a note about mendoza, argentina

we have been here a few days now. some things i have noticed: mullets are cool. not like the 40-year old man in the US who wears nascar muscle tees and cut-off bleached jean shorts and is still wearing the same mullet he got in 1985. no no. the mullet here is worn by the popular kid in high school. and everyone else. and they´re bad mullets. like the whole top/front of the head is buzzed and then there is like this pantene commercial hanging off the back of the head. and this haircut is worn with pride. i blame maradona, who i guess is a really famous pro soccer player. i had never heard of him before coming here. but he´s on the news everyday it seems. and he has a mighty fine mullet himself. so every little boy who wants to grow up to be a pro soccer player (which is just about every little boy) cuts himself a pro-soccer mullet.
also, the traffic rules seem to be a bit different than i´m used to. by that, i mean that they don´t exist. this is what happens at intersections (which are almost all one-way): many many cars come at the intersection from two directions. they lean their heads wayyy far to see how many cars are coming from the other way (which is perpendicular to the street they´re on), and how fast they´re going. then they judge whether they can be first to cross or not. i´m not sure how that is decided. because sometimes it´s who gets there first, other times, it´s who is the bossiest driver i think. so basically, no traffic rules, just a keen sense of potential collisions. which makes being a pedestrian quite dangerous. probably more dangerous than being in a car.

also, today we bought a mate. which is a special tea cup. and the straw to drink the tea is called a bombilla. and we bought the tea, which is also called mate. i think i want to have a special mate tea time everyday even after leaving argentina.