A side note to start:

Before I start my regular post, I would like to make a comment on my previous post where I had mentioned the unusual amount of 80s music. The other night, Ezra and I were out at a bar/cafe, and the music was pretty loud. Without much choice of ignoring it, it became clear to us that they were playing some sort of 80s super mix. Then, the world stopped spinning and stars collided when the theme song to The Never Ending Story came on. I nearly lost my biscuits. Slightly funnier was the Ghostbuster's theme, but I would have preferred the song from that movie that starts with "pleeeeeasssseeee.....ppllleeeeeeeeaaaassssseeeee...I believe it's magic magic..." At my Spanish lesson my homework is usually to write sentences. I mentioned this weird phenomenon to my teacher at one point, in Spanish no less, and she gladly informed me that the lead singer of A-Ha had learned Spanish from her. I mentioned that I found the whole 80s music thing rather funny, and she promptly taught me the word for "fun", at which point I told her it would serve me better to know the word for "ridiculous".

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So I've been here for over a week now. Definitely working on the tan. I have been learning Spanish as well. I definitely understand a lot more now than when I arrived (which is not hard seeing as I knew nothing), and can pick up on things here and there and even communicate, though poorly. I have a few funny/frustrating Spanish stories:

My first tale of folly took place at an Irish pub near the Plaza Cortizar in Palermo Veijo's center. I wanted to sit down, do some writing and have a Guinness. I went up to the bartender and said "me gusta una Guinness". I found out later that I apparently said "I like Guinness". Kind of silly, but he got the point.

The real funny incident was at Veijo Indecente, a cafe near my Spanish school. The waiter had brought me the check for a meal, but I had ordered an additional coffee as well. When he came to collect the money, I wanted to know how much the coffee was. I couldn't remember and in fact probably hadn't learned yet how to say "how much is this?". So, in my infinite wisdom, I had said "Como mucho?". Now, let me explain a few things. In Spanish, como means "how" and mucho means "much/a lot". I didn't think that this was the way to ask how much but thought the general idea would get across. The thing is, the verb meaning "to eat" is comer, and when conjugated with "yo" which means "I", it becomes... you guessed it, como. You don't need to include personal pronouns in Spanish, so I literally told my waiter "I eat a lot". Funny. Thankfully he spoke a little English.

I should also point out that I am in fact not learning straight up Spanish but "Castellano", which is supposedly what the nobles spoke in the castles of spain, hence castellano. It is also what they speak in Buenos Aires. Not Argentina, per se, just Buenos Aires. I am not sure who else speaks this particular dialect, but I know that if I ever want to learn Spanish fluently, I will likely have to undo a lot of what I am learning.

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I'd like to take a moment to talk about keys. There is a type of key they have here in BA that looks like those old victorian house keys. We have one that opens and locks the top bolt to our door. Now, like New York, that key is a little shaky and was giving us trouble. Well, one night as we were getting back home around 4am (and I should point out that down here people don't go out to dinner in general before 10pm), we tried to get into our apartment and couldn't because our key wouldn't open the door. Needless to say, we were upset, no one more than Ezra, who, for lack of a better term, was fuming. We tried to see if there were any hotels that had available rooms in our area, but our luck was not so good. We decided that since it would only be for a few hours anyhow, that we would sleep in the hallway of our apartment. This, by the way, sucked. We would wake up every half hour or so and try the lock again. Finally, around 6:30am, it worked. We will not be locking the top lock again.

Ezra and I saw the Departed the other day. Strangely enough, most of the movies here are subtitled, not dubbed like in Germany. So not only can we go see a movie in English, but it'll also give us the Spanish translation so we can learn as well. Aint life swell? Movie wasn't bad. Still like the original "Infernal Affairs" a little better. I'm not much of a Scorcese fan, so it was a big deal for me not to hate this movie.

I would like to introduce you to a freind of mine I met down here in Argentina. Her name... empanada. Quite perfectly the perfect snack food, it's flaky dough surrounding steak, cheeese, or ham and cheese. Mmmmmm.





Yesterday we decided to take a break from going out for dinner and try our hand at asado cooking. Unfortunately, I bought what I thought was 2 tenderloin steaks and turned out to be tenderloin cutlets. They came out well though. Here are some pics:










The asado grill is a little different than what we're used to , as it has no vent to keep the coals oxygenated while they're heating up. Ezra had to set up a mini fire on the bottom of the grill and put the coals on top. Then you spread the hot coals out and replace the grill. The grill itself is adjustable so you can get closer or farther away from the fire as you cook. He also grilled some corn and I made guacamole. Once again, I felt like a pile of stacked meat after this meal.

More fun to come as week two of my adventures in Buenos Aires continues.