Buenos Aires

During our second day of the program, we had more orientation meetings, but we also toured the city of Buenos Aires. We saw where the new pope used to be, and many political buildings like the old town hall and the new town hall, the casa rosa, and we drove past where Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina, lives now. It was a little colder than I originally thought it would be, because the sun is always out and makes it seem like it's warm out. We had a lunch near the river Rio de la Plata, which is about 20 or 30 miles wide at points, so it looked like we were near the ocean. I opted for pasta instead of beef because I'm expecting to eat a lot of beef in the next few months.

    One thing I was really looking forward to in Argentina was drinking mate, a tea that is drank from a cup with the mate leaf and a straw with a filter on the end so you don't drink the leaves. It is very common in Argentina for people to drink mate in groups. They pass the mate cup around the group and each person drinks the entire cup before handing it to the next person.We learned some very specific etiquette for drinking mate, such as that only one person is in charge of pouring the water in the cup and the cup must be passed back to that person in between turns. The water needs to be just below boiling, and you can't touch the straw while drinking. So I was somewhat disappointed with the mate because it was very very strong. I'd had iced yerba mate in the states, and this wasn't anything like it. Maybe I'll learn to like it though.

     En the city, I saw so many new things. We went to a street that I would describe as a tourist district. All of the buildings were painted with such bright colors and had all of these goofy statues that looked like cartoon characters and there were restaurants with tango shows going on.
    

   
 











    We drove past some old shanty towns where I saw people making homes out of garbage and so many stray dogs. This is the part of town that needs to be avoided. Other than that I've felt pretty safe here. We get weird stares and a lot of people have wandered up to our tour group to stare at us for a few minutes. One weird thing I've noticed here is that it is very common for the dogs here to wear clothing. Almost all the dogs I've seen have had some sort of sweater on, even the ones that look stray.