Today, I accidentally scared an old man because I was walking behind him down the street.  He noticed that someone was behind him and stopped and turned to get a proper look at me.  I just smiled and kept walking.  I felt bad, but I can’t help that I’m taller and bigger than the average person in the country.  I’m intimidating without meaning to be.  

This weekend I participated in a cooking class set up through IES.  We walked to the downtown location and climb to the top floor to find a room with 3 or 4 workspaces complete with stoves, sinks, and plenty of marble counter space.  

With my group, I made 60+ empanadas filled with bife y cebolla (beef and onion), humita (corn pudding type dish from northern Argentina), pur� de batatas (mashed white-with-purple-skin sweet potatoes mixed with a toffee sauce), a huge steak with chimichurri (a dressing for the meat that consists of garlic, paprika, salt and pepper, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and other deliciousness), fried pastries filled with a Turkish delight type filling native to South America, and a dulce de leche layered cake with merengue on top.  

It was awesome.  Everything tasted wonderful and even split four ways, I took 4 containers filled with leftovers home.  Fabulous!  

On Saturday, I traveled through the city to the University of Buenos Aires’ Agronomia center to teach English.  The small campus was filled with dog walkers, trees, 100 year old buildings, and mosquitos who believed they were vampires.  

Mosquitos in BA are not like the ones in PA.  They are tiny; you barely notice them.  But, the bites last for a full 8 or 9 days.  They are H-E double hockey sticks.  I have never wanted to scratch off my skin more than I have in the past couple of weeks.  Unfortunately, they have infiltrated my bedroom due to my large patio with plants and adjoining glass door that is my only option for ventilation.  I now sleep with a small contraption plugged into the outlet that uses the scent from the pellet I install every night to release an decently unpleasant odor.  But, it makes my count of mosquito bites in a 7 hour period of sleep go from 7-8 to approximately 0.3-0.5 a night.  Annoying?  Yes.  Unbearable?  No.  Thank God for anti-itch cream.  

Regardless of the mosquitos who attacked my legs because I was careless enough to wear a skirt, I had fun talking with a post-graduate level class.  Their class was more about practicing conversation than actually learning new grammatical structures.  Fine by me, but I couldn’t modify my lesson plan much at that point.  They didn’t tell me ahead of time which level I would be working with.  At CUI, it could be anything from Hop on Pop level to discussing in depth the probable consequences of Occupy Wall Street.  I prefer Dr. Seuss, but was landed with Wall Street.  

3 hours of intense conversation later, I was on my way home to Palermo.  We stopped at Plaza Italia to grab a slice of pizza from Kentucky, supposedly some of the best pizza in the city.  It was okay, but not the best I’ve had in AR.  

A nap and a half later, I called up a friend to go to the movies with me.  For my film class, I needed to view an off the beaten path film and write a review.  Because my attempt to travel to a small, unknown theater to watch a foreign film failed miserably resulting in a pointless 3 hour bus ride, I threw in the towel and went to the theater in the huge mall in my ritzy neighborhood and saw a film that is advertised heavily on the side panels of facebook.  Lucky for me, it was one of the cutest films I’ve seen in a while.  Sure, it was in Spanish, but I understood most of it.  At one point when two characters were chatting online, I was struggling to keep up with what was happening – panicking more and more because the audience was chuckling.  I didn’t understand some of the jokes, but it doesn’t matter, I had fun.  I’ll write my paper anyway and use the, “but I can’t speak Spanish” card.  

After the movie we went to a cute little ice cream shop and snacked on delicious flavors.  I had half chocolate brownie and half almond.  Abby decided to mix spicy lemon with dulce de leche despite the protests from our scooper friend.  It ended up being somewhat of a poor choice, but Emma was satisfied with her raspberry swirl.  

On Sunday, I decided it was inappropriate to stay in bed all day as my laziness wanted me to and went to the zoo.  There were an alarming number of bunny/fox mixed creatures roaming the sidewalks in addition to ducks chasing children in hopes they would drop the bucket containing the nuggets of feed.  Small children pointed furiously into cages all around me and shouted, “�Mira, mam�!”  It was election day, so many families took advantage of the slightly overcast day to explore “wild”life with their children.  

It was a pleasant afternoon that reminded me much of my trips to the zoo in the States, delightful nonetheless.  I lapped the nearby park trying to find the planetarium that I can only seem to find when I’m not looking for it.  Today wasn’t the day for gazing into the IMax induced sky, I suppose.  I’ll try again.  

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina