First Impressions

We arrived in Buenos Aires at 5:15 a.m. on November 5th, 2008. We were greeted by two quite good-looking Argentinean boys* who helped us to our taxi. As we were driving, the city was all lit up, active but quiet, pristine, beautiful and topped off by the news from our driver that Obama had won. I would call it a near perfect moment.

One of the first things we did when we arrived in the main part of town was to go get pedicures. Now, I usually could care less about the state of my feet, I'm really not that girl, but even I could see that after two months in Guatemala, they were terrifying and something had to be done. Once this matter was taken care of and we could breathe a little easier, we turned our attention to more important things (almost), like finding an apartment. We found several ones that we liked and have appointments to go see them through next tuesday. We are even playing with idea of getting separate rooms as a way to meet more people and learn faster.

The spanish here is a world apart from that of Guatemala, or I think anywhere. It sounds a bit like Italian to us. For the double 'l' sound, like in 'me llamo', they use somewhere between a 'sh' and a 'j', so it becomes 'me shjamo'. A lot of words are different too. Butter is 'manteca', not 'mantequilla'. It's weird but cool. 

We are staying at a really amazing hostel that is nothing like a hostel at all. Its being cleaned constantly, there are activities everyday (last night was "Emparty"-an empanada party), the staff is awesome, and there is art everywhere. During the day we walk a lot, sometimes just blindly to see what we find and sometimes with a map. Today we stumbled upon a theatre, where we bought tickets to go see the opera "The Marriage of Figaro" (Las Bodas de Figaro), and the most amazing ice cream shop ever where we bought banana split, chocolate chip and a really fancy chocolate that starts with an "N" but I can't remember exactly what the name was.

We also have been needing to take naps around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, we're probably still a bit jet-lagged, and take great relish in filling up our water bottles from the tap (we still can't figure out how to order this in restaurants though). 

Buenos Aires is a lovely city. It reminds Andrea of New York and Sarah found parts that remind her of Denver. You will all love it when you come and visit us. 

Tally of cheek kisses so far: 5 each

*NOTE: Everyone in Argentina is good-looking. And tall. It makes no sense.