This post actually has nothing to do with travel.  It’s less interesting and insightful than the travel posts, and mostly just features me in various stages of intoxication with friends from hom.  But, as I do not own sweetHangingWithFriendsBackAtHomeblog.com, I had to post these here.

Less than four hundred dollars, round trip, nets me a ticket home and I jump on the deal.  I miss my family, my friends, creature comforts, live music with songs that don’t inevitably use the word “corazon” somewhere, Taco Bell, good pizza, having more than three beer options (all of which are Pilseners) and being in a land where the dominant language is (at least currently) my own.  My friend Flynn grabbed up a ticket to see the newly reformed Phish, Jeff’s handling a crabfest on the MD side of town and Jessica’s wedding at the Mandarin Oriental in NYC warrants a weekend of its own.  Nothing like a vacation!

Since A) a picture’s worth a thousand words, B) it doesn’t have much to do with travel and C) I’m lazy and trying to get caught up here as fast as I can, I’m just going to describe the rest of the week in pictures:

Friday

My friend Pete greets me at the door to his apartment, topless.  Maybe some people would find this sexy, but it’s not exactly my scene.  He’s just waking up.  Despite this, he listened when I’d told him I wanted to get the most out of my ten days in America, and planned out an exhaustive trip through Manhattan’s east side, covering much of Chinatown and Little Italy.  Dim Sum was my one specific request, so we started there.

I'm not sure what the name of this Dim Sum restaurant was, but it was this full on a Friday at 1 pm, and had a wide assortment of live entertainment. This was only about half the room, too, and yet we still had to wait for some open spots at a table.

Dim Sum. I'd love to say this was prepping me for my upcoming year in China, but apparently this is a very different style from what I'll be getting in Chongqing.

This jerky place is all the rage right now with many of my NYC friends. Tasty, and unlike anything else I've ever tried, but not as mind-blowing as the hype might've led me to believe.

If there's ever a type of candy you're looking for, there's a better shot of finding it at this place than anywhere else on earth.

Ordering knishes.

For dinner, I chose Mexican and got mildly mocked for it. Look, Mexican food is actually in short supply through most of South America and I was honestly missing some quality burritos.

Trying out some Argentinian dulce de leche liquor with Louise. I've got pics from this night with lots of people, but since she's a semi-regular reader, she gets posting priority :)

Saturday and Sunday in Boston

Besides scoring floor tickets to the opening night of Phish tour at Boston’s Fenway Stadium, Flynn was also gracious enough to both drive and provide lodging as well with his Bostonian friend Laurie.  Following the four hour drive to her apartment, Saturday was mostly a calm uneventful exploration of Boston’s rooftops and Oyster bars.  Sunday was the main event.

A pre-show party at our friend Mark's place. Perfect weather.

Just a few blocks from the main event

Me, Laurie and Flynn

Flynn and I are circled in red, though good luck finding me. He's easier to spot with the signature green jacket, though I'm looking off to the right.

Monday and Tuesday

Knowing I’m in town for only a week, my Virginian parents make the trek up to the big city to get a little Yancy time in.  For two days, we venture around through parks, museums (cheap ones, at least) and pizzarias making the most of our time.

At the world-famous Lombardi's Pizzaria

The brick pizza oven at Lombardi's. This guy does this pose for tourists about 87 times a day.

Wednesday Night

Despite their never really learning how to sing that well, The Disco Biscuits still play my favorite live music on the planet, and it would’ve been a shame to catch Phish — a band I’m only connected to nostalgically at this point — three times while in town, and never get to see the Biscuits even once.  Wednesday night offered up a show in Providence, Rhode Island and after weeks of sweet-talking all of my employed friends into giving in to wanton irresponsibility, I finally succeeded with my friend Brittany.  Along the way, we picked up her friend Joy at the halfway point in Hartford, CT, which would also serve as our home for the evening, post-show.

Joy, me and Brittany. Complete fun -- not awkward at all!

At one point Joy mentioned her eccentric landlord kept chickens in his basement. It was crucial that I investigate!

Thursday and Friday: More Phish

The gracious Lazars of Long Island offered up their two condos to our assortment of misfits (yes, two — they bought a larger unit in the same building, but haven’t sold the first one yet) for two more concerts at Jones Beach Theatre in New York.  With only ten days stateside, there would be no rest for me.

The lovely Lazars of Long Island

Stay back, Brendan -- they're all mine!

2/5 of this night were hilarious. Sadly, only 2/3 of this picture are awesome. (Sorry to pretty much anyone reading this for all the obviously private jokes that make no sense without context)

MunchkinJess’s Wedding

On very little sleep after two hedonistic nights of Phish, i put on my finest (and only) suit and made my way back into the city for a rendezvous at the Mandarin Oriental (apparently, it’s quite the swanky establishment — you can’t even enter the main lobby without a suit on) for my friend Jess’s wedding.  As she’s of Chinese descent and he’s Jewish, the wedding was a tasteful mix of both heritages, with some contemporary elements thrown in for good measure (”Here Comes the Bride” replace by a Yo La Tengo number, for instance).

Jess and Dave. Note the chuppa in the background, a traditional cloth covering over the ceremony, colored in a dark red, the Chinese color for good fortune.

Melissa ended up being my unofficial date for the evening, such that I never went without a dance partner. The photographer apparently liked us.

Sunday: Maryland Crabs

Argentinian King Crabs never quite did it for me, and I was quick to mention to traveling companions how superior our Maryland variant of the crab was, regaling all that would listen with tales of the Maryland crabfest: picnic tables covered with newspapers, wooden mallets, a bushel or two of crabs and multiple large piles of Old Bay seasoning.  Thanks to my friends Jeff (for picking up the crabs) and Liz (for hosting), I got my wish.

