Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Things I´ve learned in Argentina:- Always look down as you walk along the sidewalk or your bound to end up with doggie poo all over your shoes.
- I love going to the gym again (too bad we won´t be able to afford one like we have here once we get back to NYC - for $16 a month...).
- There are wild cats all over the place - the first time we've seen this in Latin America.
- Fútbol is a religion here - during Argentina's World Cup Games businesses close (restaurants only stay open because they set up TVs for customers and staff alike) - hell, even the stock market closes, & people crowd around on the street in front of any store window with a TV playing inside. When Argentina scores a goal the city erupts in honks and shouts and confetti comes raining down past our windows.
- Argentine Spanish (call it castillano, NOT español!!) is really cool!
- Both Kepfram and I can hold our own when speaking with locals (although most of the shop keepers will try very hard to practice their English on us).
- Argentina has abundant locally produced media (the first country we've noted this in on our trip) - and I can generally understand Argentine TV and movies (wooHoo!).
- But still (as I noted in a previous post), it is clear that the companies that provides cable TV here are simply vehicles for the disemination of US media content (quite a bit of it is CRAP).
- One interesting thing we noticed about Argentine television is that there are no older women actresses in the sitcoms - their characters are instead played (and generally not very well) by young women wearing wigs!
- There are a ton of really interesting neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, we explored all the major ones, but I'd love to see the rest of the city.
- It's cool to go exploring with friends, and we were really fortunate to have some time with Yvan & Cécile as well as Rafael.
- There is REALLY good ice cream to be had here (and really good chocolate too). Kepfram has explained to me that part of why the ice cream here is so good has to do with how it's made - it's not adding a flavoring to an unflavored ice cream, the flavors are in place from the beginning of the ice cream making process. Whatever. All I know is that it's GOOD, really GOOD.
- Kepfram thinks it's a good idea to make hot chocolate by mixing milk, cocoa, and dulce de leche.
- Produce is abundant and cheap, we eat WELL here.
- Argentine (grass fed) beef is better than any beef we've ever had.
- You can't buy natural yogurt here (or anywhere else in South America for that matter), so I had to learn to make it myself (thanks, Dad).
- The artisan markets have really great stuff. A friend told us that there are even more people creating artisanal goods since the economic collapse of 2001 - all these talented people needed to work, so they created a market. What we saw in Buenos Aires was better than anything we saw elsewhere in Latin America (where nearly everything is the same). You can find incredible and original work made of glass, leather, silver, bone/horn/hoof, and textiles.
- Ski season doesn't start until June in Bariloche and not until July in Mendoza (so seeing as we visited both in May, we did not get to go skiing in the Southern Hemisphere...).
- It's no fun to dance tango with a slowly healing sprained ankle.
- Non-smoking sections are almost non-existent, therefore Kepfram rarely wants to go out here.
- Six weeks are NOT enough time to get to know this country. We had to skip too many things....
- We met some really great people and now have friends here - Araceli (mentioned in this post), and Claudia (seen here with her family - our Spanish teacher, and former classmate of Araceli's daughter Monica). We won't be strangers when we come back.
Ellie
Kepfram & Ellie, 2:46 AM
1 Comments:
Anonymous, at 2:01 AM GMT-4
Anyway, it's more than a month late, but welcome home.