The Sights and Sounds of Christmas in Junin

And resetting back to 2010 . . .

I went to the city of Junin for Christmas with my friend Emanuel to spend it with him and his family. Junin is a small city of about 100,000 about 3 hours outside of Buenos Aires surrounded by farm country. Semi-interesting fact: Soy is the new big time crop in Argentina, as in everyone is growing it. Apparently most of it goes to China.

Not soy, horses. My question I pose to you is why do people still have horses on farms? If you think about it they are a completely obsolete piece of equipment. Don't get me wrong I love horses as much as the next caballero but do they serve a purpose anymore? It seems like you give up valuable farm land to maintain horses.

Anywho, I'm gonna try and whizz through a few different aspects of my Christmas via a pictorial history.

First Christmas Eve/Christmas:

Emanuel showed me Laguna Gomez which is a really cool, really really big lagoon right outside of the city. It's kind of set-up like a national park where you pay about a dollar to get in and they have grills, a couple restaurants, fishing, and water sports.

Una cervecita en un restaurante, very very pleasant:

Note the beer coozy, first time I've seen it outside of Parque Tierra Santa. Also note the Cuban feel, you can thank the Buena Vista Social Club for that.

Christmas at the Benetiz house:

Christmas tree . . Check.

To sum up Christmas I would say, Cronica TV Bloopers, Just for Laughs, and Fireworks. Highlight = fireworks. At midnight all the kids go outside and light off fireworks in the streets so it feels like you are in downtown Baghdad except in a good way. That is also when I reviewed most of the Argentinean slang I've picked up. Interesting cultural difference is that after midnight around 2 or 3 in the morning all the younger people leave their families and start their night, ie. get drunk and go to the clubs. Although I personally cannot attest to the level of fun, I can attest to it looking like a ton of fun. The Boliches (clubs) in Junin are all outside in fields on the side of a road about 2 miles outside of the city, very cool beans.

The next day (Christmas) we did a recorrido of the surrounding areas:

Too cool to take off my hat. Again, note that I wear collared shirts like it's my job down here.

I would make a terrible journalist because I get really shy about taking pictures of random people, especially kids. Hence, I did a really terrible job of capturing the aspect of "life" outside they city. It's really cool how people all sit outside their houses, interact, play, but I find it so awkward to take those pictures. This was the closest I got to one.

Back to the Laguna:

Asado in Emanuel's backyard on the 27th:

I'm not a big sausage guy (that sounds so wrong) but that sausage was delicious, best of the three things we cooked. Interesting note: wood fire, I think my first ever wood fire asado.

Now for the strangest and in my opinion coolest aspect of Junin, but if I lived here I could see this sucking. There is no public transportation in the city, therefore everyone has to ride scooters everywhere. You'd see families of 4 on a scooter designed for one, maybe 2.

There is one main street in the city where on the weekend and at night all the kids go to hang out. It reminds of a movie out of the 60's where everyone goes to main street to drive their cars. Except in this case everyone rides scooters. It was really cool but I could see it being so annoying for the neighbors because all the bikes are so loud and everyone literraly just does loops around the street.