SMALL UPDATE-O

A few people have been asking me about the blog! I know, I know, I have been very slack the last month or so, but it is hard to find time to write about what is going on. My day to day life has become the norm, and it would be akin to blogging about my life in Victoria, which is quite interesting, but nonetheless not necessarily blog worthy.

Soooo, I will do a quick point form update:

• Jeremy and I are still living in our hilarious unheated shared room. He found work with a company teaching English and is quite busy doing whatever he does. I will hopefully pick up some part time work next week to supplement my all-you-can-eat meat diet. 
• I finished my 6 weeks of intensive Spanish review lessons last week. I can conjugate in all the tenses but people still speak too fast sometimes! I watch one episode of the Simpsons in Spanish everyday as a treat/homework. 
• Susan arrived ten or so days ago. I had a horrible head cold and spent most of that time lying around and then she got sick! Mal suerte! 
• She and I went to Uruguay, it was cold and rainy, but very peaceful and relaxing. A nice little trip out of the big city! 
• We went to the Teatro Colon, considered one of the best five opera houses in the world. We saw the house orchestra, after I went and got hot wings and we had beers with friends in San Telmo. 
• We play ultimate frisbee every Sunday in sunny Palermo! Yesterday there was over twenty people who came out! 
• My research has been coming along, numerous meetings and awkward coffee dates over broken Spanglish. By next week I should be getting some serious work done! Things are progressing as expected. 
• Susan is scared of dogs, yet all the dogs like to follow her. In Colonia one started following her, then others joined, and eventually there was a small pack. We had to hide in a restaurant and drink some wine while they dispersed outside.  
• Tomorrow we are all going to the Spain vs. Argentina football match at River Plate. I bought the cheapest tickets ($15). We are going to be cheering for Argentina of course!

After wandering around in the pouring rain for hours, Susan and I dried up in our fancy Montevideo (Uruguay) hotel and headed out for dinner. On the way out I had one of my daily hilarious episodes of miscommunication. 

Sometimes, instead of asking people to repeat themselves, I merely start talking about what I think they said, judging on context. Usually, I gather by facial expressions, that this works out 85% of the time. This time though, it was rather confusing. The front desk lady inquired for our passports and then was literally babbling on to herself about the weather or something or rather and I completely zoned-out after a few seconds staring at her face, yet mainly thinking about what I was going to eat for dinner. 

Well, I suddenly came back to Earth at the sound of an intonation, the rising inflection of a sentence, thus indicating a question had been asked. Immediately, for whatever reason, I just responded "Yes, we are from Canada". She then asked "how we will be traveling tomorrow", and I said, "Oh we are taking the ferry home, the boat back". Evidently, this was one of the 15% of the times in which I got the perplexed muddled face. We walked out of the hotel for dinner. 

As we walked towards the restaurant, I began to ponder about the conversation and realized she had asked me none of those things I had answered. In fact, she had asked me, "Where are you going tomorrow" not "Where are you from", and I responded that I was going to Canada, and then not by plane, but via ferry. She was no doubt intrigued about this new method of lengthy high seas adventure travel.

My faltering attempts at any sort of vegetarianism have been lacking here. For me, Argentina will be the last great hurrah  for the delicious grass-fed red meat. Instead of the classier parrilla style bbq, we went for a parrillada, which I soon found out, was a bbq consisting of cow organs. This was hilarious for me, not so funny for Susan. 

When the platter arrived it had all sorts of bbq'd goodies. I dug right into what I thought to be a strange steak. After eating an entire hand sized piece of meat, I inquired with the server as to what it was. Oh, kidney. Delicious! Next up was the large intestine! It had a very strange aftertaste. I ate a few coils before having to finish my glass of wine. Following this was the small intestine wrapped in more small intestine! This was very greasy and quite chewy. At first I thought it was maybe the throat, a piece of larynx, but nope! Just more intestine. I enjoyed watching Susan's face as she chewed a few nibbles from each random organ, pushed her plate aside, ate her salad and then the entirety of the complimentary basket of bread. 

Well, back in Buenos Aires. The weather has cleared up and spring is in the air. Today was in the mid-20s, a large difference from the blustery Antarctic winds of late last week. Today, Susan and I went to the small Chinatown and bought a load of coconut milk, spices, and vegetables. Going to have some spicy veg Thai curries for the next few days!