Teen Drama

So this Argentine teen telenovela, "Casi Angeles," is like the "High School Musical" of South America. I think. I've never seen either show.

Anyway, I have been taking a class downtown for the past 6 weeks, and I always see these people on the street corner selling autographed photos of smiling teens. I had no idea what it was about. I finally captured them with my camera and I saw "Casi Angeles" on the pics, and I realized what these were. Weird.




This guy loves his job.

In the shadow of the Obelisko.
Lovely.

Chillin'

L-R: Boludo, Ellie, Neil.

This Makes Me Laugh -- A Lot

La Peña del Colorado

This one's for you, Mom. Just scouting it out for you. Don't worry, we will go again when you get here next month!

So we went to La Peña del Colorado, a local club/restaurant with live acts every night.

We ate copious amounts of amazing Argentine food, in a very rustic atmosphere. We started with meats, cheeses and olives on a slab of wood, morcilla spread on bread -- which I LOOOOVE, as long as I don't think about what it really is -- some sort of gaucho "french fries," and hot, cheese-filled rolls. YUM!

Then we had our main dishes; Mark had a lamb stew served in an earthen bowl,

Neil had locro, a traditional Argentine stew that I thought we would share, but it wasn't enough for the both of us. It was SOOOoooo delish, I should have gotten my own bowl.
Instead, and I really don't know what I was thinking, I got the brick-oven pizza. Super cheesy. I only ate this bite, and then I nabbed spoonfulls of locro when I could. Who gets pizza at a place like this??? Dumb dum dum.

Wai-Kiki

Saw this bottle of seltzer water, or, as they call it here "agua con gas," at Nucha. Funny that it's called Wai-Kiki. In Argentina?

Did you know that Argentines LOVE seltzer water, and you have to ask for regular water or they will automatically assume you want seltzer water? And in restuarants water usually comes in a green glass bottle? Very quaint.

For the record, I really, really dislike agua con gas (Neil has politely asked me to stop using the "h" word

(hate)).

'Funny Hat' Party

We went to a "Funny Hat" party last weekend at the Marine House.

Before we left, we waited for our ride in the "park" that's not really a park, across from our apartment. Is that Joseph Smith? Just checking.

This was my "funny hat," chosen from among the collection of strange accouterments for one's head that can be found in one of Neil's multitude of Sterilite containers.
He got it at some African store in Adams Morgan. He wore a black doo rag from some gas station in VA. Now I'm glad he didn't get rid of these one of the 1,000 times I exasperatedly told him to throw away all this junk.

Jesse let us try on his authentic, Iraq-worn Marine helmet, goggles, and noise-canceling headphones. The headphones were really cool; they're electronic and they cancel noise over a certain decibel (for example, gunfire). So you can hear people talking to you but not things blowing up. Key. They even have an audio input jack so, as Jesse put it, he can have a soundtrack while traveling in the convoy or while target shooting on the range. Pretty mean!
Me looking more like a Genie than a Marine.


Marines doing (one of the things) they do best ... fundraising!

Itamae

My friend opened a sushi restaurant. We ate and ate and ate. And then they brought more.


Which we were too stuffed to eat. But they made for tasty leftovers.