Our trip to Argentina has been a grand exercise outside of my comfort zone.  Having Terry with me makes it a bit easier but I still find it easy to be the awkward one in the room.
This Friday, we decided to join up with a group of international expats we had found online who get together every Friday night.  After a 50 minute trek that include the stifling hot subway, we arrived at The Gibraltar, an English Style pub in San Telmo.  The excitement of meeting new people was quickly diminished when we recognized how bad we suck at jumping in and striking up a conversion with strangers or even people we vaguely know.  I like to consider myself pretty outgoing but apparently this is only true when I am within my comfort zone of close friends.  We awkwardly stood there for a few minutes until we built up the nerve to branch out and talk to the guy standing alone next to us.  In the end, we had a great night and got to mingle with a bunch of people there.  We got to talk with some of the people we had previously met at the hash two weeks prior, a Californian couple looking at elementary schools for a future move, a group of German guys, a girl from the Netherlands who schooled us on the fact that Holland is only the northern half, a pair of creepy old men from North Carolina, and a freakishly tall kid with gross teeth from Seattle among others.


Sunday we traveled out to Acassuso, a suburb 30 minutes north of Buenos Aires, for our 2nd hash run. St. Patty's was the theme due to the proximity to the actual holiday.  We showed up in green and were welcomed with an Irish flag face painting.  With our first hash already under our belts, we felt pretty good about this run. That confidence was quickly shaken after a descent down a ridiculously steep hill only to find out it was a "false trail" which meant a run back the way we came.  If this hill was was ridiculously before it was absurd now.

Midway, the path splits and presents you with an option to take the "Macho" way (11k) or be a "Wimp" (6k).  After that hill there was no doubt, I was a "Wimp". It didn't take much convincing for Terry to decide he was a "Wimp" as well.

After the run, there is a very irreverent "awards" ceremony put on the by leadership (known as the "mismanagement").  They come up with a list of reasons that someone requires a "down down", which is basically a public roast that ends with a drink.  For example, to start things off, the MC will pull up the two or three guys (the "hares") that laid the flour trail everybody followed. He then asks the crowd, "What did you think of the trail? properly marked? etc".  Without hesitation, everyone responded with an assortment of "it was crap/horrible/worst I 'd every seen/etc".  After a quick song, the hares drink their "down down" for the worst trail ever laid.  It continues on like this for the next 20 minutes with "down downs" handed out for various random reasons: being new, getting lost, not wearing green, last to arrive, too much PDA with your gf/wife on the run, etc.

During the "down downs" all four Americans were called up front to see their best attempt at an authentic Irish accent (in an homage to Tom Cruise's terrible Irish accent in Far and Away, which the MC had recently watched). For me, panic was setting in fast.  I'm terrible with accents and know my attempt will be witnessed by 30+ strangers that I will see again. Our phrase to repeat: "Jesus! This is the prettiest town I have ever seen". I was last so my anxiety had plenty of time to build. When my turn did arrive, I couldn't get past the word "Jesus!" with a descent accent.  At this point, I'm beet red and left eye has a full stream of tears rolling down my face in some strange sort of fight or flight response.  After about 5 attempts, I finally managed to get the complete phrase out, but with more of a country girl twang then anything Irish.

Needless to say this weekend was one for the books and one I won't soon forget.