The last few days have been quite busy with things in the apartment, and we have got into a routine for the most part of eating at the Kensho restaurant when we get hungry, which is pretty often in my case, and just working. I personally find the daytime heat pretty oppressive, but Sara has vampire-like body temperatures, the daytime seems about her comfortable! 🙂

One such Kensho outing was on Valentines Day. We had worked much of the day, as there has been a particular rush job on, and there has been a lot of focus put on getting that finished. So this meant small rations throughout the day. While I am not a fan of particular celebration days, as they feel like commercial money makers, and I feel that people put too much emphasis on the effort one day of the year and neglect the other days! Anyhow, enough of my depressing character and on with the story! We headed to the restaurant and got there for about 20:30 (8:30pm) with the talk of what we would eat, small portions by all reckoning. Sara had remarked on the way how there seemed to be an general absence of advertising, particularly around Valentine’s Day and that led to me expressing my view of the disappointment that culture needs a day of effort, bla bla bla, and Sara was saying that she noticed a range of people (some of them women) that shared this perspective. When we arrived, we burst into our usual ‘Hola’ and made for our regular table (I expect that when we die our names will be inscribed on plaques and nailed to those seats). We were then approached by the owner and asked if we had reservations for the evening as they were open only for customers that had made reservations. The disappointment was probably obvious, as while we said that this was fine, we much have looked miserable at the thought of a night without dinner! The owner told us that it was fine, and if we could eat our food within an hour we would be welcome to eat the Valentines Day two person platter that was on offer. We quickly agreed and took our seats. We ended up eating more than we originally intended to, but were grateful to the owner and staff for feeding us that night! 🙂

Friday followed in a similar manner, with us both working most of the day. However, Friday had been said to be local organic food market day. So we managed to get out at just after 10am and head to the corner of Peru and Chile, in the San Telmo district, which is literally 5 minutes from our door. Alas, it was another joyless day ont he market front. I later emailed Kara and she confirmed that the market was not there, and that she had seen a sign that read that they were on break for the festivals and would return for the last two weeks of February! So we will see next week.

Later in the day, we heard some drumming from the outside world, and we thought we would dash out to investigate. We eventually came across a group of 4 guys walking through the street, with percussion instruments. I recorded some of this, but I confess that the best part of it was lost, when I realised that the camera on my phone was not pointing to the action, but instead was directed through the front facing camera and was only recording my face! A disappointment on every level. Here is my video of the drummer fellas:

I have taken it upon myself, as often my way to educate myself about this place and the people that live in it. Until the point in which I can understand the language I will do what I can to learn more in the languages that I have a fighting chance with, namely English! I did some reading about the history of Argentina on the LonelyPlanet website, and then went and bought an audiobook that is written about the time of the civil uprising against the installed military government. I will let know how I get on! 🙂

In the evening we left, albeit a little late, for a rendezvous with a group that I had seen on Meetup.com. The group is Buenos Aires Expats. I was hungry and tired and feeling that I just wanted to eat and sleep, but my fear was that if I did not make the leap sooner or later to attend one of these events, that we would simply never go with one week rolling into the next. I bit the bullet, bitched more than I should and left in a bit of a strop! *blush* The meet up was arranged on the other end of the Subte line from us in a fast food place called Fame. We were a little early, a first for everything, and we order drinks, I had a bottle of water and Sara had an apple juice. The apple juice was the cheapest drink option, at half the price of the water and the orange juice. I am scared to think of what it actually consisted of!! We thought we spotted the group, a small collection of folks speaking Spanish. The arrangement of the group, according to the Meetup site, is that up until 20:00 people meet and speak in Spanish, then things commence in English with a larger group, and this is when most of the attendees arrive. We sat and chatted for a while, scoping out other tables. The place was a little odd we decided, but we thought we had found our group.

Movement started on their table and we grasped the opportunity and approached! Success!! 🙂 To cut things short, it was a really great evening. I got caught up talking English with an Argentine economist, named Ricardo, that speaks English and used to work for an American company. He was telling me all about the recent history of his country and the economy surrounding it, I loved it all. Towards the end, an Italian lady joined and the conversation turned a little to the variations between the structure and sound of Spanish and Italian. It was very interesting, and embarrassing as the little Italian I did know is already in serious decline! 🙁 Sara on the other hand got talking to a group of mixed background people and also got lots of local information on the economy, the avoidance of banks by the local population, the fact that BA never sees snow, and obviously the black market of foreign currency exchange, called the blue market here, which makes me wonder what their market for porn is called??

We left at around 22:00 (10pm) and got the Subte down a few stops and went to Kensho. I was hungry and needed sustaining. Over the last few days I have noticed that my mouth has become irritated with ulcers, and I know that this is related to the diet that I am now having. I am aware that a lot of raw food is made up of nuts, and seeds that are linked to causing these for me. I know that I tolerate almonds and sunflower seeds but pretty much all others that I have tried, cause a reaction. In an attempt to stem the unlimited destruction of palette, I therefore limited myself to the foods suitable, this meant that a very small dinner was had, and I was still hungry on leaving. Fortunately, I was too freaking tired to care. My 6am start was starting to make itself known as the clock ticked around to midnight! As all the subway trains had gone to sleep for the night, we had two options, walk for 100 minutes or so home, or try the potentially wonderful bus network. We opted for the latter.

We ended up waiting for about 40 minutes to an hour for the bus to arrive, and shortly after we got on, I became aware that the man driving may be possessed by some form of devil with a desire to reach speeds at which the bus may burst into flame! The corners came hurtling at us relentlessly, and while the driver handled each one with skill, I still fear I aged a few extra days on that journey. The bus filled and emptied with a mishmash of people of all sorts of accents and languages. It was fascinating, and next time I am thinking I may take the 100 minute walk instead! 🙂

Anyway, it is almost food delivery time, so I will head off and let you good people of the world get on with your day. Be good and be happy, we hope that the sun is warm and your feet toasty, wherever you are.