Museums: What I do best with free time in new cities

I have been in Buenos Aires for exactly one week. It certainly feels longer than that! When I think about all that I've learned this week, its incredible that its only been seven days.

I was just having a conversation with a friend about transitioning from tourist to resident. We were visiting "el centro," the Plaza de Mayo, where most of the governmental buildings are located. We toured La Casa Rosada and visited some small museums, clearly touristy activities. Then, I posed the question, "Eventually, when we run out of these tourist activities, what are we going to do?" I certainly don't have the funds to just go shopping endlessly. And this is where it becomes necessary to really understand how Argentines spend their days, what normal activities are, normal spending....its going to be a process of cultural integration! For the meantime, I'm giving myself at least another week or two before I give up being a tourist in BA.

Yesterday, we had a full day of classes- learning about subtleties of the subjunctive. Its difficult because (most of the time) I can do grammar exercises on paper, but its incredibly challenging to try to speak with these complex grammar constructions that we know. Its pretty frustrating to not be able to express complicated ideas in Spanish, but I know I will improve with time.

After class, a few friends and I went to el Barrio Chino- Chinatown! Every city has one, even in South America! It was quite culturally confusing to be in a Spanish-speaking Chinatown, but it was fun to peruse the shops and grocery stores. I then went back to Palermo, stopping in music store and walking to streets to get more familiar with my neighborhood.

Today, I spent several hours en La Plaza de Mayo (see earlier in the post), doing what I do best in a new city: go to museums. As I experienced in Peru, the museums in Latin America are quite different than those in the US. They're less stately, more of a hole-in-the-wall that you stumble upon. Nevertheless, we went to an interesting museum on the anthropological roots of Argentina.

Unfortunately, today was chilly, and then eventually rainy in the afternoon. I don't mind the rain when I'm relaxing at home listening to it fall outside my window...like now, but when I'm walking home and the rain is blowing in my face for 30 min, its less than pleasant.

On my walk home, I was passing by a boutique and saw some girls from my program. I stopped inside to say hi, and they told me how lucky I was to live in such a swanky (my word, not theirs) area. Truth be told, its wayyyy to expensive for me. I can really afford $ 200 USD boots and $350 USD leather jackets, but I love the area, and I love window shopping :)