Nathan Late!

The last few days have been action packed.

Thursday was my second radio production class, one of my precious classes with Argentinos. My group was to record a script that we threw together the week before. It was sort of in the style of Lady's Man of Saturday Night Live fame. I played an visiting American who was having trouble expressing his feelings to a lady. I was advised to buy her a bikini.

Also, a kid who a knew only distantly at this point in the story asked me what I was doing tomorrow. I told him that I was doing nothing cause that's all I ever got to do, and he asked me to join him and some peep to film something. Pending spanish skills, I was fuzzy on the details.

There was a lot of downtime as we waited for the the studio to rotate through the other groups and so I got to know some of my classmates better.

I met Michelle AKA Michi, yet another Ecuadorian. I found out she does Capoeira and was looking for a location here in BsAs. So we planned to go together on Friday, which was good as I had not gone in weeks.

I also ate lunch with classmate Jaen-Carlos, Peruvian and provider of Peruvian restaurant. He and another Carlos from my class are evangelical Christians, but seem to be good sorts in spite of that. It seems that evangelicalism here is less frothing-at-the-mouth crazy that in the US.

Come Friday, we went, though she was re-late to meet me. It was a good thing I waited, because after capoeira, Michi and I hung out. Not only that, we went to the big Chinatown shindig being held on account of the Olympics.

The Chinese can really put on a show. Chinatown was full to the brim with people, there was a stage, a band, and a revelation that as Argentines are so European, they don't take to dancing much.

Also, there was food. Specifically, there was pig ear, tongue and chicken foot. I bought what turned out to be alot of that stuff. Imagine my surprise as the hip-looking Spanish-speaking chinese kid working the counter took my selected ear and tongue and converted them into a rather large bag of chopped meat. Michi and I, we ate it all.

That chicken foot was problematic. We had no idea how to eat it. When we asked, we got the limited explationation "little by little" and then, later, a demonstration as to how to break off the digits and get at the meat. Delish. Still not feeling sick, so I guess that wasn't such a bad idea after all. Pictures to come.

Then Michi and I hit up a place for pizza, where we ate hawaiian style pizza. I tip my hat to Nicholas, who adores this pizza.

I also talked to Michi. She is re-cool. She loves videogames. What more qualification does a human need in my eyes? She also seems re-smart and, though a no-doubt brilliant English speaker, does not speak to me in that barbarous tongue.


And today, what a day its been. I rose at 9(ish) to meet Charlie for his mysterious film project. Things I did not know: Who was coming, what were doing, who was filming, who was being filmed.

I showed up late to the meeting point. Seems like half people showed up later than me.

Man, I'm short on details right now. Its' 5 in the morning, I just got back from being with these people as I have all day.

Short version: we filmed them dancing to this reallllly asinine song. They were all theater/dance kids. Read: gay as a three dollar bill. Also, exceptionally cool people. I finally got that wow you're foreign, what do you mean people never kiss each other in greeting in your country, attention that I'd been searching for.



We worked on this project forever, like 10-7. And never ate. Poor Michi hadn't eaten all day. Also, they put a camera in my hands. I wonder if they thought I had any training in this sort of thing. I sure hope not. I was told to film first plane or entire plane or something. I hope it all turned out.

Eventually, we ate in McDonalds, where I got more delightful hey, you're foreign attention. As well as a blitz of accents. There was ecuadorian, argentines, myself and a colombian.

And yeah, I ate a McD's. That makes it twice here. It's a thing of vast importance here. It is the place to meet. I tried to explain how my culture thinks differently about McD's. Tried.

A little break and then reunion at midnight in this girl giselle's apartment. I hung out with Charlie, this colombian kid whose name escapes me right now. Totally badass dudes, one and all. Charlie is teh cool. In a phrase, I was told that Charlie "is always making plans". I.e. this music video.

The Colombian dude. A font of kindness and information. From Barranquias? Is that Victor's home?

A final note, this goes out to Eric, who told me many times about what it was like to work with actors who are very frequently extremely outgoing, generally bizarre and gay. Wow. I now understand your inability to convey to me in words the sensation.

Anyway, coherency is obviously on a downslide. I've been up for abut 20 hours now. In short, a great time, great fun, great people, great quantity of Spanish speaking.

Nathan
PS I miss Mexicans