Buenos Aires

I am spending my last week in Buenos Aires for the grande finale of all this. Staying at the self professed ¨party¨ hostel, the Milhouse, on main drag Avenida de Mayo where once again I feel the mother hen. But a party hostel seems most appropriate for B.A., where it is gauche to show up for anything before 2 or 3 am and where I am hoping peer pressure will help keep me awake.

Today was my first day and I walked an hour to my first Spanish class - where I am the only student!! - in San Telmo, grinning and occassionally also gasping with happiness along the way. Despite being a large city and home to aprx 13 million people, I feel like I want to absorb as much of B.A. as I can on foot. This city is beautiful. The weather this morning early summer perfect, with every other street offering up some shop or monument worth seeing or coming back to. I had not planned a particular route other than to reach the corner of Defensa and Brasil, but managed to still see Plaza de Mayo, Casa de Gobierno (¨the pink house¨) and Plaza Dorrego, along with a few museums and some pretty churches.

My teacher, Julia, is great and after conversing in Spanish for 2 hours at the cafe, took me on my first (and probably only) city bus ride to Plaza San Martin near the Recoleta. The emphasis of our classes is conversation and since I am the only student, I get to dictate our pace and focus. I am grateful for this freestyle approach, am furiously writing everything down in the hopes of emblazing as many new Spanish words and tenses on my brain as I can before I go home.

I also have such a long list of things I want to do and see and *eat* while I am here, and am grateful to have a full week instead of the originally planned 3 days to enjoy Buenos Aires. These include:

- Parilla at ¨La Vieja Rotisseria¨ and maybe also famous ¨La Cabrera¨
- The markets of San Telmo and Palermo Viejo
- Visit to the cemetary of Recoletta
- Tango lessons and/or show (milonga)
- Wednesday night happy hour at ¨Museo¨
- Day trip to El Tigre
- Dinner and drinks anywhere in Palermo Hollywood (I´ve been told)
- Clubbing B.A.-style (we shall see about this one!)

Helping me along with all this is the strength of the dollar against the peso. All in all, this will not be a terrible way to end my trip.

Love,
Karen