En America Latina, los perros dicen "Wau, Wau"

Hey there folks, Charlie here just to give you guys a little more of an update on how my life's been. Seeing as how I haven't been up to anything extremely exciting, this blog will talk about some BsAs and non-BsAs things. I'll start off with things unrelated to Argentina that have kind of been on my mind lately.

So I finally have a place to live when I get back to DC! I'm going to be living in a condo in McLean Gardens with Veasey, Ben, and Wasser, three of my best friends at AU. I'm gonna be splitting a room with Veasey that will prolly come out to between $700-750 per month, a very workable number. I can't wait to get back to see all these guys. As much fun as Buenos Aires is, I wish more than anything that I could have some time home with my friends. But hey, only 6 weeks left, so no probs. Besides the housing situation, in the eyes of American University, I am a senior. All my senior friends graduated about a week or so ago and I don't know exactly how I'm going to deal with it all when I get back. Some of those guys were my closest friends and we hung out almost every day. Not seeing them will be weird, also add on the fact that I'm gonna be one of the "old guys" in Pi Kapp. There's a whole group of 11 new guys that I don't even know and I'm gonna be meeting a whole new social circle. Weird, but things should work out well.

So anyways, things have been kinda slow lately. I've been saving some money by not going out as much and until this weekend hadn't left the city, let alone the house, all that much. I've kind of gotten to the point where there's nothing really new and exciting about the city itself. I'm not bored, just kind of enough into the groove of things that, I don't know, it's not as fresh and special as it was before. That, coupled with certain circumstances I've had down here, make me miss the US of A a bunch, but as I said, only 6 more weeks left. I'm gonna try to do a bunch of traveling in the next few weeks and that should be a hell of a lot of fun. As of right now, I have Patagonia, Salta/Mendoza, and hopefully Chile to look forward to. We'll see how the dinero situation goes.

Anyways, noteworthy things:

Last Sunday I went to the Buenos Aires Zoo with Emily. I took the subte there and met up with her and we bought passport passes so that we could get into all of the special sections and exhibits without having to pay at each one. It was a pretty good day and I got to have an experience that i haven't had in quite a while. My trips to the zoo in DC were ok, but there were a number of animals I didn't get to see and at the Buenos Aires Zoo I got to see elephants (which I had missed in DC) and many many more.

Then Saturday I went to the zoo in Lujan, a town in the province of Buenos Aires, with Kim and Brittany. Brittany and I left the house around 11, having told Kim that we would meet up with here around noon. When we got to Plaza Italia I was pretty hungry so we had a healthy, hearty meal of....McDonald's. Hey, it's quick, delicious, and perfect after a night of drinking. So Kim met up with us there and we walked over to the bus stop. Now, when we were originally doing our research we saw that a colectivo (bus) went right to the zoo, so 1)we though we'd only have to pay the standard peso and some change fare and 2)the ride would be half an hour tops. It turned out that we had to buy our tickets at this little stand, which were 20 pesos roundtrip. Once we were on the bus, we got a little loopy. Id don't know what it is about traveling with these girls, but we always get a bit silly. Anyway, after about 45 minutes of driving, it began to dawn on us that the trip wasn't going to be that short. It ended up taking 2 hours to get to the zoo. Unfortunately, the driver was kind of a jerk and, even though we had told him we were getting off at the zoo, he zipped right on past it on the way there. So instead we had to go all the way into the town of Lujan and take a cab to the zoo.

When we got there, we paid our far and walked straight to where the Lions and tigers are kept. Now, the one thing that clearly distinguishes this zoo from the one in Buenos Aires is the funding put into it and the living conditions for the animals. Now, when we saw employees interacting with the animals, it was clear that they really cared about the animals, but they were living in pretty shitty conditions. Pardon my language, but that's the only way I can think to adequately describe it. The animals basically just live in cages with nothing in the background that resembles a recreation of their home environment, its jsut stone slabs that they occasionally climb onto and small spaces to just pace around back and forth. A slightly less happy feeling than the other zoo. After seeing the lions and tigers, we walked over to hte sections where the rest of the animals were. We walked up to the petting area and signed little release slips saying we didn't hold the zoo accountable for anything that might happen to us with animals we would be interacting with

