Weekend Update

And so it begins. Our last week in Buenos Aires.

To kick off the last week, we're being hyper-tourists again. Saturday morning, Elizabeth, Stacey, Jordin, Sam and I went to a guided tour of the Casa Rosada, the Pink House (where the president works).

Casa Rosada

Saturdays they have an open-house type deal, so we waited in a short line to enter the building and walked into a room with artwork of Argentine historical figures. There was a line for tours, but apparently a man was walking around distributing tickets (since it's free, the tickets just denote how soon you can enter the line). One woman handed me four tickets on her way out, and so we just got in the front of the line, didn't worry that there were five of us and handed the man the four at once so he wouldn't notice how many of us entered.

Lessons from my dad! It always works--whether you're going into a movie, concert or other public venue, never fear that someone will actually count the tickets! The tour began in both Spanish and Portuguese, and the tour guide was pretty great. He walked us through each room, gave us an explanation and then left two minutes for pictures. Flash photography is allowed! My kind of tour, right? Here were some of the highlights:

Me in Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's office!

Stacey and I in one of the press conference rooms

On the south plaza, Jordin and I found a

QUATREFOIL FOUNTAIN!

In the president's building in Argentina!!

Phi Mu spirit there.

On our way out, Elizabeth and I were mocking

Evita hand movements.

Don't cry for me Argentina!

After roaming and appreciating all that is Plaza de Mayo, Elizabeth, Stacey and I went to Plaza Francia in Recoleta to the Saturday fair and to buy some regalos/gifts. Everyone was successful, and we even bought dulce de leche-filled alfajores (cookies) and churros! We decided to walk home so we could stop by Biblioteca Nacional, the national library.

Biblioteca Nacional

Just to go inside, we needed to walk through security and submit our passport/identification numbers. This allowed us to visit specific areas of three of the seven floors- the 1st, 3rd and 5th. Argentina makes us laugh and we deemed the situation ironic because a few hours earlier, we walked into the president's office and one of the biggest governmental buildings without doing anything, and to walk around the library we needed to turn in all this information.

A cool view from one of the library windows

on the 5th floor. You can tell Argentina doesn't have

very tall buildings!

There was a Jorge Luis Borges exhibit and a lot of researchers. One room we walked past was the Academia de Periodismo (Journalism), where we saw this plaque for a National Journalist Day! Pretty exciting.

Pedometer count for the afternoon: 8,400 steps. After everyone got home, all of us napped for a good three hours. Because of our two eight-page Spanish papers due this Thursday, we enjoyed a nice night in the apartment hanging out and being productive together. Around midnight, we left to go get helado/ice cream down the street, when something really funny happened.

The only sad part about living in a city and not knowing a lot of people here is you never really run into people. You see friends who find friends, classmates and family members on the bus and hangout, but we can't do that. A woman yelled CHICAS and what do you know, it was Monica, our cleaning lady. She was walking her puppy with her husband, which was hilarious for many reasons.

1. We just ran into our cleaning lady on the street.

2. She lives in our neighborhood.

3. We finally met her dog who she tells us how much she loves, and we were already planning to buy her dog a sweater as a thank you gift!

4. We met her husband who we've spoken to on the phone.

5. It was midnight!

Pretty amusing addition to the evening.

Sunday morning, Jordin went to Mataderos while Stacey, Elizabeth and I did our own walking tour of the Retiro area. For the first time this trip, we walked into Starbucks to see what it was like. Most beverages and prices were the same, but the greatest difference for us was the sales of dulce de leche items! Stacey got the dulce de leche latte, Elizabeth got the mocha dulce frapuccino and I got the regular frapuccino. We enjoyed some quality Starbucks time with a good view of the city, then took off.

We walked Arroyo Street, which is known for its antiques and art galleries. We let the Frommer's guidebook lead the way, and walked past historic hotels, the Four Seasons where Madonna stayed at while filming Evita and practiced her balcony speeches, shops and more. The Four Seasons had a tasty Sunday brunch going on, only costing 395 pesos ($100 USD). We wish.

Next, we stopped at an excellent Hispanoamericano Museum with a lot of plates, silverware, dolls and religious items like censors, icons, vestments and more. The museum was never-ending and each room was decorated like rooms of a house. Very interesting. The man told us we could not take pictures, so of course...I took pictures without the flash. When we were downstairs, Stacey took her camera out to do the same thing. We didn't get in trouble the first time, so Welshful thinking that someone would say something. Sure enough, the man somehow appeared downstairs right as she took out the camera and said, "¡No se puede sacar fotos!" We were dying of laughter.

We walked home to get one of our last long walks down Santa Fe, and stopped at a bookstore to buy some Spanish novels. Reading novels is something I wish I had more time to do during the school year and the feeling of finishing and comprehending a Spanish novel is incredible. The woman I met at Teatro Colón gave me a list of recommendations, so I bought a book by Gabriel García Márquez, a Nobel prize winning literature author. I can't wait to read it! Tonight, we're off to our last dance class at La Viruta. ¡Saludos and suerte to a good week!