mini adventures in BA

So the second day was quite exhausting. Had my first breakfast of toast w/ dulce de leche spread instead of butter and la manzana (an apple). I had told Mimi the day before that I'll be fine w/ just toast and water for breakfast and today I find out that she will literally serve me toast and water EVERYDAY for the rest of my time here. haha i need to give her a more detailed list of foods that i eat...

yeah so i had a long Argentina/ Things You Should KNow 101 meeting. See previous post for highlights of that lecture. After that, I had my first empanada. YUmmmm muy delicioso! The whole group then waiting an extra 2 hours for our late bus to begin a tour of BA. SInce the autobus was late we didn't get to stay long at the stops. The point of the tour was to show us where we should explore on our own later so we know where to go. We hit up Palermo, Recoleta, La Boca, La Plaza Mayo, 9 de Julio, and Puerto Maderno. I began taking pictures but quickly learned after ONLY 8, that's right 8 pictures that my memory card was full. WTF?????? So my friend Lisa told me to try and reformat the pictures to increase memory space but then when she did that it erased my pictures :( sigh. good start to my day. Well now that i had more space i took a few more pictures and then tried to go back to the same format and again erased those. Que horro!!!! Frustrated i gave up taking pictures b/c i figured i would just be back to these same places on my own. I was upset but tried not stay positive about it b/c i knew that i had another memory card that would hold 1000's a pictures. 

The highlight of one of the stops was this cool artisan market. I was walking w/ a friend and realized that we had to go but were at the total opposite end up where we were meeting up so we frantically weaved our way through the market to our bus. In the process since i wasn't looking were i was going i legitimately stepped on a pigeon. I'm am so use to them getting close but then flinching with any sudden movement that i thought it was impossible to catch one, but no. it happens. Its was pretty funny and completely caught me off guard b/c i got stepped on his neck. Don't worry animal lovers, the pigeon was fine and flew away. hahaha

once we FINALLY got back home everyone was making plans for the night. My options were as followed:

1. Go to mass (you must understand that I am dealing with A lot of Texas, southern, Catholic people who are very into Jesus)---you can image that this was high on my priority list for the night.

2. Get drunk at a bar. again, this was a very close second.

3. Going to a concert to celebrate the 199th year of BA. (FINALLY!!!! something FUN)

So i ran home, showered and then headed back out to a subte to meet up with a girl. The ride was interesting... it was silent. I didn't want no gypsy kids pick pocketing me. I was with a girl who had never been on the subway/metro in her life so she was just taking it all in. On the subte they have children that shove paper at you and then come back to collect money for it. If you don't pay them they take the paper back from you. Its rather intrusive but that's how it goes in BA. Another boy was juggling in a Spider man costume. Equally impressive b/c he bounced the balls off the ceiling of the moving cars but i didn't feel like it was a performance worthy of my precious pesos.

When we arrived at 9 de Julio, the worlds widest calle (12 lanes!!!). It was PACKED. I'm talking every lane was full of people. We somehow made it into the crowd and watched some drummers for a good hour but then got tired of the smoking fumes and weed fumes. As we tried to leave we were literally mauled by people. WE were shoved this way and that and most of the time i wasn't even on the ground b/c they had lifted me up and physically moved me. It took thirty minutes just to get out of the crowd. It was quite the experience and i loved every moment of it. Especially when people stepped on my toes, spilled cold drinks down my back, and tried to pick pocket me. i kindly grabbed there hand and said "Nurr means nurr" (that's a shout out to my NOLA buddies!) hahaha but in all seriousness it was pretty awesome. 

I returned home, had an AMAZING dinner with Mimi and called it a night. Despues el dia, era muy cansado! ( i was very tired after the day). Tomorrow is my first excursion to El Tigre, this port city with many artisan markets. My computer is dying so Buenos Noche!