Chinatown and Futbol

These last couple of days have been up-and-down. I've been a bit under the weather with a sore-throat that was making it difficult to breathe. Interestingly though, with a sensitive throat, the air-pollution here in Buenos Aires is a lot not more noticeable; with the sore throat the irony of the city's name is much funnier. Everyone seems to smoke here, and the streets are so crowded with cars and disgusting fumes pour our from older cars and buses wherever you walk. Cough.
Yesterday afternoon, after a morning staying in the hostel, I decided to head outside for a bit, which is when I noticed this. I also (finally) climbed up one of those huge trees that a scattered about the city. The trunks are big enough that it would take at least 5 people holding hands to wrap around one, and their massive branches extend fifty feet out from the trunk, some of them close and horizontal to the ground. I climbed up about ten feet or so up the tree in one of the local parks in Belgrano and sat up above everyone eating a pear.
After I finished my pear and people-watching I walked to the very small Chinatown, which is actually close to where I am now staying. The entire Chinatown is one block block long and every store on the block is either a Chinese restaurant or a souvenir store whose contents fulfill every stereotype of every Far-East country on the map. After my brief excursion into the Orient I bought some crackers and cheese at one of the kosher shops, also close by, and sat in the Plaza Belgrano reading Kurt Vonnegut (one of the books I bought at Walrus Books). I haven't mentioned Walrus Books yet? For shame! Walrus Books is a used bookstore devoted entirely to English language books. It is a small but amazing place, whose books, while not amazingly cheap for used books, are significantly cheaper than the over-priced new books in the bigger bookstores; their selection is also much better, as the mainstream store only stocks cheap thrillers and pop-fiction. Walrus Books has a bit of everything, from Ayn Rand to Vonnegut. I will be going back.
Anyway, at the Plaza Belgrano I saw a guy reading a Spanish-English version of The Murders on the Rue Morgue. Naturally, I struck up a conversation with him, a poli-sci student at the University of Buenos Aires who wants to write a short story. He told me that his uncle recommended Poe to him to get a good idea of what a good short story is; I recommended a few others to him (read O. Henry), and I offered to lend him my book of short stories. We also talked a bit about Obama and politics. It was interesting that, until the Nobel Peace Prize, most people here didn't concern themselves much with Obama, and they still don't know much about him. Most people I have spoken to have no idea that he is trying to reform our healthcare system, the biggest issue in the State! Yet, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize, everyone had an opinion, and none of them very good. We're now friends on facebook.
On my way home I bought a ticket to the futbol game this sunday. Psyche! The game is River Plate vs Boca Juniors, the biggest rivalry this side of the equator. If you imagined a Yankees vs Red Sox game, where the Yankees starting line-up included Gaius Julies Caesar, Ulysses Grant, Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington, Henry II, Ernest Hemingway, Achilles, Windows, Coca-Cola, and the Roadrunner and the Red Sox starting lining up being Gnaeus Pompey Magnus, Robert E. Lee, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Beckett, William Faulkner, Hector, Mac, Pepsi, and Wile. E Coyote, and you might get an idea of how intense this rivalry is. I have to pick my sides.
Good Shabbos to all!