Now here's where we really felt gipped. The whole reason we wanted to go this zoo in the first place was because we had heard it was a place where you could touch animals like lions, tigers and bears. "Oh my!" right? WRONG. Apparently, a couple months back a journalist had gone to the zoo to write a piece about the zoo and since then they don't allow visitors to go up to the animals and take pictures with them anymore. Here's the kicker: it's not because the journalist uncovered some sketchy conditions or horrible accidents, but because the zoo didn't want to be a huge tourist attraction for these animals, that they stopped letting the public pet the big animals. Apparently now they only let special needs children do it. Needless to say, when we found all this out, we were a bit dishonored. The enjoyment of my whole day had been dependent on the fact that I'd be able to pet a freakin tiger. So what were we allowed to pet? Baby coats and calves. The girls really enjoyed it cuz they thought the animals were "soooo cute" but I could have cared less. These kids were not the ferocious, predatory kings of the jungle I had come to play with. Either way, we were able to ride camels and elephants, which was something more than little farm animals and cheered up my spirits a bit. We first went to the elephants, where the employees give you an ear of corn, you feed it to the elephant, get a picture petting him, and then get to ride another one. It was actually really cool to ride them. I think the last time I had done that had been my early years of elementary school, so it was cool to relive that again. Then we also got to ride the camels, which was even cooler for me because I didn't need an employee to ride on the animal with me. They led him along, but I was the only one on the thing. I felt childish, but in a fun, carefree way and smiled giddily for Brittany while she took pictures of me from the sidelines. Besides the animals you could interact with, we saw a number of monkeys, felines, a bear and baby lion cubs. One of the ksot interesting about these animals is that they have dogs living in their cages with them. In the baby cub cage, one dog kept on picking on a little cub, biting his tail even as the cub paced back and forth trying to avoid him. Now, I knoe this is how animals play, but it was pretty clear the cub wasn't feelin it. At one point the dog bit him pretty hard, close up to his backside and the cub had to turn around and bare its fangs. The dog didn't care and kept pestering him for a couple more minutes, but eventually led up. I don't think he realized what he was getting himself into. Although the cub is smaller than him now, in some time he'll easily be 5 times the size of the dog and when that happens I'm sure the dog will want to avoid being eaten by the thing. When we got back to the city that night, we had an asado at Kim's with Jessie and her visiting brother, mother, and her mother's boyfriend. It was a very windy night and we had some trouble lighting the fire. Fortunately, I came to the rescue and, utilizing the fire fanning lessons I'd gotten from Veasey all those weekends in PA, was able to get the fire going so all the coals would get lit. After the whole dinner us younger ones went to a pool bar near Kim's place and had a good ol' night.

Yesterday we went to a Boca Juniors soccer game, something I'd been dying to do since I got here. For those of you that don't know, within the city of Buenos Aires, the two biggest teams are Boca Juniors and River Plate, basically having the rivalry equivalent of the Yankees and Red Sox respectively. Fans of both sides will vehemently argue the superiority of their team and unabashedly disparage the abilities of the other one. Boca is the slightly popular one, so it seems the natural choice for one visiting the city. However, David Escudero being a River fan, I was originally gonna try to go to one of their games first, but I couldn't avoid this opportunity. Jessie's mom hooked us up with the tickets through her hotel and we all met there at 1pm to get on a tour bus that would take us to the game. In attendance that day were yours truly, Brittany, Jessie, Lucas, David, Kim and Mark. We got dropped off a little bit away from the stadium and had to walk through a series of blocked off roads and policemen to ensure security. Let me tell you, the last thing you want is a crazy futbol fanatico sneaking into the stadium with any sort of weapon, so I had no problems with it. On the way in I found a store selling Boca merchandise and bought an official jersey. When the game started, the section across from us began playing instruments and chanting Boca songs. Let me tell you, one of the most amazing displays of dedication I've ever seen in my life was these hundreds of fanaticos banging drums, blowing horns, waving flags and chanting a number of songs straight through the entire game. They literally never stopped, even for halftime when at least the musicians kept going. In the end Boca won and the stadium exploded with excitement. It was a pretty cool experience.

These are the lyrics to the chant that roared through the stadium when they won:
Bocaaaa
Boca de mi vida
vos sos la alegría
de mi corazooon
sabes todo lo que siento
te llevo acá dentro
de mi corazooon

Loosely translated:
Boca,
Boca of my life
you are the joy
of my heart
you know all that I feel
I carry you here inside
of my heart

Here's an audio clip of it: http://www.mundoazulyoro.com/Audios/BocaBocaDeMiVida.mp3