Even though I am writing this from my bed in Chicago, I have to get down the end of my time in BA, if only for my own records! During my last two weeks I didn't take the formal intensive classes and instead just relaxed and used the time to see any final places that I wanted to see in BA. I did however, take some private lessons with a teacher named Yesica. Private lessons are one of the things that are significantly cheaper there than in the US - about 1/4 the price - so I figured I should try to stuff in as much knowledge as I could before I left. Yesi taught out of her apartment and we did a good mix of just regular conversation and reviewing a lot of the grammar that I had learned in the last four months. It was great, but after just 90 minutes of one-on-one your brain is definitely exhausted!
I finally saw some tango during celebrations for the International Day of Tango (December 11th, in case you want to celebrate next year!). The city sponsored a huge free show in Palermo and blocked off one of the main streets for a stage. It was a sort of "best-of" show which was perfect for me - various singers and dancers did one or two songs, so you could hear lots of people and different types of music. But at the end of the day I think I just have to admit that tango, especially the music, just isn't for me.
I also tried to get my fill of my two favorite local foods - empanadas and ice cream (highly nutritious!) - from various places so that I could pick a favorite and be able to give recommendations. My default emapanada order was one carne picante (a taco-like filling that is never actually that picante, since the locals don't like hot foods) and one humita, which is corn in a white sauce. For empanadas my favorite was El Noble, which is a chain, mostly because the shells were really nice and crisp. My ice cream experiments centered around Banana Split flavor, which I first tried at the polo and fell in love with. It's banana ice cream with a ribbon of dulce de leche and chocolate chips. In BA there is an ice cream store about every three blocks and they are always full of people having an afternoon ice cream. As the weather was so hot, it was easy to make an excuse for an ice cream break in the afternoon. For me Freddo & Volta were tied on flavor, but the Volta I visited (on Santa Fe & Callao) had a gorgeous hidden patio to sit on so it takes the prize!
The oddest thing about the last two weeks was how I could not reconcile the fact that Christmas was soon approaching with the warm weather and lack of decorations. I would occasionally see a newspaper, or a ticket, that said 'December' on it and I would seriously think it was old, from last year. And while you would sometimes go into places that were decorated, for example the Hilton, which I popped into to use the ladies room, was Christmas light crazy, in general you didn't see a ton of decorations around. One of my neighbors in the building attached a small stuffed Santa to the fire extinguisher outside his door but that was it. And I was spending all my time in shorts & t-shirts, so it just didn't feel like Christmas was coming.
Since it didn't feel like Christmas was coming, it also didn't feel like my birthday. In the end it was a pretty anti-climactic day, especially since a number of the people I would normally hang out with had already left the city. I went out the night before with my friend Kim - I met her at boot camp in about September but sadly we didn't hang out until the end of November. It's one of the sad things about moving to a place for only four months - it's just enough time to get to know people and then it's time to leave! On the Saturday I met up with my friend Nina and we went to an exhibition of photos from a Rolling Stone photographer. Then we went over to San Telmo to a Basque bar to eat a few pintxos - the Basque type of tapas. While we were there we talked about how neither of us had been to the famed Cafe Tortoni, which is one of the oldest restaurants in the country and a major tourist spot. We spur of the moment decided to walk over there and see if we could get in (since there are often hour long lines). It turns out that a Saturday at 8.30 pm is perfect timing! Too early for anyone to be going out to eat, but late enough that the daytime tourists aren't around. The building was really nice, but the menu isn't very exciting - in the end I had a ham & cheese toastie...quite appropriate for an Argentinean institution!
And then it was time to go home to Chicago! My flight wasn't until 11.30pm so I had all day on Sunday to enjoy one last day of sunshine. I was handing over all my left over stuff (SIM card, cotton balls, stir-fry sauce, a whole collection of random things!) to Kim since she is staying at least for another three months. So she made lunch at the house she lives at with her boyfriend - huge delicious sandwiches and pasta salad - and we sat on their roof patio in the sun afterwards. Then it was home to pack and check out of the apartment! It was sad to leave my little apartment - I definitely got lucky when I picked it off the internet - but I didn't cry all the way to the airport like I did when I left London, so that's a good thing!
Chau! Molly
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