The Story Of Something That Happened To Me But I Can’t Put It In The Title Because Then It Would Lose SUSPENSE

So I’ve been feeling guilty that I haven’t posted anything for a while which posed a dilemma for me because I also don’t have time/ las ganas to write stuff right now. Well, a little while ago this really demanding girl told me she wasn’t going to let me sublease here room when I get back to merica if I don’t tell her a story. Finding myself on the cusp of homelessness (and we all know that that’s an impossibility for me because of my mild-manneredness and fragility), I realized there was nothing to be done except acquiesce. So I told her this story of a thing that happened to me a month or two ago(?) Here, I’m doing that cliché thing with the birds and the stones and reappropriatin that shit. Hope you enjoy.

Also, TYPO/GRAMMO, I’m sure.

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The Story Of Something That Happened To Me But I Can’t Put It In The Title Because Then It Would Lose SUSPENSE

Once upon a time it was a normal Tuesday or Wednesday night in Buenos Aires when all of a sudden I realize of course that means we have to go to a bar because in that Golden Age of my study abroad experience I had like zero homework ever. So we gather a mass of americans¹ and plan to go to this cool Irish pub my friend had heard about called CHECKERS. I got there early because that's what cool people do but then realized the bar was extremely dark, as if it were saying WE'RE CLOSED COME BACK ANOTHER NIGHT [hint: this MIGHT BE 4SHADOWING]. I totes thought it was closed and was about to leave but didn't wanna be the dumb guy that didn't even try to open the door so I did it and the door opened. I immediately felt like my friend told me the address wrong because the bar was almost completely empty except for some older people that were way out-dressing me. The older maybe-in-an-irish-mob-looking bartender comes over and asks me what I like and I say I'm waiting for my friends but I guess I could order a beer so he says they have Quilmes (Argentina's always-cheap, "national" beer), Corona, and Heineken. I thought it was kind of weird that it was an Irish pub and they didn't have Guinness or something but I ask how much a Quilmes was and he said like 40 pesos or something which is more than double what it normally is so I tell him I am going to wait for mis amigos to show up and then we'll order.

I'm sitting around waiting, and when one of the chicas I'm meeting shows up, I tell her I'm not ordering anything because I'm sure we'll go somewhere else because the prices are crazy. As we wait for others, I let my eyes wander around the bar and slowly start to notice that all the older people seemed to be women that were by themselves. I thought to myself this must be like a bar where people come and try to meet dates or something. Then I realize that they are all wearing outfits that are black and fairly revealing, which is basically what all women wear here, so you know, whatever. Then I realize one of them is sitting at the bar, staring at me. This didn't seem incredibly weird because well, who wouldn’t wanna look at me? Then I realize like all of the women are staring intently at me, which still didn’t really bother me because, well, see above.

Then I add up some facts like dark bar + empty bar + "what do you like?" + lack of obvious beers + expensive beers + all older women in black ‘“clothes”’ staring at me and I realize that this equation equaled holy shit i'm definitely in a prostitute bar and they totes think I wanna pay them to do sex things to me.

So me and my friend rapidly and as inconspicuously as possible get up and move slowly towards the door BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH because one of the i'm-definitely-sure-at-this-point prostitutes comes between the door and us and tells us we don't want to leave. I'm pretty sure it was the nervous jumble of probably-not-even-spanish that came out of my mouth that convinced her that yes, i did want to go because i was a little boy, not a man looking to do sex things with her and besides she was totes barking up the wrong tree if you know what i mean.

So then we left through the door behind her. Then we tried to convince our bro that just walked up to go in and ordering a drink BECAUSE THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUNNY RITE? But he wouldn’t do it because, well why was everyone else standing outside? So instead we found an actually cool bar whose bartender was the nicest fucking guy and also looked exactly like the guy from Titus Andronicus. THE END.

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¹ Oh well.

