One week, and your first history lesson on Argentina

Sunday was the one-week marker for all of the BC kids at UCA. Silvana emailed us to tell us that the Di Tella kids (other BC kids who are attending a different university close to here) were arriving and that we were to meet them for their welcome lunch at San Telmo Plaza, the same restaurant where ours was held. All ten of us showed up with money in hand to have lunch with them, but when we got there, they were finishing up dessert. It turns out that Silvana had planned a city tour for all of us (hence the meeting time) but the lunch was only for the Di Tella crew. We ended up raiding a nearby Korean convenience store for yogurt and granola bars to eat for lunch and got on the bus.

The tour took us to several places that we had already seen (Plaza de Mayo, la Casa Rosada, etc), but we also got to go visit La Boca, one of the oldest sections of the city. If you've seen pictures of Buenos Aires with bright multicolored buildings, that's the section where they all are. The story behind the colors is that the people used to paint their houses with whatever color paint was left over from painting the ships in the harbor, and would switch colors whenever they ran out. People enjoyed the overall effect so much that now it's tradition to keep the colors as they were. Also in La Boca is the stadium for the Boca Juniors, one of the most popular soccer teams in the country.

[[Some interesting facts about the stadium, courtesy of Patricia and Luigi's youngest daughter (an Argentine tour guide who came and had dinner with the boys and I one night): The name of the stadium is called "La Bombanera", which basically means "chocolate box". The explanation that tour guides generally give to tourists is that the stadium, when seen from above and filled with dark-haired Argentinian soccer fans, looks like a box of chocolates. The real reason for the name is that the inhabitants of the city used to be employed primarily by shipping companies who transported manure to be used as fertilizer. When going to work, they would jokingly say that they were going to shovel bonbons, or chocolates, and were called "bombaneros" by most people. The stadium is actually built in the shape of the shovels they used to use, and the name stuck.
Other facts: Although the team's colors are blue and yellow today, they used to have the same colors as a rival team. They had a soccer match to determine who had the right to keep their colors, and Boca lost. They chose blue and yellow by choosing the colors of the first ship to sail into their harbor after the match, which was from Sweden.
Coca-Cola is one of the biggest sponsors for the Boca Juniors, and the outside of the stadium is covered with their ads. However, since Boca's biggest rival, River Plate, has red and white as their colors, the Boca Juniors forbade Coca-Cola to use their traditional red&white logo. As a result, the Boca stadium is the only place in the world where the Coca-Cola logo was changed to just black and white.]]

We also went to the cemetery in Recoleta, which is enclosed and full of elaborate tombs that date back hundreds of years. It's still in use today by the families that have lived here for generations, but serves as a tourist attraction and a place for Argentines to pay their respects to Eva Peron, who is buried there in her family's tomb.

After seeing a few other sights, Silvana brought all of the BC kids to the mall so the Di Tella kids could buy their cell phones. The UCA kids wandered around and got some ice cream while we waited, and finally the group split up and went separate ways. The Di Tella kids, Lauren, the boys, and myself all went to a pizza place near my apartment and then headed home.

I don't remember much about Monday other than that we went to class as always, and the boys and I wandered around looking for a sports bar where Ben could watch his soccer games later that night. We found a really cool bar called "Locos por futbol" which was exactly what we were looking for, and we wandered through a bookstore and bought a book on Argentinian slang to help us out a little.

Shorter than expected, but the best entry is still to come.