calle florida: more than one way to this street

on our recent ACA trip to buenos aires (a mite long, and too expensive for my liking, but supposedly necessary anyway) we had five days to review the city. our most frequented venue was a street named Calle Florida. this street is solely for pedestrians, which makes it a tad easier to get around on foot. obviously. however, most of the common activities that take place on this street include the loosing of money,,,such as: buying clothes, gifts, food, or being pickpocketed. thankfully i and those with me only experienced the first three of those commercial activities.
on the last day that we were in buenos aires, our directors informed us that we had the whole day to do whatever we wanted. this brightened my outlook on life for the time being, because while i like museams, and capital buildings, and pigeons(wait, i dont like pigeons) one can only look at so many without them all running together a bit.
therefore, when i was turned loose upon the city with only the whims of my and my friends' brains, it was only natural that our activities turned out thus:
for a while, we, in calle florida, did the usual buying of t-shirts, or books, or food. but soon we tired of these things (or rather, ran out of money) therefore, we needed a new activity to fill the remaining 4 and a half hours we still had there. wherefore, i purchased a quaint little recorder in a shoppe on the side, and found a cozy spot on the street to sit down, and commenced to play a tune upon my new instrument. as i am not accustomed to playing the recorder, i became fatigued after merely 40 minutes, so i stopped my playing. i looked in my shoe, which i had set infront of me for tips, and to my delight, found a little over 5 pesos.
before i recount our next steps of entertainment, i have to inform you of a tendancy of the occupants of calle florida: as we walk down this street, we are often, if not constantly approached by people handing out small peices of paper that advertise restaraunts, shoppes, or other worse things. hence, we were mildly perturbed by this frequent occurrance. this led to our next activity:
with the five pesos i had made with my recorder, i purchased a small box of Q-tips from a pharmacy on the side, and me and my friends christian and jeremy walked about with our pockets full, and when we were approached by these advertisers, and offered a paper, we offered a 'hisopo' (q-tip) back at them. some were so surprised they actually took them. we also paused to mimic a statue-man. we stood on either side of him for around three minutes staring straight ahead, and not moving. i gladly announce that a lady approached me directly after this activity and told me that i was a far better statue than that man was. but still we besowed his unmoving pockets with a few hisopos as we departed.
after we tired a bit of our hisopo distribution, we happed to be near a shoe-shiner's station. and according to the desire i've had all my life, i approached his chair, sat down, and extended my foot to his attendance - - without my shoes. i cannot in words describe the look on his face in that, and the following moments. it was my honest best to keep my own face to rights whilst i discussed with him the invalidity of his refusal to polish my foot. we had quite a lovely conversation upon this matter we did, which my friend christian captured on his camera.
with fortune, i had elected a jovial shoe-shiner, and i left him laughing, and with my compliment of a brand-spanky-new pink hisopo.

Stitches

El Campamento de Balsas...
...is a weekend where very many youth and otherwise gather together at the parana river with rafts that they've built and float, paddle, or by other means propel themselves upon the raft down the river.
i managed to get myself into a group with the most sofisticated balsa: it had five sets of pedals connected by chains to two propellers out the back. most of the other balsas, in comparison, were only barrels with wood or bamboo across the top, operated by makeshift paddles. we were obviously the best balsa.
however, despite the incredible design, and overall good looks, the thing we were missing was power. it would have taken about fifty horspower to operate that beast correctly, and at the desired speed. therefore, we had a rather leisurely float down the parana river.
but thats not my story.
in the wonderful leisure that we had, we often swam to cool off from the scorching sun (and to escape the balsa, because we also overlooked the fact that painting a balsa black would not improve our situation with the scorching sun) one of these times after i went swimming in the wonderful wet water, i desired to climb back out to bask in the scorching sun on the black balsa, and since we had no ladder(another small oversight) it was custom to clamber out wherever and however one wanted. i chanced to elect the worst place, however, and in the process of exiting, i quite soundly gashed a wound in my right knee upon a metal flange protruding from the balsa. upon gaining the balsa, i examined my wound, and to my utter shock (literally) i was met with a hole in my leg that permitted me a startlingly clear view of my vastus medialis (a leg muscle) and a rather large tributary of the my greater saphenous vein whose specific name escapes me at this time. (and google does not render) wherefore, i commenced to tap the knee of one of my balsa companions, and ask her where the first aid kit was. to which she turned around to see what damage i had done to myself, and nearly fell quite off the balsa. but she recovered, and we cleaned it up, and hailed a motorboat of the campamento overseers, and they whisked me off to a bigger motorboat which contained a doctor. and there on the boat, on the side of the river, he kindly sewed three stitches into my leg, rather without anaesthesia, (a might painful, i say!) and i had a faster ride the rest of that day in the motor boat. this was the first day of the campamento, november 10.
today, november 20, my friend sabri was kind enough to help me by removing the stitches, and making sure everything was ok. i am a healed, and stitch-free man again, and am again ship shape upon my knee.
following are photos, (only of after the stitch, christian felt shame to take photos as i was languishing upon the balsa at first) of my knee and the escapade.


the cleaning in the morning. to make sure i wasnt gangrenous.



a wonderful display, no?