Why This Is My First Post In More Than A Month

What up y’all it’s me, Shoosteen, and I’m back after more than a month of nonbloggediness. You see, I would have updated this blog a lot sooner but these are the factual things that happened to me that prevented me from doing so and I’m not making any of them up, not even one:

On the day that I last updated this blog, I was leaving my apartamento with the intention of going to a museum of old things to experience CULTURE so I could tell you all about it on my blog that definitely more than 5 people read including my parents. Then, what happened was ¡KA-BAM POW! all of a sudden I got run over by a parade of beef farmers which would have been fine except for the fact that they were each wielding a bottle of wine which they forced me to drink the entire thing of, making me get lost in a hazy cloud of espaynish. All of a sudden, I found myself in this trendy-as-shit bar where they were playing nothing but things YOU would never have even heard of. I told the bar tender, “hey look, I know who all of these bands are, you’re not really as hip as you think, but that’s neither here nor there because I really have to go to this museum so I can tell all my friends and family about what I’m doing via a blog that I have which totally has more than 15 hits, I promise.” He said something really fast but I totally understood it porque my Spanish was so much more mejor than before. I tried to do what he said but de repente it was daylight because I HAD STAYED OUT ALL NIGHT and it was loud because everyone was screaming. At first I thought I was back home and had wandered into an SDS rally but then I realized oh yeah these are just regular students and they took over school and have refused to let anyone have classes for the next three weeks because a window fell or something. Not having to sit through a four-hour class, I hopped on the subte home and started listening to my iPod when I realized that the music that YOU would never have even heard of was only coming from one of the ear buds. What had happened was that I had broken it just like I always break my headphones. But this was the least of my worries because ¡GASP! I looked down at my LEVIS SKINNY JEANS and realized some bro had picked the shit out of my pocket. And this won’t have even been a thang except for the fact that the only way I know the password to my blog is it is written on a tiny piece of paper that I always keep in the back pocket of my LEVIS SKINNY JEANS. The entire next month I did nothing but worry about how the HECK are my friends and family going to know what I’m up to if they can’t read my blog because there’s definitely no such thing as email or skype or facebook or twitter. De suerte, I got an email (oh yeah i also keep my email address written on the piece of paper) from some boludo saying “I’m sorry I stole that piece of paper with the password to your blog on it, I thought it was money because a lot of estadounidenses just keep their money there. Here it is in this email because I know how keeping a blog is a very important part of THE STUDYING ABROAD EXPERIENCE.”

And he’s right, which is why I immediately logged in with the password I had lost for an entire more-than-a-month and started to write this post. In my next post which I PROMISE I WILL DO SOON I will tell you about how I went to see a bunch of falling water called Iguazú Falls.

(Safe) Sex & The City

So remember that time when I said I would talk about going to La Rural? Yeah well I’m not going to do that. It happened like two weeks ago and there’s not much to say other than I saw some of Old McDonald’s farm animals and they smelled not unlike the dog crap that lines every sidewalk of this city, and which I manage to only step in about once a day (I’m so good at walking).

If you wanna see more pics of me at la rural and at other places and you’re not friends with me on facebook you can follow the link at the bottom of the page (HA now you hafta read the rest of my post cause you don’t know how scrolling works).

Mmmkay so this program that I’m doing is through this organization called the Institute for Study Abroad which is this really expensive thing that sets the whole shebang up for me and holds my hand while I’m living here if I want them to (hope they don’t have coodies, y’all). I’m also doing this Gender and Minority Studies concentration through them (because INSTITUTIONS, MAAAN) which means I take a class related to human rights and then they set me up with this internship thing. Argentina just passed an equal marriage law last month so I thought it’d be pretty kool to work with a GLBT organization. So yeah. That’s what I’m doing.

Bueno. Y’all wanna hear about my first week of classes? ‘Course you do, duh. Even though I was aloud to take classes at four different universidades, I’m taking all of them at la Universidad de Buenos Aires, the state university which apparently, along with some universidad in this country called México¹, is considered the best in Latin America, even though it’s completely free.² Now, whenever “la UBA” was my answer to the question “¿grrrrrrl whut school u go 2?”, I would always get looks as if to say “oh, I’m sorry.” Because here’s the thing: the school is a chaotic heap of red tape barely contained by it’s dilapidated walls. And while it’s frustratingly disorganized, I can tell this is going to be one of the most interesting aspects of my time here. It has an extremely activist-oriented student body, with political posters on every wall, people handing out flyers of upcoming demonstrations, and ubiquitous Marxist graffiti. So yeah, who wants to live with me in Carrboro when I get back?

