Juxtapositions, Vendimia, y los boliches

I will begin this post with a juxtaposition, possibly my favorite of all literary techniques. I have two applications on the background of my computer. The first is a 5-day forecast of the weather in Mendoza and the second is the snow/trails report for Sunday River in Maine. It is 29C in Mendoza and the little icon indicates sun with some fuzzy, incandescent lines across it, while at Sunday River it is 37F with 50" of snow at the base of the mountain. Juxtaposition complete.

This past weekend was Vendimia, the festival of the harvest. It's basically the biggest party of the year in Mendoza and it brings in approximately 200,000 tourists every year and is growing annually. On Friday night I went to Via Blanca, one of the four events of Vendimia. Here's the lowdown: Via Blanca is a parade where snazzily decorated floats carry the reinas, beauty queens that represent each of the 16 different departments of the province (in addition to being the name of the major city, Mendoza is also is the name of the province), throughout four downtown streets. The culmination of Vendimia, the first night of Acto Central, is essentially a beauty pageant in which one of the reinas wins, represents her department, is admired/made fun of by all, and plays some sort of ambassadorial role in the grander scheme of Argentine government/bachelor parties. During the parade the reinas and their court throw produce that their department is famous for into the crowd of onlookers. So there's the typical grapes, pears, and peaches, followed by the slightly more dangerous melons and wine (in bottles). While I was not fortunate enough to catch a bottle of wine, I also did not get smacked in the face with a cantaloupe. I suppose I broke even. I was able to catch two bunches of grapes, but couldn't eat them without wondering whether or not those reinas had clean hands.

After Via Blanca was over, a few friends and I thought it would be a good idea to go to a boliche, see what it's about, and never have to do it again. So we boliched it up, saw what it was about, and now I never have to do that again. It was definitely something I needed to do once while here, but found that the people in our group were really the only ones dancing... I assumed that in a dance club we might run into people moving their bodies in an expressive and rhythmic manner to the music, but I guess that's not how it's done in Mendoza. People were mostly milling about trying to talk to each other over the booming bass line, as well as moderately moving their hips (perhaps accidentally in time with the music). I might be seriously misjudging the whole situation, but people immediately knew we were not Argentines because of our dancing. On the other hand, I can now check "boliche" off the list of things to do, as well as a.) flirting poorly in broken Spanish with a bouncer to please let my male friend into a club and succeeding! (the bouncers refused to let the only male in our group into the boliche), b.) staying up in true Argentine fashion until 6:30 a.m., and c.) realizing I know all the lyrics to My Love by Justin Timberlake.

I'm pretty exhausted right now, but the basic message of this post is that I am having a wonderful time right now. Aside from my intense bowel problems and stress regarding grants/fellowships deadlines for Bates, I am experiencing a surprisingly low level of frustration, cultural shock, and anxiety. I can also see the Andes from my front door, which helps.

Tomorrow I am meeting with an academic adviser to pick my classes for the semester, standing on line for 302049 hours at the bank to deal with Argentina visa bureaucracy, and dodging every car that almost runs me down as I try to cross the street. I can't wait (and I actually write that with complete sincerity). I hope everyone reading this is doing well!

I leave you all with a photograph I took during the Acto Central last night in the Greek Theater in the mountains. It is the last event of Vendimia and is where the reina is announced, but more importantly it's where an amazing performance of dance, music, and history is performed by hundreds of Mendocinos. In addition, a photograph of my host dad and I with the my first asado (100% Argentina cow) cooking over the fire.