It's a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.

One of the best things about the Argentine football league is that no one's place is secure.  Today Club Atlético River Plate played against some club from Córdoba called Belgrano to avoid descent from the top league into the second echelon: "la B".  This would be like, I don't know, one of the very most venerable teams in the NBA, like the Celtics, having to fight from being sent down into the D-league.  AWESOME.  The best part is:  River CHOKED.  Of course, it's a two-game series, and this game was played in Córdoba, and the next is played in River's home stadium in Buenos Aires.  But Córdoba beat them 2-0, meaning River will have to win very soundly to end up winning the series and staying in the top division.  In more than a hundred years of history, they've never been relegated to anything besides the top division.  HA!  River's mascot is the hen, and toward the end of the game some Cordobes fans were stringing up rubber chickens by the neck.  Oh, and right after half time started, some River fans tore a hole in the chain link fence separating the fans from the field and ran up to their own players to push them and tell them to "ponerle huevo," that is, to really give it more, um, gumption.  So the game was delayed 20 minutes while they brought in the police in full riot gear, I kid you not, to stand in front of the holes in the chain link fence.  THIS IS SOCCER.

The best part, actually, was that I was watching it with people I love.  Alejandro is this big lovable Viking who loves Incubus and his wife Sabrina just seems to have it all together, and she speaks great English and puts up with Alejandro's video games, but not too much.  They live in Ciudad Evita, a suburb an hour from the downtown that actually feels like a town, and actually has houses that are shaped more or less like the ones I'm used to.  I mean a lot of them even have yards.  There is this very strong sense of community there.  It was Sabrina's birthday, so a bunch of friends came over, some of who I knew and some not, but they were all super nice and talked to me nonetheless.  We drank pop and ate salty crunchy things of all shapes and sizes and watched the game and I just felt great.  They are just good people and it feels awesome to be loved by good people.

So that's the marrow of my story for today: my brain's message of hope from my future self to my present self was true.  People are good, life is abundant, God is merciful, and you sometimes don't even have to wait more half a day to be reminded of it.  I slept great, got up and bought some shampoo, and found the little bag of chargers and things which I'd thought I had lost.  I think that means I have lost my bag of tylenol and nail clippers.  Which is fine.  Oh, here's a deceptively non-peripheral part of the story: I started my internship today.  It's scrappy, and I think that's great about it.  I had a good long chat with Celeste about what I'm going to be doing and all the questions I have, and I'll dedicate a subsequent post to that.  Everyone welcomed me with open arms -- or at least, they seemed to be about as welcoming as one could expect, given that EVERY SINGLE OTHER VOLUNTEER in that NGO is FRENCH.  Yeah!  Make of that what you will.  The paid (barely) employees are non-French.  But all the volunteers are French and hearing someone speak Spanish with a French accent is actually really hilarious; I recommend it.