We're back!

A number of our faithful readers have commented that it has been quite some time since our last post. This is true. I apologize. When we left you, we were living in a studio apartment in Recoleta, ignorant of the meaning of the term "backwards ocho," untested in our public tango-dancing skills, and unsure of where to find great burritos in Buenos Aires.

All that has changed now.

Oh boy, do we have a lot to fill you in on. This may have to be done in installments! Well for starters, I want to give a shout-out to our friend Rachel, who we met for Japanese food at a downtown restaurant. Like almost all of the expats we seem to meet, Rachel is from Seattle, which means she's awesome, and has really cute hair. Unfortunately, Rachel was on her way out of town just as we were on our way in, but she gave us all sorts of goodies like subte passes and coffee to ease the heartache.

Nell, Dinah and I had a picnic one Sunday in Puerto Madero, the riverside neighborhood that is quickly becoming the most expensive place to live in Buenos Aires. Brand new high-rise apartments are shooting up everywhere, and you can find lots of chain restaurants along the "diques," or docks, that used to serve as Buenos Aires' main port until the 1898, when a new, larger port opened to the north, and Puerto Madero was shut down. For about 100 years the docks fell into disuse, and the area was considered a dangerous and run-down part of the city. But in 1990 developers began fixing up the old Victorian buildings. Now a fully gentrified area, Puerto Madero has the most expensive apartments in the country, a spiffy-looking passenger train that was a gift from a city in France, a T.G.I. Fridays and a Starbucks, and a gorgeous park where we found clusters of families and groups of friends lounging in the spring sunshine. There's also a nature preserve that separates the skyscrapers from the riverfront, complete with trails for running or strolling, though a surprise rainstorm kept us from exploring too much.

One of the reasons we have had so little time to blog is that we have taken up tango lessons with the talented instructor Nathan Smith. We met Nathan at a party thrown by a Democratic Expat group to watch the first Presidential debate. Since he's an Obama supporter, and since he's from Seattle (Freemont, no less!), we immediately knew he was awesome. The photos are from Dinah and my first individual lessons, but we've since managed to round up a gang of boys to serve as our dance partners--Colin, Noah and Nicholas. Amazingly enough, we often have TOO MANY BOYS at our dance rehearsals. This is the first time that has happened in my entire ballroom dance career, which, as you may surmise, has been extensive. Anyway, thanks to Nathan's fine instruction, Dinah and I have already made our public debut at a community milonga, and we didn't embarrass ourselves too much. (By the way, a "backwards ocho" is a fancy-pants, hotshot tango dance move. I'll show you sometime.)

Moving on! October 8 was the Voting Party (woohoo!) at the US embassy. We voted! (Guess whom for?) To celebrate the successful casting of our ballots, we ate freedom burritos at the California Burrito Company downtown. They tasted like America.

(to be continued...)