Tova and Alice: September 2005

our week

This week was pretty uneventful - a lot of studying spanish... But we did go and see the Argentinian Congress. It was beautiful, but was an almost picture-perfect copy of the US Congress in Washington...In fact, their entire political system is a hige rip off of the American one. The part that we founbd most facinating was the ashtrays in each one of Congress and Senate chairs (in the hall where they pass laws etc...)!!! Can you imagine that they can smoke in there while passing laws??? You can smoke in the entire building!!! In fact, as we entered, the secutirty guards were having a smoke while they were on duty, and they actually asked our tour guide to translate to us that they wanted to have a drink with us after we were done the tour!!! hahahaha. Last night we went out with some Italian friends of ours named Diego and Andrea. We played pool and got into this huge fight because, according to them, the last ball you put in is NOT the black eight ball, but the yellow one ball!!! They said that this is the norm in Italy.... but I don't know. Plus all the Argentinains agreed with us!!! Also, Andrea and Diego wore these weird gloves just to play pool, and looked pretty funny. Oh Italians.... hahaha. There are some pictures of them below. Also there is a picture of our friend Florencia with an appropriately named van (her nickname is Flor). We took this picture on the way back from the movies the other night.

Alice and Tova

pictures of friends

these are some pictures of:

*Mavi and Tova
*Andrea, the "wierd coincidence" guy from Italy, and Alice
*Tova, Luz (an Argentinian girl from the hostel) and Alice.
*this sign for a legitimate doctors office, who just happens to be "Dr. Silva" - Jeff Silva, this one's for you!

Boca

First of all, I have to tell you all something pretty funny: Tova and I update our website at the internet cafe around the corner from our hostel. At this internet cafe they have an anti-porn mechanism that prevents porn from popping up on the screen, and for some reason, whenever we try to go to the website to update it, the anti porn thing comes up and closes the internet. Everytime we want to update the blog we have to go up to the woman at the desk and try and explain in Spanish that this anti porn thing is blocking us so she can come and disable it. It was kind of embarrasing at first because we thought she would think we were trying to get porn but I think she knows now that we are not...

Anyways, now for the real story of the weekend. We went to a musum and a few parties, but the real event was the soccer game we attended yesterday (Sunday). Boca is the local Buenos Aires soccer team that plays in a league with other Argentinian teams. We went to the game with a friend of ours from the hostel (Mavi) and her friend, Clara, who is a regular at these games. Mavi had never been. So we went to the game, and the first thing Clara said when she saw us was "take off your earings, put your purses in my backpack and don't speak English!" So we were a little confused and, to be honest, unsure if all this was really necessary, but we went along with it. We bought our tickets from a scalper and then we had to get in line to get into the stadium. The line was insane. There were hundreds of people, many stinking of alcohol, screaming, singing, chanting and pushing to get past the gates. There really weren't any actual gates, just rows of policeman with riot gear on, and the crowd was screaming at the police, calling them really awful names. There were chldren on the shoulders of men who were in the crowd. It was hard just to stay together! And then finally we got past the policeman. The first thing we saw was a young guy on a stretcher with his face covered in blood. He loocked unconscious and the ambulance was taking him away. Our friend, Mavi, from the hostel decided that she had had enough and she jumped the fence and ran into the street to get out of there and go home, leaving us with her friend (who we had just met)!!!! Also, she had the backpack that contained our keys and our wallets and my jacket, so all we had on us was our cash in our pockets. So Tova and I decided to continue, because we reall wanted to see the game. We finally got into the stadium and had to walk up endless flights of stairs to get to the "popular" section, which our tickets were for. The stairs stank of urine and there were people running up, sliding under railings and screaming. We could see people trying to climb up other ways, like through cracks in the walls... it looked pretty scary. So we got up to the popular section to find that it was standing room only. In order to see we had to duck under railings and practically crawl through crowds of people to pop out in a place were we had a view. I ended up standing, perched on the edge of one level, leaning on a man standing on the level in front of me because this child, who was perched on the railing behind, had his feet resting on my butt, pushing me off the level. It was reall hot and sweaty and smelly. But the view was amazing: we could see the entire field, as well as thousands of specators. There were guys leading chants and songs, which everybody knew and which never seemed to end. When we scored the crowd went crazy. Then at halftime, we changed levels and finally had a bit more room. However, then the sun disappeared and it got really cold, and Mavi had left with my jacket. I was freezing. And then when the game finally ended (we won 2-0), the police didn't let us out of the stands for almost half an hour. They had to let the sections out in shifts to avoid the rush. And the opposing team's section, just to rile us, weren't leaving and were taunting us from across the field. But the police came and made them leave and then we finally got out and came home. What an experience!

