What's worse? Tripe or an ugly socialist?

7.13.08 – It’s been a few days since I last wrote, and it was filled with meetings, driving, clubbing, and a new city. It is only 7:00pm right now, but an ill advised glass of water has limited the distance I can travel from home. As a result, I have decided to stay in tonight and watch the Simpsons dubbed in Spanish.

During the day on Friday I had my last two meetings, and they too went very well. After they all finished I took a quick nap, for at 7:30pm Alejandro, the guy I worked with to set up my meetings in Mendoza, offered to drive me to Cordoba, my next destination. I was looking forward to it, for not only would we be making an eight hour drive, but he invited me to stay with him at a friend’s house in Rio Quarto, about five hours away.

Our ETA was about midnight, and the drive was beautiful. That part of Argentina is remarkably flat, but because of that you could see forever and the stars were shining. And to top it all off, we were burning free gasoline that a friend hooked us up with!

Among sips of mate we solved the problems of the world, sometimes is English and sometimes in Spanish. Due to some delays, such as them being a little late to pick me up, a police checkpoint, and a detour that took us forty kilometers out of our way, we arrived at about 2:00am.

We (there were four of us in the car) walked into the apartment to be greeted by three of Alejandro’s friends, and the Fernet was flowing. We drank pitchers of said Fernet (that Italian liquor similar to Jagermeister that they mix with coke) and listened to music.

Snack time at 3:00am deserves a mention, particularly in the context of my (non) vegetarianism. Empanadas came out of the oven to accompany our beverages and they smelled delicious. I was two bites into one when I was told that these empanada didn’t have meat in them. Upon hearing this I said, “Are they vegetarian?” enthusiastically. To which I received a reply of “no, it’s stomach.” I looked closer, and indeed, it was packed with tripe, that white, rubbery, honeycombed food made from stomach lining. In slight shock, I finished my empanada in two bites without chewing, and worked it down with a couple of healthy gulps of Fernet and coke. I think that was the most cultural thing that I have eaten since in haggis in Scotland .

By 4:00am we decided we were ready for the clubs. Six Argentines and an American. Until six in the morning we passed around bottles of beer, talked to anyone who would listen, and took copious amounts of pictures.

I was talking to this one girl (don’t worry, I told her all about Ashley in the first five minutes!) about nothing much in a mixture of Spanish and English when her friend came up to us. I don’t want to sound rude, but she was the less attractive member of the group and as a result I made sure to include her in our conversation. Within thirty seconds she asked where I was from, within forty five seconds I had learned she was a socialist, and within sixty seconds I was in the middle of a verbal onslaught. Oh, and she was drunk.

I understand more Spanish than I speak so my counterpoints were weak at best and I simply had to bear the brunt of it. And those issues I raised I had to repeat only five minutes later, for she was drunk and would forget what I said.

Amongst furtive hand signaling searching for a rescue mission, I was finally relieved when some of the guys came to help me out. After that the theme of the night was, “save Ryan” and which was shouted from various street corners.

With the club closing at six and our efforts to find another unsuccessful, we made it home by seven in the morning! We piled into every nook and cranny we could find and fell asleep amidst a symphony of snores.