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July 15th 2007

Published: July 15th 2007

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Me at Mataderos

I spent most of today at La Feria de Mataderos, a weekly art fair in a barrio on the edge of town. This is home to a gaucho museum, as well as many retired gauchos. They sell everything you can imagine and at the best prices you can imagine. I got a bottle of really good cabernet for 7 pesos (about $2.25 US). I also got other things to be discovered later 😊

There were all kinds of interesting people there. A lot of the merchants dressed in traditional garb. And so did the animals. The funniest site of the day was two dogs lounging on the back of a pony. One looked kind of like Polly (of course not as cute).

Anyhow, the highlight was the folkloric dancing. They have all these dancers in traditional garb who perform and then invite people in the audience to join them and learn the dances. I was the only one from my group who wanted to learn, so the others took pictures of me. It was actually really easy, and I think afterwards others wished they had tried it.

This experience has made me want to learn more about

This Llama is Too Cool

Gaucho culture. I am going to take a few days off from class this week to do a bit more siteseeing, and The Pampas are high on my list of places to visit.

Anyhow, after getting back and seeing my friends off to DC, I had just enough time to get to my favorite sports pub to watch Argentina´s national fútbol team suffer a grueling and horrible death in the America´s Cup finals against Brazil.

And to finish my day, I have officially moved. I will be spending this week not in a homestay, but in my OWN STUDIO APARTMENT IN THE CITY. I put this blog as being in San Nicolas, but I´m actually on the border of San Nicolas and Once (the historically Jewish barrio that has in recent years become Argentina´s Chinatown). It´s kind of nice to have my own space again.

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