I'm back in Buenos Aires, triumphantly carrying 6 bottles of wine, and a receipt for a half a case more that will arrive in the US in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully my dad won't decide to drink it before I get back to California (just kidding Dad!).

It's my last night here, and I'm sad at the prospect of leaving this beautiful country, and the new friends I've made here. I know I'll come back, but I never imagined that I would have such a great time, or that I'd love this city so much. I really felt at home here.

HOWEVER, I am heading off to a very fun time at my 5th year college reunion. There is much partying and merriment in store, so my current sadness will hopefully be turned around once I'm there.

I arrived in Mendoza, Argentina's verson of Napa, two days ago, and have been scheming since I got here about how I can get a case of wine back to the States. Argentinian wine is AMAZING, and it's impossible to find some of the bottles of wine that I've loved here in the US. Yesterday I visited a few wineries, and although I have no idea how I'll get the wine back, I bought half a case of it from a boutique winery that doesn't even import to the US. I couldn't resist. At the least, I'll have a party in the airport with a few newfound friends...

(fast forward a few hours...)

I've figured it out! My quest to import over the 2 bottle limit of wine to the US has finally been achieved. I came across the Vines of Mendoza tasting room today, which is a multi-winery tasting room that will ship wine to the US for a pretty reasonable fee. I was pretty ecstatic about the whole arrangement, and may have made my sommelier a little uncomfortable with the vigorous fist pumping and yelling, but hey, when you're excited, you're excited, you know?

My sommelier, Josefina, trying not to look scared...

My time in Buenos Aires is coming to a close, and today I head to Mendoza for 3 days. I'm feeling very sad that I will have to head back to the States next week, even though I'm excited for the next phase of my travels. Being here, and especially spending time with Bianca, has been so much fun. I'm really glad that I will at least get to spend more time with her in Palo Alto, if not in Buenos Aires.

On Monday, I moved to Bianca's mother's house, after she very sweetly invited me to stay there, and when I demurred, politely prodded me until I realized I'd be silly to continue to refuse. Bianca is incredibly giving and it's been wonderful getting to know her while I've been here. Her mother is out of town right now, and has a huge house in Palermo, which is where I've been spending most of my time while not in class. Bianca very rightly pointed out that I am paying for the room I'm staying in now, and it is not nearly as nice as the free room I could stay in at her mother's house. Who can argue with logic like that? So, without further argument, I moved, and am very glad that I did. I'm much closer to Bianca and Manuel's apartment now, and to school, which makes the daily excursions about town much easier. (Bianca, you're an angel, thanks again!).

I think I'm going to stay an extra week in Buenos Aires, instead of heading to wine country right away, I feel like I could spend several more months here and only just scratch the surface of this amazing city. I can take one more week of Spanish classes, and hopefully retain enough that I'll be able to pick up again when I start classes in the fall. Tengo que practicar!

On Sunday, Runa, Tara and I went to the Feria de San Telmo, a famous street fair in Buenos Aires. It was mostly a flea market, with lots of antique silverware and lamps, but there were some very cool booths that had art deco artwork. I bought a tango program with a very interesting painting on the front of it for Nate, as a bit of a joke, and then stumbled upon the independent designer garage within the feria. The designer garage was a little corner of a building that had about 20 clothing design students and their creations packed into it. The clothes ranged from scary to wonderful, and were all extremely cheap. Argentina is a hotbed of new clothing designers right now, and the population of Buenos Aires is unrepentantly fashionable, so finding good deals on clothing can be a challenge sometimes. We shopped around a bit more, and then headed out to see some street performers.


My favorite performer was this puppeteer. He did some really amazing things with his puppet, but what I liked most was that he was dressed in the exact same outfit as his marionette, down to the splits in his shoes and his suspenders. I appreciated his total commitment to his art :)

The rest of the week/weekend has been a whirlwind of dinners out, heading out to START partying at 1am, and trying to drag myself out of bed for class at 9. I don't know how portenos (people from Buenos Aires) function on what seems to be about 4 hours of sleep a night, I'm struggling, and I'm on vacation!

I love it here. The city is such a mix of cultures and foods and art and traffic and noise and music. It's just fascinating. Buenos Aires is a "new city," which means that it is built on a grid, but it still has some incredibly beautiful holdovers from an older time, like the wood paneled subway car that I take to and from school each day. Argentina as a country has had a similar immigration policy to the U.S., in that it accepts a lot of immigrants from around the world, mostly from Europe, but also from Asia. This has resulted in a blended society, where you are likely to run across someone who is Italian-German-Polish, and who speaks Argentinian Spanish perfectly.

Speaking of Argentinian Spanish, if you've studied Spanish, you know that it is a little bit different than the Mexican Spanish that most estadounidenses are used to. The "ll" is my favorite sound, pronounced like "jsh" it gives a soft, lyrical quality to everyday phrases like "me llamo Saamra." Bianca has promised to keep me honest about Argentinian pronounciation when we're all back in the States together.

