Hola!.... Holla!

.....or, my week in Argentina.

(we taught our Argentinian tour guide some English words. So, each time she said, "Hola!" we responded with... "Holla!")

As promised, this is the ridiculously extensive blog entry about the Wind Ensemble tour in Buenos Aires. I don't blame you if you skim it over. You win a prize if you make it all the way to the end.

Well, let's start at the beginning (a very good place to start). We loaded the buses in Athens at 11 Monday morning. I was running on 3 hours of sleep and felt/looked like death warmed over. We took campus transit buses to the Atlanta airport (side note: campus transit buses on 85 loaded down with luggage = very strange sight). Made it onto our first flight to DFW. I was glued to the window as we came in for our landing and saw some old familiar sights. It was good to be back... even though it was for an hour in a terminal. :-) Loaded up for our long flight and, 10 hours later, we were in Buenos Aires!

Our Argentina bus picked us up at the airport Tuesday morning and drove us about an hour into the city to our hotel. Our bus for the week was a double decker, which turned out to be a lot of fun and a great way to see the city on all of our drives! We made it to the hotel, checked in and I promptly... took a nap. I know, I know, not the cool first thing to do in a foreign country, but I was not going to make it one more step without a little sleep. After waking up and showering, I felt like a new person and headed out to explore a little bit. Banks were closed, so there was no exchanging money that day (whoops), but I did go see the Congress building...

......which was beautiful! (Not my picture. But shows how pretty the Congress is). We walked around the park there a bit and had our first locuturio experience. I was really struck by how much of a cosmopolitan city Buenos Aires is - it reminded me a lot of New York. Very busy, not entirely clean, and a big combination of old and new. That night the hotel served us a welcome dinner, complete with flan for dessert.

Wednesday started with a city tour. We saw the mechanical flower in Palermo and toured the Bosques de Palermo (gorgeous park) complete with rose garden and the love bridge (something about being in love and married if you walked over it. not entirely sure.) We then headed to the Plaza de Mayo and saw the building where the country's May 25th revolution happened, the pink house (where the President lives), and the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral. The Cathedral had to be my favorite part... I could have stayed in there a verrry long time, just taking it all in. It was gorgeous.

very blurry picture, but you get the idea.

That afternoon I walked to Florida street, an area with lots of shops, cafes and vendors, by way of the obelisk, a big monument on 9 de Julio Avenue. I also had my first pizza in Buenos Aires (soooo much cheese!) and finally exchanged my money. There is a strong Italian influence there, so pizza/pasta is a must have!

That night we had our first concert at the Buenos Aires City Conservatory of Music for students there. It was in their concert hall, which turned out to be... a basement/garage. Literally. We were kind of squeezed in there, but we made it work and the audience was great. Everything runs a little later in Argentina, so people drifted in during the concert. By the end, there was definitely an enthusiastic full house! Another dinner back at the hotel, and Wednesday was complete.

Thursday started with another concert a little bit outside of the city. We played a shorter program at a high school for their music students.

(Funny moment: Our director asked about 200 kids, "How many of you speak English?" and every kid raised their hand, since they are required to take English at school. He then turned around and asked the band, "How many of you speak Spanish?" and about 5 of 60 raised their hand. Yeah. Embarrassing.)

The kids were really cute and afterwards we got to talk with them and show them our instruments. They were really curious and fun to talk to. They also served us lunch at the school and we watched some of the kids in their PE class and cheered them on.

That afternoon our city tour continued with a trip to La Boca neighborhood, which is famous for its colored houses.

This was our first visit to a market and a chance to haggle for some souvenirs. The neighborhood is next to the river, so we saw the harbor and some ships there. It was the first time we got to see tango in the streets! We also drove by some fútbol stadiums and learned about their teams. That afternoon I had some empanadas at a cafe with a view of the Congress building (again, so pretty. could have looked at it forever) and went to see the Teatro Colón. This is the famous concert hall in Buenos Aires that is supposed to have amazing acoustics... and was closed for renovations! :-( But we saw the outside of it anyway.

