Today was our first sunny day in Buenos Aires, yay! It had either been overcast, foggy or raining for our first week and a half here, so seeing some blue sky greatly improved my mood. Lindsay and I were so motivated by the weather that we even brought our dirty clothes down to the lavandería to get out laundry done. We dropped it off, and in a few hours picked up our clean, folded clothes for only 30 pesos, about $4 on the Blue Rate. As I mentioned before, the official exchange rate (5.5 pesos to 1 US dollar) in Argentina is currently very different from the unofficial (Blue) rate, about 7.5 pesos to $1. Many businesses have cropped up to allow people to take advantage of this exchange rate, and not all of them reputable. Some money change places will give you counterfeit pesos, and some will give you only a slightly better rate than the official. Luckily, Lindsay and I have made Argentine friends, so we have been able to exchange our US dollars with them to get a good deal in a safe and reliable way. Many Argentinians want US dollars because its a more stable currency then the AR peso and because US dollars are accepted at many places in Argentina, especially for bigger purchases.
We went out for our first happy hour (which in Buenos Aires is usually 7-9 or something similar, sometimes even until 10 or 11) in Palermo tonight. Danilas had tasty 2 for 1 happy hour cocktails, decent nachos (Argentina may be in Latin America, but they don't really do spicy and the empanadas are the only thing that really resembles Mexican food) and was right around the corner from La Viruta. La Viruta is a popular dance venue that teaches tango and other types of dance every day of the week. So today, we finally learned how to tango.
We arrived when the post-lesson free dance from the early dance class was just ending, so we watched people dance for awhile, wondering when (or if) our tango lesson would start. But start it did: the lights went off and a spotlight illuminated a group of smiling people in the center of the room, who all introduced themselves as instructors. The lights came on and we divided ourselves into beginning, intermediate and advanced sections in the room. It was a bit hectic: the room and dance floor were large, but still bursting with people. The women went on one side of the room and the men the other, where we both learned our respective steps.
Then, we partnered up and danced the basic tango steps. Then we would stop, the instructors would give us feedback, we would switch partners and dance for another (5-10 minutes). It was fun, but there were (of course) more women than men so we didn't get to dance every time, and some partners were good while others were nervously staring at their feet. The dance floor was also crowded, so we kept tangoing into each other on accident. Also, tango would probably be fun and sexy once you're good at it, but when you're learning it's kind of boring and more difficult to improvise to than other dances. I think I prefer dancing salsa, but tango is still really fun to watch.
Lucía and Gonzalo (or Gonza for short) met us outside La Viruta and we walked over to Soria, one of the many cool bars in Palermo. It was crowded as tonight there was a MundoLinguo event, which is kind of like Spanglish but way less organized and with all languages. We didn't participate, but it was fun to see people walking around wearing flag stickers for the languages they spoke and hearing conversations in so many languages.
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