Tigre-River Plate

Tigre is a town of about three thousand people spread about on various tributaries leading into the mouth of the River Plate. It´s about a half hour train ride north of BA and good weekend getaway.




The hostel where we stayed.



The only means of transportation.


The morning´s activity.

Update

Because cameras are not permitted in the embassy (along with cell phones, MP3 players, basically anything electronic) I stopped by on Saturday to take a picture of the outside. Within less than thirty seconds of having taken the photo, two police officers rushed up to me and told me that the photo must be deleted (you know, security reasons?!) Anyhow, this is the perfectly hideous builing that the U.S. built expressly to be an embassy. It´s more like a compound occupying half the block. During the week there is line trailing around the corner of visa applicants.

Photos from this weekend

Here we are (along with half of BA) on the edge of Rio de la Plata river. It was a great day for a picnic and we had champagne, and strawberries that we dipped in a gigantic chocolate bar we left in the sun. It´s about a half hour bike ride from the city.

I intended to photo document my whole weekend but blogger goes down a lot, it´s one thirty and I meet the acting ambassador tomorrow. A bit about today though, I accompanied my office mate to lunch with a contact within the local (meaning BA) legislature, who was a total weasel. Attended a course for diplomats on the history of Peronism where we some how got seated next to the Venezuelans and had to endure very akward small talk as a result. This evening attended a presentation put on by the Eisenhower Fellowship on democracy and higher education. All in all an informative day and long ( I put in more than 12 hours).

I can´t figure out how to post and keep things in order! Sorry...

My roommate was amazed that I was able to take so many pictures of such a small space.








My apartment:

1472 Scalabrini Ortiz
5th floor #22
Palermo

Entryway

Entry #1

My roommate:

Michelle Sriwongtong
23 yrs. old
calls LA home
played soccer at and graduated 1 yr ago from Brown with an IR degree
worked for 1 yr. for the Thai gov´t (she is of Thai origin) and is now learning Spanish before moving on to Recife, Brazil in Dec.

Here we are at Puerto Madero and the photo to the left is the port by day. It no longer functions as a port but is lined by very expensive restaurants on one side and hotels and nightclubs on the other.

Welcome to my blog?

For those of you who know that I am the least technology literate 22 year old in the developed world, you realize what an accomplishment this is for me. I have decided to join the 21st century and ATTEMPT to keep a blog. I´ve been told they´re more efficient than mass emails?! A blog?! After having criticized others for months I am jumping on the bandwagon.

I am justifying this accordingly:

It´s the least lame alternative to Facebook and Myspace. The former I morally oppose and the latter was too hard to figure out (besides, I think you have to have an account as well to be able to view someone on myspace). Regardless it serves to the same ends. It avoids me unduly repeating myself and eventually will erradicate the necessity for mass emails. I don´t know. Maybe that´s too ambitious, it could be a total flop that I will abandon momentarily...
It also plays to my vanity which assumes that everyone is dying to know what I´m up to.

So now that I´ve cleared my conscience, where to start? I´ve been in Buenos Aires (BA) for two weeks now and am in love! It´s very cosmopolitan while retaining most elements of the Latin American culture of which I am so fond.

I can´t wait until I figure out how to post pictures!!!