thanksgiving with the boys :: season 4 :: buenos aires

yesterday turned out to be way much more fun than we thought. after everyone was showered and ready - we headed over to the plaza de mayo for the pride celebration. it was just like a typical small-town pride (only in spanish - we imagined the festival was like any border town pride in the u.s.). bandstand in the middle of the plaza with performers and people making announcements - booths with information and things that you could buy to support various local charities - food and beer carts - and the parade trucks parked over to one side that would eventually be in the parade later that evening. evidently it's tradition for everyone to meet and party in the plaza and then at 6pm the real party starts. this is when the parade takes off down the avenue and suddenly you are in a sea of thousands of people walking with and in the parade. it was fantastic. of course we walked next to the woman selling canned beers to keep us sufficiently hydrated for our long long walk down the parade route.

we met a 16-year old girl who's parents live in wisconsin. she's always lived in ba and refuses to move to the u.s. as a sign of rebellion to her parents. she's a fashion designer and wants to live in japan and become a harajuku girl. we also met a group of 4 older men who were from san francisco but had retired down in palm springs. they are here in ba to study spanish for a month. oh to be retired - lol. we saw trannies - hotties - freaks - and everything in between. typical pride really when you boil it down to the basics.

after we had walked the length of the parade route - we pulled off to the side for some port-a-potty action and put together a game plan for the rest of the evening. since we didn't think we were going to take as much time walking the route as we did - we had little time to get a dinner plan together. we chose to go back to mott because the food is good and we were certain they could house a party of 8. everyone went home to freshen-up and assemble back in an hour for dinner. i was able to sneak in a power-nap so i was good to go.

turned out that shawn stayed home to rest and catch up on sleep as did joshua. so our party of 8 is now only 6. anthony, michael, ben, billy, aaron (newest addition from d.c. who arrived yesterday), and myself. dinner was great - as always. anthony and i took aaron to sitges to get him acclimated to ba nightlife. we had a few drinks there then went dancing at glam. at 5am we decided to call it an early night and left - aaron decided to stay - hopefully he made it home in one piece.

i think today we are going to head to san telmo for some flea market shopping and a tango class. yes - this year i may actually dance instead of observing from the side-line. ooh - and the sinus infection seems to be on it's very last legs - fantastic. too fun!