Our First Days as Tourists

Casa Rosada (Pink House) Our First Tango Show

Woong: hehehe, that street is called Mai-pu (pronounced My Poo)

Me: seriously?? :)

Woong's best dancer pose

A rainy day from our balcony

Our first days in BsAs

We've been in Buenos Aires for two nights now. And I 've caught Woong's cold. We haven't been able to switch to BsAs time so we're going to sleep at 4 and waking up at 16. (I'm switching to the Argentine way of doing time). I don't have many adventures to share since I've been dying the past day but we did try to make the most of our first night.

Some observations: Buenos Aires is a big, dirty city. It's a cross between Mexico City and New York City, with a drop of European. It took me forever to realize why Buenos Aires has pizzeria's on every corner and is renowned for their ice cream. I kept wondering what their fascination with American pizzas is until it dawned on me that Buenos Aires has heavy Italian roots. It was my AHA moment. Duh- that explains the pizzerias and plentiful ice cream.

Buenos Aires is also very polluted. Lonely Planet says the city is "lax on pollution controls." It's not as bad as China but it's not very refreshing either. Want to know something else they're lax on? CLEANING UP THEIR DOG POO. Again- Euro influence? Woong and I couldn't help but think how glad we are to live in America, a country that cleans up their poo.

Our first meal was at 20hrs on a Friday night. We hadn't had anything to eat since 8 and were famished. The restaurant didn't open til 20hrs. Argentines don't eat dinner til about 22hrs so we were the very first ones in the restaurant. But let me tell you, they don't f*** around with their beef. It was delicious.

Our first dinner in BsAs

We also tried grocery shopping which was an adventure in itself. And I DO speak Spanish. I mean, I got that "leche entera" is whole milk, but the rest of the milks were so hard to understand. And there were so many options for salt I had to ask someone which one was table salt.

The rest of the time I've spent lying on our couch and watching our 100+ cable channels. About half of the channels are in English w/ Spanish subtitles and the other half are American programs dubbed in Spanish. As we speak, Woong is watching The Simpsons in Spanish. Good to know we won't be behind on our pop culture.

My Best Madonna impersonation

Woong at our front door, which we can watch on Channel 98.

And the adventure begins!!

By going nowhere. As you may or may not know, I'm going to be living in Buenos Aires with my wonderful boyfriend until at least January. Our graceful exit was scheduled for today- United to Dulles (DC), Dulles to Buenos Aires. We said our good-byes over a handful of dinners [and a cake aptly saying "Hasta la Vista" courtesy of Carolyn and Satura Cakes (yes, I do free marketing if you're interested)].

After staying up past two trying to get ourselves ready and waking up at 8:30, we miss our flight. Technically we didn't miss it and I blame United for us not being on our way to BsAs right now, but that's another story. So after some frustration and a rescheduled flight, we gathered our 4 check-in bags and two carry-on bags and head to Angel's place in the Marina for yet another final night in the bay/California/United States. We go back and forth for a second as to whether or not we should have a quiet night in or call up our friends.

We chose the latter. Not for anything fancy but for a FEAST of Korean bbq at the Brothers in the Inner Richmond. We text our friends and had a last minute dinner with seven great friends.

And now I'm ready to go. Again. I'm determined to make my flight and by Friday at 9:30 am- local time- I will be in Buenos Aires. As excited as I am, I was sad when I realized what I was leaving behind. It dawned on me just how lucky I am, to miss my flight, have great friends to stay with, drive me to the airport, and have a huge dinner with- all so last minute. I won't have that in Buenos Aires and I'll miss it plenty.

Thanks to all those friends that had pounds of Korean meat with us today. I'll miss all of you. Hopefully- if I ever make it to Argentina. :P

Mean Girls

My friends say that I'm "too nice." I used to think this was a compliment until I realized their version of "too nice" translated into "you let people walk all over you." I've worked on this a little bit and now I feel that when they tell me I'm nice, it no longer means "you're a fool, grow a backbone."

But I got to thinking on the way to work about what it means to be nice. There's a gentleman, presumably homeless, that gets on my bus every morning with a bag of food and eats all his food. Nothing fancy- today he had a slice of plain white bread and some juice. But I couldn't help to think when he got on "on here comes the smelly man." And then I thought to myself, Betty, that's just mean. Clearly the man is having rough times and he seems nice enough.

That's when I started breaking apart what it means to be nice. I have nice friends that no one would catagorize as mean, but they are quick to be snide or annoyed when they feel the urge. Then I have friends that are nice to me but can say really mean things. I recently told one of my gfs after she told me how nice I am that the only difference between her and I is that she is unabashed about saying her mean thoughts outloud to whomever will listen. Whereas I keep my mean thoughts inside, because I think they are mean and saying them outloud will make me a mean person.

Aren't I already a mean person by having said thoughts? Oh, she should not be wearing that. Woah, her kids are not attractive, and recently, wow, thank goodness for him he looks like his father. Or, by checking my thoughts, and recognzing that they are less than friendly, am I seperating myself from the Mean Girls? Are mean thoughts a part of human nature and how we express them is the determining factor of what makes us nice or mean? Or is that all BS and I'm really not as nice of a person as I thought?

I'm not sure, but I'll keep debating this in my head. In the meantime, I 'll just follow Thumpers mom's advice (which I think is actually one of the golden rules of life, but Thumper says it so well): If you can't say nothing nice, don't say nothing at all.

I can't believe my eyes

I'm the first one to say how little I actually like/respect Paris Hilton. In fact, she might be why I stopped following celebrity gossip. Her and Britney. And Lindsay. Regardless, this is just plain funny. McCain's poke at Obama, using a comparison to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, has completely backfired. I had no idea Paris could be funny. I'm sure most of this was scripted for her- but she pulled it off well I just had to share.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

The original video:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/64ad536a6d