Let's Pray Away the Gay

Today a good friend of mine sent me a link to an MSNBC article. He asked me if I knew what was happening in Anchorage, AK on Saturday... and me being in my own little world right now called "stress" of course answered "no." He then sent me the link and I started reading. In the past month and a half or so I've gone into warp speed on reading political articles and such. For the first time I can vote in a presidential election, so I want it to count. I read about McCain and Palin, Obama and Biden, more McCain, more Obama, and recently I have just been reading and reading and reading about Sarah Palin. To put it bluntly, she scares the shit out of me.

After reading this article, (if you haven't yet, you should do so now...) I found myself thinking about what a world I've grown up in. I lived in San Francisco for 18 years and then went to college in a mostly liberal city. I have never really experienced people going to rehabilitation for being gay, nor heard of anyone I knew "praying away the gay." My only real experience with this has been the movie But I'm a Cheerleader. It plays on the fact that people can't be cured of their natural feelings. For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's quite the hilarious satire.

For a while I didn't think that John McCain was such a bad guy. Sure I knew that I most definitely was for a Democratic nomination, but I thought that McCain in the Whitehouse was not the end of the world. My mind has changed. This election is supercharged now. Sarah Palin sure does scare the shit out of me, and rightfully so. Could my rights be taken away? How is it knowing that someone thinks you just need to pray a bit more to change something you were born with? If I pray a bit more can I also change my sex or become 6' tall? I'm not at all against praying. I grew up going to church, went to Catholic high school, love going to temple now. But, this kind of prayer just seems wrong to me. I would rather pray for world peace or something along those lines than praying to have a "normal" relationship.

Maybe Sarah Palin instead should pray for her son not to mess up and have to join the army instead of going to jail. Or maybe she should pray that her daughter had learned about condoms so she wouldn't have her bastard baby. Maybe she should take a look at her own life and the lives she's raised and see if there are bigger problems than who people love.

Loves It!

This past weekend I feel like I saw John McCain ads bashing Barack Obama the entire time. The commercial hails Obama as a celebrity in the likes of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.

Now... Paris Hilton and Britney Spears didn't know they were going to be in an ad supporting John McCain, so Paris Hilton did her own take on the video.

The Video

I like totally support Paris Hilton in the race!

SF Homeless come to Iguazú Falls!

Friday, July 19, 2008

Yesterday I arrived in Iguazú Falls after a 17 hour bus rude. The bus was pretty comfy: the seats reclined to a sleeping position, 1 TV for 2 people, dinner and breakfast. The only part that sucked was… well… it was 17 hours on a bus. I arrived in Iguazú at noon and got to my hotel at about 1.

After settling in, we went to do our half-day excursion. I had no idea what we were doing because… I’m on vacation… I let others think when my mind relaxes for a weekend.

We ended up on a tour of one of the native villages of the Guarani tribes. We were led on a tour (all in Spanish) of this native village. We saw vines and huts, tried some bread, watched our guide demonstrate some animal traps, listened to the village children sing, and bought handicrafts. In all of this, though, I couldn’t help but feel like I was intruding on someone else’s culture.

I just felt awkward being there. I felt awkward taking pictures, I felt awkward watching kids sing wearing old American hand-me-downs, I felt awkward buying goods from them. I felt like I was given a tour of live in poverty, an afternoon with the homeless, catching raccoons for food, and scrounging for clothing.

It wasn’t until the end of the tour that I realized that it’s just capitalism at work again. This tribe needs money, and, by exploiting its unique characteristics, it can make some money.

On a happier note....

After this tour of the "Indian Trail," our group was suckered into paying 95 pesos to go on a boat ride with great sunset views along the Paraná river. This river runs along the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Needless to say, it was worth the US$ 30. Once again there were members of the Guarani tribe who sang for the boat passengers. One of the members then came onboard to sell some of their merchandise.

On Saturday John and I and about 10 other students went to see the actual falls. John tells in his blog about our experiences that day.

This is a picture from the Paraná River

The next day we went to Iguazú Falls. Here is a little video of the falls. The water literally just keeps falling and falling and falling. Iguazú Falls are the widest falls in the world. Truly a spectacular sight. I can't believe I was NOT going to see them!