Weird Coincidence

So...... There is this guy named Rhys, from England, who stayed in our hostel a few months ago, but who now has his own apartment and teaches English in Buenos Aires. Several people at the hostel recommended that we contact him to get advice about teaching English in Buenos Aires. So I called his home number last night. However, another guy (Andea) answered the phone and said that Rhys no longer lived there. We kept talking for a while, and it turned out that the owner of our hostel (they are friends) had told him about us: that we were two Canadian girls who had just arrived in Buenos Aires and were "very beautiful". So Andrea decided that he wanted to meet us and told us he would walk to our hostel in twenty minutes!!! We agreed out of curiosity.... So he showed up and we started talking. He is a photographer from Italy who has traveled all over the world. He gave us a lot of good advice, and then we ended up taking a long walk and having dinner. The restaurant ( funnily enough, called "club eros") reminded us of a soup kitchen: it was messy and full of people, some men didn't even have their shirts done up!! and you could see this gym with people playing volleyball through the glass wall.....we're not sure what this really was.... but the food was amazing and incredibly cheap!!! So we now have a new friend and a new hangout spot.... purely by accident. Weird how these things work out, eh???

Tova and Alice

Our Weekend

hey everybody!

Hope you all had an amazing weekend. We certainly had quite an interesting one ourselves... On Friday night, after completing our Spanish course at the International Bureau of Language, Tova and I celebrated with a dinner of bread, cheese, and a bottle of wine. The wine here is incredibly cheap, between 1.5 and 5 Canadian dollars a bottle, which you purchase at the supermarket. Our bottle was in the 1.5 dollar category, but was pretty good, or at least drinkable. Then we went out with Bjorn, a guy from Sweden we met in our Spanish course, and two of his friends, Erik and Catherine from Switzerland and Germany respectably. We went out to this bar near our hostel which has a rooftop patio that reminded us of the Drake Hotel.
On Saturday we took it upon ourselves to handwash all our laundry, to save money. It took an hour, and the clothes (which we hung to dry, old school styles) took two full days just to dry completely because it is pretty cold here right now, especially at night. That evening, we went out for "asado", or BBQ with Bjorn and Erik. The portions of chicken and steak were huge and came with lots of side dishes and wine. It was an amazing meal. When we left the restaurant at 1:30 a.m. the place was still packed and a show of singing and guitar was just begining. Then we went out to this club called "Niceto", which ended up being electonica music and kind of a strange crowd, but still fun all the same.
On Sunday we sat out on the patio of our hostel and took some sun, which is getting stronger as spring aproaches (we actually got bit of a tan, and its not even spring yet!!)
There is a picture of Tova and I with a cat in my face, which was taken at a restuarant at Plaza Cerrano. This cat was wandering around the restaurant, and our friend Mavi (the girl in the other picture with the coffee) chased it around the restaurant, picked it up and put it on the table (luckily BEFORE our food came!). No one seemed to mind.
Today we are going to the historical Teatro Colon, a theatre and opera house which has guided tours. We will probably go to the movies tonight with some friends, but we aren't sure what we will see yet ( We are a little behind here in movies - hint, Cinderella Man just came out!).

love you all,

Alice and Tova

weekly update

hey everybody,
Tova and i have had quite an eventful first week in Buenos Aires. On Saturday night our friend Mavi (Maria Victoria a.k.a Vicky) took us to this concert of the band she manages. it was in a small club close to our hostel. first of all, we left at 11, and we thought that was kinda late. it turned out that was just when she was leaving to go and get things ready because the show didn`t even start until 1:30, and that was an early start!!! the timing here is crazy, ppl don`t even eat dinner till like 10-11, so they don`t even get to the club until 2, and they go till the morning. anyways, so we got there and waited around for the show with another friend of ours and had THE strongest gin and tonics ever. when the show came on it was some middle aged african drumming troupe, and though they were quite good, it wasn`t at all what we had expected. so we listened to them for about twenty minutes and then our friend`s band finally came on after 2 am. and let me tell you they were something. the lead singer was this bald gay guy who couldn`t have been younger than 60 and he thought he was Mick Jagger and was running around the stage flailing his arms and knocking over the mike stand. the rest of the band were these two guys in their early 20s with sunglasses and long hair. also they were playing electric rock, which is kinda weird to begin with. and then at the end of the performance, despite the fact that the club had about 12 ppl in it and no one was that enthusiastic about their performance, the band proceeded to trash the stage. and one of them played a piano around his kneck!!! and he threw it on the stage and it broke!! tova and i were laughing so hard, but we didn`t wanna show it because no one else seemed to find it that funny.