A quality MD crabfest

Crabs!

Monday Mimosas

Lisa, possibly one of the best people ever, picked me up early after arranging a mimosa brunch at our friend Rachel’s house.  Luckily all of these people seem to have night jobs!

Though I've recently started to tolerate Bloody Marys, I think Mimosas still win out as the number one morning beverage

Lisa and me. Something funny was apparently happening here.

Tuesday: Back to Peru

And just like that, it was over.  I spent the last of my time with my Mom; sure, I’d just seen her in Santiago, but mothers never can quite get enough time.  I let her get even more time with me by driving me to the airport.  When you’re only in the country for ten days of the year, you’re a celebrity — a walking party.  One more week in the States and I’m sure coming across people, the reaction would return to “oh, you again…” but as it stood, no greeting was anything less than a bear hug, and for an attention whore such as me, that’s enough to keep me out of the country for 51 weeks per year for a long time!

Mom and me, just before heading off. I miss those glasses. They'll be stolen the following week in Cuzco...

On to Cuzco…

Seven months on the road and suddenly I was done with ancient ruins, idyllic natural beauty, the college dorm-like hostel lifestyle and never sleeping in the same bed for more than three nights in a row.  Sure, I missed my family and friends, but not in the homesick “I wanna go home” sense.  No, what I missed was a sense of normalcy.  Unshifting surroundings.  A home, even if said place wasn’t anywhere I’d ever been before.

I chose Buenos  Aires.

The college couple in the room next to mine. She's Brazillian, he's Argentinian.

With a little over a month’s time to spend integrating myself into the heart and soul of the city, I used my first few days apartment-hunting on craigslist (it’s as big down there as anywhere I’ve seen in the States) and meeting an assortment of landlords.  Prices ranged from 220-500 for the month for single rooms in shared housing, and eventually I settled on 290 for one of four rooms offered by an Argentinian music producer named Guido who lived in the downstairs basement.  To the left of my sparse (but wifi-included) room, a young Argentinian/Brazilian couple in college; To the right, an Israeli magician named Dimago.

Dimago was friendly and enterprising, and while he still relentlessly haggled and made deals all around the city so much that no one would confuse him for anything but an Israeli (at one point he pushed a sushi restaurant on us really hard, then ate for free as he’d worked a deal out in advance with the owner that he could do so any time he brought three or more people along), he was far friendlier than his younger compatriots that were fresh out of the army.  His magic focused on sleight of hand, card tricks and mentalism and were almost unanimously phenomenal, and he’d actually convinced two clubs to pay him to wander about performing.  It was interesting to watch him at work the one time that I did, though dimness and excessive noise from the music probably caught his nightclub act from ever really taking off while I was in town.

His one great weakness, though, was a monotone Borat-like delivery that make the strange, one-liner attempts at humor he attempted to throw into his act tend to fail confusingly.  For example:

Dimago, in the midst of a trick:  ”So it’s a good thing… that I am good at magic… you know?  Because it is better than my old job…”

My friend Nicole and I wait out the pause and then look at each other.  Does he want us to probe further on this one?  Ok.

“Uh…  So what was your old job?”

“Well… I sold drugs… to kids.”

Nicole and I look at each other, perplexed.  It’s a joke, right?  I mean, even in Israel it’s probably not cool to sell drugs to small children…

“Oh,” we say. “Ok.”

To his credit, the trick is outstanding.

Couchsurfing

There’s little more to say that wasn’t covered by my first visit here.  Avoiding clubs entirely, I opted to semi-successfully figure ways to meet and bond with the local populace.  The most fruitful of these attempts involved the website couchsurfing.com.  Ostensibly a way for people to travel on the cheap while meeting fun and exciting new foreign strangers, its users in Buenos Aires pride themselves on being the most social couchsurfing community on the Internet.

One of the cooking lessons: An Irishman and an Argentinian making empanadas. Said meat pockets are ubiquitous throughout the country, cheap and generally always pretty good.

“Events” take place on a nightly basis: cooking lessons, concerts, English/Spanish practice groups, parillas (Argentinian barbecues) and, ostensibly, orgies.  I’m not sure if the last one ever happened or not.  Most of us were sure it started as a joke, but as many as twenty people of both sexes put their names down as potential orgy-goers, and Dimago was one of them.  Utterly fascinated, I regularly asked him how the plans were progressing, though participants had hit a roadblock upon realizing that none of them lived in a large enough (or possibly squalid enough) house to accomodate twenty people simultaneously copulating.

What’s more, the “sexually liberated” women that had initially put their names down with the intention of experiencing a mature, respectful, carnal romp, suddenly came to realize that such a thing is nearly impossible from nearly 97% of the male population on the Internet.  I’m not sure whether it was the guy excited about bringing his camera or the slew of users publically expressing their aversion to “fat chicks” (the message board was equally made up of English and Spanish writers), but as of my departure from Buenos Aires the list was down to two girls.

In general, the couchsurfing boards focused more on traditionally wholesome fare, though.  Monday night in Buenos Aires hosts a weekly show of heavily choreographed drumming called La Bomba del Tiempo.  Rain or shine, the large outdoor venue (comfortably located only two blocks from my apartment) fills up with drummers, young Argentinians and a dense cloud of marijuana smoke.  A conductor maintains a steady rhythm, keeping the 20+ member percussion orchestra playing in unison while throngs of concert goers vibrate to the Latin-influenced beat.

For a month, I did nothing but live in Buenos Aires.  Why not?

My final night in BA, I purchased this tenderloin for under four US dollars. In terms of both quality and price, Argentinian steaks are the best on Earth.