Boliche Nº 2: Popeye!

Last night I went to my second club here in Argentina. It was my friend Juli´s 17th birthday, and she wanted to go out partying to celebrate. Before I get into the details of the night, I want to explain a little about boliches (clubs) in San Juan. Technically you are supposed to be 18 to legally enter a club but that rule isn´t always followed. Places like Kika and Popeye actually don´t let you in if you are OVER 18 years old. They are clubs designed for teenagers between sixteen and eighteen. You might think that the cops would have places like this shut down in an instant, but think again. Sure there were cops there last night but they acted more as bouncers than as cops. They didn´t stop us from entering, they didn´t stop us (or should I say my friends) from buying alcohol, and they sure didn´t carry out any fire safety regulations (I will explain that a little later). So I have learned that as long as you know where to go, you can get into clubs even though you are under age. There are ofcourse clubs that check ID and that my mama wouldn´t let me into even if I could slip past the guards. But that is okay with me. I am happy just hanging with my friends at the younger clubs. :)

Where to begin? I guess that only way to describe the night it to go through it step by step because otherwise you just might get lost. My parents dropped me off at Juli´s house at about midnight where we packed eight people into a four person car. Yep, they recently invented seatbelts for a pile of kids stacked ontop of eachother...in Argentina they call them arms :) When we arrived at Popeye I decided to leave my jacket in the car as I figured I wouldn´t need it once getting inside. There are no windows in the building and if we were going to be dancing a lot, I didn´t want to be stuck carrying my jacket all night. Of course, we get out of the car and then have to wait five minutes in the freezing night air to be able to get in. I was wearing my flats, black leggings, and a long sleeve shirt (with an undershirt underneath) so basically I started missing that jacket REAL fast. Thankfully we inside it was the perfect temperature and I warmed up to a more normal and not deadly low body temperature. The inside was a lot nicer than Kika (the other club I went to). It had disco balls and tons of strobe and colored lights. It also had a roof (which I don´t know if I mentioned but Kika didn´t). The only thing that made it worse than Kika was that it was tiny. For those of you who know about how big my living room and kitchen are combined, it was about like that. By two a.m. they was probably close to a hundred teenagers packed in there and you could barelly move enough to dance. At one moment I had the scary thought about what would happen if a fire broke out as surely whoever was in the middle would be trampeled (that is where the police comment came in). At first I was a little uncomfortable. I felt awkward being my my leggings as I am used to something a little less...tight fitting and curve showing. Also, people were smoking inside and given that there weren´t any windows, my eyes started burning. Then add a strobe light so everything is moving all weird and music that was unimaginablly loud. But soon I was able to relax and start dancing. My eyes got used to the smoke and I actually started to enjoy the stobe light. Three girls, me, and about four other boys were able to open up a little circle and danced together for a while. A lot of my classmates were there to party with Juli so I got to check out some of the boys dancing. That is one of the things I absolutelly love about Argentina. Guys actually dance. And it is not just the swaying side to side that many guys at Homecoming try to pull off. They are busting moves, singing along to the music, and basically making a fool of themselves like the girls. I have also found out that many of the guys often dance more than the girls. If you are looking for some fun dancing all night long, deffinetelly find your guy friends. :)

I was super glad that I ended up leaving my jacket in the car. With so many people inside, there was a ton of body heat and by the end of the night every one who was dancing was sweating and trying to stay cool. The music in boliches is also fantastic! As I might have mentioned in a previous posting, at first I really didn´t like it. It was weird to dance to and since I didn´t know any of the words, I couldn´t sing along with everyone either. But now I love it! Potentially more than music in English but I am not ready to officially say that yet. :) As the night went on the music just kept getting louder and louder until I couldn´t even hear. You know that feeling when the music gets so loud that you can´t even hear the words any more and only the bass? Probably not since I didn´t know the feeling until last night either. It was litterally so loud that I couldn´t hear the words to the music and we were all just singing by memory. :) I also couldn´t hear myself talk. It was like when you plug your ears and you feel like your voice is almost echoing inside you heard. I know that by posting that I am probably going to get some hearing loss lectures from my parents but I figured you guys should know every little detail. :)

The boliche shut down at about four thirty and Gime´s papa brought me home. I got in bed at about five a.m. and slept soundly until my alarm went off at two this afternoon. I figured I would probably sleep the whole day if I didn´t set an alarm and I was right. Even after lunch I could only think of sleep but I knew that if I slept more today, I wouldn´t be able to sleep tonight. But given that I have to get up early for school tomorrow, I think I will go to bed a little early tonight. :)

In order to help you better get a feeling for my boliche experiences, here are some videos that I took: Oh! And the weird light and skipping thing isn´t your computer. That was literally how everything looked from my eyes. :)