The next day we went to the art museum and the Evita Museum, both of which were very interesting and the art museum was beautiful and filled with world famous paintings as well as local argentinian art.

So the next night Mavi took us to this gay karaoke bar, which we didn't realize until we got there, but everyone was really nice. tova and i got a litre of beer (it comes in litre bottles!!) for 5 pesos which is about 2 dollars!!!! it was crazy. also, it was kind of annoying because all these people sang songs in english, like frank sinatra and christina aguilara and BUTCHERED the words!!! it was funny.

Tova and I started spnish classes on monday, four hours a day! We take the subway there and back, which is really cheap and close to our hostel. There are some weird 50 year old guys in our class and a lot of ppl suck!!!! we are the best for sure. but there is this one really nice guy from sweden and hes only a couple years older than us so we hang out with him. we are really learning a lot and the teachers are pretty good.

Tova got her hair cut the other day, she wanted me to let everyone know that it looks really nice, its been thinned out a lot and layered a bit and she got the underlayer re dyed bright white blonde and it looks cool (and it only cost 35 bucks total)

We have, unfortuantely been to mcdonalds!! you knew we would!! first of all its not that cheap compared with other places here. but everythibng else is the same except they have no plum sauce for nuggets. tova considers this an outrage and an issue of international importance and is considering writing to the canadian governement about intervening in this issue. also, they have something called mccafe, which is a sepreate coffe shop in front of mcdonalds where they do cappucinos and mochas and fancy stuff and it comes in actual coffee cups... weird. oh and they played GASOLINA in the mcdonalds!!! hahahaha

love and miss you all. hope to hear from you soon!

Alice and Tova

Our first days in Buenos Aires

We got to Buenos Aires at 5 am on Monday morning. Its actually colder here than in Toronto but we are in their winter. Tova got sick the day we got here but she is A.O.K now!!! we have met 3 really nice girls called Anna Rosa, Vicky, and Luz. They are all from South America but can speak english well. We have sort of figured out the subway system but its a little different than Tornto's. We tried to do a little shopping downtown but we need to save our money. The city is really beautiful and very European! We are going to go to this party tonight that Vicky is throwing at a bar/club.
The pictures are of our hostel and the couple is Mario and Maria, the owners. The other girl with Alice and I is Vicky.
The washroom is really complicated because it's only a little room with a toilet, bidet, sink and a shower head. Basically, you have to take your shower in that room with no curtain, no boundaries, right in the middle of the bathroom.
See you soon,
Tova and Alice

In Lima there is a street called Canada and we just wanted to capture it! The picture of bones are of catacombs in the San Francisco Cathedral. They were just in open tombs! It was so weird and eerie. That car is a really old vehicle but it is used in Lima as a Taxi! It has 3 wheels.

More Peru and a little Argentina

Hey everyone,

So we made it safely to Argentina and we are now living in this really cute Hostel in downtown Buenos Aires. Its owned by Maria and Mario, this really cute and older couple who do not speak a word of English!!! Acctually, most people in the hostel don't speak english but that's ok because Alice and I REALLY need to learn Spanish fast. We signed up for a course so hopefully that will help. The following picture is of a really poor family in Lima. We met them through this guy (Tim) who we met in our hostel in Lima. The Father of that household (Ricardo) has 3 addoped children. When his brother died in a bus explosion, his 3 children were left with Ricardo. All the children in the picture are boy and girl scouts. Every Saturday, Ricardo organises this assmebly of all the children in their little community. The other picture is of their street. There is no paved road or sidewalk there.

Peru!

This first picture is of the hostel we are staying in in Lima, the "Inka Lodge". The second picture is of Tova with a pre-Incan man found in an archaelogical site only a few blocks from our hostel. There is also a picture of the actual site where the pre-Inkan people held ceremonies and created textiles. It was only discovered 25 years ago. There is a picture of Peruvian "erotic art", which is actually a shot glass....they sell them everywhere here. There is a picture of some llamas we found roaming around the city...no, they were in cages at the archaeological site. We have a lot more pictures and stories to post, but we have to go to the museum, so we'll talk later.

Alice and Tova