One month in BA come and gone

Wow, a month has already passed since I had my birthday, found an apartment and settled in. I do feel much better acquainted with B.A. but we're still in the Honeymoon phase. The first few weeks we took it easy, really recovering from backpacking in Peru. But now the time has come for us to start venturing out, seeing everything and really taking it all in. That's not to say we haven't been doing anything, but now I'm ready to do even more. We have yet to go to a tango class, mostly because we are intimidated from the tango show we watched and what our friends had to say about the seriousness of the dance (which as most of you know, Josh and I had a hard time with serious). Don't worry, we will try it at least once, and may surprise ourselves. The Tango show we went to was put on by Kevin and Shanna's tango school where they took their lessons. The tickets were cheap and it was a one night show, so we were in. We met them downtown on the block I like to call Broadway, because there are 4+ blocks of theaters in a row playing everything from Beauty and the Beast to small Spanish plays whos titles I can't understand. It was a small theater packed with people, many English speaking tourists who have also been taking tango classes with this company. It was nice to hear a bit of English around you every once and a while. They started letting people into the theater, late as usual, and it was a crash of people shoving their way through a tiny entrance and a character of a man with a pencil thin mustache taking tickets. My shoving skills aren't quite up to par with the Argentines' so I had to meet our friends at our seats. The show started promptly 15 mins late, to be expected and we were less than impressed until the third act in when the owner of the company came out to dance. It was pure beauty with the accordion playing so beautifully in the background. Yes, accordion. Not the polka, I want to rip my hair out accordion, it's cousin the tango accordion, with long, sweet sultry notes that make you really find the sexy tango spirit. After that, it was pretty much downhill. They went to intermission about 40 mins, and after intermission came a singer that is hard to describe. He was about 5ft4in, possibly smaller and thought he was the most suave, cool guy, but man he was not. He would give these looks that he thought were sexy, but really came off as a major joke to the rest of us. Argentines were eating it up, especially the men, oddly enough, but the Americans were all making eye contact trying to figure out if it was a joke or not. A few left, we stayed through the whole painful thing and came out of it with some good jokes. Overall, a good experience.

That weekend I dragged Josh to the famous San Telmo (one of the barrios within BA) antiques market. It was probably one of the coolest scenes I have ever been apart of. You get there and there are hords of people, locals and tourists milling around these warehouses and stands full of antique items. They had everything from 1920's record players to fur coats to whole kitchen sets of silverware and dishes. The selection was enormous and SO much fun to look through. I was obsessed with the broaches and rings from the 20's and 30's, they were exquisite. I also had fun looking at all the old glasswear and came across a stand that was selling these beautiful glasses for $5 pesos, $1! Once you leave the wearhouse there are about 20-30 blocks of vendors set up selling their own handmade goods. It's insane.The streets were packed with people looking, bands playing music, and street performers trying to make a buck. What a scene. One of my fave memories so far.

Some other things we have done...visited the Recoleta cemetery where Eva Peron is buried,but more to come after we take the tour Monday or Thursday next week. There is only so much you can figure out without a tour guide. It is really cool site though. It is literally like a city within a city with walkways and huge standing tombs all around. Oh and the cats make it super creepy. We also visited La Boca, the birthplace of tango with colorful buildings all around and street tango shows every corner you turn. However it was an unusually cold day, so we stayed as long as we could, but left pretty quickly. I'll put up pictures of the buildings shortly, they are really different looking.

We have, also, enjoyed a movie or two while we have been here. It's very different that in the U.S. First of all it's way cheaper! The first movie we saw was $7 for 2 ppl. Then they assign you a seat for your show, so you really can't just show up anytime, you have to get there a little earlier and they don't put butter on their popcorn. So not cool. The funniest thing is we went to see the Expendables (which, oddly enough, is called the Indestructibles here. Kind of the opposite, right?) and the audience would clap every time someone killed someone in a flashy/gory way. Good movie, by the way. But, ya, the audience is very animated in the movie, clapping often, laughing out loud, making comments. It's fun to be apart of. Oh and you should have heard them when Schwarzenegger came out. They were roaring in laughter and saying things in Spanish about the "Governator." Hahaha Classic!

The weather has not been great the past few days, but were hoping it clears up for the weekend. We want to visit the Japanese Garden's and china town this weekend to pick up supplies to make our own sushi.

I'll try to post some pictures soon. Take care everyone!!