One Week Down, 10 to go

hello all--

Today makes one week that I´ve been in South America, so I figured I better get the blog going or I never would. This is a wonderful place, and the trip has been great. Hard to prioritize what to say exactly about what i´ve done...

Highlights:
1. Colonia, Uruguay with Ross, Timmy, Edward, and John. Took the Buquebus ferry, posed for pictures with mimes, saw some wonderful views and cobblestone streets. Great first night with good friends.

2. The city of Buenos Aires... It´s huge so there´s horrible areas (that was our field visit today) but the middle class and upper class areas + the government center and the parks are amazing. Like New Orleans in that when you enter a new neighborhood, you can usually tell so by the shift in architecture or just general feel. Palermo is like 30 blocks of Magazine Street, Florida looks like Tokyo, and Recoleta has a wonderful laid back feel that inspired a lot of Borges stories.

3. Tango Show: Our somewhat awkward professor who grew up in BA invited us alng to this tiny club near downtown to see ¨and older guy, but one of my favorites". This concert was phenominal. Tiny basement club, maybe 40 other older, rich Argentines there, just instruments (tango is a style of music, dances that are famous are just extras) and he just belted out songs. At one point he pushed the mic aside and raised his hands and the entire club (minus us gringos) joined him in singing this song. So incredible. One of the best concerts I´ve ever been to.

4. Todays field visit to Cuartel Quinto, a very poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. The 45% of residents there that actually manage to find a job travel 2.5 hours by bus, train, then bus again to get to the city center or wherever they work in construction or domestic servants. But we visited La Comenal, which is this umbrella group of civic organization that tries to improve life in the neighborhood. They have landscaping classes so the people can get jobs as gardeners, and put on arts and sports clinics to give the kids something to do besides huff the leftovers from cocaine production. And they run like 80 soup kitchens for the 60,000 people in the area. They´re big on community identity, trying to give the people something to cling to besides buying the next consumer good or doing drugs. It was a sad place, but hopeful too. And the people were wonderful. there´s a chance i´ll be going back there for 4-5 days next week as part of the field experience/internship that we do. I´d like it, but theres other options that I might like more. But we´ll see.

Going to eat some empanadas and will write again next week or before.
dz