Party in La Boca

Yesterday was the end of the year party with Voluntario Global and David and I had a BLAST! It was CRAZY. Voluntario Global paid for 80 kids from poor communities to come to one of the poor neighborhoods in BsAs and play on these huge inflatable toys, get a bunch of snacks, and hand out a few presents, too. It was really neat.

The kids were pretty much at full tilt the whole time, as you can imagine. After about 6 hours of being in the sweltering heat, herding kids and trying to keep them from absolutely cracking their skulls open coming off of that huge (wet) inflatable slide, all of the volunteers (mostly foreigners and some Argentines) actually felt energized. The kids just had so much fun and it was great to see them interact with other kids from different neighborhoods and just HAVE FUN!

I'll be writing a post about it for Voluntario Global too, on our blog, if you want to check it out www.voluntarioglobalbuenosaires.blogspot.com (and if you feel like donating to replentish the money we delved into for throwing the party).

We're sunburned and sore, but it was one of my best days here. Merry Christmas!

BBQ Chicken Pizza

Virgil and Sharon, thank you so much for the garlic press!!! It has already made a huge difference in our lives. Like when we made this delicious BBQ chicken pizza with red onions, BBQ sauce, mozzarella and gouda. mmmm! (also thank you for the BBQ sauce)

Love ya'll!

Summertime

Long time no post! Just wanted to share this nice picture and point out (braggingly - especially to those of you in a blizzard) that this particular photo was taken at 9:30pm. Pretty awesome, right?

Patagonia

Patagonia was awesome! I'll just post a couple of pictures right now because of time, but I'll get back on here soon for more. The sign says "Ushuaia: the end of the world" because it's so close to antarctica!

Uruguay is Awesome!

For a country no one has ever really heard of, Uruguay rocks! It's a lot like Buenos Aires except there are fewer stray dogs, more sauce on the more delicious food, less people, fewer buses, more crepes, and the ocean doesn't smell bad! We had a blast!

BA Morning Tour

Lots of buildings...
1) Marriot Plaza Hotel - Argentina's first first-class hotel
2)The organ inside Basílica Santísimo Sacramento (the same brand as the one in Notre Dam)
3)The Kavanagh Building - once the tallest building in South America
4)A modern government loosely modeled after the 19th Centurty Palace reflected in its glass
5)The fanciest hotel in BA, Madonna rented the entire two floors with the balcony when she was filming "Evita" and rehearsed her famous song from it (always a marketing genius)

I've been working for BA Walking Tours and we're starting a new project where we're going to make a tour-related booklet. We hope to sell them on the tours as supplemental pictures/information and eventually sell them in stores to interested people (and potential clients). David and I went on a morning tour on Sunday and here are some of my favorite pictures from that. (Buenos Aires is a beautiful city and the weather was perfect!)

change we can believe in

We celebrated our two month anniversary by voting at the US embassy. We weren't allowed our camera inside (wait in line for an hour to leave all electronics at the door), so we've got a set of before and after shots here. (the second one has part of the Argentine flag in the back...that's what happens when you ask strangers on the street to take your picture, I guess).

Estancia

Last weekend we had another great opportunity to leave the city behind for a while when we went with David's group to an Argentine "estancia" (ranch). It was a little Disney-esque, but it is a working horse ranch. It felt good to me just to get out of the city and be driving down a road with trees and grass and (yes) power lines. It was bizarre how much it reminded me of Georgia in the winter, really. At the estancia we ate REALLY well (I hope I learn how to make empanadas so I can share the wonderfulness that is empanadas) and got to see some people perform traditional Argentine dances and some of the kids rode horses. There's also this "gaucho game" they do where they ride on a horse really fast towards this little ring (the size of a ring you'd wear) and try to get the ring with a little stick they have that's about the size of a pen. Traditionally, this is how competing suiters would win their brides. One of the students commented that if this was still the custom, David never would have been able to marry me. :)

Buildings and Art

The first is a picture taken from the balcony of the office of BA walking tours. Pretty incredible view. Then we've got some various art from different places. We went to a graffiti exhibit in the Recoleta cultural center and it was AWESOME. The last one is my favorite art I've ever seen, I think. It's made out of little rolls of colored clay and string. And that's it! You can smell the clay when you walk in the building and on each little piece you can see the artist's fingerprint. The different textures and feelings he created absolutely blow my mind. The two frames are side by side, maybe creating one view, maybe not. That is to be found at MALBA, the latin american art museum.

Buildings and churches

David and I were able to have our first real tourist day together last week and it was super fun! I'm pictured in the city center (you're welcome, mom), we've got the national cathedral (the building that looks like a library), a cool view I liked of clocks, the tomb of San Martin ("the liberator" for Argentina and most of South America--he's buried inside the cathedral building, but outside of the actual "cathedral" because one of Argentina's early presidents decreed that people were not to be buried inside churches--he also has an eternal flame on the outside wall of the NOT cathedral), and David with a doll of Mary and Jesus that he particularly liked. The cathedral was MASSIVE and really impressive.

Landmarks

So, I made our first Argentine pesos through the Walking Tour gig. Pretty great. We bought a little desk, which we've been very happy with, and we joined a gym (not necessarily in that order) that is in an old mansion. It's been great walking up a grand staircase to go work out.

El Tigre

We went to El Tigre a couple of weeks back with David's program. It's a part of the city that's about an hour by train from where we are. It's where the very rich live, so it's really nice. Lots of green and trees and it's also where a lot of the country's furniture is made. It felt incredible to get out of the city for a little break and breath the fresh(er) air. Life's a little slower, but still not necessary to drive (awesome). We went to the beautiful building you see here, the museo de bellas artes, and the cool statue inside. El Tigre sits on the Delta of the Rio de la Plata, so there are all kinds of people who live in little wooden houses on stilts throughout as well (also pictured). It was a great day trip and I hope we do it again once it gets a little warmer!

Food pictures

We've been making some delicious meals, largely thanks to our local "casa leona," where they make fresh pasta and pizza shells all the time. The first dish shown (it's so hard to make pictures of food look good) was fideos (weird-looking raviolis, kinda) with eggplant, onions, a zucchini-cucumber-like veggie called "zapallito," and whatever else was in the fridge when we were making up the sauce.

The pizza was a proud moment for us because we just bought the crust from them and then made our own pizza sauce from diced tomatoes and our own additions which we cooked down for a while. We also bought a half-kilo of sausage, which we found out is really a lot of sausage, and put that, eggplant, and red bell peppers on it. It was REALLY good. And these things cost us practically nothing to buy, so that's nice, too.

HBC=muy famoso

Check out this link. It doesn´t directly correspond with the title of the blog, maybe, but it is wonderful anyway. You can fast-forward through the first 1/3 if you want. It´s just setting up the fact that there is a nc fair happenin´right now.

http://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/wlos_vid_1290.shtml

Love ya´ll!

Patio and music

The views off of the patio on a sunny day. Yes, that is a huge highway. You can pretty much hear it all of the time, "like a river" commented one of David's colleagues. 

The last picture is a band that was playing yesterday a couple of blocks from the house. Have you ever seen so many accordions in one place?? That's what I thought, but the instruments are actually called "bandoneónes" (check out bandoneon on wikipedia if you like).