Anyways, my first class was last Monday and because I had heard that the school is wont to be like “hey your class isn’t in this building it’s in a different neighborhood you ever taken a bus before?”, I got there like a half hour before my class was supposed to start. Which was totes awesome because of course I was in the right place and of course I forgot that NOTHING starts on time in Argentina. Like the professor got there fifteen minutes late, put his things down, and left the room to get some coffee. Anyway, the class was supposed to be a seminar on the social aspects of AIDS. En realidad, the first clase was basically just “hey these are the ways you can not get AIDS, let me show you with real live condoms, wooden penises, and graphic drawings of people having sex the right and wrong ways.” So yeah I was a lil taken aback. Let’s just say I learned a lot of new vocabulary that day.

My second class was part of the concentration thing I was talking about earlier and there’s not really much to say sobre esto other than the fact that I found afterwards that the women that taught it that day is a really big deal and anyone who’s familiar with Latin American academia would have been like “whaaaaaa Dora Barrancos came to talk to 15 americanos who barely understood what she was talking about?”

Nothing really happened in my next class, although lots of things were probably supposed to happen, I just didn’t understand anything. Like we divided into groups and the argentinos in my group basically gave up tryna ax me questions because I couldn’t understand them when they said “féfwnfЍЖpfdá fá návó͠zz f ¡ fdsòáضعـf Ÿ¿きぜゆこ?”³ So yeah totes droppin that class.

For my last class of the week, UBA was so kind as to do the thing where they move the class to another building on the other side of town and then act like it’s Argentina’s best kept secret. By the time mis amigos and I got to the right building we were fifty minutes late but that didn’t matter because oh yeah, they changed the time of the class as well. So we went to wait at a café where I was berated by the waitress for ordering both fries and coffee at the same time.⁴ The class was worth the wait and me committing that gastronomical faux pas though because OH SHIT I FOUND OUT THE PROFESSOR IS A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER. It’s a seminar se llama “culture for peace and human rights” and the first lecture was as uplifting and inspiring as that one time Ira Glass came and spoke to us, like 4realzies that’s what it reminded me of. So yeah think I’mma try and stay in that.

In unrelated news I lost mi celular at a dance club this weekend because I was just dancing so hard and my phone was like “look I can’t chill with you if you’re dancing so hard” so it just left. And apparently stores here are never open on weekends or Días del Libertado José de San Martín which is today so I can’t get a new celular until tomorrow so that makes me really sad and this is a run-on sentence now.

Also, you might be wondering: hey Hoosteen, have you been participating in culture and sights and tourism and other things that you are putting yourself in student debt to EXPERIENCE? And I will tell you, yeah a lil bit I think. Pictures of those things will prolly be on my facebook in a sec or if you’re an old person you can go here instead.

Al fin, I promise to try and do this thang at least once a week (that’s not really happening).

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¹ Sidenote: México is also considered the safest country in Latin America. ~~~*>THE MORE YOU KNOW<*~~~

² Effin socialists. Who do they think they are, investing money in education instead of in killing people in other countries?

³ DON’T THEY KNOW THAT’S NOT SPANISH? Silly argentinos.

⁴ Hey food snob friends shut up that’s what I wanted.

On Beef, Bars, and maybe some other things that start with B idk

Sorry I haven't been up on my blogging game, y'all. Just way too busy being a like really cool cosmo/metro politan student n doing things n other languages n stuff. Feel like i no what it means 2b a human. Feel like i'm having experiences that make me different n special n better than ne1 elze. Everythings just so MEANINGFULCORE that I just want 2 move down here and ride this chill wave (it's winter here blaaahhhhhh) the rest of my lyfe.

