Buenos Aires

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Well folks, we finally arrived at our destination. You know, the so called reason for traveling in South America: Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina. The city is expansive and culturally inundated with Italian style food and a mix of French and Spanish style architecture. The "New York of South America" truly exists, and it makes me wonder if all major metropolitan cities have a similar potential, regardless of language and culture. Cities are cities wherever one may end up, and the excitement is in the idiosyncrasies of daily life. This is why I am thankful to be with a Porteño (from Buenos Aires) family.


Andy and I arrived a little over a week ago from Salta, in the north of Argentina. We were received by Andy's grandmother's cousin's son, Emi (I'll leave it to Andy to tell the story of their relationship), and taken back to his apartment. For the last week we have had nothing but the comforts of home. Andy's family has taken excellent care of us and shown us around the city and a bit of the outskirt provincial area.


On a daily basis, we have been looking for things do get us out of the house. I found a life saving yoga class that is making me feel great after nearly 6 months of no routine exercise, and Andy is training for a 10k race at the end of the month. Otherwise, we have found some free Spanish classes and have plans to go out on the town with the cousins.

---FAST FORWARD TO AUGUST 31, 2009---

Now we are at the end of our stay in Buenos Aires and I never got around to posting the above post. I continued with my yoga classes and turned into work-out barbie, and Andy trained for the 10k, which he ran today. His time was 44.12 minutes and ran under the name of ¨Manuel Francisco Lopez¨because registration was closed to Emi´s (Andy´s cousin) company. Manuel ran a pretty good time for not having shown up, eh?

Our lives were a little lazy in Buenos Aires, but we enjoyed it all the while. We went to some great museums, took a few more weekend outings to the province with the family, and went out on the town a few nights til 5 am. The clubs don´t even open til 2, and dinner doesn´t start til 10 or 12 on the weekends. Coffee at 1 am? Sure.

We took our free Spanish classes that ended up being a pilot program for a new ´ex-pat´ program for the ever increasing number of ex pats in Buenos Aires. The class was great and focused on ´Lunfardo´ (the Porteño slang), the vos form that replaces the tú form in Argentina, hand gestures that speak for themselves, and Porteño history and culture. You won´t believe the dirty insults and foul words I learned, hah! No me rompe las bolas, ¿eh?

Now that we are used to the late lifestyle, we are leaving to work on early rising farms. Tomorrow we both leave for El Bolsón in the South (22 hours by bus). We are going to work on separate farms that happen to be hardly 30 miles away from each other. The personal space is much needed for the both of us and we look forward to seeing another side of Argentina. The government and money is centralized in Buenos Aires, so I am interested to see what the other regions are like. So far, Argentina has been the most comfortable place to live in terms of public services and amenities. Emi and his girlfriend Veronica were so nice to put us up for an entire month, as well as his entire family to take us out and treat us like their own. Ain´t nothin´ like Argentine hospitality. I do believe they can claim real Southern hospitality as their own (sorry Texas).

Also, Emi introduced me to the U.S. 1980´s tv series ¨V¨. Strange discovery while in Argentina, but it is probably the best series I´ve ever seen, and I don´t usually watch tv. Anyone know it? Was it popular in the states?

I don´t know about you, but I´m ready to come home.

Love you all,
Lauren