A date!

Well... last Saturday after we rested up from our trip to Papallacta the girls and I went to find a place to dance salsa. The discotecs are fun, but all too often the young men are too pushy and aggressive when we'd rather be dancing solo. So, we thought we'd find a salsa place so that we could really dance and maybe meet some people who could teach us a few steps. We went to a chocolate cafe for shakes, and got a great recommendation from one of the employees. Mayo 68 is the name of the place, and they play all salsa, all the time. It was pretty empty when we arrived, but was absolutely packed by the time we left. I think we saw 3 or 4 other obvious foreigners the whole time, which is a miracle in that part of the city, and we had a great time dancing. I met a very respectful (HUH! Who knew?) guy named Roman Crespo. He's a photographer and is currently working on a Latin Film Festival which will be happening in New York... not sure when. Long story short, he took me to a really neat event in the historic district last night. All this week there's free jazz happening in el centro, and last night there was a short film screening. We watched about 6 short films from various Latin American countries, all of which were very modern and unlike anything I've ever seen. My favorite was from Argentina, but was filmed in India. There were beautiful shots of elephants and children playing together in the river, and everything was edited to feel kind of like a dream that blurred from memory to memory... impossible to describe, but it was really neat. There was another claymation film that was pleasing to the eye but had a terrible story, and one that used clips of various speeches and songs to tell a story about the dangers of war and pop culture. I think... I was surprised to be following it, so I wouldn't be surprised if I actually WASN'T following it.

Fun night. Roman laughs "with" me a lot, because he's quite the joker and I can't always tell when the joke begins. He used to live in the historic district, so he was teaching me about all the best places and the stories behind them, and ocassionally he'd slip in a lie and laugh because I totally believed him. Two can play that game, and I held my own. I told him he probably shouldn't call me again and he choked on an ice cube. HA.