NAH BUT ENSERIO. What I’m actually doing right now is sitting in my bedroom, typing this blog poast on my Apple computer with a Facebook window open, while eating Goldfish. I just got done listening to American hip-hop (that’s this kind of music a lot of young people listen to nowadays, mom and dad) with my Japanese-made head-phones and later, when/if I leave my apartment today, I’ll put on my Old Navy pea coat and probably buy some pizza.

This is all just to say that, even though I’m living in Latin America, I’ve found it pretty hard to integrate so far. When you come here with a program full of other americanos, it takes some effort to not make it a party in the (kinda) USA. Which, honestly, for now it’s cool and all, since I’ve had little opportunity to meet some people to speak not English to, but eventually, ya know, I’m tryna meet some more porteños. Whatevs. Introspection complete.

ANYWAYS, I guess a few things have happened since my last post. I’ve figured out how to properly use my phone and even more, IT STAYS ON FOR A WEEK WITHOUT RECHARGING IT. I’ve also managed to use public transportation, go out to bars, and continue my daily ritual of awkward dinner conversilences for an impressive period of time.

In regards to public transportation here, it is both terribly awesome and awesomely terrible. The two options that I can feign understanding of are the Subte (what they llamar the metro system here) and the colectivos (public busses). Both are fairly ubiquitous around the city, which is great, but also not great because that’s how everyone gets around. This means that during rush hours, if you are even able to get on, you will be so closely Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box THAT THE BREATHING OF THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU SOUNDS THIS LOUD IN YOUR EAR HOLEZ.

As for going to bars, well I do that sometimes. I’ll give you a brief recap of what I did a couple days ago to fingerpaint a picture of what maybe normally happens mmmkay? On Saturday nights we don’t get dinner from our host mamas so we went to dinner at this parilla, which is I think how you say steak house in shpaynish. Regrettably, it turns out that I couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate name for my blog: I had been in Argentina for a week and 6 days sans beef,¹ so needless to say, I was pretty ready to eat some delicious cow meat (SORRY ANNA MORRIS, BUT ALSO NOT SORRY BECAUSE TWITTER TOLD ME YOU ATE CRAB MEATS). In the interest of brevity, let’s just say I went overboard and spent 70 pesos on dinner. It’s cool though, because that bought a steak with ham, onions, peppers, and a fried egg on top; fries; wine; and the best effin ice cream ever with a Trix-flavored wafer.² The after-party of the parilla was basically we were going to hang out with these Argentine bros then go to bars/dance clubs called boliches. What this means is around ten to fifteen americanos wandering through the skreets of BA and speakin in English about theories about Inception, what we did earlier in the week, Inception, la rural, and Inception. Eventually around 3 or so?³, we ended up at a bar that was playing a good deal of música americana, including quite a few 90s power pop ballads. So clearly that meant we had to form a rotating ring of jumping/moshing people (two parts fun, one part “damn I look like a stupid American right now”). You might even say we were bar hopping HAHA SEE WHAT I DID THERE? After the bar there was the after-party and after the after-party was the after-after party aka my colectivo home. Then was the after-after-after party aka me being in bed and realizing I was getting sick and probably should have not come home at 7 in the morning. Then I went to the after-after-after-after party with Tracy Jordan.

Right-O, then. I was going to talk about this thing I went to a few days ago called La Rural but I’m realizing this is getting kind of long so I’m going to cut it short. So, you know, stay tuned cause next time you’ll get to see some pictures of cows n goats n stuff, along with me saying y'all a lot. Also, prolly pictures of whatever I do this week since I don’t have any responsibilities until next Monday.

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¹Apparently the people who grow the cows and then kill them for you so you can eat them have been feudin with the government for a few years so it’s a lot more expensive than it used to be to eat beef. This is all according to mi host madre, which also means it is reliant upon my understanding of her explanation.

² All decisions related to cereal flavoUr were made only after a general consensus of those seated at the table was reached.

³ Schedules here are the craziest. Like, take the time you would do any activity in the US (unfortunately, except wake up) and add about three hours to it and that’s what time people do it here.