Road Rules

When I think of trying to walk around Buenos Aires all I can think of is that scene from Mean Girls where Regina George gets hit by a bus. If you've ever thought that San Francisco was scary to drive in, you then thought "Well... It's worse in New York..." I got news for you. Buenos Aires makes driving in New York seem like driving in Davis. Here there are street lights and stop signs...kinda... I fear for my life every time I take a cab or ride the bus. I used to drive busses... This is like how the bus driver from Speed had to drive. The busses go about 45-50 mph on normal city streets. Also... there aren't really lanes... I mean, there are lanes, but no one uses them. When a car is driving too slow, the car behind will tailgate at first to try to get the other one to move out of the way, and then will flash its brights several times when it comes down to it.

It makes me appreciate that people in America actually kinda sorta follow traffic rules. At least I don't usually fear for my life in the States.

I've decided that too much time has passed since going to Uruguay to adequately describe my time. We took a cruise ship to get there. There was sparkling wine. There was a light house....

Look at these photos to get an idea.

If you want to read about more happenings while I've been here in Argentina, my bud John has been posting as well about Buenos Aires. He's better about writing something every day.


Here are my other albums:

Buenos Aires
More Buenos Aires

¿Como?

I try and I try. I even try to answer questions that I don't understand with the correct answer of "¿Como?" instead of what we think of saying "¿Que?" Today I was in a store. The man working there asked me a question. I didn't understand what he was asking, so I said, "¿Como?" (granted I paused a little... but I was proud of myself for answering correctly). Then he asked "English?" I don't get it. Is it the way I walk, talk, breathe?? All I said was "Como" and there I am a foreigner. It seems like every time I try to speak Spanish to someone in a store, they always know just to start talking to me in English.

Oh well... At least I tried...

Deer in the headlights. I guess that's what I must look like. This only makes me think of how awful America is with foreigners. I can't even imagine trying to visit America.

Next to come: a full report on going to Uruguay and the past week's events.

Somewhat like David Sedaris's French in Me Talk Pretty One Day, I feel like the only word I know in Spanish is "Si." I guess that's better than "bottleneck."

Stop me if you've heard this one... An Irishman walks PAST a bar...

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 (technically Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 4:00am)

This really is a city that never sleeps. I thought that was New York City…but I was wrong. I live on a busy street in Buenos Aires. I am right near the Plaza de Mayo, a starting point for most demonstrations. Then the demonstrations usually go up Avenida de Mayo, my street, up to the Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest, busiest street in Buenos Aires. At all hours of the night I will hear cars and busses speeding past my hotel. I either wake up to zooming busses or most recently the sound of drums from the demonstrations. The demonstrations have been occurring nearly everyday, and mostly peaceful minus a car en fuego sometimes.

That’s a different topic entirely. I wanted to talk about how this is really a city that never sleeps. As you know, I’m here writing at 4 in the morning. I’ll start by giving the run-down of my night. At 6:30 tonight our teacher arranged a wine tasting at the restaurant associated with the Museum of Evita. I just took a course on winemaking, so this wine tasting was fun for me because I felt like I actually knew what our expert was saying. In general, since I’ve been in Buenos Aires, my friend John and I have been splitting bottles of wine when we get good dinners because we believe that it is part of the meal experience. Most bottles of wine in restaurants aren’t that expensive, so we’ve been taking advantage of that. We’ve tried two Torrontés, a Chardonnay, and a Malbec. The Malbec was the most expensive, and the least expensive at 19 pesos (about $6 US) was our first Torrontés. Both of these were fantastic wines. We’ve been trying to get wines we wouldn’t be able to get in the States. Torrontés and Malbec are grapes that are classically called Argentine grapes.

If Argentina does anything right, it’s wine and meat. My first experience with the wonderful beef here (other than the wonderful beef empanadas of course) was last night. A big group of us went to get sushi at a sushi bar. It turned out that it was more of a bar that also happened to serve sushi, which wasn’t going to work out so well because most people were hungrier than that. On the walk over from the Subte (the underground system here), I saw this place that looked like it might be somewhat decent. It had florescent red lights with the name of the joint and plastic coverings for an outdoor patio. The tip that this was going to be a good restaurant, which I didn’t even notice when I had walked by it the first time, was meat roasting in the window. The restaurant was called Emilo Criollo in Palermo Viejo, a neighborhood in BA. This meal was the best I’ve had so far in Buenos Aires. I’ve been to quite a few restaurants, but this one was the most expensive AND RIGHTFULLY SO! I decided that since they had meat cooking in the front window I might as well try some beef here. I had medallions of lomo (beef loin) in a creamy pepper sauce with potatoes au gratin, a shared bottle of Malbec, and, to top it off, chocolate mousse. I was pretty much in heaven. Now if you’re not jealous enough of what I got to eat, here’s the reason to be jealous. This meal only cost me 80 pesos. That’s just a little over $25 US!!

