My first Spanish lesson, BBQ

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This morning I was feeling a lot more positive, probably because I slept splendidly. At breakfast I bumped into a fellow traveller called Jon, a pretty cool guy, he´s been in Buenos Aires for about two weeks and apart from joining the gym down the street, and chilling he hasn´t been up to much. This encounter almost made me feel guilty about describing the hostel earlier as empty.
Juan (one of the guys working at the hostel) was also in the kitchen and he told us a bit about the culture in Argentina, in particular he introduced us to the country´s obsession with drinking mate, a kind of tea beverage that tastes slightly bitter, made of a herb called ýerba´. He seems to drink mate all the time from a wooden cup and a metal straw. The cup is apparently the ´mate´, and the straw is called the bombilla.
According to Juan you can mix mate with anything, even milk. He demonstrated this by adding sugar and then coffee to it. I´m not sure whether it tasted any better, but I hear mate is more enjoyable once you get used to it.
I managed to locate the language school recommended by Augustina( a friend´s friend´s friend....), and had my first lesson with Monica, the (most friendly) owner of the institute. It went really well, and I think she´s a very good teacher. She seems to be very interested in languages, and is in the process of writing a beginners Spanish language book based other techniques. Apart from picking up Spanish, Monica and her husband are also a great source of information regarding things to do in Buenos Aires.
There was a BBQ at the hostel at around half past nine in the evening, and apart from me and Jon the party consisted of the people working at the hostel and their friends. The food was great (we had chorizo sausage, followed by beef and blood sausage, and then ice cream and barbecued banana for dessert), and the people were really lively. One of the guys started playing the guitar and sang traditional songs with another, which was good fun to listen to.
I got to know quite a few people as we were sitting around, including one of the singers who´s having some difficulties with his overweight foreign girlfriend. A few hours later we went to a pub a few blocks down the road. It was a little bit weird as it was hidden away in a normal building, and frequented by young people, typically by the children of rich land owners. I was told it´s quite unusual to see young people who are into traditional music, so I felt quite fortunate.
To start with there were a handful of groups, and they took turns singing and playing the guitar, but eventually they all merged into one. They seemed very friendly, but I get the feeling they weren´t particularly open to foreigners( tried to talk to a few people, but they weren´t too interested).

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Photos

Pub1
Singing in the pub

Juan
Juan

BBQ´d banana
BBQ´d banana

Comments

[Beast]

That bird looks fit!!!