Still Alive, Y'all

As I had expected, about as many things have happened to me in the past few days, as did in the rest of my entire summer. After flying for approximately three gazillion hours, I got to Buenos Aires, where my program thingy paid for a taxi to take me to my family. In the taxi, these things happened:

1. I tried to read the street number to the taxista but realized I had forgotten how to say “fifty.”
2. I feared for my life.
3. I feared for muchas pedestrians’ lives.
4. The taxista tried to introduce himself with the universal hand gesture of pointing at one’s chest but he had to repeat himself three (3) times.
5. I feared for my life.
6. The taxista gave like ten piropos to women passing by.¹
7. The taxista turned on the radio and started playing music to which he started swaying violently. (No exaggeration, the car started leaning side-to-side).
8. The taxista smoked like 5 cigarrillos that were called something terrifyingly similar to formaldehyde.
9. I feared for my life again.

There have been so many interactions similar to this with los argentinos that I’ll just let you generalize from here.


After the taxi ride, I met the woman I’ll be living with this semester. She lives in a neighborhood called Belgrano, which is middle to upper middle-class, which means it’s pretty safe, which means I’ll only maybe get mugged. Cristina, mi host mother, was the most nonchalant about the whole thing, I guess cause I’m her fourth student. This means she’s got the whole thang all set up for me, including INTERWEBS and una TELE² (that’s what the rest of the world calls TV) in my room. She’s real nice but it gets kind of awkward sometimes when I have nothing to say. Por ejemplo, this is what my first dinner was like:

1. I SCREWED UP MY FIRST BESITO GUYS³
2. We sat in silence.
3. I smiled awkwardly.
4. They talked about universidades.
5. I smiled awkwardly.

I’ve realized it’s going to take some adjustment because Argentines do things like talk for hours over tea/coffee after dinner, whereas I’m accustomed to talking never. It’s not that I’m timid, I’m just the worst at small talk. Whatevs.

Anywhoo, apart from these difficulties, I’m having a great time getting lost in the city. But for reals. Basically what happens everyday is we have breaks between classes⁴ where I wander around with personas from the program I’ve met (YEAH I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU, THE PERSON(S) I JUST FRIENDED ON FACEBOOK WHO MAYBE FOUND THEIR WAY HERE) and get lost and eat in a café or McCafe⁵. The cafés are kewl. The first día I ordered a fairly decent sandwich and a glass of wine (THAS RIGHT I’M LEGAL NOW, MOM AND DAD) for around the equivalent of 7 dollars. Also, they have not normal U.S. things at the cafes. Por ejemplo, while I was at McDonald’s today, at a regular café, this chico ordered what he thought was a sandwhich, and it was, except for the fact that the sandwhich was a bunch of raw meat between two crackers. Yeah. I think I’m required to eat that before I leave.

Anyways, I also bought my celular from a store called Personal. Now, it may be because I don’t understand Spanish completely⁶ but cell phones are the most complicated thing down here. What you do (I think) is buy a phone that has 5 minutes on it then go to a pharmacy/convenience store to buy real minutes. BUT WAIT because you probably can’t do that yet because you don’t have your number yet because it takes hours for Personal to text it to you. This is all really boring I’m sure, but basically, all this leads to why I’m sitting here writing this blog post instead of being at the bars with people.

Basically what ha’ happened was was that I used my 5 minutes trying to call a cab to pick me up,⁷ so when the cab never came, I was without a way to get out because I’mma be honest I’m sorta scared of taking a bus because I feel like I’ll end up in Brasil.

And that brings me to ahora. Next time, I hope to talk about using a cell phone correctly, going out to bars, and carrying on at least five minutes of conversation con argentinos.

¹ This is a thing where men rape women with their eyes and mouths when they walk down the skreet. My taxista had various techniques including beeping, shouting incomprehensible (to me) things, and whistling (yeah, you know the whistle).

