socializing

My first weekend in argentina brought not one but two couples dates. already we've got a more active social life here than in sf. we'll see but i hope to keep it up. friday night we went to dinner at a nice restaurant in trendy palermo soho called Social Paraiso with our new friends Fernanda y her boyfriend Mario. i'm always tentative with new people as with couples you just never know if the women and/or men will have the right chemistry much less the foursome. dios mio, we had all of it in spades. we sat at dinner enjoying each others company, discussing everything from the difference in argentine vs. american culture, to sports, and independent films. they speak ok english and our spanish is one octave up from god awful but the combination and hand gestures was enough. F. and M. are both 41, childless like us, professional with lots of hobbies and interests. Mario and Hugo found a shared passion in tennis. also, mario is as fanatical about the boca juniors futbol team as hugo is for the dallas cowboys. Fernanda and I both want to learn tennis so are going to take beginner lessons together. hugh attempted to make jokes but although their english is pretty good, it's just not that good so there were some moments of blank stares. at about 1:30am, we called it a night. a typical leisurely 4 hour meal.

saturday night we had plans with another couple we met recently through friends of friends. Brad is from Wisconsin and moved here two years ago to develop real estate. he met his girlfriend Lara the second night he arrived and they seem pretty serious now. fortunately she spoke excellent english having worked in the UK for 3 months and a few different US companies in argentina. we ate at a fancy pizzeria that grills its very thin crust pizza on the barbaque grills that are more typically used for cooking steak. delicious! the restaurant was a ways from our apartment, but it was yet another warm night so we decided to walk back to our part of town, talking and strolling through the different neighborhoods for an hour. (so far, buenos aires has felt very safe to me. even more so than san francisco. the streets and parks are extremely well lit especially at night. also, so many people stay out in the evening that it seems comfortable to walk around. )

we ended up at our favorite heladeria aka ice cream shop called persicco. i've a new afinity for dolce de leche con brownie - yes, exactly as it sounds and better than any ben and jerrys flavor you can imagine. the square we sat in for an hour eating our ice creams was packed with families and young people at 2am. at one point several cars drove around the square honking their horns. a young man with nothing but a g-string bikini on and a mask was in the back of a pick up screeching with delight. a friend stood next to him with a fly swatter whipping his bare bum. they stopped in front of the heladeria so that he could honor the obvious hazing ritual and run inside. i assumed it was his bachelor party but who knows....