Palermo, te amo.

Palermo, I love you.

Hello!

It has now been almost three weeks since I officially moved into my new place, so I feel authorized to publicly proclaim my love for Palermo, my new neighborhood. Not that my old barrio, Villa Crespo, didn't have its own charms (hmm at the moment only one comes to mind and that's a cheese shop that was oh-so-cleverly named ''Villa Queso." Haha? Get it? Sounds like Villa Crespo? No? Hmm . . .) but I didn't realize that living on such a crazy huge street was really wearing me down.

Let's just say my old digs were more ''I live with Rockville Pike outside my bedroom window and it's rush hour all the time!" and my new place is a lot more cobblestony, leafy and generally pleasant. Amanda and Ellen helped me discover that we also have the cheapest ice cream shop in Buenos Aires at my doorstep (Dulce de leche ice cream, anyone? No? What about dulce de leche with cherries? Dulce de leche with chocolate chips? Vanilla with dulce de leche pieces? Or if that's not Argentine enough for you, dulce de leche with dulce de leche pieces?). I've also struck up a ''relationship'' with the old lady who spends her entire day peering out the yellow-grated window in her first floor apartment across the street. (Who is she watching?) And by relationship I mean she knows that I know that she's watching everyone.

Besides the one night when the couple in the building next door decided to have a not-so-private break up between the hours of 5 am and 6 am, and besides the day that I broke the toilet (long story), everything has been going swimmingly.

I spent Sunday photoadventuring, and was happy to discover that someone else felt the need to proclaim their love for Palermo (see photo above).

Above: Sunset from our living room.


Above: Spotted in my neighborhood.


Above: The graffitti fairy doing her work to make Palermo
look interesting (check out the can of spray paint in her hand).

The times they are a-changin'

. . . says Bob Dylan.

And indeed changes are about in the Argentina compound. For various (amiable!) reasons, my roommates and I have decided to go our separate ways once we ring in the New Year. For me, that means I'll be moving across town to Palermo into a new apartment with two new roommates. The apartment has red walls, a 13th-floor view of the city and a giant giraffe in the living room (it's wooden). New year, new people, new neighborhood, new subte line . . . new adventures.

Alana and Drew on our terrace in October.

As I discovered yesterday, however, my new apartment will also involve learning some new skills, i.e. finally learning to light a gas stove. Pathetic and embarrassing yes, but I have avoided those light-with-a-lighter gas stoves for years, succumbing to my fear that I will light my face on fire and gracefully allowing someone else (Grace Koerber in Italy, for one) to do the lighting themselves. Something about gas and fire gives me the heebie jeebies. It's kind of like driving stick shift. I should reallllly know how to do it, but . . .

Anyway, I went to visit Mechi, my new roommate, yesterday, and she showed me the ins-and-outs of the apartment, including the gas stove and oven. Unless I want to eat PB&J for the next couple months, it looks like it's light or perish for me.

Drinking mate on our terrace in October. One day I will explain mate to you all, but I believe it warrants a whole blog post, so just sit tight for now.

In other news: I am officially on vacation since my school is on break until Jan. 5. Ellen arrives tomorrow, and on Thursday we take off for southern Argentina and Chile. I am trying to convince her to go horseback riding once we arrive in Chile, but if anyone remembers the last time she got on a horse (sorry this is mostly a joke for my uncles), perhaps we should just stick to bicycles.