she couldn't even stay lying down. She told me that she would be in the emergency room if we were in Santiago, but we were in Argentina and leaving in two and a half hours. I said she should maybe go anyway. She went and threw up (which she had wanted to do since the previous night but couldn't) and I talked to a really nice Chilean guy who told me that if we went to a hospital and told them we were foreigners, they would see us fast and for cheap. This seemed brilliant to me, but Rosie took a little convincing. The lady at the desk gave us the address of a close-by hospital and we took a cab there, too. They saw her right away, the doctor was very competent and clear and nice (the clarity was especially nice, considering the strangeness of Argentine castellano), wrote out some prescriptions and some directions for Rosie to help her take care of herself. We were in and out in less than half an hour. There was a pharmacy around the corner, where she got the prescriptions filled. All told, including cabs, it cost less than 35 dollars. The wonders of socialized health care. Back at the hostel, she took her meds, which immediately made her feel better, and we walked to by some bland food and water and then it was back to the bus station.

The ride back was on a much less modern bus, but we had movies and it was 5 hours shorter due to fewer stops and faster drivers, so no real complaints. Also I slept a little more than on the way over, again I really think no thanks to the sleeping pills. Oh well, they cost less than 4 bucks. Got home, ate lunch, checked email, talked to Francisco, left to go do homework with Rosie and bring her roll bag back to her (saved my life, that bag...no way I could have handled a backpack). Ended up having a weird conversation with her, getting a little Spanish done, watching most of a very strange Martin Scorcese movie about Nick Cage as a paramedic in New York over my reading, coming home, finding a bunch of people here to celebrate Francisco's birthday, which he said nothing to me about, eating dinner, drinking some wine and trying to listen to their very fast conversation, then coming in here and writing this.

Moral of the story: Study abroad is worth it for the personal revelations alone. Not that I said anything about that above, really, but it's true. More true now than I even thought before. Amazing. Okay, time to go to bed, I haven't slept a whole lot the past week. 'Night!

update: Okay, blogger is combining with my erratic connection to make uploading photos impossible. I'll try again tomorrow.
update 2: here are the pictures!