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Published: February 3rd 2009
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Cool picture from the craft fair that happens every sunday in San Telmo 2 blocks from our house... it takes up about 15 blocks of this one street called "Defensa" with all kinds of crafts, live music, tango, etc. Hey! So I have been telling everyone that I will be sending mass emails since I left in November... and obviously haven't quite kept up that promise... so now that I'm going to be moving around a lot starting on Sunday I decided I would finally do that! Right now I'm in Buenos Aires, Argentina living in the district of San Telmo... it's like the Brooklyn of Buenos Aires if you can imagine what that's like. Our apartment has one bedroom with a queen size bed, a loft above what they like to call the kitchen with 2 twin beds, and then a little sitting area with a couch that is sleepable. Charlotte and I arrived down here on January 7... claimed the beds in the loft... then Amos and Bo came two days later. Right now it's just Bo, Amos, and me living here until Chris comes later today! Charlotte is living in La Plata, Argentina for the next two months doing an internship.
The past three weeks have been great. Bo and I have been volunteering for an organization called LIFE Argentina; we have been volunteering in the slums of Buenos Aires with the kids there. It's summer
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Me, Amos, and Bo walking up one of the streets of San Telmo towards our apartment here, so the city is very quiet compared to usual. The kids also are not in school, so rather than tutoring them or what not, we just pretty much go for a few hours and play with them... they are kind of crazy and rude and really don't behave well at alll, but all their mothers are our age so they pretty much just run around and do whatever they want and have no rules... so I guess we just try to get them to play organized games and cooperate... this week has been a huuuge improvement... rather than cursing at us and being really disrespectful they actually played a 20 minute game of duck duck goose in the park (in Argentina is called "pata pata ñata) and sat down to color the next day for a good 2 hours. It doesn't sound like much, but it is.
Other things that we've been doing... obviously getting the sightseeing in Buenos Aires out of the way before we leave on Sunday to start moving around- La Boca is a district here that is very dangerous in some parts, but one area there is something called "El Caminito", which is a
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San telmo- one of the shops we go to sometimes but it is closed in the picture pretty walk of colorfully painted houses for which Buenos Aires is well known. When immigrants came they didn't have enough money to paint their homes so they used left over barge paint. There are always outdoor tango shows there which is fun too, but we have yet to go to a "milonga", which is a tango house pretty much, so we are going to do that this week. La Boca is also home to the Boca Juniors soccer team, so we saw the stadium, but soccer isn't yet in season so hopefully we'll be back to Buenos Aires to see a game because we hear they are really something to see. We also went out to a suburb of Buenos Aires, Tigre, which is on the Delta river. The river water comes in from all the jungles of South America. I worked for a few days as well on a polo farm outside of Pilar, about an hour and a half from the city of Buenos Aires (but still in the Buenos Aires province) exercising polo horses. It was fun to see the country side- when I went on a trail ride around there, we passed a "gaucho" riding his
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hanging out in our sitting area... the couch Bo is sitting on is our 4th bed horse.
We went to Uruguay for 5 days as well because that is where we were told all the porteños in Buenos Aires escape for the summer... so we took a ferry to Colonia, but did not have enough time to see the town, and took a bus straight to Montevideo, the capital. We stayed in a hostel there that was a lot of fun, tons of people from all over and the staff working there was really cool, so one of the people working there took us out to a "boliche" (what they call the clubs here) where there has honestly never been a tourist before- that has probably been our best night out so far. All the Uruguayans were really nice... everyone teaching us how to dance salsa, cumbia, merengue... I have never seen dancers like the people here, it's incredible the way they can move their feet and bodies... not something I see in America.
The next day we met my mom in Punta del Este, which is where a lot of South Americans go for summer vacations... so we stayed in a hostel and met friends from Sao Paolo, Brazil and all over Argentina,
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trying to have an "asado", except we don't have a grill or oven... so we cook our steak in a pan... incase you did not know, Argentina is known for it's steak, and when you eat it it's called an "asado"... pretty much just means grilled steak which is great, because we now have more friends in Buenos Aires and 2 in Cordoba, the second largest city in Argentina that we are going to visit in a week and a half. Punta del Este was a lot of fun- the first time here I stayed out late enough to see the sun rise. So the time difference here is 3 hours later, but it really makes no difference in terms of jetlag because everything happens three hours later... dinner at 11/12, go out between 1-3, clubs do not fill up untill about 4, then close at around 7am. I don't know how they do it all year round... except the tea they drink here is called "mate", which has more caffeine than coffee, so that could do the trick. It's really cool, everywhere you go, you see people sitting with a mate gourd, which is a silver mug type thing with a metal straw that they fill with "yerba", or the tea, to the top... they have a thermus on the side which they fill it up with hot water, give it to one person to drink, then refill it, give it to the next person, etc.
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This was our second night in our apartment- I took this from the loft above the kitchen of Ehud, one of our Israeli friends who we met on the plane here, and Charlotte cooking dinner So it's partly a social thing, but really tasty too.
Anyways, since Uruguay, we have been working mostly and doing a lot of planning for our backpacking portion of our trip which we are starting Sunday, with our first stop being an indigenous village on the way to Iguazu to volunteer with the organization we've been working for. Oh- and tonight... we went to "La Bomba de Tiempo" which is every Monday here- it's an outdoor concert that gets absolutely PACKED... the line to get in wraps three blocks around... the line is practically a show in itself- people doing the Argentine form of tailgaiting which is standing on the street corner with 1L Beers, buy fresh backed empanadas from street vendors, etc... then inside the concert, which is an outdoor concert (it's walled in, but no roof) with a really cool Brazilian drum band... the place gets completely packed and everyone dances... it's a cool scene... a lot of hippies, so use your imagination and picture what it's like. I have a video of it in the video section of my blog... check that out, it's really cool.
That is not close to a full update of
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some of the houses in La Boca, the district I was describing in the blog what the past 3 weeks have been like, but if I write any more it will just be too long... so if I think of anything else significant I'll throw it into the next blog. Saludos.
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Travel blog=totally good. THIS looks SO AWESOME. so happy for you. dips on your "sleepable" couch during spring break.