Have you planned your trip here yet?!

But, back to the wine tasting… Our class tried about 10 different bottles of wine. One of the bottles of Torrontés was the Crios label, which coincidentally my mom actually bought me for my 21st birthday a few weeks ago. Also, the table spread was pretty amazing. Not only was there lots of wine, but lots of bread and cheese and chicken bites wrapped in pancetta. Here in Argentina everything either has jamón in, on, or wrapped around another meat. Though, this ham tastes better than most other ham I’ve ever had.

We finished the tasting at about 9. We were going to go out to a bar for this guy’s birthday, but it was still early. Now here in Argentina most restaurants aren’t even ready for people to eat dinner until 9pm. In Davis people can start going to bars around 9 or 9:30, even 10. Here… no one goes out to bars or clubs until 2am. 2am!! Anyway, I was getting tired of waiting to go to a “popular” bar, so I suggested we wait until we could go to this other bar at the Irish pub right around the corner from our hotel. We hung out at this Irish pub rightfully named “The Clover” until about 1. A friend of someone else in the program knew someone who could get us into this other bar for free if we came a little early (ha! Early being 1am!). We went over to this other bar, which was okay, but I was tired and hungry. I hadn’t really eaten dinner after drinking all that wine and eating all that cheese and bread.

My friend Ryan and I decided to leave the other bar and walk home and find something small on the way home. We weren’t terribly hungry but just needed something. We stopped and got empanadas to go from a restaurant. We were crossing a street when we were stopped at the light. We both looked at each other and gave the other a weird look. We saw a woman with 3 policemen. She was wearing short shorts and high heels. We both assumed she was probably a prostitute or something. We were waiting at our light when I realized she was speaking in English. I then knew she was no prostitute. Apparently this light was taking a long time because it gave the woman enough time to realize that Ryan and I were speaking English to each other. We then went to help the woman because she asked us if we spoke English. I saw this woman looking through her Spanish-English dictionary with a hopeless look on her face. She was walking back to her hostel and then to a club with a local guy. The policemen were just worried for her because she’s a tourist and this guy had been driving with two of his friends and they stopped and dropped him off on the side of the road. This seems like suspicious activity to me, but the woman had met this guy in a club another night. We had to explain this all to the officers. I asked the woman if she had been drinking earlier in the night and she said yes. She had a Sprite bottle with her. The officer asked what was in the bottle. She said Sprite. When he tried to take it from her she then changed it to include vodka. Her excuse was “I’m Irish!” I guess even the real Irish use that excuse to be drunk. Happy Tuesday night!

My First Blog...EVER

Sunday, July 6, 2008

It wasn’t until today that I ever thought I should start blogging…but I usually have things to say or ideas about events that happen in my everyday life that I never write down. I consider myself a pretty terrible writer (though still better than others), so I figure I should start practicing more now.

I’ve now been in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a week. I flew out Sunday June 29th, and now it is Sunday July 6th. I’ve been here studying Music and Culture in Latin America with the UC Davis Summer Abroad program. Coming into this I had no idea what to expect. The last time I was out of the country I was 12 years old. My family went to England for two weeks. I have no memory of customs or the hustle and bustle in the airport. I don’t really even remember much from the trip, mostly because I was very much into the Harry Potter book I was reading at the time– bad planning on J.K. Rowling’s part by releasing the 4th book right before I left for England (though you could say I was at least reading something British!).

The week leading up to my departure was frantic. I was busy helping my parents with their summer program and enjoying my first week as a 21-year-old. I had no time to pack or even think about packing. Not only was I frantic with all that I was doing, but also worrying about not knowing any other Spanish than “No hablo Español” or “¿Donde está el baño?” Granted, those are two important phrases, but I was worried about being totally immersed in a Spanish speaking country with little Spanish capabilities. My biggest concern was getting from Ezeiza International Airport to Hotel Novel (where I am residing these 4 weeks). Those were the only two places I needed to be, but I had no idea how to ask to get to the hotel.

