06/20/10 - Day 3

Today, I woke up 5 minutes before we had to leave for orientation. We still made it on time. We met Claudia, the site director for the program here, and she gave us a map, and then we took the subway downtown. We saw many sex hotels (yeah... weird I know) and an actual porn cinema (also strange), and the broadway-style theaters, the obelisco, the supreme court, and many other parliamentary buildings. Claudia told us a story about the obelisco, when a few years ago Argentina did an AIDS campaign and put a giant condom on the obelisco (see google images for this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Condom_on_Obelisk,_Buenos_Aires.jpg)... let's just say a lot of things are accepted in Argentina that are way out of line in the U.S which is really interesting and awesome... We went to two different street markets, and had lunch at a FANTASTIC restaurant. I, of course, had steak. Now, this steak was massive (pictures on facebook soon) and yes, I ate the whole thing... and it was only 37 pesos (less than 10 dollars). Talk about awesome. Claudia left to go back to Belgrano, and most of the group stayed out and did some more shopping at the street market. Around 4:30, two of us went on the tourist city bus tour (a little expensive, and cold, but worth it). We sat on the open top deck of the bus and it drove around for about 2 and a half hours to all the touristy places in town. very beautiful. again. see facebook pictures. Dinner this evening was pastries and coffee, literally. super delicious. and then we had 1/4 kilo ice creams (that's quite a large amount of ice cream).. yummmmmmy. We came back to the house and ate ice cream and talked for a few hours. We hung out at the house and went to bed around 2:30am. Big day tomorrow!