Below are some photos from a full moon camping shindig hosted by my friend Dustin out at the Klickitat Canyon Winery in the Columbia river Gorge, from early October.

Burnside

I stopped by Burnside Skatepark yesterday. I had never been there before. The place was actually built "guerilla-style", I think 18 years ago or something along those lines. By "guerilla-style" I mean these skaters just took this empty trashed lot under the burnside bridge, where a lot of junkies and prostitutes would hang out, and with what concrete they had, started forming ramps and whatnot, now it's one of the most challenging skateparks around. Built by skaters, D-I-Y, with a spirit of lawlessness. Their project eventually gained approval by the neighboring businesses apparently. It makes the skatepark back in Louisville look like Chuck-e-Cheese. It was wierd because I had visited this place via video games in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater when I was younger and it was actually pretty similar.

Back from Burning Man

My neighbor had just got back from Burning Man. He plays in a group called March Fourth Marching Band. I haven't seen them yet. They drove the fire truck and apparently a school bus too, to get down there. I think they said there were around 15 people at their camp. The name of their camp was The Dump. They also called it The Shark Camp, because they had shark costumes and fake blood and whatnot. They strapped an upright piano to the back of the fire truck, it was the one we had kept in the basement here that they had taken to BM the previous year. Everything was covered in desert dust. The piano is looking a pretty fatigued, I might see about finding a different one. People are giving away pianos for free on craigslist all the time out here.






Time to fire up the old blog.
Some photos from the other day.

yesterdays asado

Idocumented my meal yesterday, it was a mini asado, we ate a bunch of chorizos (sausages). This first picture is up on the terrace of the place where I stay. The big brick structure in the back is the parrilla, I think that would be called a parilla, parilla means grill. It is not really that different from grilling out in america, Im no expert on this but heres what I gather, they use a rectanugler rack thing that is elevated about 6 inches off of a stone surface, a lot of times they use wood, this time he just used coals, they also use dried corn, Frederico said that was the best. The asados that I had before this one consisted of the same stuff, some beef, chorizos(sausages), morsillas(blood sausages), and other stuff like chicken, one time they threw in some intestines and kidneys, this one was just chorizos, which are my favorite. Typically around here, the chorizos are eaten with bread, cut it or splitit open and eat it kinda like a hot dog.
The picture of people at the table has everybody in it except hugo the cat. From left to right is Darío, Frederico, Rubén, and Romina. Negro the dog is in my lap trying to get at the table, Rubén is hollding antonia and Romina is doing something with Coca. I live with Rubén and Darío, both very nice people, Frederico and Romina are friends visiting, Darío is an acrobat and instructor at the circus school around here who also does Par kour, Par kour is where you jump around on city streets, advanced Par kour is where you jump around from rooftop to rooftop, and other quite dangerous things. Darío trains a group of people
in Par kour, he is the only Par kour trainer in Rosario so I am going to try and tag along sometime this week and get some pictures and maybe learn some badass jumps, hehe, he doesnt do the crazy rooftop stuff, its all on the ground. Rubén is the director of a museum here in Rosario called El Museo de la Memoria, this museum is focused on sharing with the public information on the last dictatorship here in Argentina. There was a dictatorship here from 1976-1983, it was a real grizzly affair, over 30000 people disappeared, they are referred to as the disaparecidos. It was a rough time people couldnt speak up and if even there was the slightest bad speech against the government, people disappeared or were tortured or both, who knows. Every thursday in Buenos Aires there are a group of mothers who circle the monument in the plaza de mayo. They wear white bandanas on their heads with the name of the person who is missing written on the back. And they have been circling this monument every thursday since la guerra sucia 76-83 because they dont know if their child or family member is alive or dead or where they could possibly be and they want to know. So Rubén directs a museum in Rosario that is focused on informing the public about the dictatorship so that it never happens again. Aside from the museum they do programs at schools and other informative things, its pretty interesting.
But anyways, it was a good meal, Rubén went to Chile for a week for museum conferences and came back with some Chilean wine. In Argentina they have a special kind of wine called the Malbec, most of Argentinas best wine comes from Mendoza. In Chile they have a special kind of wine called a carmenére. He brought back some Carmenére, it was good. I like the Malbecs too. Wine is really cheap around here, you can get a bottle for 4 pesos, which is around 1.33$. I also had this stuff called Fernet, Its like some kind of mix of herbs and I think itrs alcoholic. Darío mixed it with coke, Fernet and coke, It kind of tasted like something you would buy at the Health food store, like those little glass bottles of herbal supplements like ginseng, you know how those things taste like crap? Well its kind of like that but the Fernet can actually be enjoyed with the coke. He said it was an Argentinian thing.
They deliver ice cream here, maybe they do that in the US somewhere, but as I mentioned before Argentina has awesome helado (ice cream) and Rubén ordered Tiramisu ice cream and some guy delivered a tub of it to the house, truly amazing.Then we finished the meal by passing around the matte, we used my matte and Frederico showed me the proper way to prepare it, it seems like everybody has some "perfect" way to prepare it but I think I like the Frederico method, it makes sense. So thats about it really for the meal, just thought I would share that.
Now I want to show you a picture of the bathroom. These pictures are probably all twisted up I never know how they are gonna line up in this thing, so just bear with it. Down here they have bidets but I dont think many people use them, at least the people that I live with dont they just books in theirs, but the bidets seem to be a pretty common thing, and while this isnt any kind amazing insight, the flusher on every toilet I have seen is built into the wall above the toilet, every one, it's the white box on the wall above it. I put a picture of my key to the apt on here too cause its kind of interesting, at least to a first-time-out-of-the-continent-gringo like myself.
Hey if you want to, leave a little comment, all you gotta do is click the comment thing below, Im kinda curious who is looking at this. word.
The next installment will possibly feature Par Kour pictures Im hoping to tag along with Darío this week.

