Entrando la cultura Porteno!

Buenas de Argentina! After some sprinting in the airport after last minute flight changes, I slept my overnight flight and arrived in Buenos Aires at 7AM on the 11th. My first few days here were busy ones, cramming as much in as we could while Nick had some more time off than usual..

The apartment is beautiful, with plenty of space and a balcony overlooking the famous Recoleta Cemetary and the busy square with statues and park space, filled with benches and portenos lounging in the grass drinking wine or mate (tea). We started out our Thursday by being portenos. We went to a famous cafe La Biela which is right next to the apartment building in this fancy part of town and had cafe con leche y medialunas or croissants, the typical argentine "breakfast" (they don't do breakfast). But don't let croissant fool you, these medialunes are flaky sweet and delicious, different from any I've had before, and they're a local staple food. Next on the list enjoying Buenos Aires Porteno style was bringing our bottle of Malbec and blanket to spend time on the lawn soaking up the city and relaxing for the afternoon. Later we went out for dinner and drinks with some of Nicks good friends and fellow teachers.

The next morning we went for a run through local parks and to see Palermo's park and garden, a local neighborhood close to Recoleta. Fridays Nick meets with his advisory group of 4 students for dinner. I was thrilled to meet some of the students Nick speaks out frequently, and there were no exaggerations, they are wonderful! Incredible kids that are intelligent and interesting, as well as very easy to get along with. We went out to a local Milanesa restuarant, which was amazingly delicious! I love Milanesa. I plan to make it at home frequently! Here is a link to a recipe I found online, this is the Napolitano Milanesa recipe, it is the original type, a typical argentinian dinner.

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/milanesa/

Milanesa is steak, chicken, or fish in thin layers, cooked or fried covered in breadcrumbs which makes the base of the meal. Then you decide which toppings, Napolitan is the original, and is ham tomato or marinara sauce and mozzrerlla cheese. It's the new pizza my friends. The house special was ham, fried eggs, and cheese to top. Incredible. Needless to say I already hit up the local supermercado to buy some milanesa seasoning packets.

After dinner we got ice cream and spent some time walking in Recoleta and walked the students back to their dorm. Nick's group has a student from Charlottesville VA, Ecuador, China, and Thailand.

Saturday we spent the day getting slightly lost navigating the city, which in all seriousness is not South American! There are Portenos, then there are Argentinians. Portenos or people of the port are specific to Buenos Aires and have a different culture altogether. I recall memories of cities in Spain and Italy while here, similar to New York just with parks galore. The city streets are busseling, food stands and dog walkers galore, or Portenos with their miniatures in arm as they attend to their errands. It's entertaining, no doubt! As well as the calls of "estas divina!" y "Hola Muneca!!"

Finding a local cafe for cafe con leche is easy, as long as you can navigate around the dog poop and pee on the sidewalks which is apparently normal in this city, no doggie bags needed here. With every coffee, you also receive a miniature glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, water, and minitature cookies for dipping purposes.

This day we visited the local Buenos Aires Zoo and Botanical Gardens, both fantastic! The zoo was very fun, as some of the animals can literally just roam the park. Hippos, giraffes, zebras, camels, and huge wooly creatures and can't even say what they are.

After exploring these areas of town we caught a cab to meet up with the students for their indoor soccer practice, and afterwards we caught a cab to La Boca. La Boca is an area of town very popular for tourism, it's where the port is and the Casa Rosada or the president's home is located. El Caminito is famous, it's a few streets of shops and restaurants and activity with wildly painted houses.La Boca has brightly painted walls throughout the streets from teal to pink, streets filled with vendors and sit down restaurants and bars with tango demonstrations. We got a bottle of red to share and enjoyed a meal and some excellent dancing and musical performances. Definitely a tourist location but you still can't miss out! It's a good time. However most of the tourists are not American, mostly European or south American.

Definitely taking advantage of our time free together in Argentina, & more posts to come!