June 13, 2006
Yes indeed my friends, my run with the geriatric magic bus has definitely ended. Yesterday I met my new group, and it consists mainly of little, little girls. And by little I mean both physically tiny and very young. I could crush these girls with my bare hands. Three of the girls in my group just finished high school, which means if I were so inclined I could try to adopt them. But I'm not going to do that because they probably already have families and because I like to keep my weekends free. There are also two enormous men in my group - not as impressively large as the giant I saw on my first day in Peru, but still abnormally huge. One of the guys wore a sleeveless shirt to our opening meeting, and he could definitely hold all of the girls in the palm of one of his hands. I´m not sure why nobody in my group is a happy medium in terms of size. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before I go into the teeny bop tour, I should cover the past week or so...
For the past week I have had the pleasure of visiting my friends Ryan and Nadya. It was quite a change of pace for me to switch my bedtime from 8:00 p.m. to a more appropriate hour for my age group. And by more appropriate I mean 4:00 a.m. for the past week. Ryan is living in Chile at the moment. There are really two types of places in the world, those that provide you with toilet paper in public restrooms and those that don't. Chile does, and it also has a Hooters, so there you go. Ryan and I decided to visit a Miro and Picasso exhibit in Santiago, and it was very bizarre. I have no idea who the curator was, but he was either blind or drunk, or both. You could actually see the tape slapped on behind original pieces of art, and half of the pictures were completely crooked. Huh?? Are you even allowed to use tape on the originals of masters? That being said, geniuses or not, most of the pictures just looked like doodles to us, although Ryan and I think Miro uses some nice colors. Maybe I will become an art critic.
Now, when I was travelling in Peru I felt really good about my Spanish, like I had some idea what was going on. In Chile, however, I understood not one thing. Not one. People would speak to me and I would just stare at them blankly. I don't know how Ryan survives there. One day I went to the subway, and since I wasn't familiar with the money I handed over a bill to the teller to get my ticket. The man hands me back some change and I walk away, only to be chased down because apparently I gave him like $50 for one subway ride. Nothing makes you feel stupid like being in a foreign country with no sense of the currency. On a side note, Ryan and I were discussing the fact that nobody in Chile seems to have an understanding of the "stay to the right" rule on the streets. Everyone just merges together and crashes into each other. Really, it would be much better for everyone if they all stayed to the right, but it's hard to get that sort of thing going unless you are Oprah.
After several relaxing days with Ryan I headed out to Buenos Aires, where I have always wanted to go because of Evita. I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but for some reason I was surprised when I didn't hear ¨Don't Cry for Me Argentina¨upon my arrival. I think I half expected to see los descamisados chanting for Peron in the streets. I didn't see that, although I did see some Armenians, which is almost as good. Incidentally, in South America I am widely regarded as a Brazilian, whereas in NY am widely thought to be a Jew. Hmm. Never has anyone mistaken me for a Swede. Buenos Aires immediately struck me as a strange place, because upon disembarking the plane all of the passengers were herded into a tiny bus where we waited for 15 minutes. When the bus took off we were driven, I'm not even kidding, like 20 feet and dropped off again. We could have walked the distance in about 10 seconds, and although I found it odd, I did recall with fondness my elderly friends and thought that they would have appreciated the lift.
It turns out that Buenos Aires is a great city, I love it here. The other night Nadya and I were taking a cab to a party very late, and we kept trying to stop at little shops to buy beer. For some reason these shops only deliver beer but won't actually hand it to you (which prompted us to sit in the cab right outside and signal to have the beer ¨delivered" to us, to no avail). Eventually, our cab driver actually left the cab to try to buy for us, which I found odd and very nice. I can't quite see that happening in NYC. Earlier in the night I met the strangest English speaker I have ever encountered. This guy was completely normal when he spoke Spanish, but then he randomly switched to English as the night wore on and it was as if he was channeling some strange Austin Powers persona, only if Austin Powers were a robot. He got this weird smile on his face and started speaking the Queen's English in a way that I have never even heard a Brit attempt. We completely thought it was a joke, but when we laughed and asked about it, it became very clear that this guy was serious. Oops. He was using these awkward hyper-British phrases, and saying them all in such a robotic voice I couldn't even comprehend what he was thinking. He sounded like the automated voice you hear when you call for movie show times. I wanted to help him, because he works in tourism and I'm certain he scares a lot of people, but I had already had lots of wine and really, what can you do?
What else. I tried to check my email yesterday and I kept getting this message accusing my of trying to access porn, so I had to go to the desk and have the man disable the anti-porn system for me. I wanted to say ¨I wasn´t looking at porn!¨ but it's hard to tell people you're not a pervert in Spanish. I can barely order bread.
Oh, I think you will find this bizarre: this girl I met the other day who studies here told me that in her University lectures random people come off the street to beg and sell trinkets. Apparently that is acceptable here. In one of her classes this kid came in and the professor stopped the lecture so the kid could tell a joke and then walk around and collect money. Can you believe that? I heard it was a good joke though.
Ok, I will wrap this up. At the present time I'm staying in a filthy hotel (Ryan, Mike, Rachel, and Amie, it reminds me of the crack whore hotel we stayed at in Valencia). Ohh, I know I am wrapping this up, but speaking of hookers, Nadya took me at night to visit the park where all the transvestite hookers get picked up. Strangely that's not listed in Lonely Planet. After journeying for some time to find this special place, we realized fairly quickly that it was not safe at all and had to leave. It is good to add a little nervous tension to your sightseeing though. Anyway, like I was saying, my hotel is filthy and dangerous. My roommate had all of her stuff rifled through already, and she got bed bugs. Oh, and the elevator is a huge steel death trap that routinely stops between floors. My roommate is very nice, although last night she said as joke that she was going to read out loud to me, but then proceeded to actually read out loud to me for several minutes. That was different.
Alright friends, once I get to know my new teenage travel companions I will report back to you. So they might not have their braces off yet, at least none of them have grandchildren.
Liz
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