Adventures in South America

Bringing you up to date

Its very early in the morning for me, but today Usama and Natalia arrive. They are both coming on American Airlines, but on different flights. Usama's arrived at 7:18 am (thus me being up... I am waiting for his taxi to arrive here at the apt) and Nat's is arriving around 11:30am. They will be staying in an apartment at Paraguay and Gurruchaga... about 6 blocks from here. They are our first guests since we arrived and we are hoping that they have a great time. We are leaving on Monday morning to go to Ushuaia (the Southern most city in the world). I will keep you posted on the trip!

So for the last couple of weeks, we have been hanging out with different friends. In general we have found the people here very approachable and friendly. We have hung out with Roberto’s friends a couple of times – Juan, Pablo, Alejo, and Diego, among others. These are his best friends and they are quite a riot… they act like a bunch of teenage boys when they go out – staring at all of the girls and making comments… very typical male Porteño behavior. Seth and I really appreciate the way that they have made us feel very welcome, despite the language barrier that exists at times. Argentine Spanish is very distinct. Its spoken with a very Italian inflection and there are a lot of slang words. Many of the Porteños that I know tend to run their words one into the other and instead of the “y” as in yellow sound that typical in most other Spanish speaking countries, this sound is replaced with a je (as in the French pronounciation of Je). It definitely takes some adaptation to get used to!

Roberto also invited us to his friend Diego’s house in San Isidro. Diego has a beautiful house in a gated community about 30 minutes outside of BA. Because a business associate of Diego’s was in town (Jaime), Diego was having a barbecue (or Parrillada) at his house. This was Seth and my first Parrillada at someone’s house. It was really good – meat, meat and more meat… all cooked on the grill. There were Morcillas to start (blood sausage – ewww – I don’t want to try that), Mollejas (Tripe), Chorizo (a sausage), some sort of beef on the bone – they were kind of like ribs, a pork tenderloin, and grilled chicken thighs. Everything that I tried was delicious and was well seasoned by Juan the grillmaster with salt and lemon. There were also baked potatoes, grilled red peppers and grilled onions. The meal lasted about 4 hours, as we got there before the fuel for the grill had even been lit. Very delicious. I included a few pictures on the page.

We have also hung out with friends we know met through our friend Teresa back home. Their names are Martin, his girlfriend Vanessa and their friend Fernando. They are very sweet and we look forward to hanging out with them again.

posted by Kathy T @ 6:07 AM