This past weekend was a lot of fun. I already told you about Reggaeton Night on Friday. Well, on Saturday I spent most of the afternoon studying, but that evening I went with some buddies to a birthday party. The girl hosting the party was from Italy, and pretty much everyone there was from Europe or different parts of Latin America. I enjoyed this crowd a good bit more than the last ex-pat party I attended several weeks ago. That last ex-pay party was part of the inspiration for my very first blog post - see "Gringo".Anyway, on Saturday I started out the evening with my friends, Felix and Sebastian. That is Felix on the left in the picture. He is a buddy from my Maritime Law class at the UBA. Felix is a great guy and lots of fun to hang out with; however, I do not think he will be be helping me out a whole lot in preparing for exams because he doesn't show up at class half the time. I've also seen his handwriting, which is complete sh*t. I'll be much better off studying with a nice girl - a strategy I have discussed in a previous post.
Sebastian is the guy squeezed in between me and the skeptical-looking girl with big hair in the picture above. Sebastian is one of Felix's best friends, and we hit it off pretty well when we all went out together a couple weeks ago. Sebastian is one of those guys who seems to know everybody. For example, in Buenos Aires the stores stop selling alcohol at 11:00 p.m., but Sebastian always seems to be on a first-name basis with the owner of the Kiosks. He generally walks in and exchanges some jokes and banter with whomever is working, and then they go ahead and sell us beer or liquor even though it is past 11:00. I think every time I have hung out with Sebastian, we eventually end up going to a club called Shampoo. I guess Sebastian knows the owners and the guys who work the door, because we have always gotten to go ahead of the long line and enter without paying the pricey cover-charge.
So we are at this Italian girl's birthday party, and I was having a pretty good time. It seems like Felix and Sebastian must have been getting a little restless, though, and ready to move on. At one point, I was having a nice conversation with this girl from Colombia and her friend from France. Things were going well, when Felix and Sebastian walked up and told the girls that I am gay and here visiting Buenos Aires with my boyfriend from the U.S. Thanks a lot, guys! They didn't mean any harm by it, that is just sort of the way we interact. Lots of exchanging insults. Anyway, it was pretty obviously a joke, but I suppose the girls weren't interested in hanging out amongst this belligerence - so they sort of wandered off to chat with some other people. Then Felix and Sebastian start arguing about whether we should leave and where we should go next. Finally, we got in the elevator and left the apartment.
Sebastian had called a couple of his buddies, Fede and Nicolas, to come pick us up so that we could all go to Shampoo. So those guys are waiting outside, and
, the 5 of us piled into a car. A few minutes later we pull up to the club, and there is a huge line. The guys at the door don't seem to be paying much attention to Sebastian, and I was wondering if maybe this wasn't going to work out tonight. After all, there were a whole bunch of people (including a lot of girls) waiting to get in who were actually willing to pay the cover-charge. It would make sense that the bouncers would prefer to let those other people in rather than a group of 5 guys (with no girls) standing there hoping to enter for free. Anyway, finally Sebastian gets one of the bouncers to let just him in the door. He gives us a thumbs-up sign before going in. Well, about 4 minutes later he steps back out of the club and motions for us to cut under the rope and go on in. I'm not sure what he did or who he talked to, but it worked out. On the left is a picture of Fede, Nicolas and Sebastian in Shampoo on Saturday.
Shampoo is a really cool club. Interestingly, when I studied here about 5 years ago Shampoo was a brothel. It is under new ownership now, though, and I promise you that it is no longer in that "trade". I'm not really sure why the new owners never changed the name, though. Anyway, they play great music and is always packed with a really good crowd, but the venue is sort of small. To the right, you can see a picture of Sebastian trying to hit on a blond. What Sebastian didn't realize is that the girl's friend was standing behind him motioning to the blond to "just walk away". Haha, so smooth...
Every time we go into Shampoo, it seems like we all end up getting separated. Well, Saturday night was no different, and after about an hour-and-a-half I was only sporadically seeing any of the people I came in with. That is when I decided to leave and go meet up with another group at a club called Pacha.
Pacha is a HUGE disco with outdoor spaces, a VIP area and at least 2 floors. So it is sort of like multiple parties going on in different areas of the club. I called a friend to meet me at the door, and we went into the area of the club where a bunch of the foreign students at the UBA were together. They were playing Electronic music, which a genre that I have been exposed to only recently. Anyway, my friend from Chile was there along with several Brazilians and gringos that we know who are all studying here in Buenos Aires. A couple of the Brazilians had company in town, so it ended up having a pretty good-sized group. We ended up staying at Pacha till about 5:00 a.m.
The next day, I got together with Marta for a big lunch. Marta is the lady I lived with 5 years ago when I studied in Buenos Aires as an undergrad. She only lives about 3 blocks away from me, so we get together periodically to eat and visit. She made a great meal with several different cuts of beef. Her brother was there, too, and we all sat around chatting about how the weekend had gone, the U.S. economic crisis, crime rates in Buenos Aires, etc. etc.
After that, I went back to my place to study for my Maritime Law class, and that is what I have been doing ever since. I have a mid-term coming up next week in that class, and I am far from ready for it. I'll pretty much be locked away studying again until next Monday. The good news is that this is my last mid-term for a few weeks. Anyway, a good weekend to tide me over until I am done with this test...
From left to right, you can see Fernando (Brazil), Fernando's good
looking sister (also from Brazil), Me (gringo),
Rachel (Brazil), and Consuelo (Chile)
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