Recoleta

Yesterday I took the train downtown with a few people.  We went to the Recoleta Cemetery - it's funny that a cemetery would be one of a city's top tourist attractions, but it's amazing.  I think there are almost 5000 people buried; well, not really buried, because the cemetery is constructed as a town with tons of huge ornate mausoleums.  I don't know how big it is, but you could probably wander around for hours.  There are strays cats running around everywhere, it's kind of creepy.  Evita is buried there, and a lot of Argentina's former presidents.  You can look into most of the tombs through glass panes on the doors, and a lot of them have stairs heading underground where family members are buried.  Creepy.

We went through the artisan market at Recoleta, wandered through some of the major streets and shopping districts (la avenida de 9 de julio with a bit of the obelisk is shown at the right), and ate at probably 3 different cafes before heading to the Boedo barrio to listen to Segundo Mundo, a klezmer (secular Jewish/Yiddish) band play at an intimate little theater attached to a cafe called "Pan y Arte" (Bread and Art).  The nightlife here is amazing, it's something I'm definitely going to miss back in Seattle.  People didn't start lining up outside of the cafe to listen to Segundo Mundo until almost midnight, and afterwards when we went to have dessert people were still coming into the cafe.

This afternoon my host parents had an asada (a barbeque) and invited family over.  Everyone was so nice.  There were only 10 people in the house so it wasn't an overwhelming amount of spanish, and people here actually don't talk that fast.  It was a very argentinian meal... there were 5 kinds of meat and most of the conversation centered around futbol and politics.  And tonight I went to a catholic mass at a really pretty cathedral in San Isidro.  The service was in Spanish, and the cathedral was completely packed with mostly younger people, it seemed like the place to be in San Isidro tonight.  I think that 96% of Argentina is catholic.