Springtime in Buenos Aires

For a city named Buenos Aires, you´d expect the weather to be paradisal. It´s actually crazy. Sometimes it´s beautiful and then it pours hot rain, sometimes it´s chilly and you wonder why you have sunburn, and sometimes it´s incredibly humid so you feel like you are walking around in soup. But this weekend was perfect springtime weather.

Quick summary: I tried a new salsa class across the city and played in the finals on Sunday. Lack of sleep definitely hit me. I am still on a mission to find a decent Mexican restaurant. This past week and next week I have final exams for classes. It´s been overwhelming to say the least, but Sarah and I had amazing quesadillas on Friday and got cracking on our final presentation.

Flor invited me and some friends to her house for an asado. It was fantastic, not just because I tried chinchulines (intestine), morcilla (blood sausage) and something I think was ear, but also because we took a walk around the neighborhood. Her family is so incredibly nice!

The meat cooking on the parrilla. Please do not drool on the keyboard.

I always wondered what my life would be like if I went to art school...Apparently painting classes have final exams too. For our final painting project, Meghan and I have to do a painting on an open subject. But first we have to hand in 5 still life paintings using complementary colors. So here are the last two of my I Never Want to Paint Bottles Again series, and the beginning of my free subject.

Another thing: Kennedy and Megan came to visit! Megan is Kenn´s friend who I met when I visited Chile, and they came to Buenos Aires for the weekend. I met them on Thursday night at one of my favorite salsa places, and it was fun because even though I am by far one of the worst dancers there (one regular is a professional bailarina) it was great to introduce them to such a subculture of BA. Friday we went with my Venezuelan frisbee friend to a club that was celebrating Venezuela night. We met some of her friends and danced merengue and salsa in their apartment.

It rained all day Saturday, so the girls did tourist stuff and I worked on a paper. We grabbed dinner at a typical cafe and they tried the essentials like ham pizza, medialuna sandwiches, and alfajores. Later, we went to a peña. It was amazing!!! It was like at this "underground" unmarked door and I thought I wrote down the wrong address. The girls left at 2am because they had an early flight but I stayed until 7 in the morning. It was like a huge family reunion, because everyone knew everyone. It was obvious that I wasn´t from Argentina, since I was the only one who didn´t know the words. But everyone was so friendly and so excited to tell me the history behind the songs. They even danced traditional folkloric dances that looked like roosters (the men) conquering the women (with handkerchiefs). My host mom said whenever they had family parties, that´s exactly what they would do, but they would move from house to house singing and dancing from dinner until morning. No wonder why these people love coffee!!