AlfajOreo!

A combination of laziness and busy-ness means that not much is getting written on here these days. But I'm breaking my dry spell to tell you all about something seriously amazing that I discovered today. Or rather, that my friend Sarah introduced me to. (Sidenote: guys have some fascination with two blonde girls who have the same name. Sort of like with twins. The best was when, upon hearing that we are both named Sarah and from the United States, one guy asked if we were sisters. 'Yes,' Sarah said, 'And our parents named us BOTH Sarah.')
Anyway. I had heard tell of the existence of an Oreo alfajor, but had never actually witnessed one until today. For all y'all in the USA, an alfajor is a cookie made from two or three cookies stuck together, usually by dulce de leche, but sometimes by fruit or chocolate mousse, and often the whole thing is dipped in chocolate. So, Oreo + alfajor?? Amazing. It's like North meets South! I tried my first one today, it's basically a huge oreo with three cookies instead of two and then the whole thing is covered in more chocolate. And there is no dulce de leche anywhere in it!
Here's the thing about dulce de leche: it's okay. I like it okay. When I first got here I wasn't having it, but now it's alright. BUT I do not love it, and in a country that legally requires all desserts and sweets to contain a certain percentage of dulce de leche, and it is regarded with an almost nationalistic kind of blind reverence... well, it's nice to find an alternative. (I just had this conversation over our Oreo alfajores with Sarah, in which she said that her fiancee, an Argentine, would probably not speak to her for a week if he heard us dissing dulce de leche.)
I hope no one's offended and I don't get deported for publishing negative comments about D. de leche on the internet. I'll just add that I'm not all that impressed by dulce, BUT the beef down here is just as good as everyone says it is. Better. Really, it's fantastic.
That's all for now! Back to packing up and getting ready to move to my new apartment (more on that later.) Everyone down here, enjoy your holiday for día del trabajo!

Smoke gets in your eyes

So... nice weather we've been having. Unless maybe you've been living under a rock (or in the USA), you probably know that Buenos Aires is drowning in smoke from fires up north for the fifth day in a row. They are crop fires that, if you listen to the government, were started by reckless and/or conniving farmers. Ugh, who knows. I just want it to end.
You know when you've been in a super smoky underground club all night, and it's so gross, and you can't breathe, and you can smell the smoke in your hair and feel it on your skin? And all you want to do is emerge into the cool fresh air? Well, it's kind of like that except you can't escape. Really. Most of the highways leading out of the city are closed and the domestic airport is cancelling flights. Boo.

Well, what you can you do in this smoke but find new destinations in the city for art, culture, and air conditioning?

Today was Museo Xul Solar, Las Violetas (one of my favorite old school Buenos Aires cafés), Abasto shopping, and Casa Museo Carlos Gardel. With mi mama querida visiting me, I am getting to revisit & visit for the first time some nice touristy places. Museo Xul Solar was fantastic - lovely art, a super cool space, and lots of clean air! The others were smoky - but nice.

by Xul Solar...

Love his work!

Abasto & Gardel Museum

Pray for us here in la ciudad del humo... we've had about all the feo we can handle this week.

Sí, quiero...

I love this commercial. It's really cute. Maybe now I'll even try the 7up H2Oh! manzana they've been handing out in the subte lately. Anyway, enjoy! It'll make you feel all warm and fuzzy, and Lord knows we all need some warm fuzziness especially since winter just came to Buenos Aires overnight.

Luna de miel

The honeymoon's over. I've been in Argentina for 6 months, which means I don't have stars in my eyes about Buenos Aires anymore and I'm beginning to see what life here is really about.
It also means that I had to go across the river to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, to celebrate (read: renew my visa.) Before I went I was thinking about it as more of an expensive chore than a nice daytrip, but that changed when I arrived. Sidenote: to get to Colonia, you take a Buquebus ferry from Puerto Madero - there is a fast one that takes less than an hour, and a slow one that takes three hours. I took the fast one and it was basically more like a posh airplane than a boat - there were television screens and a duty free shop and nothing to indicate you were on a boat - no deck or access to the outside, no bumps or waves either.
Once you arrive, the historical part of town is a short walk from the ferry terminal. You cross a medieval-ish wooden drawbridge into the old part of the city, which is adorable, cobblestoned and picturesque. Even though it's totally touristy, it doesn't feel that way at all. It was quiet, uncrowded and serene. The perfect place to wander tiny winding streets, gaze out at the river and admire the brightly painted buildings - you could be anywhere in the Mediterranean.
While I was in Colonia, I realized something. When you live in a big, crazy city - in the case of Buenos Aires, extra big and extra crazy - you sometimes forget what the real world is like. The real world outside of the insane video game that is life in a big city. I am, undeniably, a city girl: I feel much more comfortable surrounded by skyscrapers, noise, and pigeons than trees, hills, and grass. However, I have come to the conclusion that, although endearing, Buenos Aires could drive even the most sane person in the world completely crazy.
So Colonia was a welcome, and desperately needed, breath of fresh air. It was adorable, quaint, and calm. And, I got what I needed, a stamp in my passport and 90 more precious days of legal residence in Argentina.

More pictures of Colonia below...

Pretty!

Yes, the Río de la Plata is actually that color. Silver it is not. It looks like the chocolate river in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I don't know why.

Mellowed out Uruguayan perros sleeping in the sun.