Holy crap! What a weekend… hahaha. Caution: This weekend deserves a long post J
***********************BOLICHE****************
Friday night, right after dinner (so of course not before 11:30 because we eat so stinkin late here) I went out with my friends Jay and Brianna. We had plans to go to a boliche (club) with this guy that we had met at a bar last week from Argentina. All night he practiced his Spanish and we practiced our English and it twas great! First, we just went to a bar to meet up, then we took a bus and met up with the guy. One thing I found crazy was that when we stopped at an ice cream parlor at 1:30 a.m. so I could pee, it was filled with families and little kids. In the U.S, those kids would have been in bed 5 hours ago! Jay showed up wearing shorts, and apparently you’re not allowed to enter the club as a guy without long pants, so he had to borrow from Alejandro's friend. But, Weird! I guess it’s like a formality thing, because it was a really elite club. And the guy we went with was friends with the DJ (who we also met playing pool last week). I was super impressed! To be the DJ at a huge club like that must make him like really well-known in Buenos Aires, I’m assuming? Because of him, we got to go in the VIP seccion of the club. Anywhoo, I’m still trying to figure out how guy’s can’t wear shorts, yet girls can go wearing practically nothing. Just doesn’t make sense to me! The girls all dressed super 80’s fashion with the high pony-tails, giganomic earrings, denim jackets, and mini-skirts.
Random fact: Here it’s socially acceptable for guys to wear little short shorts. Not always a pleasant thing.
The club was sort of similar to a club in the U.S., (I’m assuming, although I’ve never been to a club like this in the U.S. Never anything this huge.) I wasn’t lovin how they were playing Spice Girls and Lady Gaga and every American song in the books. I'm not going to lie, I felt cool for once being one of the only people to actually know the words to the songs and what they meant! Everyone else knew just to sing the “oooooohs” and the “hey heys”. Later in the night they played the Spanish music, a mixture of techno and reggae. I put my basic level tango skills to the test!
Another difference from America is the fact that people here seriously never sleep. And this is coming from the girl who almost died after last semester because I killed my body never ever sleeping. We got to the club at maybe 3 in the morning, and nobody was there yet because I guess we were lame and showed up early(?!) Then, all the people came. We left at 5 a.m. and had to apologize for being “lame” and leaving early, but we knew we had a HUGE day the next day. Apparently the crowd stays until at least 9.a.m., sometimes as late as 5 p.m. the next day. Do these people not have jobs? Seriously?!
Oh! And I forgot the coolest part!!!!!! We made a friend, and he seriously has the COOLEST accent. He grew up here in Argentina so of course speaks Spanish, but he learned English in school and decided to watch movies and pick it up in a BRITISH ACCENT! It was the most fantastic mixture. I can’t even do a British accent like that, I've known the language for years! Unfair.
***********LA CARNIVAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After getting home in the morning, I tried to sleep for like an hour, but people kept texting me about plans for the next day, so that didn’t really happen. Then I just got out of bed and headed to meet up with 9 friends to go LA CARNIVAL DEL PAIS in Gualyguachu!!!!!!!!!!!
I took the subte to the bus station, then it was a 3 hour bus ride to Gualyguachu. It felt so good to leave Buenos Aires! When I looked out the window and saw the cornfields and hills and bright blue skies, I could not have been happier. The culture, architecture, and everything is like a whole different world when you leave the city. We spent the day at the park and watched the people at the beach. I played on the playground and met a friend at the teeter-totter. He was a really nice friend. He is 8 years old and is named Juan.
Then, we took a taxi to La Carnival!!! I had no idea even what it was. It was a crowd of 200,000 people, wearing crazy wigs, face paint, and make-up, and sitting in 2 long rows of bleachers that were facing each other, down both sides of a long pathway. It was a show that lasted from 10 p.m. until I think maybe 5 a.m. It was like a parade of dancers, wearing either pretty much nothing but an inch of sparkly material, or HUGE headsets of feathers and diamonds. The costumes were unbelievable! Each one must cost a fortune and there were thousands. And the floats were giganormous. Everything was so elaborate!!! They have nothing like this in the U.S. It was like Mardi Gras on steroids. I wanted to badly to be one of the dancers! I of course got my jiggy on in the stands. They spend all year preparing for the show. There are 4 acts and each one has a different theme. We had to leave at 3:15 a.m. to catch our 3 hr bus ride home, so we didn’t see the last two acts, but the theme that we saw was “Nightmare”. There was dancing/acting/drama including beds, monsters, and just crazy creatures. I'm not sure what the theme of the first act we saw was... I was just so overwhelmed trying to take it all in, I didn't even know that there were themes. They played probably 3 songs the whole night (live bands would be on the floats) but the music just never got old!!!! The whole crowd was singing. . . it was a hoot! Quite the party! I wish we had culture like that in the U.S!
When I went to the bathroom, we were with a crowd that was super riled up and pushed the gate of the tunnel until the whole tunnel moved about 50 ft. and blocked the path of the parade. Eventually the police had to let us back through.
When I got off the bus, in Buenos Aires, it was 7:00 a.m. and had been daylight for a couple hours already. The train and subte were closed, so I took a bus home. It is Sunday afternoon and I have not really slept since Thursday night. On the bus, I was trying to read the street signs to know when to get off, and they were all just blurring together. Then walking the rest of the way, I was literally counting each block hoping that I could make it home before my body just collapsed and I would fall asleep on the sidewalk. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired!
Now I’ve napped and I’m feelin fabulous. It’s 6:00. Only 4 more hours till dinner! J (…. Ridiculous.)
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