plaza de mayo

damn we're getting lazy! dani insists on sleeping in and no one's disagreeing with that so instead of starting the day by going out to breakfast, we went out to lunch. we had a palmito pizza though i'm tired of pizza already. we bought some more cold medicine because i got twiddle thumbs sick. we walked over to the parade, which was not too far from where we are staying. it was starting in the plaza de mayo, over by the casa rosada, presidential palace. we looked around there before trying to find a place to watch the parade. we definitely got there too late and should have went immediately to find a spot because it was much too crowded by the time we went to find a good spot.

okinawa immigration parade

at first i was having the hardest time trying to get a decent shot but then god intervened and said i must bring back some decent pictures of the parade! there was a car parked on the street and it had to move. they made the people in front of it move, including me. once it left and the crowd regrouped, we had swollen into the street and people weren't moving back to where they originally were. this caused me to be in the front row and have a good view, though there were some girls next to me who kept getting in my way by ignoring everyone around them and going into the middle of the street to take pictures. by the time they would sit back down, i had missed the shot that they had been blocking. i should've gotten up too to take photos but i'm just too considerate.

i had that bird eating out of my hand

after the parade was over, there were some taiko and other performances but it was too crowded to see this so we went back towards casa rosada to check it out some more. there are many pigeons there and you could buy some food for them and feed them. the birds crowd around you like crazy and it was funny to see little kids completely surrounded or having the birds land on their hand. i decided that this is a great opportunity for photos. we bought some food as well (corn) but the others were hesitant to get close to the birds. i said i'd go first to show them what to do. it took awhile for the birds to notice i had food in my hand and then gain my trust to eat from my hand but they eventually did. by the time twiddle thumbs and dani tried to feed the birds, they were all too eager to land in their hands. dani was shit scared of the idea and one bird kept trying to land on his hand and he finally just threw all the corn and ran off like a little girl. i guess that toucan really traumatized him!

congreso

after the funny bird moments, we decided to walk all the way to congreso. we could see it in the distance and decided to just start walking that way. the palacio del congreso building was modeled on washington dc's capitol building. there is a park in front of the building with some things for children going on so there were many kids running around. there were also a couple people that looked homeless or like robbers. anyway, i didn't trust them and walked past quickly. there were also more pigeons in the park. a lot more pigeons. and the people selling corn to feed them were selling it a lot cheaper. you could do a lot more pigeon feeding for less at congreso than casa rosada. we however already had our pigeon feeding kicks for the day and passed.

buck-tick fan meetup

we took a taxi back to the hostel to get ready for dinner with buck-tick fans. then we took another taxi to the dinner because i had already looked at the subway map and just thought it'd be easier to take a taxi. we had dinner and drinks at the roxy with some b-t fans who happen to be sisters. it also happened by chance that all of the ladies at the table were vegetarian, which was pretty cool, especially in latin america, the land of meat! the roxy was cool because it was like an argentine version of the hard rock cafe. there were various rock posters on the wall and a giant screen playing 90s music videos. it was very natsukashii. songs that i hated at the time sounded good. it must be that i'm getting old or that music today is crap or a combination of the two. we had a really good time at dinner as the sisters are just very nice and fun people. they also taught us about gancia. we had it prepared with some lemon and sugar as well as a similar bottled version called dr. lemon.

we took a taxi back to hostel and on the way saw some funny graffiti. twiddle thumbs translated it as "this summer, i'll kill you". we were laughing so hard but speaking english the entire time, except for when twiddle thumbs read the graffiti in the original spanish. i realized the drive might think we are psychos who are plotting to kill him. i told her she better translate what's going on. she told him the story but the driver didn't laugh at all. damn, that just made us laugh even harder. already we've seen some other graffiti that we decided to use as our band name and here we were given our first song or album title!