Dia de la Bandera

Hello, so monday was the dia de la bandera (Flag Day) and here in Rosario people love flag day. The celebrations for it were tuesday night and today was the big day when the president came and spoke. Rosario is the home of el monumento de la bandera, it´s a huge obelisk on one end and the other end is a structure of columns which you can see in the back of the first picture and the entire monument is shaped like a huge ship withthe column structure in the back and the obelisk in the front and in between is room for hundreds and hundreds of people to sit or stand or sell superpanchos(dangerously foreign hotdogs) or for dogs to sleep. If you look in the front row of the people picture there is white jacket lady and she is drinking matte. This flag day was especially flaggy because it was the 50th anniversary of the monument. I cant compare it to any other flag days here but I give it 9 out of 10 flags, certainly the best flag celebration I have attended and may ever attend. In the first picture with me in it is the largest flag in the world. Im not sure exactly how large it is but I would say it extends through at least 10 blocks probably more. Last night, Tuesday, they had a celebratory thing where they honored some Rosarinos, then the lit up the monument with some blue lights that made it look like the argentine flag and then an opera singer sang some songs, then they shot lots of confetti in the air, confetti that was surprisingly had the same colors as the flag. Also at the beginning of that night, last night me and two others played hacky sack, hehe, argentina apparently doenst have hacky sacks so we always make friends when we play hacky sack.















This is the friend we made with the hacky sack that night, we was trying to sell people stickers, I cant remember his name, he introduced himself to he others and I thought I heard Eduardo so he got to me shook my hand and I said "Me llamo Jordan" and I said "te llamas Eduardo?" and then he said something like "no, wawa" which is just what I heard i have no idea what he said so I said "oh wawa" just basically trying to mimic the sounds so it would sound close to what he said and apparently it was close enough cause he didnt correct me. Wawa was a pretty outgoing guy in the picture where he has his arms out he is holding the hacky sack and making a donald duck sound, ya know, like Donalds voice. The other picture is of Jennifer and the hacky sack and the monument. and the other picture is of the biggest flag in the world and the momument and that was from todays festivities.



Todays festivities included the huge flag, a military parade and the president came to speak, apparently people really like this president a lot, at one point after his speech he crossed over the barrier fence thing and mingled amongst the people, people crowded around him semi frantically kind of enguilfing him, this is pretty unheard of in the states, bush has to drive past everyone in bulletproof limos, I cant remember his first namke but his last name is Kirchner, he seems like a pretty good guy, I believe this October is the election and I think he´s running again. and yea thats a picture of the tv here. The other picture is of the rebel group Ive been organizing since Ive been down here, our favorite colors are red and black, and we put my intials on all our protest stuff, and we really like evita and drums. The other picture is of some of the study abroad group people friends.

We went on a trip to Cordoba AR

Ive got a bunch of pictures, when I do this many things seem to get jumbled up, lets see what happens... The first picture is of Coca, a dog at the apartment where I live, she is a pain in the ass, negro is eating in the background, Negro is laidback. The next dogs are strays, there are strays all over the place here and the wierd thing is that none of them look malnourished, some are even fat, and they just lay wherever they want, which is everywhere, they sleep in the middle of the sidewalks, they sleep everywhere, it´s just something Ive never seen, healthy stray dogs who sleep in the middle of sidewalks, Most stray daogs Ive seen before arent asleep, maybe I havent seen many stray dogs but one would think that stray dogs would be busy trying to find some food, because they dont have any. This is a mystery to me, one day a group of 5 of us were walking around and a dog accompanied us for about 13-15 blocks, just as a buddy, he wasnt trying to bother us he was just tagging along, hanging out, a new friend, we even tried to give him a croisant and he didn want it. He would even bark at the crosswalks when we would stop, Im not sure i he was telling us to go, to be careful or barking at the cars going by, but he was a great dog.















