off to uruguay

I just got into Colonia, Uruguay, where I´ll be until Sunday morning. The town is really nice, it´s a little colonial getaway town with cobblestone streets and open plazas, and is really clean and well maintained. Reminds me a bit of Newport, or maybe Victoria. Anyhow, nice to get out of the big city for a bit.

Last night was Buenos Aires thanksgiving. It was a bit of a 'quilombo' preparing it, which is the omnipresent word in buenos aires for mess/snafu/less nice words, however you want to call it. My sweet potatoes were an unmitigated disaster, but the rest of the food was excellent and there was tons of good wine. I took it upon myself to buy a few bottles of champagne and give a thanksgiving toast. It caught most by surprise (19 people total, 4 americans), but despite the sentimentality, it's the whole point of the feast to take a moment and reflect on everything we have to be thankful for. That's the simple purity of thanksgiving, there's none of the commercialism or religious complexity of holidays like easter and christmas. Just a feast, and an opportunity to reflect on how much we have to be grateful for, especially the people around us. Anyway, the dinner (which started at 11:30 pm) was a fantastic time in a great old converted 19th century villa in San Telmo.
My favorite quote of the evening was a local guy explaining to me that when he was travelling in europe and was trying to meet girls, one told him: "you don't have to lie here, you're not in argentina." sums up the social interactions between men and women here pretty nicely.
I may move this journal to another site so it's easier to post photos, but will be sure to let any of you reading it know.