¡Uy!

Or "Ay!" or "Oy!" or "Uff da!"

Happy (belated) St. Patrick's Day, a todos! Hope everybody had a good time. Buenos Aires actually has a pretty big group of people with Irish heritage, and in the Irish section of downtown (it should be "Little Dublin" or something, like Little Italy) there are a whole bunch of Irish pubs and they have a big street celebration on St. Patty's. Also, there are communities in Argentina that are mostly or all Welsh, and some of them speak only Welsh. As I've found out, people in Argentina and/or Buenos Aires are pretty mixed, culturally/ethnically speaking. I've seen a lot of blue and green-eyed people, people with skin pastier than mine, a bunch of blondes and even one redhead - like Red red!

I did not enjoy the St. Patrick's Day fest here because I'm sick. What is the deal with that? I had a low-grade fever most of the day yesterday and a terrible cough. It was raining all day Thursday and yesterday, so that may have had something to do with it, but yeah. My dad and I managed to make it outside when it cleared up yesterday to see an amazing sunset.

Today I felt better (though I'm still coughing like a 73-year old with emphysema) and the weather was perfect, so we went to this huge park near my dad's place and had a picnic with a bunch of his friends. It was right on the Rio de la Plata, which reminded me vaguely of Lake Superior, despite its obvious rivery-ness. The city is right along the banks of the river, but just before the point where the river meets up with the Atlantic, so it's really wide and you can't see to the other side, which is Uruguay. We had a good time playing frisbee and eating and flying my dad's kite, and two of my dad's friends have a 7 week old baby who is so sweet. I like babies.

Man, this city is crazy big, like 16 million people big, and that's half the country's population here in one gigantical metro area. Which means there are vast tracts of empty land lying around, because this is like the seventh biggest country in the world. It's a cool city, too, with tons of stuff going on all the time. It's hard to compare to my time in Venezuela because there I wasn't in a big city and I was on my own in a lot of ways, but as that was my other Latin American experience, it's hard not to. I've been trying not to think of all the ways they're different everywhere I go, like, "Oh, in Venezuela they did this..." There's good stuff and bad stuff about both places, and I'm sure if I spent more time here I'd come to find more negative aspects, but so far I like Buenos Aires a whole lot.

Well, I just checked my temp. and it's back up again. I should get some rest. More later.