This is a photo of the town where we stayed on our weekend trip to the Cordoba area. This is Villa Carlos Paz. A much smaller town than Rosario, it´s a vacation town for a lot of Argentinans, most tourists dont come here because the tourists want to go directly to the andes, this town is in the foothills of the andes. We stayed at Hotel Santa Cecilia, a pretty nice place, they had an indoor pool, a sauna, a ping pong table and even a little futbol (soccer) field on the roof of the pool area to the left in the picture, we played a game of two on two, I suck but I try.














This is some church in Cordoba, I dont know the name, maybe Im not attentive enough but Im pretty sure that when the day comes where I add up the total of my life I wont regret not knowing the name of this church. If you look at the ground in front of the church is a mirror outline crafted into the pavement of the front of the church, kinda neat. The next picture is of part of the inside

















In order to get to one of the stops during our trip`, we had to drive ona dirt road for about an hour. The bus driver was fearless, it was like being in a Buenos Aires taxi again, except he was driving a bus and instead had 29 lives in his hands, I am still trying to figure out whether I think Argentinians are the best drivers I have seen or the worst, the way I can sum it up is, fast-paced controlled recklessness, whether on dirt roads in a bus or crowded city streets it´s an exciting experience. We spent a lot of time on the bus this weekend, I felt a little bit like the typical tourist, like anyone around was thinking oh god here come the americans. It was fun though, we stayed in Villa Carlos Paz, and visited Belgrano, Cordoba, and la Cumbrecita which is german influenced thats where the picture below of the waterfall came from. We took a hike in the hills to the waterfall which was very nice after breathing in Rosarios exhaust for the last couple weeks, and I ate a Knackwurst.
The people in this country dont stop. The time schedule is different here, let me explain some things here. The time schedule for the argentinian lifestyle is much different than the US´s. On Friday and Saturday nights the clubs (boliches) dont open until 1 or 2am and people stay out until 6 or 8am dancing and partying, they also normally dont eat dinner until 11pm each night. These are just things that one should bear in mind. I myself have not subjected myself to an Argentinian night or boliches yet but I think this weekend I will give it a shot so that I can understand. The different schedule canbe a bit confusing to the body at times.
Another thing to think about is that Argentina doesnt have peanut butter. But they make up for that with dulce de leche and amazing ice cream, and dulce de leche ice cream.




Below are some friends in the study abroad group, me on the right in the picture of the three guys. This wednesday is the Dia de la bandera which means flag day basically and the president of Argentina is coming to talk in Rosario and everyone will be out in the streets, they will carrying through the streets the largest flag in the world and it should be ineresting, Im also going to go to another tango lesson this friday and I am going to post pictures of both of those things so yea, there ya go. I know a basic tango step now I am going to try and improve on that beore I leave, Today is the 18th and I will be leaving on the 30th.

Walking by the river on sunday June10

Apparently everyone on sunday goes to the park by the river, gets a blanket and takes their matte and they sit their and they drink their matte and they conversate and have a good old time, everybody does it, there were people everywhere simply relaxing in a park, a novel concept for a stressed american but I think its a brilliant idea. "It´s sunday, now every single person in the city go to the park, sit their and drink matte and dont worry about shit". genius. Matte by the way isa tea-like drink that is kind of more bitter than tea. You put a bunch of yerba in a little wooden cup or gourd and you get a bombilla, a mettal straw, you put the bombilla in the cup full of yerba and hot water and drink it and pass it around, and dont move the bombilla and dont say thank you until you´re done. I got one now

This was surprisingly entertaining, he had a monkey marianette, and a little guy with a cane marianette and the monkey played piano and the little guy with a cane walked on the tight rope.
Argentinians pop wheelies too.They have a feria every sunday and tons and tons of people set up booths or kiosks or whatever and sell their handmade stuff. They do it at different points along the river. It´s really pretty neat they do it every sunday apparently, and they keep it open after dark, everybody just sets up a little light bulb.

They guy on the far left is the churro guy, he is all over the place, he has a little trumpet horn thing that you hear sporadically all day long, if you´re looking for a churro, it´s like a little sugar doughnut thing, all you have to do is wait a fewminutes whereever you are and listen for the horn.

yep.