Friday, January 26, 2007

Blog Number 141

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Since today was Friday and on Monday the team starts doing "real" work, today was a little festive.  Weeks of training are now over and everyone is excited to start working.  One thing that is very popular in Argentina is Mate.  It is basically a tea of sorts but is drank from a hollowed out gourd cup.  You put some yerba in the cup, pour water over it and then stick in your "bombilla" (straw).  The straw has small holes in the bottom that filters out the yerba as you drink the mate.  It is also very typical to pass the cup around to your friends and today (for the first time) the cup was passed to me...

It was about what I expected.  It tasted about like you had went out to your lawn, grabbed some weeds, put them in a cup, poured hot water over them and then drank it.  This is also my last mate I think.

My teammate from Michigan arrived today as well and I met him after work in his hotel room.  He looked about like you should look after spending 20 hours or so in airports and on airplanes but we headed over to the grocery store and I loaded him up on pop, water and snacks.  We came back and talked for about an hour and then ordered a pizza from room service.  Now one thing you must know about he and I.  We have an annual wager when the Pistons and Pacers meet in the playoffs.  In a nutshell the loser has to buy a piece of clothing (hat, shirt, etc.) with the other teams logo on it and pose for a picture and email that to the rest of the team.  Since I am rooting for the Pacers I now own a Pistons hat and t-shirt.  This I proudly wore as we did our shopping.  Anyway, after the pizza was delivered we flipped on the TV and as luck would have it, the Pistons were playing.  So at long last he and I actually watched a Piston's game together.

All it took was both of us to come to Argentina!  Tomorrow we are heading to someone's house for another "Tour de Cow" type bar-b-que.  I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

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