sort of not the same

so we are living in an apartment in the center of buenos aires. we go out almost every night to eat huge steaks and each night at around 8 we have wine hour, which means that we buy a bottle (no, not box) of argentinian wine for about $2.50, then buy some grapes, some pears, some plums, some figs - whichever fruit we can get for under $.50 at the supermarket and then sit in our apartment drinking the wine and eating the fruit and remarking how cheap and great all of it is. at around 10 we go to the parilladas at which point we order said huge steaks, another bottle of wine - with club soda as its done here - and salads. over dinner we eat greedily and then remark about how cheap and good all of it is. by the time we are done, it is 12am or so. this is what time people ere stop eating. then we go out for a drink or something or a coffee, which inevitably comes with a cookie and a glass of bubbly water, and sit at the outdoor bar or cafe and watch people walk by and drink our drinks or coffees and remark about how nice the weather has been and how relaxed and healthy we feel. the truth is that although we are eating so much steak, it is always preceeded by fresh fruit, always accompanied by a healthy, colon cleansing salad and always followed by an arterie cleansing glass (or bottle) of wine. now that i have a mirror in my apartment, unlike in ecuador, i can see that ive become quite plump in my final weeks of ecuador. i attribute this to the pig binging i was doing. also the copius pairing of white rice with each and every meal couldnt have helped. and, the fact that the most commonly used - by about a ladelfull in every serving - spices found in ecuador are salt and sugar, couldnt have helped. here, though im eating cows all the time. they are not heavily salted. and, they dont come with white rice. so, i feel healthy. we have spent the days - after we deem the morning worthy to wake up to (aka11am) - walking around the city for miles on end, visiting cafes, visiting stores, visiting people weve met, visiting potential jobs, watching people and remarking about how many of them there are - how we didnt know that this city was about as populated as new york, and how we could really get used to this.

of course, tomorrow we have some job interviews and we wont have our days free to walk around town feeling like some slacking aristocrats with nothing better to do, but its been nice.

all tht travelers we have met, and even people we knew in cuenca ill prepared us for this city. the majority of travelers come to south america to see indigenous culture because a) it is most different and b) the places where it is found are generally cheaper than the places where it is not found. so, people get their flights to buenos aires or out of buenos aires when they want to travel the whole continent. they get to buenos aires and waste a bunch of money and grow bitter because they now cant travel as long as they had wanted to. or, they finish up in buenos aires and have already spent all their money and cant enjoy it here as they would have wanted to. so, when you see them in the mountains of peru or ecuador and they are sitting around the hostel hungover from a night of overindulging on the local moonshine, wearing a newly purchased poncho and boiling their daily pot of plain pasta, they will tell you that argentina is not the real south america. that is fallacious. admittedly, we are staying in a free apartment courtesy of annas godfather, and so dont have that daily expense that other travelers might have. but, the fact of the matter is that given argentinas recent economic crash and unwillingness of the people to change their lifestyle, a good bottle of wine here costs less than the bottle of moonshine (ok, i know, the same amount of the moonshine will get you more drunk, but who needs that?). they probably got ripped off for the poncho no matter how hard they bargained or how down with the people they feel they are, and, their daily meal of plain pasta just shows their general lack of creativity. so, i am here to tell you that buenos aires is definitely the real south america: its just different than the rest.

we also have hot water. but, in order to flush the toilet, we have to fill te toilet tank up. but, the toilet tank is not like a regular toilet tank. instead, it is controled by a knob on the side of the toilet and a faucet that pours water into an unseeable container behind the wall. i cant even really describe this... its weird though. and to flush the toilet you have to reach your hand into the wall and pull on this hook-like contraption. to get cold water in the shower or any of teh sinks, the toilet water faucet has to be gushing, and, to get hot water in te shower the sink has to be running too... i dont know how to describe that any better...