Argentina

I voted today from Argentina. My parents sent me the ballot, I completed it, and dropped it off in the US embassy. Before going to the embassy I assumed it would be a little oasis of America but no. I had to speak Spanish to get into the place and I had to go through a security check point. Anyway, I am proud to say that I have voted, although being from Washington and with our beloved electorate college my vote doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference. Why the hell do we still have it? It makes the entire election become the decision of a dozen or so "battle ground" states. Just think, if we hadn't had it in 2000 we would have avoided the worst president in the history of the United States, according to some, George W. Bush. L.B. Johnson was pretty bad as well. So I handed the sealed envelope to the employee in the embassy and he said everything was good. But think, the employee could easily shred my envelope after I had left, or he could put it in a ...

I have befallen a series of unexplainably unlucky events. Te explico: 1) My green Colombia rain jacket was ripped when I entered my room because somehow my door knob caught of hold of a loose piece of fabric on my coat and ripped it. Has that happened to anyone else? I didn't even know that could happen. 2) There was a piece of dried spaghetti on a wooden spoon, and like any normal person I tried to use my finger nail to scrape it off. Unfortunately, the spaghetti noodle broke off and stabbed underneath my the fingernail of the thumb and broke off. I pulled most of it out but the very end broke off and is still about 3/8 of an inch underneath my fingernail and I am unable to get it out. The story is weirder because the day before we had been talking about how the Viet Cong would shove bamboo underneath prisoner's fingernails as a means of torture. Well, dried spaghetti noodles work just as well if there is ever a scarcity of bamboo. 3) During the soccer game, I got blaste...

Well, as you may remember, I destroyed my soccer karma three weeks ago or so when I accidentally smashed a kid's lip open and he had to get 6 stitches. My karma balance was wiped clean on Monday when I got a black eye, sprained thumb, a bruised quadriceps (I know what you're thinking, and no it's plural even though it only applies to one http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/bicep.html), and raspberries burn marks on the length of my right arm. But it's not so bad because you have to know the story behind it. Alright, we made a team of exchange students and about 6 of us are decent players and then we have a shitty goalie, a shittier Argentine, and two exchange students that are worse still. The first game we admittedly got trounced 7-0, but the score didn't really reflect our skill. The second game, which I missed because I had to get the stupid pre-travel abroad health screening for UW, we got raped 14-0 (the other key player also missed this game). This time thing...

So we had another party in our apartment. This time the theme was Power Hour. A Power Hour is when you have a playlist of 60 songs which you play for one minute each. After each song everyone says "shot" and takes a shot of beer. It's actually pretty difficult to make a good play list because you have to edit the songs so that it plays the best minute of the song. I made the playlist. I used a mix of American, Argentinean, and European songs so that everybody was happy. Since we had empty bottles left over from the last party we used those as our deposit for the beer we bought. In Argentina you are charged a deposit for every beer bottle you buy so that there is incentive to return the bottle to get the money back. So we returned 22 bottles of beer and bought 22 more. The guy behind us in line gave us a coupon of 15% because he couldn't use it. In the end, the price was 45 pesos or $15. I'm going to miss the insanely low prices when I go back to Seattl...

Well, so many things have happened that I am not really sure where to start, so I suppose I'll go to the end. "And then I decided to write in my blog." Rewinding back in time from this reference point takes us to Friday. I arrived in Córdoba at 13:30 and hung out, ate food, walked, read, and people watched until Oscar got off work at 18:00. I made sure to go to the super market and picked up a nice bottle of wine for the family. Oscar arrived with his friend Marcus and picked me up from wherever the hell I was. Honestly I have no idea but there was a statue and trees and shit. It's really disorienting the first day when you are in a city because you don't understand the layout. Anyway, we went out that night to Oscar's cousin's birthday party. On the way there we discussed Oscar's year long trip in New Zealand, traveling, and life. Mostly we discussed how hard it is to be away from your home for a long amount of time because you are never as re...

I`ve met up with Oscar and it looks like things are going to be pretty freaking sweet. He is a cool guy and has lined up a bunch of stuff for us to do this weekend. Tonight we are going to the birthday party of his cousin. Tomorrow he has to work during the morning so he set me up to go with his friend downtown to buy some things we will need for our trip to Oktoberfest. We`ll leave for Oktoberfest tomorrow at around 3 pm and I have no idea when we`ll get back. Then on Sunday, we are going to have a parrilla (barbeque) with his friends at somebody´s place in the country and since it`s a holiday on Monday, we`ll likely go out afterwards. I`ll leave and go back to B.A. Monday then I guess. Oscar is a good guy and he spent a year working in New Zealand so he helps me out if I don´t know a word in Spanish. He also lives in an amazing house and I have a room all to myself. The internet can be used for lots of bad things, viruses, porn, false information, child predators, but it can...

Well I havent updated for a while. I am currently sitting in an internet cafe in Córdoba which is about a 12 hour bus ride west of Buenos Aires. But before I talk about Córdoba, news from the past few days. On Tuesday I got my first grade back from San Andrés. As I have mentioned before the grades are from 1 to 10 with a median of around 6.5. Anyway, I got a 10 in my International Relations Class. Two other foreigner exchange students got tens as well but whatever. With this 10 counting for 35% of my grade, I am well on my way to getting my 8 which will convert into 5 credits of 4.0ness. I had a doctor appointment on Tuesday because UW wanted me to complete my pre-study abroad Health Screening. Somehow I wasn´t informed of this until I had been in Argentina for 3 months. I guess this is one of the downsides of a big school is that stuff gets lost in the shuffle. Anyway, UW sent me an e-mail last week saying that if I didn{t get the health screening, I hadnt properly done co...

Haven't written anything in a while so I am. The San Andrés soccer team is in a rut. We lost yesterday again making our record 0-3-1, which puts us on equal ground (almost) with UW's Football team. The problem is that our team in physically very small. Everyone is technically good, but when it comes to being big and fast, on the whole, we can't compete. My next game in the intra-mural league with the team of foriengers is Tuesday. We continue in the group of death and unfortunately our next game is against the other really good team in the group. We just got a brutal draw and I wonder if it was completely random that the team of foreigners ended up in the group of death with our first two matches against last years champions, and the champions from two years ago. We'll see. The team of foriegners has the exact opposite problem of the San Andrés team, we are all big but some of the players lack the technical skill necessary to be a good footballer. On Friday we...

Finished up my last mid-term today. Easy stuff, even took it in Spanish. That's pretty much it. I hate to get political but some of this stuff is too funny to pass up... also quite disturbingly sad. First Palin's political experience as the Mayor of Wasilla (a town in Alaska of 6,500 citizens). "Shortly after taking office in October 1996, Palin eliminated the position of museum director and asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from top officials, including the police chief, public works director, finance director and librarian. Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her.She temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying that they first needed to become acquainted with her administration's policies." "According to city librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, Palin inquired in October 1996 as to whether Emmons would object to library censorship. Palin later spoke...