Argentina

This is probably the first ReadMe you have ever read. When I saw this bar graph I was thoroughly surprised. I don't know if you can read it, probably not. But the red bars show the number of military deaths in WWII and the orange bars show the number of civilian deaths. Basically, the Soviet Union and China got pummeled, and Poland Indonesia, and India had almost entirely civilian casualties. If you scan down to the 7th or so allied force you see the United States. In WWII, the US lost 1 soldier for every 52 that the Soviet Union lost, not even counting civilian deaths. The pie graph shows that over half of the WWII deaths were Allied civilians, followed by Allied military, and finally Axis military and axis civilians, in that order. Ok, enough of history. I have been living an extremely sedentary life style these past few days. Basically, I have just been studying and getting ready for my remaining two final exams. The marketing test on Monday, which seems easy but that is...

Have you actually listened to the lyrics of Pink Floyd's Time, fuck it's depressing. Anyway, last Friday I went to a very hip restaurant with some of the exchange students. It's amazing because everything was a price you would expect it to be in dollars in the US, except it's pesos. Sorry Mike Zhao, it's probably the same thing but not in your favor in England. So, despite being in a very chic restaurant and ordering two beers, I only spent about $20. After dinner we wandered around, and randomly stumbled into that Magic themed bar that I went to a few months ago. We got seated right in the front and played drinking games until the show started. The game was awesome because it included the "Draw Master", "The Great Escape Master," and "Bull Master." Essentially, at any point in the game, the Draw Master would shout "Draw" and point a hand pistol at the group. The last person to copy would become the new "Draw Maste...

On Thursday night after the awards banquet, the guy and girl soccer teams went to the house of one of the players for an enormous feast. This guy had an amazing house with a patio, bbq, and pool and we cooked up some amazing fire grilled pizzas. I paid 20 pesos and got all I could drink beer and fernet, and all I could eat pizzas. Pretty good bargain I'd say. Anyway it was a good cap on soccer season. But now for the main event: La Guerra de las Almohadas, which means the Pillow War. With the fenomenon of the internet has come an even greater fenomenon, "flash mobs." Basically they are massive demonstrations organized over the internet where people do amazingly absurd public stunts. For example, in Grand Central Station (I think), hundreds of people froze in mid action at the exact same time for 5 minutes, and then simultaneously unfroze as if nothing had happened. Well the flash mob we did wasn't so flashy, but it was definately more mobby. We had an enormou...

Quilombo is a great word. It refers to any sort of a chaotic disorganized and generally bad situation similar to a "cluster fuck". It's roots are quite racist as quilombos were the small villages that escaped slaves set up it South America to avoid slavery. Apparently they were so badly organized that now the noun is applied to anything chaotic. Other great terms: me estás jodiendo: are you shitting me estoy al pedo: literally, i'm farting around (doing nothing) estoy impedo: wasted tirarse un pedo: fart la concha de la lora: equivalent to "mother fucker" but doesn't translate well, neither does, la concha de tu madre. People says these things all the time even though they are among the most offensive things that one could possibly say in the English language. pelotudear: dick around (pelotudo means dick, like jerk) googlear: to google que paja: how shitty/borring pajero: bum/lazy person purro: weed chupar huevos: suck balls tener una resaca: to hav...

Tomorrow is the last day of classes for me. That means I survived a quarter of waking up at 6:30 am in order to walk ten blocks to the train station, taking the train, and the subsequent 15 block walk that ensued. I suppose that means that 8:30's at UW are technically do-able, although I'm not eager to try. I am sitting in an internet cafe to write this blog as my beloved computer and link to the outside world is still inoperable. It costs 3 pesos an hour, or a little less than a dollar. That's the kind of cost I'm willing to expend to stay in contact with you guys. Take note. I am completely finished with one class, I have an easy final and presentation in another class tomorrow, and in the remaining classes I have a final exam and a final paper (Marketing and International Relations). We finally got the air conditioning set up. We had the machine for a few weeks but in the old building we are in, we didn't have the right voltage on the outlets so we had t...