² Argentine TV is the most fascinating thing. They have about five or six regular channels like in the US and then some, my family included, have additional cable packages. On the tele, you can watch: soap operas about people walking around the forest with guns, game shows that rival the Japanese in peculiarness, and a bunch of American shows like Friends, or The Office, etcetera, either with Spanish subtitles or dubbed in Spanish. My first night, I chose to watch COPS dubbed in Spanish because, well, why wouldn’t I do that?

³ En Argentina, when you greet someone, there’s this thing you do called a besito where what is supposed to pasar is you’re supposed to touch the other person’s cheek and make a kissing noise IN THE AIR. Here’s what happened with my first besito: I tried to shake her hand (BECAUSE IS GON BE WEIRD IF GO IN FOR THE KISS WHEN I WASN’T SUPPOSED) but she leaned in for the besito. What happened was a kind of hybrid hanbesishake where we interlocked our hands (like we were doing the half-shoulder-hug thing in ‘Merica) and shook them while she kissed the air next to my cheek and I panicked and accidently kissed her cheek. Let’s just say that say you should be sure to watch out for this mini catastrophe on the next episode of WHEN BESITOS GO WRONG.

⁴ They’re not classes.

⁵ Yeah I went to McDonald’s here so what. I was basically curioso about what they were like and ya know what? No big deal. WAY more expensive than at home and apart from the burger I ordered, WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO COME WITH WHAT LOOKED LIKE DORITOS ON IT BUT DIDN’T, pretty much the same.

⁶ Yeah, that’s definitely what it is.

⁷ I’ve been told I have to always call a cab because if you take one from the street you will be robbed/raped/killed in 5 minutes flat.

I Leave in Two Days (Who’s Tryna See My Freak-out Face?)1

It’s taken a few days of living in my empty room to make me realize it, but I’m leaving incredibly soon. Like, so soon that I could look up the forecast and be fairly confident that weather.com knows what the eff they’re talking about.²

This is tremendously alarming to me for a number of reasons. Of course there’s the obvious “ah man, I’mma miss my friends so harrrd” and the duh-core “this city is gonna be huge and I’m not gonna understand anything people say to me.”

What I’m dreading the most is closer to the usual “Ah don wanna go back to school, I liked summer so much.” To explain the intensification of my back-to-school angst, I’ll paint you a picture (keep in mind that because I’m not an English major, I will be finger-painting instead of paintbrush-painting).

Guys, do you know what I’ve been doing this summer so far? Because it’s nothing. Aside from working at the El Harris Teeter³ for a couple months, I’ve had none legit responsibilities. I even peaced out of there like two weeks ago for no other reason than to “prepare for my pending journeys abroad” aka go to the store twice for some traveling supplies and paint my room (thanks a lot, Townhaus).

Now don’t get me wrong here, because I had fully intended on having a productive summer. I was going to start running everyday and get in shape. And you don’t even know how much I was planning on reading that one collection of Borges short stories in Spanish. But GUYS, they call it Chapel Hill for a reason: there are a lot of hills here (running). Also, after reading one of the aforementioned short stories and not picking up on much more than a general plot outline, I realized that, ya know what guys? That stuff’s all in SPANISH (reading Spanish short stories).

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that I've had a fairly lazy summer, and starting in two days, I’m anticipating a transition akin to the one that took place at my recent WEREWOLF BAR MITZVAH.⁴ I know everyone else has to go back to school soon but listen: shut up this is my blog about me and beef and it’s about me right now. Shifting from a life where the most strenuous thing my brain faces is keeping track of the plots of all the TV shows I watch on the Internet, to a life where the most difficult thing is getting adjusted to a whole new world⁵ all in SPANISH is something that I wouldn't mind putting off for a little longer.

Having finished complaining about all this really boring stuff, I want to say that my excitement for all of this far outweighs any of these apprehensions. Because (¡CLICHÉ ALERT!) going through all this stuff will be good for me and I wanna learn about stuff outside of Chapel Hill, and learn how to speak SPANISH, blah blah etc.

So if you’ve come this far through this post without getting annoyed with my complaints and footnotes, you’re probably bored and/or one of my parents. So I’ll just finish by letting you know that the next time I put something up here, I’ll almost definitely be in Buenos Aires, really tired of eating cows, and in my host-mother’s place because ¡I FOUND OUT SHE HAS INTERNETS YA’LL! (¡¡¡¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!!!!)

