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!