Well things seem to be winding to a close which is sad. We had our last soccer game on Saturday and after the game to wish me goodbye, the team made a circle around me and we jumped around and yelled and they pushed me around the circle like a pin ball. We won our last game 5-0 by the way. It seems like our team really came around in the end after a difficult begining of the season. We are having an awards night on Thursday so that will officially be the end. I got really close to a lot of the guys on the soccer team and they took me right in as the token foreign guy. Things have to end though I guess. Another example of things ending is that my sister is getting her driver's license in under 30 days which will end the safety of everyone else traveling on the roads. Last night we had the goodbye party for the exchange students, which was amazingly fun, but when they played a slideshow of photos from the quarter it seemed to sink in to everyone that things are coming to a cl...

Alright, you probably won't understand this blog but basically after the tournament, the team sent around this chain of emails which basically says, hey guys, even though we lost, we played really fucking good and I'm proud to be a part of this team. I just thought I'd post it, if you don't understand Spanish there is no point in reading it. If you do understand Spanish, you'll notice that just like us in english, they use a lot of abbreviations when they type. Later. Gracias a todos: Chicos quieria de verdad agradecerles por las ganas y el futbol q pusieron todsos este fin d semana.Hoy cuando llegue a casa la verdad q estaba muy orgulloso de ser parte d este equipo y de haber jugado tan bien al futbol como lo hicimos estos dias.Pase un fin de semana espectacular con ustedes y no quieria dejar de hacerselos saber. Nuevamente les agradezco por la entrega y la garra q pusieron en todos los partidos y por todo lo q corrieron con este calor tremendo. Me es un lujo y ...

i am tired as hell and typing on a french keyboard so excuse the brevity of this post. this week end was la Copa Taylor or the Taylor Cup for our soccer team and it was a huge tournament hosted by San Andres that hosted teams from Chile, Uruguay, and Argetina. The tournament included soccer, rugby, rowing, swimming, basketball, chess, hockey, and tennis. In the soccer bracket their were ten teams so in the priliminary rounds we had 2 groups of 5. In our first game the other team forfeited, and we won the next three games 1-0, 2-0, and 3-0 respectively. This was all on Saturday and the games were just 40 minutes each. It is full fleged summer here so having a tournament with games longer than this would be death. Inbetween the second and third game the team went to McDonalds for lunch. wtf? I was opposed to it but they didn't understand what the big deal was. McDonalds has perfected their business of getting kids to go to McDonalds when they are young and still forming their...

well, bad news. the power adapter for my computer broke and i'm at the moment computer less. it's also super frustrating to type on this french keyboard i'm using because qll of the letters qre fucking out of the right plqce: m, a, q, z, w, and basically all of the punctuation are in different places and it is a nightmare, example; the auick brozn fox ju,ped over the lqwy brozn dog: this zill mqke blogging very difficult: also; its a huge hassel to replace my pozer cord because dell is only online and if i order it i zill hqve to do customs again: so my plan is to send it dirrectly to another exchage students house whose parents are coming in two weeks and have them bring it to me: in the meantime, hozever, i will be crippled without my computer with finals coming up and intership applications: dell is pretty garbage because now both my battery and adapter don't work: for the last few months i had a land locked lap top that had to constantly be plugged in: also; i...

Nearly a week has floated by without any updates. The weeks seem to really be floating by right now. It's already November and I have been in Argentina for almost 4 months. The thought of returning back to my life at UW almost seems as absurd as going back to high school. It seems like the distant past and I know that I am much different now after just 4 months than when I left. My research on the Bonderman as well as my class in International Relations, and being a student along side people from around the world has made me see myself as more of a global citizen than whatever I was before. I want to travel, I want to learn languages, and I want to see things. I've been researching scholarships and it seems like there are a variety of grants/scholarships that can help me do this once I graduate from college. There is, of course, the dilemma between starting my career and traveling, but hopefully I can resolve this by doing both. I would like to work/live in Brazil for ...