A Lot Can Happen in Four Days

We made it to Buenos Aires on Tuesday morning, arriving right around 3am - apparently the perfect time to go out dancing, if we'd only known. This town is substantially cosmopolitan compared to all of Central America, which has sparked numerous conversations and desires to change hairstyles.

To give you Buenos Aires in a nutshell - even though it would be more at home in an adorable leather purse - imagine an inexpensive version of Europe, heavy on the Italian, beset with amazing restaurants, incredible wines, beautiful people, and abundant steak. People talk with their hands, drive badly, are passionate about almost anything, and live in the moment.

We got ourselves an apartment in the center of town, our first real home! We've been taking Castillano classes here (much cooler than Spanish) and trying to get settled in. We've explored a lot of Buenos Aires by foot, taxi, bus, subte, and foot. The many barrios (neighborhoods) keep unfolding, there's always something more to see, and the people are a hoot.

Then we got our camera stolen. The good one. Suddenly Argentina became a nation of thieves and brigands hell-bent on our demise. It didn´t take too long to realize that it could have happened anywhere, it's only a camera, and it could have been a lot worse. That and a really nice dinner made everything ok.

We've had a lot of interesting conversations lately, together and with our various professors. Today we were talking about the tragedy of high school shootings, and our teacher postulated that it was related to the concept of "winners" and "losers" in our competitive country. He said that, for better or for worse, Argentines aren't as ambitious or competitive which makes their lives less intense or he thought possibly less successful, but also somewhat more peaceful. In learning the nuances of the language, we found out that the word for "loser" doesn't exist - only for the result of a particular situation. The concept of someone who is worthless doesn't exist in the language or the culture... He asked us what we do with "losers" in our country, and thought that maybe children who are pegged at a young age as worthless are likely to be the ones so dissatisfied with their lives as to take it out on their peers. Interesting perspective to see your country from the outside.

We have also been talking politics and probably have better established residency here for voting than we do at home, citizenship aside that is. Hope the elections go well today and that you remember to vote! As a side note, anyone following Nicaraguan politics? Very interesting...

The language training is going well...we're able to converse about politics, ask about cameras, order several tiny espresso coffees a day with ease (very important if you want to fit in here) and get around the city. People talk with their hands here, which helps a lot when you can't understand someone but they're pointing and waving wildly in the direction you should go. Or at least that's what you think they're doing.

Something you must know about the Buenos Airean schedule - it's insane. Lunch is around 1pm (not too crazy), afternoon snack (coffee) is around 5pm (still reasonable), dinner gets going around 10:30-11pm (what!?) and, especially on the weekends, things really start hopping after dinner ends around 2am. We tried to get a table at one of the cities nicer restaurants at 11:30pm and had a 45 minute wait. There were probably several hundred people eating, every table was packed, and people were still coming in to eat when we left after 1am. You might be interested to know that very restaurant served me the best steak I've ever had in my short time on this planet.