Drum Circle and Business As Usual

4am and I'm brushing my teeth on my balcony watching but mostly listening to a drum circle mostly obscured by trees in the mini park across the street from my apartment. Singing, dancing, clapping and drumming at 4 am on Peru y Chile! I love it. Just a typical night here in Buenos Aires. We had our friends over for Shabbat dinner after going to services at the NCI congregation in Belgrano. There I lit candles with the other women and danced with the congregation during L'cha Do'di. While I know I'm not one of the congregation yet it felt great to be accepted as usual in a Jewish community wherever one is in the world. It also felt great to have Shabbat dinner again after so long. My friend Juliana and I compared Challot, and while mine was the more aesthetically pleasing of the two, hers was the tastier. She put lemon zest in for flavor!!! I am very excited about this new development into my Challah baking explorations. I am also VERY excited for Challah french toast in the morning.

Just went downstairs to check out the drum circle. They were Brazilians!! Just one drummer, a cow bell type thing, and singing in Portuguese. Then this girl pulls a wood block out of no where and hands it to this guy. That was ridiculous. It also added a whole new element to the drum circle. Good old wood block. Then they were all singing, the girls were trying to harmonize, and they were dancing. When I took African dance a lot of the moves and beats were from South America and I was so excited to see these girls dancing like this to these beats that I recognized. Then the cops came. Typical. I guess they were making a lot of noise for 4 am though...

Saturday morning in Buenos Aires I wake up at 1 pm to the smell of camp fire? I look out that same balcony window and yes, there is a man tending a camp fire in the same square the drum circle was in last night. He has a table set up with corn, sausage, and a lot of lemons. Curious. I wonder how this is legal. Asado in the mini Plaza! Hopefully I'll see him do something good before we leave for Frisbee. This is our first Saturday missing all of our friends and teammates who went home this week. Mostly people from the US, but some Colombians have returned home as well (I can't wait for an excuse to visit them, mostly because I really can't wait to go to Columbia). The Cadillacs have suffered much from this departure, but really we suffer more because we have spent the week saying to many good byes. Luckily I have high hopes that we will see everybody again someday soon.

Asado update: The parilla attendant has placed a grate over his well tended coals and is placing corn, ribs, and other kinds of meats on top. In the plaza across from my apartment. This is amazing. And now it looks like an entire family has arrived. I guess when one's roof lacks a parilla you have the licence to take your asado to the street!!

Job update: Josh and I had an interview yesterday with a group we were put in touch with through an introduction my Uncle Howard made for us (Thanks Howard!!). The group is a group of English teachers who need to keep a couple of people from the US on board to teach classes or for one on one instruction where being a native speaker is necessary. Things like cultural information, accents, idioms, ect. are usually taught by native speakers. They offer a measly 24 pesos an hour but the classes are all an hour and a half. Its extortion and rediculous and they probably will only be able to offer us 12 hours a week in the begining, but its a start. They should let us know next week about the summer class schedule.

That's all the news for now on our front. Send us some emails with yours!!