my birthday!

The last couple of weeks have been really fun. I feel like I'm getting to know Buenos Aires a lot better and have been having a lot of fun in general! Some of the fun things I've done (and interesting things I've noticed)...

I had my first taste of Argentine "parrilla" a couple of weeks ago. Parrilla is Argentine barbeque, which here basically means meat cooked on a grill. But it is amazing! We went to a great restaurant more or less in my neighborhood, which seems to be really popular with locals and has a great vibe. Here I am with my roommate Christelle (far left) and three of her French classmates that are in her study abroad program here.

I also went to another "closed door dinner," and this time I made sure it was one with shared tables! Here I am with the three Argentinian women that shared my table. The one on the far left is a chef herself, and was looking for ideas for her own closed door restaurant. I wasn't sure if maybe she should have warned our host that she might be stealing some of his customers in the future? :)




And last weekend (the weekend before my own birthday), it was the birthday of a friend of my roommate Liz. We all went to a park and had a picnic to celebrate. It was so fun!! In the picture, the girl on the far left, sitting down, is Christelle (my French roommate); to the left of me is Mariana (the girl whose birthday it was, who is from Greece); and my roommate Liz is to the right of me.

This past weekend, I had the excitement of my first visitors from the US! A friend from college (Eddie, the one next to me in this picture) and three of his friends had long-standing plans to visit Brazil and Argentina this fall, and they were able to spend a few days with me in Buenos Aires. It was soo fun to have them! Here we are in San Telmo, a fun old neighborhood in Buenos Aires, with some delicious Argentine ice cream.

Here I am with Eddie again, showing off that excellent ice cream. Actually, the clinic where I am working just won a lawsuit against this ice cream store, "Freddo." Freddo had refused to hire women to work in its ice cream stores, and the clinic sued them so that they would stop discriminating. They seem to be complying with the court judgment requiring them to hire women, because the people that sold us our ice cream were female. :)

My Birthday!!

My birthday this year was really great! To celebrate, I went out to dinner with my roommates and another one of our friends. We had had such a great experience at the parrilla restaurant (the first picture in this post) that I chose that same restaurant for my birthday dinner. Here we are enjoying some more great parrilla. To my right is Anne (Christelle's classmate and one of our friends), and then Christelle, Freddy (one of my Argentinian roommates), and Liz (my American roommate). Thanks for a great bday, guys!!

Lisa and David sent a really cool bday gift, a bouquet of cookies! Yumm... I thought it was so cute. :) And they had it delivered to the office, so I shared the cookies with my coworkers, who thought they were the greatest thing ever.

And now for a few more cultural tidbits I thought were interesting:

Argentinians love pizza. In fact, they say that Argentinians love the "Three P's": Pizza, Pasta, and Parrilla. The other thing that they really seem to love is onions. It seemed crazy to me, but the second-from-left pizza in this picture is completely covered with onions (on top of the cheese).

And speaking of pasta, they have tons of pasta stores around town. Basically, there are piles of raw fresh pasta behind the glass counter, and you tell them how much you want of each one. It's sold by weight, and you take it home and cook it. And it's amazingly delicious!

Yesterday, my friend Samanta took me to the law school of the University of Buenos Aires, where she teaches a constitutional law class. I got to sit in on a class, and then go to a faculty meeting with the constitutional law faculty. The outside of the building is really beautiful. I had actually seen this building before without realizing what it was -- it's right next to the mechanical flower sculpture from before! :)

And lastly... one of the subway lines still uses the original subway cars from the 1930s, with wooden benches and everything. They're quite something, although they're smaller than the modern cars which means they get ridiculously crowded during rush hour. Thankfully the cars weren't very crowded when I took this photo!