¿Hola, hola, hola, sí?

I've finally explored a bit of Buenos Aires. I started the "fin de semana" or weekend with a very American Friday evening, well we did eat dinner at 10:30, so that wasn't American but, the conservation was and the dance club felt like it or Europe, even the drinks cost as much at home. But it was wonderful, some girls from my program, had a bunch of us over at their home in Palermo for dinner and drinks, then some clubbing. It was nice to be able to understand people without concentrating because the whole evening was in English. I enjoyed it but, I am here to learn Spanish and about the culture.

Saturday I did just that. I woke up (early for Porteños, about 10am) and headed out to explore my neighborhood of Recoletta. I decided to start by waking up the dead at the famous Recoletta cemetery.   This is what being a millionaire does for you, it gets you a marble or stone home for your corpse in a village like setting.  But you tell me you only have a few million in the bank, not hundreds, well you can get a spot on the wall of the town. The place was beautiful and I don't want to be disrespectful to the dead but it was pretty creepy as well. Many of the grave homes had windows and you could see the coffins stacked up inside. Just peering in gave me the jitters. 

After the cemetery I went next door to the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Pilar mainly just to get upstairs to the bell tower and take a photo of the cemetery. The church was beautiful inside but, I think they were about to start a service for someone's funeral and I didn't feel like crashing that party. Off to the next stop which tested my navigational skills, good thing I have some sense of direction, although I did take a longer path than necessary to get to where I wanted to go. I did end up seeing the Facultad de Ingeniería, a decaying but still functioning school of engineering. I guess its a prestigious one too, but you can't tell from the sad state of the building. My walk took me past a few plazas and to my destination of Floralis Genérica, a large metal flower sculpture that is supposed to close up at night but it doesn't work most of the time and when I drove past it later that evening in a taxi, it was still open. Needless to say its beautiful and one of the symbols of BA. And the reason my walk to the flower was so out of the way is that literally a block away from the flower was the plaza Recoletta which houses the cemetery that I started at!


I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the crafts fair, Feria Artesanal. After I was tired of looking at crafts and hippies I bought some fruit and empanadas with my Norwegian friends (also in my program) and we sat down to hopefully listen to a local singer. Well we thought we would listen to him, this guy took 2 hours to sound check his equipment and kept strumming and singing " ¿Hola, hola, hola, sí?" we thougt that maybe he really couldn't sing, but alas after about 2 hours of ¿Hola, hola, hola, sí? he finally sang but I had to leave to make it to an ex-pat yoga class (facebook.com/pages/YoGO-Power-Yoga) that was being taught by a friend. 


My evening was spent fully in the throws of learning, speaking and understanding Spanish. I had dinner with my 2 Argentine house-mates, and then went to a house of their friend for some wine, and finally out to the bars at 2am (these people really do not sleep, and it is unfashionable to get to the bars before 1 really). I had a great time, and really enjoyed myself, even tough I had to concentrate to understand.

On Sunday I got up at the time the Argentine's would, 12, but alas that was early for them too! I decided to get lost in BA, but really didn't. I walked from my house down the famous Ave 9 de Julio (considered "the widest road in the world", it has 16 lanes) to see the Obelisco (the symbol of BA) and then the Plaza de Mayo which holds many famous buildings including the famous pink house of Casa Rosada which holds the presidential offices, we have the white house and they like pink, I like the pink too.  The plaza is also the main area for protests, there was only a silent semi-permanent protest there today, and I have no idea what it was about. I continued my walk all the way to San Telmo and the Feria de San Telmo, another street and crafts fair. There were hundreds of craft stalls selling mate gourds, to leather goods, to scarves, paintings, jewerly, you name it they were selling it, there were also many street performers including a great band called Hormigas Negras or black ants who have a Latin music style mixes with various forms of rock (hormigas-negras). 


I know this was a long one, but thank you for re-talking my walks with me. I think I must go for now, as a pigeon told me today that I was done with lunch by pooping on my table, I will post (not poop because I am smarter and nicer than pigeons) one more link to more photos facebook.com/album and head to a dinner party.
Chau!