Just Hanging Out...

My, my it has been a while. Since we decided to stay here in the city and try to cut down our daily budget a bit, we have been somewhat low-key, yet creative in our activities. Unfortunately, for about a week, we were severely limited in our creativity due to an unforeseen cold-snap – the chilly-est fall weather that Buenos Aires has seen in over 50 years. One evening, when the temperatures dropped below freezing, so many people plugged in their heaters, that we had a power outage for about 30 minutes. Being the California kids we are (and not having a heater of our own), we spent much time on our couch, under a sleeping bag, drinking mate and tea. When it was warm enough, we spent time wandering about the city photographing graffiti murals and stencil art in San Telmo and trying Argentine McDonalds McFlurry flavors (which are different than at home). We have also been keeping up with the games in the Copa Libertadores, a South American Soccer Tournament, and currently Martin’s favorite team, Boca Jrs. is still in it and doing great (we can not say the same for River Plate). When at home, we spent time cooking new recipes (including a fish-chowder casserole that came out great despite filling our apartment with smoke while in the oven), and reading Paulo Cohelo novels such as The Alquimist and Brida (in Spanish!).

We were not alone the entire time though. Martin was fortunate enough to have lunch with nearly 40 of his dad’s closest friends from military school, who meet up on a monthly basis. We also attended the 6th birthday celebration of Camila, the granddaughter of a cousin of Martin’s mom. We had a fun evening there, talking politics with the adults and laughing at riddles from the kids until 3 in the morning! On another late evening, we met up with Ceci and Nacho and some of their friends from grad school at a bar. We also enjoyed both a dinner party at our apartment, and a boat ride on the Tigre river delta with Carlos and Marisa (the owners of the campground in San Clemente del Tuyu).

We are very happy to have our friends Cody and Amy here now visiting for the week, and we will put up more of our adventures with them in a post soon!