Carne

So, I am here safe and sound. My host father is very nice, very funny, and loves to eat. What a perfect match. He bends over backwards to do everything for me. I feel kind of useless. He won't even let me take my plate off the table when I am done eating and put it in the sink. I tell him that I wasn't planning on washing it, but he insists that I don't even remove it myself.

The weather here is gorgeous. It is in the mid 70s every day. I couldn't ask for better weather.

The kids here ended their summer break yesterday and went back to school. The streets were super busy. They were also inaugurating the new members of parliament yesterday. It was a big event.

Last night my host dad, Roberto, and his son, Alejandro, brought me to a traditional Parrilla (a restaurant that specializes in roasted and grilled meat). We drove about 30 minutes outside of the city and sat down outside so we could enjoy the extremely pleasant night air. Just inside of the glass wall there was a fire pit with a wood fire roaring in the middle. All around the edges there were piece of different animals on stakes, stuck in the ground kind of like this (just click on the word to follow the link). This cooking method is very typical of the gauchos (cowboys) of the pampas here in Argentina but produces an amazing cut of beef.

We ordered a salad with onions, lots of onions, and it was delivered with a massive bread basket of 5 or 6 different types of bread and 3 fried beef filled empanadas. We ordered a bottle of Argentinian table wine from Mendoza, which was amazing, and my host father ordered a big platter of food. They brought over a sizzling platter (which literally had coals in the bottom from the fire pit) that had on it chorizo, which here is more like a kiebalsa, blood sausage and stuffed cow intestines. This was accompanies by a large plate of french fries covered in garlic and parsley. The chorizo was delicious. The blood sausage was really interesting. It had a very crispy casing and a very soft mushy interior that was essentially coagulated blood and chunks of fat (mmm, mmm). The intestines, well, I had to try them. The flavor was meaty though they had the most horrible texture. They were not only gritty but you chew the thing for 5 minutes before you can swallow it. So, just to be nice, I would take a bite with a lot of spicy chimichurri (a type of sauce they serve with meat here) and then swallow it whole with a gulp of water. I left the rest of the intestines for my host dad. He loved them.

Once we finished that he ordered a slab of roasted beef. I couldn't tell you what the cut was but it was cooked perfectly, still on the bone, and was surrounded in melting fat. The beef here is truly a lot better than in the US. I hear the fat is lower in cholesterol too (hooray) since the cows are not only active but eat a real diet of grass and not corn.

This was followed up by some vanilla icecream studded with dulce de leche coated nuts and topped with hot chocolate sauce. It was a little much. I don't think I can hope to ingest as many calories in one day as yesterday and still fit into my pants. We will see. Today I am off to a park to meet up with a friend from Minnesotta. We are then walking to school together to hear our afternoon lecture on health safety precautions in Argentina. I start signing up for classes tomorrow. My life is about to get much much busier.

Random observation: The stoplights here turn not from green to yellow to red but rather from red to yellow to green. So, people fly through intersections on red lights all of the time because it changes from green to red immediately. On the other hand, the other cars just tear into intersections because they see the yellow light and think that it is going to turn green in a second so they must go. I am surprised I haven't seen any car accidents yet.