Mi Buenos Aires Querido!

I finally have a few minutes to sit down and write so I guess I should tell you all about Argentina! We got back home to Montevideo around midnight Sunday night after spending the past week in Buenos Aires. It was so much fun but now we all have a huge amount of homework to catch up on. Study abroad is probably the most incredibly fun thing I have ever done in my life, but sometimes I forget that "study abroad" actually means studying...so it's a lot of work too. So for now I'll try to just give you an abbreviated version!

In the past week I:

- rode a train for the first time in my life
- used up a new page in my passport
- saw the world’s largest keychain and pencil collections
- walked across the widest street in the world
- saw paintings by Picasso, Rembrant, Monet, and Renoir
- actually went to a capital building that is painted pink!

While we were in Buenos Aires, we took a train to Tigre, a beautiful little town outside of the city with a river and lots of craft markets and pretty things like that. Tigre was a lot of fun but I was actually a little disappointed by the train...I've always thought that all trains were like the ones in Harry Potter, with neat little compartments and a lady coming by to sell Bertie Botts Every Flavor Jelly Beans. It was actually just like a subway--kind of dirty and crowded and it stopped a lot--and on our way there we had to sit in the luggage compartment (where there were no seats) because we got there right before the train left. It was fun though and I really enjoyed Tigre. We took a boat ride down the river there and it was so beautiful and relaxing; the riverbank had some little houses and hostels and I think that the only way to get to them was by boat...it was cool. I also really enjoyed the craft market in Tigre--I bought a hand-painted leather purse for 50 Argentinean pesos, which is less than $15, and spent some time talking to a man who makes wooden instruments. I told him I was a music student in the U.S. and he showed me how he made his wooden saxophone and we even talked for a while in Spanish! I'm really learning a lot here and it's so exciting when I realize that I'm able to communicate with the people I meet.

Some highlights of Buenos Aires:

• Making new friends We spent some time with a youth group in Buenos Aires, just playing futbol and going out for dinner. It's cool to see how much we can have in common even despite all of the language and cultural differences. Also, Lawson and I made friends with a guy on Florida Street who makes beautiful jewelry by hand. He was from Peru and spoke no English, so we got to practice our Spanish with him. We watched him make a silver bracelet for awhile as we talked and he had a wooden flute that he let me play!
  
  
• Spending our free day seeing Casa Rosada and the Buenos Aires Zoo Casa Rosada is the Argentinean equivalent of the White House--except that it's pink! It's where the president does her work and also where Evita Peron did her famous speeches back when her husband was president. We also saw the Zoo on our free day, and even though I've never really liked zoos I had a great time. I saw an albino walabee and a hippo for the first time...I never realized how enormous hippos are!
  
  
• Shopping on Florida Street It's one of the biggest shopping streets in Buenos Aires and the streets are lined with vendors selling all kinds of souvenirs and handmade things. I bought a really awesome hand-knit shirt and of course some cool souvenirs for you guys! (Let me know if there's anything in particular that you want while I'm here and I would love to get it for you!)
  
  
• Seeing a tango show We went to dinner as a group at a really nice restaurant that had a tango show while we ate. Last week at Casa ACU, some instructors came to teach us tango and we had a blast so it was really fun to watch some professionals dancing. I really want to learn how to dance like that while I'm here!

I posted an entire album of pictures from our trip on facebook, so if you're interested you can check them out by clicking here! I love and miss you all very much!