La Guerra de las Almohadas

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 enormous pillow fight at 18:00 in one of the central parks in Buenos Aires. There was probably around 3000 people at the thing. Here are some pictures:


At one point I made the brave decision to hoist Simone, a small german exchange student girl, onto my shoulders. We armed her with a pilow and ran into the mob like how you play chicken in the pool. All of the Argentinians saw us immediately, not only because she was towering above the crowd, but also because we are blond haired blue eyed Aryans amonst a sea of Italian and Spanish decendents. Everyone in unision turned on us and shouted, "LOS RUBIOS!" (the blonds) and we got pummeled. I couldn't see what was happening because I was too busy running through an angry hoard and being beamed in the face by pillows, but apparently Simone, probably 100 pounds, was being tossed around like rag doll on top of my shoulders. I remember hearing, "Taylor, get me out of here", and I sprinted away out of the mob and set her down so as to show we had had enough. She was so light, I was actually decently agile. Here is a picture of our flee: The mob mentality at the pillow fight was intense. At one point I was fighting alonside my friends Justin and Allisandro. Justin is from the US and is black and Allisandro is a red headed Italian. The crowd shouted, "el Negro!" and they all mobbed on Justin and made a circle around him and viciously beat him with their pillows. It was definately border line hate crime. Justin was in the middle of the circle covering his face in an attempt to protect himself and unable to get out of the circle. After that they spotted Alissandro, "El colorado" (the red head) and they mobbed on him in a similar, yet less vicious way. Finally, they spotted me and shouted "el Rubio", and I had my turn at getting smashed on. The crowd would target people and attack them and then when they got bored somebody would shout out somebody else out to attack. Usually the victims had some distinguishing characterstic. There was a bunch of photographers and tv stations at the event and at one point the crowd turned on a reporter. The reporter made the mistake of running away which just further excited the crowd. It was like in Indiana and Jones when Indiana is being chased by the angry natives in the forest and he has to run to the water plane. Hilarious. Anyway, after the pillow war we walked around this park and it is truly amazing. Ther are some more pictures. The park was filled with people biking, roller blading, running, walking, and sitting. Ok, I have to go to watch a game of polo so I'll sign off. More to come.

Comments

MZ said…
That is awesome. I'm kind of glad I wasn't there because everyone would've pointed at "el chino" and pummeled me with pillows that, ironically, were probably made in China.

Sounds great though. BTW, there are a ton of people studying abroad over in Europe. I'm going to meet up with E-Rich in a few weeks.

When does school end for you?
Anonymous said…
I keep on picturing yelling LEROY JENKINS and charging the pillow battle field.
taylor said…
LEEEERRRRRROOOOOOYYYY.... JEEEEEENNNKKKIIIINNSSSS.
Oh my god, he went in.

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