Nick and Laina's Adventures

Shortly after getting to Rosario, we met our friends parents, the father could speak some english, however the mother couldnt. They were both very nice, even though they were in a rush to get back to their hometown, 100km away from rosario. The apartment hat our friend has is very nice, two rooms, nice bathrooms and a kitchen, Pretty soon after his parents leave we find out that there are two more girl couchsurfers coming! So we walk to the groery store buy some food, including Milka! (a brand of chocolate from europe,very good chocolate) and two big chicken steaks(best way to describe) breaded and fried with potato salad. The groery store is very close to his house which is nice, and it is not very touristy so the people there assume we are Argentinian and we can speak spanish, not true, as you should know. Laina does most of the talking, because she can understand more then I can. I am alright if I can think about what I am going to say, but when they talk to me, most of the time I cant understand one word out of their long sentances! In Argentine spanish, the "ll" sound which sounds like "yeh"(kind of), will now sound like "sh", If you understand what i am saying, it is a big change because the "ll" is in very important words like llamo (name), pollo (chicken) and llegar(arrive). now if these words have the integral part of their sound changed so dramatically, in the rapid speech of a argentine cashier, it is easy to not understand anything she says. So we hed back to the apartment to eat our food, and then take a quick nap. When we wake up a few a hours later, we all go and get the two new girls from the train station. It took some time to find them, and eventually we all found each other. The girsl are very friendly and interesting. one is a GREEK! the other a Swiss. they are ona simular trip to ours, about the same time, and in similar countries, how cool! Getting back to the house, we prepare everything for the barbeque we are going to tonight. We lave the apartment and head to the grocery store again, the grocery stores are diffferent here too, They sell soda in 2.25 liter bottles, a teenagers dream. Many of the snacky foods I have never seen before. And Unlike brazil, their bread comes in many different types and flavors. In the Deli, they sell blue cheese for 36 pesos per kilo, I think that comes out to 5 dollars a pound, a pretty good deal for blues cheese! We head to the meat section, and we order about 4 pounds worth of Chorizo!! If you don't already know, I love chorizo. We bought some more snacky things, 4 bottles of argentine wine, and took our leave. Our friend is taking us to a special barbeque hotspot for argentines, right on the banks of the Rio Paraná. It costs 5 Pesos to get in and the place is packed! After 15 mins we finally find a tabel we will share with a bunch of other local rosarioans. If you can picture this place, It is a barbeque, picnic table area, rectangular in shape, 50 feet wide, 1/4 mile long. right on the river. on the other side oppisite but parallel the river there is a brick wall, 75 feet high, the "sea wall" or river wall to the town. So this place defenatly has a feeling of Isolation, and pure barbeque. In this large recatangle there were about 3000 people. If my numbers dont seem right just think"really crowded". We opened the wine, and bought some liters of Quilmes, the local argentine beer, I dont think you can be in Argentina anyless then a day without drinkng it, it is everywhere. After a few hours some other friends show up, who are from rosario ,and speak a little english, and laina starts practicing her spanish, which is starting to get better, and I am trying to extend my vocabulary past 30 words. After a few hours, around 12 :30 we put the chorizos on the coals, and begin to cook. It will take about an hour for the chorizo to cook. Laina is very hungry, she wants the raw chorizo. I slap her hand, she doesnt get any raw chorizo she has to wait! Afte rthe hour passes, many liters beer and bottle of wine later, everyone is starving. We bought some italian bread, tomatos, and lettuce to go with the chorizo. Making sandiwhiches we also add a argentine condiment called chimmichurri. It is like a salsa/relish that is hard to descibe, but salty and flavorful! Mmmm! I love chorizo, and these (sorry jim and the boise chorizos!) are the best chorizo I have every had!! a perfect pland of beef and pork, the best percentage of fat, not too much, but enough for a moist savory delsious flavor in every bite! Can you tell I like chorizo? I ate two. after we ate dinner, our argentine friends who are sharing their table with us start up a conversation with me. Besides the fact that I have had little beer, and they have had more then their share, our conversation was interesting. One of them could speak very vroken english, and the rest, maybe 10 words. Our conversation was about my favorite futbol(soccer) team, then switched to Obama, then to their own female president cristina kirshner, It turns out thay they all worked at the GM Argentina Plant, and were seriously concerned with my countries bailout. I hadnt thought of GM's interntional employees. We talked for a while longer, they are very cool people, once we established how to converse, and then they left, around 2:10 AM and we started to get ready to go. Our friend wanted to go to the bar, but we knew that tommorow we are going to a really long party, supposedly over the whole night. We decided to get sleep while we could and stay up all nigh ttommorow. We all headed home and went to sleep. We woke up around 11:30AM, and bought some breakfast from the close grocery store. Mostly argentine croissants, pastries, and sweet things. I ate a leftover chorizo! We are going to the beach today! It is soo hot here right now. It is probably around 90 degrees. We hop on the bus, even hotter, an ¡d head to another part of the Rio Paraná which has a beach. When we get there, there are already many people crowding the beach. When I headed into the water, I realized that it was extremely hot! around 88 degrees itself! and it was very muddy, I couldnt see my hand after it was 3 inches underwater, once i waded into deeper water, it got cooler and much more refreshing. Looking around, most of the women, 90% are wearing thong bikinis, and most all of the people are very tan. Another 10% are drinking Maté, an South american drink very popular in Argentina ,out of cups or their own personal gourds. The water we brought got hot very fast, and we bought some bubble water wih ice to refresh. We ate some pasta salad we had made, and it was very nice. Everyone got sunburned to some degree, laina and I the least because we had 30spf, Hawaiian tropic! we grabbed the bus back to the apartment, got ready and headed out to our big party in a rented house, outside rosario. Our friend has friends that work in the poorer sections of rosario, and this party was to help them pay for some of their expenses. For a small price, we get as much beer and Fernet (an herbal alcohol from italy, bitter and spicy, that you mix with coke to get the argentine national cocktail) as we can drink, and they ment it. we got to the party around 11PM and the music was already basting. Many people could not speak english, but many could speak some words. we ordered a pizza, very different from the US, there is no pizza sauce on their pizzas. This pizza was bread, cheese, peppers, ham, green olives, and eggs! Weird, but delicous. The party was very long, I drank alot of fernet, and then took a nap around 4:30 AM I slept onthe porch upstairs in the house, unfortunalty i put my mattress on the floor, and when i was sleeping I got bit by 200 ants, damn those ants! I woke up soo ichym I couldnt fall asleep. at 5:30 I rejoined the party, and got some more drinks. Laina and I were inthe same boat, but she slep on a bed elevated off the ground and subsequently did not get bit by those damn ants. The music got louded are more exciteing as the sun rose around 7 AM. People wer still drinking and dancing, aroun 9AM he sun was rising in the Sky and I was drinkingfernet and looking at the sky! This was a big first for Laina and I, partying all the way until 10;30AM, was a big step into our argentine experience. Once home, we slept for 5 or so hours, and then woke up, starving, for some breakfast. It is raining pretty hard here, not a beach day. We walked around town a little, and then got some coffie and milkshakes. afterwords we met up with some friends, and went to a little fastfood joint for Lomito, a think fried steak with lots of cheese, ham, tomato, and chimmichurri. We met another couchsurfer, from south africa, and germany. He was really cool, had alot of knowlege about argentine history, that I didnt know. Later we went to a tango bar, got some beer, danced a few songs(I am getting good at dancing), and then went home for some more much needed sleep! Hopefully I can buy a t-shirt today, I only brought two for the whole trip, and now i want a new one!