Hey,

Sorry, its been a while. Okay. So Tova and I got a call on Thursday night from this guy from Hillel, the international Jewish organization that we contacted in Buenos Aires. We had gone to the Hillel headquarters (which had crazy security) a few days before to ask if we could spend Rosha Shana dinner with a family here. So this guy, Mati, called us and said his family had been asked to have us for Rosha Shana dinner and would we like to come and meet him and his friends the next night for drinks. We ended up going to this bar in a really nice area of the city, Recoletta. We had a really good time and ended up going out with him on Sunday to Plaza Francia, this huge marketplace with live bands, restuarnats, clowns, martial arts demonstrations etc... On Monday night we went for Rosha Shana dinner at Mati's apartment with his parents, brothers, grandmother (and her boyfriend), aunt, uncle and cousins. It was pretty crowded around the table! The food was really good, and they were really interesting, funny people. Their English was really, really limited, and sometimes we got really lost, especially during the conversations about the grandmother's boyfriend's Viagra.... but it was funny all the same. The father has this thing about Chineese people: he thinks he knows everything about them and every story he tells involves Chinese people... like how he had to sell his house because Chinese poeple were running a sweatshop under it and all these other crazy stories. You would think Buenos Aires was full of Chinese people the way this guy talks, but we have seen very few. It is definately strange to hear Asian people speaking Spanish (especially decked out in Adidas and Kappa....) but we are getting used to it. So anyways, back to the dinner... It was really informal, which we appreciated. Also, they have the cutest dog, a Beagle named Tomi. He was always jumping up at the table and barking for food and the grandmother nearly had a heart attack several times and was getting really angry about this dog and was yelling at him, while the father was egging the dog on, giving it treats to jump on her lap! Oh and that night we nearly got into a car accident while Mati's brother was driving us home. Since there are no stop signs here at intersections without traffic lights, people just wing it and at night that can be pretty dangerous. We were centimetres away from crashing into a taxi at about 60km an hour. But we are ok! On Tuesday we went to the museum of Decorative Art, which was really a massive mansion filled with art. Today we went to the Recoletta Cemetary, which is massive and filled with the bodies of Argentina's national figures. We had never seen anything like it: it was like a miniature city of houses on streets, but the houses were actually vaults that held dead bodies. We took a guided tour, and there are many amazing stories about the bodies that are buried there, including a yound girl who was accidentaly burried alive! Tonight we're going to the concert of our friend who sings in a Brazilian band, so we'll let you know how that goes.

Until next time,

Alice and Tova