Feliz Cumpleanos, Rio Cuarto!

11/11/2010

Between all of my Argentine grandmothers, grandfathers, parents, cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters, there are approximately 365 birthdays to remember. (Luckily, birthdays in Argentina are always accompanied by cake, Fernet, and kareoke). As if my calendar weren't already cramped enough, Rio Cuarto also celebrated it's 224th birthday this year.

Being the devoted Rio Cuartense that I am, I decided to join the festivities and congratulate my new city for having more years under it's belt than Nancy Reagan---a true accomplishment. My cousin, Trini, and I went to La Rotonda San Martin to watch the parade, which consisted mainly of folklore dancing and fireworks. After the parade, we went to a nearby ice cream shop, where Aryton met up with us. I discovered that a task as seemingly simple as ordering ice cream is challenging in a foreign country. There were about 50 different options on the menu and the only one that looked even remotely familiar was "chocolate." This did not help the matter in the least bit, seeing as the one flavor that I did not want was chocolate. After having blindly selected my three flavors (butchering the pronunciation and pointing stupidly at the menu), the nice lady wearing the blue hat asked me the order in which I would like my scoops. Oh, how my mind instantly jumped to the various units in math class dealing with permutations and combinations!

"Como vengan...," I responded.

Why must we further complicate the situation with trivial questions like this, Blue-Hat-Woman? My refined pallete will be equally as satisfied tasting flavor B first as it would be tasting flavor A or flavor C first. ABC, CBA, BCA, CAB, ACB, BAC....This is ice cream, not a ten course meal with Elizabeth Taylor! Then Blue-Hat-Woman had the nerve to ask me which syrup I would like on top. I should have said, "Cherry, but only on the middle scoop, please." Sticky floors make me unusually sassy, I think.

Full of foreign flavors (though I am still uncertain of which ones), we proceded to the concert along with the majority of the population of Rio Cuarto. Ever felt like a crayon in one of those obnoxiously excessive 64-pack Crayola boxes? I can now say that, yes, I sympathize with those poor, inanimate, multi-colored cylinders of wax. Strangers' everythings were plastered against every part of my everythings. Despite the claustrophobic and chaotic atmosphere, it was an enjoyable experience, and we even managed to find a milimeter (note my subtile use of the metric system here) of space to move our fingers in an attempt to dance.

Feliz cumpleanos, Rio Cuarto!