We have also dolled oursleves up a bit going to the salon for our hair and nails. We needed it!
Our first big event here in BsAs was Creamfields. Creamfields is an electronica-techno music show from England. Big techno djs such as Chemical Brothers, Too many djs, and LCD Sound system. Not really Lizzie and my kind of music, but everyone we met was going, so how could we pass it up. It started at 3pm, but we didn't arrive until about 10pm. As music would be raging until early morning we figured that was early enough. We danced all night and ended up having a really fun time. We left at about 4am, but people went on well into the next day.
Other than that we have been doing lots of shopping and sight seeing.
Last Tuesday James, Liz's brother, came for a visit. We were so excited to have some family come stay with us. We were really excited when he showed us that he had brought some Peanut Butter!!! We had been craving this sweet snack for months! But that wasn't it. He had an even better surprise in store for us. Cooking lessons! He was taking us to learn how to make some traditional South American fair. We jumped up and down as we were so excited.
The woman in charge, Terecita, is a cute little Argentina. She greeted us with a big smile and showed us into her warm kitchen. First lesson - Empanadas! Liz was especially excited as she had been wanting to learn the art of empanadas for the whole trip. We made two kinds, meat and corn. We even learned how to make the dough for frying and baking. It was so much fun and she always kept our wine glasses full.
After there we made our way to the futbol stadium to watch Buenos Aires' River Plate team play soccer against Arsenal. The game was crazy. The fans jump, yell, cheer, and even light off fireworks! River Plate lost in the end in penalty kicks, but it was a good game to watch.
The next day we took a bike ride through the whole city on a tour. It was a great way to really get an idea of where everything is and how much there is to see.
Then came James birthday! We had another cooking lesson at Terecita's. Parilla aka Argentine BBQ. Meat. Our driver, Buda, picked us up and drove us to the local butcher, best butcher in town. We picked out kidneys, intestines, sweetbreads (glands), morcilla (blood sausage), skirt steak, flank steak, ribs and more. We had loads of meat and I doubted we would be able to eat it all(very wrong). There were two Canadians staying at the bed and breakfast that joined us in our parrilla lesson. The guys tended to the charcoal and Terecita taught us how to make the tradicional sauces. The chimicuri is amazing, but the others were good too (I'll make them for you when I get back).
They put all the meat on the grill and slowly brought it over for us to eat. I can't forget to mention the wine! We started drinking at about 11am and didn't stop until we left that evening at about 6pm! Terecita knows her wines and picked out a fabulous selection. As for what our favorite new meat are - James' favorite was the ribs, Lizzie loves intestine, and I loved the morcilla! Yum. We just ate and ate and ate for hours. They surprised us at the end with a cake for Jamie. We all sang happy Birthday and stuffed ourselves even more.
Our last cooking lesson was brazilian Poa de queço and muceca de pescado - a delicious cheese bread and fish soup. With that we made rice and fried bananas. We also learned to make caiperiñas (traditional brazilian drink similiar to mojito). All amazing!
Our original plan had been to make our own attempt at a Thanksgiving dinner. But with out really knowing how to work our stove, and being exhausted from three days of cooking with Terecita we kind of flaked out on the idea. But at the last minute we thought we had at least try. So James and I went to the store to pick up an already made rotisserie chicken while Liz started on the mashed potatoes and salad. We even got apple pie for dessert. So, it wasn't the original Thanksgiving we had hoped for, but it was still family and it was delicious.
For our last event we had planned with James we were going to go to the Miguel Bose Papito tour concert. We were so excited and had been listening to the cd all week. We got all dressed up and wondered why when we arrived no one was around. We found out the concert had been cancelled due to illness. This is us being very sad.
We have really been loving BsAs and can't wait to see what is next!
