It's a Small World, After All

Friends and Dear Readers:

Hola! I have a lot to report but unfortunately not a ton of pictures this time. I am slipping into my old habits of not bringing my camera out with me. Que una lastima!  There is actually quite a lot to report since last week. Things just keep getting better and better. Lemme break it down:

1. La Gente (The People): They are fantastic. I am really lucky to be meeting some really spectacular people so far. People at my Spanish school, people through Couch Surfing and the people I met on my tour to el Tigre- muy bien! I didn't get their contact info on the tour, but then a week later, on Friday, I was walking home from Spanish school and they saw me on the street! It's amazing how things worked out. We spent a fantastic weekend together, and now I have 5 new amigos fantasticos de Vancouver! Next trip: Pacific Northwest and Vancouver, anyone?

Here is a picture of me, looking as usual like a Muppet, with them at Milon, a mansion that has been converted into a swanky restaurant/bar/club that we went to last night. Que rica!

2. Tango: I took my first tango lesson Thursday night at La Viruta in Palermo! There were a lot of people there, so I should take a more semi-private one. But it's definitely a place to go out and take a free tango lesson. Amigas, we're goin' when you get here! As all who have seen me dance before, let's just say....it wasn't a pretty sight.

This is a little picture of the steps we learned on the sidewalk outside of the school.

3. Getting Less Touristy:
Fran, one of my fabulous professors, took us on a tour of an amazing neighborhood that's more off the beaten path than the ones you usually hear about- Belgrano. It is BEAUTIFUL. I took a couple of pictures (below), but they really don't do justice to the trees, beautiful buildings and peaceful tranquility her neighborhood has to offer.  It was really a lovely way to spend the morning and afternoon, walking, sitting at a sidewalk cafe and (trying to) speaking Spanish.

This is a church in Belgrano. Friends (ie Greg), Help me figure out how to rotate pictures!

Impromptu band. The guy playing the banjo was REALLY good.

4. Understanding More and More Spanish: Besides a couple of days of it's-too-hot-to-go-outside- or- you-will-die, the weather has been fantastic. I have been bringing the newspaper with me to this giant park near me (Parque Tres De febrero) and reading next to the lake in the rose garden (a destination to bring you, dear friends who are visiting!) The roses are in partial bloom, but it's still ridiculously beautiful, and I essentially sit around reading the same sentence 46 times until I understand that inflation in the country was 23% last year, for example. (It's actually a problem that I will touch upon another time). But anyway, reading the paper is getting easier. I will bring my camera this week to show you how beautiful this park is.

Spanish class is getting easier, but it's still pretty hard. This week, we sang songs, played Taboo and Guess Who and - oh yea, learned the imperfect subjunctive. Ay de mi! But I am really enjoying the classes. The 4+ hour classes go by really quickly! I am totally in my element, except that it still takes me 100 years to respond to a question, for example, like my thoughts on Pinochet's dictatorship/military junta in Chile in the 1980s. Yikes. Friends, get ready for many more history puns/anecdotes when I return!


5. Goals For the Next Week:
-Take the colectivo (bus). It's a terrifying network of 800 gazillion lines that intersect in a crazy network of horror around the city. Also, if you want to hail the bus, you more or less have to risk life and limb and hail it down by jumping in front of it. Standing at the stop on the curb ain't gonna cut it, people.

-Join el VideoClub (video store!) Fran gave me a few horror/suspense movie recommendations that I'll need to rent. If only I could get a 20 piece bucket at KFC with Gloria now....

-Plan my trip to Uruguay. I'd like to go next weekend. Let's see if I can get it together. And then plan my trip to Galapagos.

-Buy apparatus with which to drink mate. Mate is the national drink here. It's essentially tea, but different. It's a major cultural pastime here, and you share it with your companeros all afternoon. People drink mate all day, every day. In the US, we have water cooler breaks. In the UK we had morning and afternoon tea. In Argentina, there's at least one mate break per hour. It's got a lot of caffeine in it and you can make it hot or cold, with water or orange juice.

-I think that's enough goals.

Many thanks to my good friends John and Gloria for the blog redesign! I am in love with it. As you all know, if I were a man born in the 1600s, my dream job would have been a cartographer, so I am DIGGING the map.