This evening (Friday), I went to a college party with my two housemates, Runa and Tara. They are both German, about 20 years old, and are staying in Susana's house for a few months while they experience Buenos Aires. They're studying tango, and picking up Spanish as they go. They have made friends with Susana's 22 year old daughter, who is currently at university, and we headed out to a party of one of her friends tonight. It was eye-opening to say the least. I felt about a hundred years old, surrounded by 17-20 year olds. The highlight of my evening was a 10 minute long conversation in which I attempted to explain to a Guns and Roses-obsessed young gentleman that: a. I don't really listen to Guns and Roses, and b. I was way too old to go out with his friend. In Spanish. Right.

This evening I headed to an asado, a traditional Argentinean BBQ party, where I met three of my future classmates and my classmate's wife. (From the left) Bianca, Manuel, (me), Ignacio and Rupa met at Manu and Bianca's apartment in Palermo, one of the nicest areas of Buenos Aires. I had been e-introduced to these four by Ime (Yale classmate, 2003), who is currently at the Stanford GSB. When he found out I was headed to Argentina, he pulled a Jedi email string and got me several connections before I even left the ground (thanks Ime!). Rupa is also in Buenos Aires as a visitor, doing a several month internship with a nonprofit here, so Ignacio (Nacho), Manuel and Bianca decided that holding an asado would be an excellent meeting occasion for us all.

A traditional asado is all about meat, and lots of it. During dinner, we were treated to Manu's exceptional skill as an asador, and at the end gave him the well deserved salute, "Un aplauso por el asador!" I ate until my stomach hurt, and loved every meaty minute of it (mmmm, choripan!). I can tell that my traditionally low-meat menu is going to be put on hold for the next couple weeks.

COINED is a language school with branches across Central and South America. I was happy to see when I arrived that the school was in a beautiful and traditional building, with gorgeous wood floors and architecture (it's not actually the building in the picture, but you get the idea...). There's something about studying in a pretty environment that makes the brain gymnastics a little easier.



I have two teachers, both named Cecilia (that creates a little confusion when they have a difference of opinion about some grammatical rule: "But Cecilia told me this." "I don't remember saying that!" "No, the OTHER Cecilia."). They are both incredibly sweet, and great teachers. In the mornings I have 4 hours of class with two other students, Dagmar from Germany and Charlotte from South Carolina. They're both younger (~20 years old), but very nice and enthusiastic. In the afternoons, I head to a two or three hour private lesson, where I usually spend at least half the time talking in Spanish and the other half the time listening. It's very interesting to try to have a conversation in a language that you've only been studying for about 15 hours, and say anything meaningful. My instructor is very good at reading between the lines...

This is a picture of another instructor who is legendary for her dry erase artistic expertise. She filled up the whole board with marker animals!

After a lovely 10-hour flight, I arrived in Buenos Aires, if not refreshed then at least very excited for the next three weeks. I went straight to COINED, the school where I'm taking intensive Spanish classes for the next 2-3 weeks, where I accosted the poor receptionist multiple times with lots of random questions (where is the bathroom? can I leave my huge bag behind your desk? how do I get to my host family's house via train, bus and taxi?). After failing my pre-test miserably (not surprising, as I know no Spanish at all yet), I was put in the very beginner level, and began my illustrious career as a student of Spanish. Hooray!

After 4 bleary-eyed hours of class, I was supposed to head into another 2 hour intensive private lesson, when I decided that I'd rather jump off the building than sit for another minute in my 2 day old and decidedly stinky clothes. I went to our friendly neighborhood receptionist, and begged her to let me off the hook for the afternoon class for the day. She graciously obliged and sent me on my merry way to my host family's house, giddy at the prospect of a shower and brushing my teeth.

Susana, my host mother, lives in Caballito, which is a middle-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires, from which a large portion of the city-going population commutes to downtown. When I arrived, she was waiting for me, and showed me around the place. It was two stories, with 5 bedrooms, all occupied by her family or other wayward travelers like myself. My room was small, but cozy, with shelves full of books in Spanish that I was excited to see I could almost understand the titles of. Maybe after my kick-ass Spanish lessons are over, I'll be able to read the first page of one of them?

On my way

After a year of gainful employment in the US, I've entered the next phase of my travels. (Actually, I entered it about 2 and a half months ago, but free internet access has been limited, so reports from the front have been slightly delayed...).

On May 2nd, I left my job to go on leave for 2 years and head to business school at Stanford. I'm excited about the prospect of being a student again; as I recall, it was a very fun time. Oh, and I learned stuff too. But at the moment, my real focus is the next 4 months, during which I'll be traveling around the world, trying to remember to take pictures to supplement my horrible memory.

First stop: Buenos Aires.