That afternoon was also my first Buenos Aires taxi experience (they drive crazy. and fast. and not in the lanes at all.)

That evening we dressed up and went to a dinner and tango show. This was my first Buenos Aires beef experience and, well, it lived up to expectations. Delicious! The show included tango dancing, music from a live band, and singing. Part of it also had gaucho music and my favorite part, the boleadoras (known by our group as "balls on a rope"). Very impressive.

That night was my first Buenos Aires nightlife experience. It. Was. Crazy. People don't go out until 2 in the morning there!!! We somehow managed to get 20 Americans in taxis, across town, and into a place someone's waiter had suggested. The people there might have thought we were crazy, but we had a blast!

Friday we loaded up the bus and headed out of the city and into the Buenos Aires province to a town called Mercedes. This was a smaller town and it seemed like they all knew we were coming. We rehearsed and played a concert in their famous theatre there, Teatro Municipal de Mercedes. They fed us more great pasta and their famous salami for dinner. This was by far the most enthusiastic crowd (which is saying something, because they all were!). They packed out the theatre and some people even stood in the lobby to hear us play - for 2 hours!! What troopers. They asked us to sign autographs afterwards and wanted to take our pictures. It was an amazing experience.

We got back to our hotel in Buenos Aires at 1:30 in the morning.. perfect timing to hit the town again! An even bigger group went out that night to celebrate a great performance. This place was even more over the top than the night before and on the river, so it had a great view. We shut the place down at 7 in the morning!!! A good time was had by all.

Saturday I slept in (much needed) and had a rich cultural experience for lunch - Burger King. (It was the fastest thing around, don't judge!). We then went to Recoleta neighborhood, where there was an open air market of hand crafts. The famous Recoleta cemetery is also there. There are beautiful mausoleums and sculptures everywhere, plus that is where Eva Perón is buried, so it is a popular destination.

Eva Perón's family's masoleum.

We also saw the church next door to the cemetery, another beautiful one!

Saturday night we played a concert at the University of Buenos Aires Law School, a really beautiful and unique concert hall.

A local youth orchestra played before us, and then it was our turn! It was a great last concert. The hotel served us dinner one last time that night, and even surprised us with champagne to toast to the end of our Argentina tour! Some of us found our way out onto the roof later on and got some breathtaking final views of Buenos Aires all lit up at night (but you didn't hear that from me!).

Sunday was our day at the gaucho ranch! We each got to ride a horse for a little bit, and the view was gorgeous, especially after being in the big city for a few days. They fed us a HUGE lunch of MEAT. It was delicious but I was so done with meat after that meal. Seriously. They just kept bringing more and more MEAT. There was another show of tango and gaucho dancing too. The gauchos put on a show for us outside and then they took girls in the audience for a ride.

Somehow, I ended up with the gaucho our tour guide told us to avoid... but he seemed nice enough! I even carried on a semi-conversation with him in Spanish, so I was pretty proud.

After a (slightly bizarre) video send off from our tour company, we loaded up the bus one last time and headed to the airport. Many, many hours, two flights, one bus ride and one frantic sprint through the DFW airport later, we were back in Athens!

Things I learned/realized on the trip:

1. I can really be a party pooper about traveling, even if I don't show it to those around me. I don't like living out of a suitcase and I like my routine, so I take a little while to warm up to traveling, even when it is going somewhere as awesome as Argentina. I need to work on this, especially since...

2. This definitely made me want to travel more. All of my international travel has been with a group that has some sort of itinerary, so I am really ready to head out to explore on my own. And it will probably be somewhere that I can...

3. Speak the language!! I was not anticipating how very frustrating it would be to not be able to speak Spanish. I wanted so badly to talk to people, but just couldn't. It was maddening! It also made me want to learn Spanish. So maybe I'll be back in a Spanish speaking country sooner than I think.

4. I really do love cities. I think they are so fun and exciting, and I would love to live in a big city at some point in the future.

And thus ends my adventures in Argentina. If you actually made it to the end of this, I am amazed. and super impressed.

Here's to one amazing week!!

Lauren