Buenos Aires, Day 9

Well, it’s been 9 days since I arrived in Buenos Aires, and I thought I would give an update. So far, I’m really enjoying myself here, although I haven’t been too far from Palermo Soho yet other than to set up my cell phone.

Today marked a pretty important milestone in my journey – laundry. In Buenos Aires they don’t really have coin operated laundromats, they have what are called lavaderos. They are usually small shops where you drop off your laundry and pick it up later after it’s been washed and folded. I managed to muddle my way through some dialog to drop my clothes off this morning. I walked away with a ticket and the inclination to return at the end of the day, so here’s hoping I get my clothes back! I’m sure it’ll turn out fine.

I’m actually really excited about this weekend because I’m going to venture outside and start seeing some of the tourist spots in Buenos Aires. The first stop I’m going to make are the Japanese Gardens, some of the largest and most beautiful outside of Japan.

Depending on how much time I spend there, I may walk all the way over to Recoleta and take in the cemetery. It’s quite the hike, but if the weather is nice I think it’ll be a good adventure.

I’m still struggling a bit on the language front, as I still haven’t got the basics nailed down for spanish yet. I tried muddling through a spanish speaking event the other day, but other than asking someone the time or what their name is, I’m not really that useful in a conversation yet. So I’m hoping to start lessons this week and get some real world practice speaking and listening to spanish. I think once I start practicing and forcing myself to attempt to talk that the process will go quite a bit faster.

But so far so good. One aspect I’m really enjoying here is the social life it provides. Most Argentines go out around 9pm for dinner, and usually the restaurants are full with people spilling out onto the streets, casually sipping wine or a beer with their friends until the wee hours of the morning. You don’t really see that in Vancouver that often, especially not during the weekdays. So it’s nice to go out at 9pm or 10pm and spend a few others sharing some food and some casual drinks.

I’ll be taking a camera to the Japanese Gardens, so look for some photos over the course of the weekend.