Also, in case you were wondering, I apparently wrote this blog post in a style reminiscent of the late great J. D. Salinger.

¹Sorry this blog post is about to read like a kvetch. I should also take this opportunity to apologize from using a David Foster Wallace-amount of footnotes, because I’m sure that’s annoying to read on the Internets.

² I refuse to look up the weather until I leave. The reason for this is because, due to certain astrophysiologies, the rotation and angles of the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars, whether or not Pitchfork has recently bestowed their Best New Music accolade to some deserving/undeserving artist*, the proliferation of heliocentricismization, SCIENCE SCIENCE TYLERMILLS SCIENCE, I know that it is winter in Buenos Aires and this fact only enhances my wanting-to-stay-in-chapel-hill-a-little-bit-longer-ness.

* Oh, so you thought P4k only controls the world of indie music? WRONG THEY CONTROL THE WORLD OF EARTH. In fact, Pitchfork’s recent allocation of a lowly 4.4 to M.I.A.’s most recent album, /\/\/\Y/\ (yeah, I know), caused 4.4 days blizzard in some parts of southern Argentina, and even Chile. IT’S TRUE LOOK IT UP.†

† HAHAHA LOOK AT YOU! I MADE YOU READ THE FOOTNOTE OF A FOOTNOTE OF A FOOTNOTE!

³ Thanks to Emily, I’m already calling it by it’s Spanish name. This way, when I work at the El Harris Teeter in Argentina (as I inevitably will because if you know anything about me, destiny thinks it is my raison d’être or some French shit like that) I won’t look like a complete ass by not knowing it by its proper name.

⁴ TRANSITION FACT: Boys becoming men and men becoming wolves is the most intense transition imaginable.

⁵ …A new fantastic point of view / no one to tell us no or where to go / or say we’re only dreaming (YOU’RE WELCOME)

A Note On This Blog

From July 18th until sometime in December that I could look up right now but don't really want to, I will be living and studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina (pronounce that with an 'h' sound or you lose), which is a really big city in a country that's really far away. As it seems like what people do when they go really far away, I'm making a blog to keep people updated on how overwhelmed I am about being in a place where I have to speak Spanish only Spanish and never English.

Let me just say I know embarrassingly little about this place (thanks Wake County Public School System for teaching me everything you know). Luckily, the only time this could possibly become an issue when I'm living there is when I'm trying to decide what to name my blog. After failing to come up with a coherent variation on "The Bob Loblaw Law Blog" that had anything to do with my pending studies abroad, I shuffled through the Wikipedia in my brain and realized I know approximately three things about Buenos Aires/Argentina*: (1) La Guerra Sucia happened there (this was the state-sponsored "dirty war" in the late 70s/early 80s where as many as 30,000 civilians were killed or disappeared), (2) Buenos Aires is sometimes called "the Paris of South America," and (3) beef consumption in Argentina is the highest in the world. As it would be in bad taste to name my blog after a massacre, or to overshadow Buenos Aires with Europe by defining it in terms of a French city, I chose "¿Dónde Está El Beef?" because it was in better taste (haha get it? get it?). Yes, I'm aware that by using a Wendy's slogan (OH HEY, GLYNNIS!) I'm defining it in Merican terms, but I guess that's what American Cultural Imperialism (OH HEY, DREW!) is all about.

Also, to give credit where credit is due, none of this decision-making process happened; I think the good Sir John Tyler Mills suggested the title to me a few weeks ago or something.

Also, also, it's extremely likely that upon arriving in Buenos Aires, I will be told by someone that understands political correctness better than me that the title of my blog is insulting and I should never have even come to Good Airs, Arhentina if that's the way I'm going to represent my university/culture/country/personal brand, whereupon I will change the title.

Anyways, check back at this Uniform Resource Locator in the next few [unit of time]s because I'll probably have at least one or two more posts on here before I leave.

* I promise I'll learn more before I go, ya'll!