Saturday I sat about trying to learn as many of the dozens of unknown spanish words I'd accumulated over the course of my 4 hours of classes this week. My hostel in BA, Sandanzas, has been an absolutely specatcular place to lounge and hang out. Whether in a hammock or in the group room, there's never a shortage of places to crash. Not to mention that they sell beers and sodas here cheaper than you can get anywhere in the city. A liter of beer from our fridge costs $US1. My conversions are crap, but I think its somewhere in the vicinitiy of 30 ounces. Pretty good deal, though it doesn't seem to be helping me retain my spanish too well.

In the evening, a group of us from the hostel decided to head out to dinner. We covered quite a few countries between us. I think there were two Americans, two Swiss, an Italian, a Frenchman, a Danish chap, and an English guy. Half the table conversed in french while the rest of us talked in English and the remainder of the Indian restaurant we ate in spoke Spanish. The meal was terrific, and afterwards we headed out to see where the night might lead. Luckily, we stumbled upon a Carnaval celebration in one of the barrios, Palermo Viejo. All the participants were dressed up in quite outrageous costumes and dancing along to the beat of the drums. It was a good time, but I'm sure it was nothing compared to the craziness of Carnaval in Brazil.

At the end of the night, we split into two taxis for the ride home, and that's where the fun began. Myself and the other american were in one taxi with the english gent, Elliot. As it turns out, he was the only one who knew enough Spanish to get us home, and even he was far from fluent. About three minutes into our ride, our driver starts asking us where we're from, and what we're doing in Buenos Aires as the neighborhoods we drive through become sketchier and sketchier. We do our best to convey our info to him, that we're essentially vacationing. At this point he begins trying to sell us on the idea of visiting some "ladies of the night" he knows of, who would be thrilled to entertain some international men such as ourselves. Now I won't speak for Elliot or Matt, but I didn't think I looked that desparate. I've actually devoted a good portion of my days to avoiding exactly that look of desparation. Perhaps I've failed miserably. Anyway, it was fairly obvious the guy gets a commission from this brothel, because he whips out a brochure, whiffs it somewhat suggestively, and continues on about the beautiful, bi-lingual babes at this BA brothel. We assure him it's too late for us to be partaking in the brothel, and all we want to do is get to sleep. Naturally, as any good salesman would do, he reminds us that there is not better sleep aid than a good roll in the hay. Fair enough, hard to argue there, but we still refuse. At this point he pulls the taxi over and slows to a stop (always a bad sign). A gentleman in a tux comes out and essentially makes the same pitch. He's driven us to the brothel, just in case we were more interested than we let on. When we abstain one last time, he finally head's us off to the hostel.

I can say that, if nothing else, I picked up a couple of spanish words and phrases I highly doubt my instructor was planning to cover in the next couple of weeks.

Let the adventure continue.