I got to the desk of the Manuel Tienda Leon shuttle service (where my Lonely Planet guide suggested I go) and had a look of absolute helplessness on my face. I couldn’t even get out the phrase “¿Hablas Inglese?” The woman working there asked me “Eeengleeesh?” I said, “Si, please.” From there I was a little less concerned about not knowing much Spanish. At this point I had a phone that I could call my program director on if I really needed help.

If you have ever considered traveling to a foreign country or studying abroad somewhere…DO IT! There is nothing more humbling yet also amazing than being in a country where you barely understand the language. Everyday I am more surprised and excited about how much more Spanish I have learned. For example, I now know how to say, “Puedo usar el internet, por favor?” That’s a complete sentence… and USEFUL too.

Four times a week I have my Music and Culture class. It’s from 12-1:15pm M-Th. It combines listening to music from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Cuba, Mexico and a few other Latin American regions. We listen to recordings and watch YouTube videos, but generally just get a feel for the differences and similarities between regions. After that class on Mondays and Wednesdays I have “Survival Spanish.” This is the beginning of the beginning. Out of 19 people on the trip, there are only two people who have had no formal Spanish training…I’m one of the two. The other is the guy I convinced to go with me, John. Our teacher is from Buenos Aires and speaks about as much English as Spanish I did before coming on the trip. Everything she says is in Spanish when she is teaching us. Though it makes it hard for me to understand learning Spanish, there’s something about someone pounding a sentence in you head until you just…get it. I probably understand about 30% of everything she says. Some of the other people in the class know about 95%, but they’re good sports about it.

Now onto the entire reason I decided to start this whole blog thing.

Today I decided that I should go to church. I’ve been going to church all my life. Don’t get me wrong, church is awesome, but I don’t think it was ever my number one priority to go to church when I was in Buenos Aires. I decided to go because I realized that Catholicism is huge in Argentina. I figured it would be really cool to go see a Catholic mass in a country that was so very Catholic. There is a very beautiful church next to this amazing cemetery with probably thousands of mausoleums, including Evita’s grave. A guy on the program and I both thought it would be cool to go, so we went this morning at 11am. We didn’t know what time there was mass, so we guessed that they would have one either at 11 or 12. We were right. In fact, there was mass at 6am, 10am, 11am, 12pm, 7pm, and I think another time that night. I was kind of amazed by the amount of masses in a single day there were.

We got there just a few minutes before the 11am mass and took our seats. In the back of my mind I knew the mass was going to be in Spanish, but I kind of forgot that it really meant that EVERYTHING would be in Spanish. I went to four years of Catholic high school and thankfully I knew what every part of the mass was. I wasn’t lost in the mass. I knew what the English equivalent was at most times…and yet I still felt to disconnected. It made me think of what life was like when the entire mass was in Latin. It wasn’t accessible to everyone. I feel like it’s a double-edged sword. Having masses in the country’s home language helps everyone to feel like they know what’s going on. However, I feel that it would also work well to have masses in Latin because then really it represents what the word catholic means– universal. Having a Latin mass means that anywhere you go it’s exactly the same. I could go to Middle of Nowhere, Antarctica and still know exactly what was happening in the mass. I’m not sure I think anyway is necessarily better, but it did get me thinking this morning.

Another thing I thought about when I was at mass this morning was something that we call CCM in my family. It means Crappy Catholic Music. I was baptized Lutheran, confirmed Episcopalian, and attended Catholic high school (where I was very involved in ministry). Here I was in this beautiful church. Gold everywhere, statues and everything. The only thing that was missing was an organ. As I was sitting there I felt cheated by having two relatively bad singers and a guitar. I felt like it should be a rule that any nice looking church should be required to have good music. Next Sunday I’m going to try the Cathedral. I hope that a cathedral would have an organ… and maybe I’ll be able to have missa sin guitarra (as they would say here).
I guess I have to end this. I’ve never really been good at endings… so I guess I’ll just say that this is the beginning!



This is one of the mausoleums from the cemetary. It’s amazing how much people here care about the deaths of loved ones. I’ve never seen so many mausoleums and beautiful ones at that with statues!