Tuesday, November 21, 2006

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.

6 Comments:

Blogger Jonathan Gerrans said...

now david stop confusing the poor locals with your random acts of randomness!

:)

12:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is so awesome. Why didn't I try any of that when I went to Calle Florida? I guess it takes the Maine genius...

3:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

nicely done my friend. I wish I'd been there. from showing up drunk french chicken fighters, to ___ back flips contests, we really ought to do a few more moves in concert. you should have asked the dude to shine your gloves.

3:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey David!
I'm glad that I found your blog! your antics continue to amuse me :) Are you still running up walls like a squirrel?! We miss you in orchestra! This last weekend we played the Bach Magnificat - it was really fun :)
Anyways...
Dios te bendiga,

6:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hmmm, reminds me of some unknown characters who walked through a mall sporting paper masks (with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth) and fake nose/mustache/glasses. They then proceeded to pose in the Bath and body works window.

Why would anyone want to spend their time shopping when they could be having so much more fun doing things like you and your friends did? It boggles my mind.

thanks for the fun account, it was amusing.

oh, by the way, i don't think I've commented on your blog before. I'm christy. I'm a friend of Jonathans. :)

9:36 AM  
Blogger Christy Joy said...

why did my post show up as anonymous? hmmmm.....

9:44 AM  

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