Buenos Aires – Gwen

Hola from Buenos Aries! We’ve been here about a week and a half now, relaxing and seeing the city. It’s a really gorgeous place, very picturesque (hence the thousands of pictures on my camera). We’ve had some pretty great experiences so far. We’ve gone to the capital building, the Pink House, like our White House, but pink! Dad and I toured it, it wasn’t too interesting to us, but it was nice looking on the inside. We visited the only matte museum in the world; a little whole in the wall with hundreds of matte cups behind glass. They sold matte cake, which was surprisingly delicious. We bought some, scared that it might taste like the actual matte, which in my opinion is GROSS. Made with the same plant as chimarrão from Brazil, which I thought wasn’t all that great, until I tried matte. Chimarrão is great. Another place we saw was Recoleta, I guess it’s called. It’s a huge graveyard that looks like a little city, full of mausoleums. It’s famous not only because of all the mausoleums, but because Eva Peron is buried there; I’m not really sure who she is, but she is very famous and important in Argentine history. But, I thought it was very creepy, looking into the windows of the above-ground graves and seeing bunches of coffins. Not exactly my cup of tea. We’ve done a lot more interesting things, but what I really wanted to write about was my tango class today! 😀
On the weekends, and some weeknights, you can walk through street markets and see couples dancing tango. It’s very exciting to see, and really makes you want to learn to tango! So, that’s what I did. The class took place above a fancy little café, in a huge upstairs ballroom. When we first got there, there was nobody except older people. I was terrified that either I’d be in the class by myself, or have to dance with some old man. Thankfully, a few minutes later, a big group of kids from Los Angeles showed up and accompanied me. The class was very fun, and not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. Tango looks like a very fast, complicated dance, but it’s really pretty slow and the steps are very easy, once you get into the basic posture and balance. You definitely have to be light on your feet. I never really relaxed through the whole class, but things got easier for me. I enjoyed it a lot! Hopefully I’ll be going back for another class on Sunday night at 9! Pretty late, but that’s when everything starts here! I’m very excited to expand my tango knowledge. It’s a beautiful dance! If you’re ever in Argentina or Uruguay (it’s big there, too), take a tango class!!!!! It’s a must.
Gotta go now, Mom’s making chicken curry with the coconut milk from Chinatown, haha. (:

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