A spoonful of life

While walking down a busy street today, lost in my own world of thoughts, I heard a skateboarder approaching me steadily from behind, and I didn't want to deal with the rascal, and I thought, "If that skateboard touches me, I'm gonna kill this guy," and then the skateboarder passed me on the left, and revealed herself as a young woman, and I was left standing there, alone in a city of 13 million, punched in the stomach and holding nothing but my own prejudices.

The Most Important Man in the Barbershop

Today I finally gave in and got a haircut. Sitting in the barber's chair while the stylist snipped away was easily the most terrifying experience since I've been here. I learned that I am just as incapable of describing the type of haircut I want in Spanish as I am in English, which left me anxious I would walk out with any of the number of atrocious hairstyles that are inexplicably popular in Buenos Aires. Seriously though. Mullets, rat tails, rat tails that start at the top of the head and bowl cuts are all evidently in style. There is a dude in one of my classes with three dreadlocks in the back with the rest of his hair normal.


This time, I avoided my typical blunder of continually repeatedly asking the barber "a little shorter, please," until my hair is way to freaking short. I don't know why I do that. Usually it's because it's been such a long time since my previous haircut I have no ability to comprehend depth and length, and maybe even time and space. Resisting was difficult, especially because one moment had my confidence and self-worth soar to unprecedented levels. Mid-haircut, I was called upon to translate between a barber and a customer who did not speak Spanish, briefly making me The Most Important Man in the Barbershop. I walked out a completely neutral-headed man. Just my style. All in all, a haircut you could set your watch to.


Meanwhile, the correlation between having a two-studded eyebrow ring and a completely indecipherable porteño accent is strong as ever.

Aardvark attack

A quick recap of the past week of my life:

Thursday-Monday

Iguazu Falls last weekend. Iguazu is an uber-majestic waterfall park on the Argentina-Brazil border. It is a bit of a ritual for Buenos Aires tourists to suffer through a 18- or 20-hour bus ride to get there. At the park, my group absorbed the raging splendor of the falls from afar on a series of trails and bridges. Then, we hopped on the Grand Adventure speedboat, surged at kamikaze-like speeds into the falls and got raging splendor sprayed directly in our faces.

The real fun began when we took a break at the snack bar. That's where the coatíes hang out. As we discovered, coatíes are small aardvark-like creatures whose only apparent source of food is bread crusts from the snack bar at Iguazu Falls. 

For real, this place was crawling with aarvarks yo

These guys spend their days with their snouts on the ground hunting for crumbs. They also sucker tourists in with their cuteness for a bite to eat. They have no reservations about climbing onto tables, either. In all seriousness, more so than seeing the actual waterfalls, my favorite moment from the weekend very well may have been witnessing a patron accidentally drop a full sandwich on the ground and watching an impressively alert coatí sprint to his table, snatch the sandwich off the ground, sprint away and devour it in a matter of seconds. 

Actually scratch that. My favorite moment happened on the drive back, when boarding the bus, I slowly came to the realization that our bus came equipped with "cama" seats rather than the semi-cama we paid for. Cama seats, which are considerably more expensive than their semi counterparts, recline all the way back and are comfy beyond belief. Ironically, for several hours I was unable to sleep because I was so excited that I was sitting in a cama seat.

Tuesday

Incubus concert. Lead singer Brandon Boyd shouted "muchas gracias!" after several songs and the crowd went apeshit every time.

Wednesday

MLB playoffs began. I watched the Phillies-Reds game at The Alamo, which caters to Americans desperate for sports that are not named after poultry. 

The bar was packed, albeit with Argentinians who did not know what baseball is. My friend Anthony, a Yankees fan, commented on how unbelievable it was that two American baseball fans are watching the playoffs on a muted TV in a noisy bar in Argentina. 

I picked a good day to get in front of a television as Roy Halladay, my new hero, pitched the second no-hitter in postseason history. When Carlos Ruiz threw to Ryan Howard for the final out, I went berserk, shouting and jumping and running up to high-five a group of Argentine strangers who were startled yet intrigued by my happiness. Alcohol may have been involved. I don't remember for sure; I was too drunk. Needless to say I will be there for the next one.

Thursday

I got tina'd without even saying a word. While participating in a Facebook chat on my laptop, I typed the word 'it's' and was confused to see the 'it-s' on the screen. I soon realized I have grown accustomed enough to the Latin American keyboard that I had reached up for the dash key, where the apostrophe is located on keyboards down here. 

The future

Tomorrow I take the 10-hour bus ride to Cordoba, where I will spend the weekend celebrating Argentina's Oktoberfest. I have ceremonially renamed the festival Doctoberfest in honor of Roy "Doc" Halladay, who, if you didn't here, is a beast with insatiable appetite for blood and World Series victories.