Excursiones en la Ciudad

Since I have so much free time in the weeks before classes start, I decided I will see something new - a museum, park, neighborhood, etc. - every day. I enacted this plan yesterday by going to the Recoleta cemetery, a huge cemetery in (unsurprisingly) the Recoleta neighborhood. It is basically a miniature town, with wide paved roads lined with huge, house-like mausoleums. Although it's a huge tourist attraction, and something that I can't leave BA without seeing, I have to admit that I found the whole thing a bit weird. Still, a lot of the mausoleums were quite pretty, and it was definitely worth the trip. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries almost as soon as I entered. I took a few pictures that don't really capture what it was like, but here they are anyway. Also, my camera died before I got to Evita Peron's grave, to me the most interesting part. There were tons of people standing around it, and the "street" in front was covered in flowers and notes.


After leaving the cemetery, I went home to eat dinner with Joaquín y Elvira, and then went out to a bar with new friend Bennett. Bennett actually goes to Wesleyan, but we never hung out until now. However, we live about 4 blocks away from each other, so we decided to check out the fairly sizeable bar/club scene where we live. We went to a bar called Gibraltar, about nine blocks from my house, and it was a lot of fun. On a Wednesday night, it was packed, mostly with people who had come from work. It was a very relaxed night, exactly how I like it, each of us just drinking a beer and talking.

Today, after a very short orientation session, I went to El Expo Rural with some other kids on my program. It was kind of like a county fair, filled with farm animals competing for prizes, and scantily clad women selling tractors (okay, I don't actually know if that happens at state fairs). The best part was seeing all the rural artisans selling really nice leather and wool stuff. I can say with confidence that this will be the smelliest new thing I see this week - or at least I hope so.

And now some boring logistical contact information:
The phone number I gave out is my new Argentinian cell phone, not my host family's apartment phone. I'm not sure if I can receive American calls on it, but feel free to give it a shot. You can also give my old phone number a try, but I don't usually turn it on. Finally, if you left me a voice mail, I am not ignoring you! I simply cannot figure out how to check my voicemail here. If you are my mystery voice mailer, please contact me and let me know what you said!

More neighborhoods, photos, etc. tomorrow.

¡Hasta pronto!
Chelsea