El jardín botánico

It’s a beautiful fall day in Buenos Aires, contrary to what I thought when I saw the darkness on my way to work at 7:30 a.m. I walked into the office at 9, and much to my surprise was the only one there. Although work always starts at 9, porteños are known to be casually late, so my co-workers didn’t arrive until almost 10 a.m. After the clipping and a translation, I continued the Excel sheet from yesterday with more researching on IGT—International Game Technology—and NetApp—cloud computing software and storage.

My boss’s boss, Miguel, was in the main room with us and wanted to get to know me this afternoon. He gave me credit for not really having a summer since it’s late fall-winter in Argentina. He also wanted me to teach Martín, one of his employees, English, which is funny because Martín gets mad at me because I can’t understand his voice in Spanish. It sounds like that of a raspy, Argentine, mumbling smoker; you can’t blame me on this one. He proceeded to say what he knew in broken English: "Hi, my name is Martín. I have 26 years." In Spanish, stating your age uses the verb tener- to have. I taught him how we say "am" and use am, are, is, etc for that. Oh the differences across languages.

We had a mate circle at work, meaning the mate cup keeps going around the room until everyone is caffeinated enough to stay awake. It was a relaxing day and I leave at 2 p.m. on Fridays, so I stopped for some dulce de leche ice cream on my way back. Last Sunday, my roommates went to Plaza Italia while I was at church, a park area in Palermo, so I figured I’d explore there today.

“El Rosedal” is a gorgeous botanic garden right in between Palermo & Recoleta, so I walked around the lake and brought a book to read at the botanic garden. They event rent rollerblades here, but the idea of having another broken arm this summer has stopped me from taking up that opportunity. The park not only circles a lake where you can paddle boat, but also has beautiful flowers, palm trees and gazebos everywhere. Everything’s blossoming because it’s fall, and I love just sitting and people watching. There’s everything from people with cameras (only some tourists though), family photoshoots, couples walking around, kids walking home from school to old people enjoying the park. This will definitely be somewhere I plan on returning to!

Stacey and I went to our first tango show tonight, more on that tomorrow. Here are some pictures of El Rosedal!

The view from my bench where I read for a bit

Flowers and birds

The lovely lake!

I just love the shadows in this picture, and the overhang

around this section of the lake.