última noite em Brasil

Ok so tonight is my last night in Brazil and we're taking it pretty easy and staying in so I figured I'd update the blog. Yesterday was the last day of Carnaval and we partied all night with intentions of waking up and going to the beach today.... yeah, that didn't happen. So tonight we've taken a much needed respite from the alcohol and tomorrow, cross my fingers, we are waking up at 8:00 to go to a beach about 45 min. from here. There are beaches right here in Recife but this beach is supposedly on of the prettiest in Brazil.

Alright, I'll get back to Brazil here shortly but for now I want to say a bit more about Buenos Aires while it is still fresh on my mind...

Buenos Aires was awesome, I wish I could have stayed longer. Just as I was starting to really know the city I left. I have a feeling that that is going to be the story of this whole trip, but oh well, I'll go back someday.

La Casa Rosada ("The Pink House"), akin to the White House (currently under renovation). There are two stories as to why it is pink: 1) When it was constructed, there were two major political parties, the Red and the White, so pink was a compromise. 2) Argentina is famous for its beef and has a ton of cattle, to offset costs cow's blood was used to color the paint.

I learned so much about Argentinian history, politics, culture, everything... I won't delve into it all now because comments were made telling me to keep all that stuff to a minimum, cough, Chris, cough, but I would highly suggest anyone who is interested to browse Wikapedia or something.

A few interesting tidbits though: earlier I said that there were hardly no indigenous people, that is because they were all killed off in an effort to clear the lower part of Argentina for settlement towards the the end of the 19th century. Also, no black people because the Africans that were here were used as the soldiers, on both sides, during Argentina's war of independence, and after that Argentina didn't have the same need for slave labor as did the US or Brazil, so more weren't brought in. Argentinian politics: I don't understand them at all. Argentinian politics are Peron. There are Peronistas and Anti-Peronistas, but I don't really understand what either of them stand for because Peron was both as far right as you can go, a faschist with friends like Mussilini and Franco, and as far left, with his policies of redistribution of wealth and support from the working class and Communist groups.

Also, I watched a documentary called "La Deuda" (The Debt) about the Argentinian debt and the monetary crisis of 2001 and its aftermath. The movie was made by Jorge Lanata, a left-wing journalist in the same vein as Michael Moore. Much of the movie showed the points of view of the extremes of Argentina about the need to pay back the Argentinian debt. It compared the view of the super rich, those vacationing in Punta del Este in Uruguay, who said that of course Argentina needed to pay it back and that of course they could, with the extremely poor, those starving to death in the northern states of Argentina. The point was that Argentina couldn't pay back its debt, especially at a time when the economy was in shambles, and take care of itself at the same time. The images of poverty were striking though. He compared being poor in Argentina with being poor in the US. Wow, there is no comparison. The poverty in South America is real poverty.

Both the crisis and the debt are still on everyone's mind, but the situation is much better. The economy is stronger, with the exchange rate being 3-1 with the dollar now as opposed to 5-1 in 2001, and number of those living under the poverty line has decreased from 30% in 2001 to 10-15% now. Most importantly, as told to me by my professor, the people have hope, and walk with there heads held high.

Ok, enough about that.

Buenos Aires isn't the safest city in the world, but its not the most dangerous either, but there is a neighborhood called La Boca (famous for its soccer team the Boca Juniors) which is pretty dangerous. It is really a touristy area, but you're highly warned to stick to the tourist streets. Well, one of my schoolmates decided to cut through La Boca to get to the Boca Junior stadium to buy tickets for a game (rather than walk around through another neighborhood). He was walking with another student who was an older lady of about 50. Well, he got jumped. Two guys jumped out and one put a knife to his throat and told him to give him his money and his camera. My schoolmate though, somehow twisted around and shoved the guy to the ground. He couldn't simply run away though, because he was with an elderly woman who not only couldn't run due to here age, but had also been kicked to the ground, so he had to fight the guys off with his backpack until they got back to a more populated area. It's an amazing story but almost as amazing as the event itself, something that we all laughed about after the fact, is that he was even attacked at all. The guy is a BIG guy. About 6'5" and muscular, and he is really boisterous and outspoken; you can tell that he is not the type of person that is going to do something against his will, almost exactly like Chris but more werewolf-looking, with hair like Wolverine from the X-Men. No one could imagine walking up to the guy with intentions of robbing him. He's also Polish, so I think that partially explains his reaction. People from the former USSR just have a different mentality about things like that, I guess it's just more commonplace there.

Tango couple in La Boca.

Another funny story, well again after-the-fact... I was talking to another schoolmate at a bar one night, a Swiss girl that I was starting to fancy, and I asked her a question about what she was doing the next day or something, and it turned out that I had already asked her that question and she had told me the day before. This was something that had happened before with her and at the time we had joked about it and I told her "yeah, I know, but I've just met so many new people and you always ask the same questions and its hard to remember, blah, blah, blah..." So this time she had the same reaction telling me "Oh Matt you're so forgetful, I mean come on, do you even remember my name?" The rough part was that I didn't, and I had talked with this girl every day at school for about a week. When I met her though it was at a bar and it was loud and she had a foreign name anyway, so it was a situation where: 1) she told me and I never really got it the first time and then 2) I saw her again and forgot to ask and then 3) I kept on seeing her and didn't ever ask her again in order not to appear a jackass. I would just say "hola chica". Anyways, I told her I didn't remember her name and I think she thought that I was joking because she asked again "c'mon what's my name?" When I told her again that I didn't know she quickly turned serious and asked slowly and deliberately "what is my name?" That's where the conversation ended. I tried to explain using the same logic given above but to no avail. She feigned laughter but was fuming. She stepped outside to have a smoke and I quickly turned to my friend and asked her name: Antonella. I apologized when she came back, using her name, but it was futile. Once again she lauged it off and said that it didn't matter but wow, that was an awkward situation. I payed her drink and left.

Ok, I'm going to go to bed. I'll write about Brazil next time, probably when I'm in Chile... that makes sense right?