Stories from my 14-month study abroad in Buenos Aires, my 16-month post-college move to Miami, and my get-me-the-hell-out-of-Miami move to Denver

Monday, March 24, 2008

Semana Santa

So I just finished my first big holiday weekend in Argentina, Semana Santa. My friend Hannah and I headed to Mar Del Plata, a huge beach resort city, along with a bunch of other IES students to get some sun before fall starts to set in. Semana Santa is to Argentina as Labor Day is to the States. It's the last big weekend of the summer.

Anyways, we left on Thursday afternoon and got to Mar Del Plata at about 9pm. The busride was about six hours and it was very pretty smooth. We had front row seats on the second level of the bus so we got to see the landscape and everything pretty well. There was one pretty intense accident while we were driving down. This little car lodged itself under the the truck part of a semi-trailer and they both burned up. We drove by afer the fire was put out, but it was very destructive.

The first night Hannah and I took it easy in preparation for the next day at the beach. The next day I walked about 45 minuted down the beach to meet some IES-ers and we enjoyed the sun and Quilmes all day. That night in the hostel we met some cool Canadian girls. They were from Montreal and are spending 6 months traveling around South America. With them we went to Sobremonte.

Sobremonte....probably the largest club I've ever been inside. It was the equivalent of four clubs put together and took up around three city blocks. I've never seen anything that big. We got to the club around 3:30AM, and it was just starting to get going. We danced until around 8AM when the club closed. The DJ did not let us down, very good techno/progressive all night. A cool guy named Ceasar invited us to an after party he was DJing. Hannah and I stayed until 10AM, and then had to go, we were just too tired. Rafael and Camille, the Canadians, stayed until 12:30pm. They're rockstars.

The next days followed in the same manner. Going to the beach, walking around the city, get some food, and then go to Sobremonte. My body is officially wore out. As a sign of thankfulness for what I put it through, I'm currently enjoying the full force of the summertime cold. It's almost an "I'm going to have to carry a hanky" cold. Thanks body!

Dinner time...I'll write more in a bit. Enjoy the video. I have more I'm going to post.







Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://ali-in-argentina.blogspot.com/

patrick, this is my VERY good friend allison's blog... the one that is on the fulbright scholarship in your neck of the woods. she's terrific. i can do an intro for the two of you by email or facebook whenever you'd like.... i'll just do it right now since i'm thinking about it. she and i traveled/studied/lived in mexico together, she the graduated and moved to ireland to work on the protestant/catholic conflict there, now she's in argentina. really cool person, you should become friends.

Geoff said...

You are one lucky man. That looks AMAZING!