"I'm on no sleep, no sleep!"

"You don't know what it's like in there, all night long things are creeping and cracking. and that red light is burning my brain!" Bonus points if you know where the quote is from.

I'm back in Phoenix now, my home for....well....as far into the future as I've thought ahead. But that's a whole 'nother topic for further down on this blog or another blog by itself. I came back 2days early. I'm tired. My wallet is flatter than I planned. I'm missing things I left with. I keep reaching for Spanish keyboard punctuation that isn't there (the keying is different is all I mean). And yes, I got basically no sleep on my overnight flight from Buenos Aires to Houston [spoiled by Semi-Cama night buses, or even a luxurious Cama bus, I was anticipating something close on the overnight flight, but then was brought quickly back to reality when I sat into my exit-row, bulk-head seat combination (should've been a tall-man's wet dream for flying coach) and I couldn't straighten my legs and the decline of the seat back goes from 90º to 87º. For reference, the Semi-Cama buses seat backs go from 90º to about 40-45º] and none on my flight from Houston to Phoenix. And man, I gotta tell you, what a strange place, for me anyway, Houston was to return to. Immediately those Texan accents and Texas people were everywhere. I'd gone from sing-songy, Italian-influenced Spanish to immersed in Texas in a heartbeat. Amazing. I took 3.5months to get to Buenos Aires from Guatemala City and then I was back in a matter of a half a day. Amazes me everytime I fly.

I gotta comment on my airport experiences for leaving Argentina/Latin America and coming back into the US. First the leaving process at Ezeiza (BA's international airport) was pretty involved. There was an interview before checking in at the check-in counter, check-in, security like we're used too, then a carry-on bag search before you reach the gate. I'm not entirely sure if this was because my flight was going to the US, but that's what my guess is. National flights, and international flights for that matter, within Latin America have pretty slack security measures in comparison. My favorite though, was when I had reached immigration/customs for the US at George Bush International Airport in Houston. My flight landed at 6:30am and I got to the female agent in her booth around 6:50ish. She was my age mas o menos 5 years, which isn't important other than we were likely true peers. She asked me 'how long have you been gone for?'. I answered in 'Buenos Aires specifically?'. She looked up from my passport and replied, 'yes' with a-don't fuck with me asshole. You want this to be easy or want me to ruin your whole US existance?-tone and look. 'About 10days' I said with a grin. 'Where else have you been?' was her next question. 'Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.' I answered. 'How long have you been gone?' was next still with a tick of the attitude. 'Three and a half months' I answered. 'So you're not working?' she asked. Ouch! I thought. 'Not now.' I answered amused. 'And what did you do before?' she asked. While answering her question, 'I was a chemist' I instantly thought of John Munger flying back from San Diego to San Jose, and thought 'Oh fuck. Trouble.' But Lil' Miss Early-Morning Attitude just stamped my paperwork and I was on my way through. The differences we have to go through being US citizens is astounding. They're pretty profound in the airport. I suppose I should be really happy that I'm not brown and foreign for that matter. I'll digress here before going any further into a rant.

Instead, let me tell you about Buenos Aires from my perspective. I feel compelled to qualify my statements here by saying that by the time I'd reached Buenos Aires, I'd pretty well surpassed my projected budget and I was tired. Like I said before, I felt like I'd just run a race or finished some huge project. I really hadn't anticipated feeling like this at all, especially in Buenos Aires, one of the party capitals of the worlds. But that was my state of mind on my first day. Regardless, I walked all over a lot of that city in the following days and did as much partying as I felt up to doing.

There's no real comparison that I'd want to make-Buenos Aires is like...Buenos Aires. Yes, it has an incredibly European feel to it, but I haven't seen enough European cities to make a valid comparison. I stayed at a hostel in the San Telmo neighborhood which is known for it antiques market, specifically the one on Sunday which has morphed into a weekly street fair, where the tourists as well as portenos (natives of Buenos Aires) flock to see the street performers including the street tangoers, old-time architecture, and cafes. It's a nice enough neighborhood, tree-lined streets, nice old buildings, some monuments, but it would be better if there was a couple of parks in the hood. There's also the Recoleta, where the upper class live, which I didn't visit really. Palermo, the yuppie hood (as I continue to label) with its trendy restaurants and bars. La Boca, the beginning of Buenos Aires and arguably Argentina, which is now a real artist hood, with its Caminito, which if the buildings are legit, is really, really cool, Club Atlético Boca Juniors stadium painted yellow and blue, and a bad rep for being dangerous for tourists that walk outside the tourist's streets. For the record, I walked through the non-tourist parts of the barrio (on a Sunday afternoon) and never thought twice about it. In fact, the barrio is really quite lovely. A real family feel as well as the feeling of any neighborhood that's in the shadows of a fabled stadium. There are government areas, the financial area, and the theater district. There's apparently a Chinatown and some other immigrant barrios. There's a metro and a legit bus system and taxis that use meters. There's some of the best cheap pizza around (cheap by US standards, ~$0.75/slice). Cafes on every corner that all serve these amazing facturas and medialunas. It's a legit legit legit city. I really really wish I wasn't in the state of mind I was in when I was there. Well, really what I wish I had there was some of my peeps, there with me experiencing it all. Shit, someone else there would really have been great when I went to La Cabrera to eat Argentine steak (truthfully, after I got past the first 5 bites, it tasted like pretty much any other really good steak I've eaten. More marbelization would have made that steak taste so much better. Really, what else makes red meat taste good? The fat, right?). Yeah, I ate the whole big-ass ribeye myself (at midnight no less. Nights get started late, especially weekend nights which is when I was there. People were still showing up at midnight to start eating.) but it would have been really nice to have someone eat it with me and drink a bottle of wine with me instead of me drinking the overly priced Johnnie Walker Negra. But that's for next time I suppose. What I usually think of when I visit a city is could I live here? Paris, Amsterdam, Miraflores Lima, Cusco, Santiago, San Francisco, DC, and Baltimore are all cities I know I could live in right now. I can safely add Buenos Aires to that list. Right now, I'm not a fan of the damn Italian mullets or the scruffy business look, the sing-songy Italian influenced Spanish, the very Western indifference to strangers that you can see in the peoples eyes, or the large amounts of carbohydrates that tempt me from every window. But that all would become part of the background fabric along with the street noise that seemed ceaseless. My favorite line from Argentina that I can remember right now was from John, the Irish guy I met in the Cordoba hostel, who said 'I fall in love every 4-5mins here.' I can understand his sentiments completely. I hope things went well for him with the girl he met in Cordoba.

So what now? Well, first I'm gonna go to sleep. Then tomorrow, I'm gonna upload my pictures and then hopefully work on getting this blog corrected with pictures and posts that have been written but not posted. Later in the week, I'm going back to the east coast for about 3weeks. During that time, hopefully it'll come to me how I'm going to make some money this summer so that I can continue to pay my bills while I go back to L. America. Yup. That's right. I'm goin' back. I'm not done with learning Spanish or checking out Latin America. Plus I think it's wise to get myself pretty fluent before I jump off to my next country.

Well. That's it for now. As you can see I've left it open for a sequel. I'll send out an email when I've perfected this blog the way I'd like it to be. Thanks for reading. Hasta luego peeps. I'm out.