A love/ hate relationship

Last week was undoubtedly one of the worst weeks I've ever had. It was up there anyway. Just about everything that could go wrong went wrong. My boss yelled at me, then made me trek across town for my paycheck, only to stiff me out of some money. My cell phone died, and when I went to buy more minutes, I was sold a fake card and got ripped off yet again. Then turned out the parts they sold me for the phone were broken too, and to fix the phone I needed to go to the store, but since it was Semana Santa the store was closed. General stress and all the "little things" started to pile up, and financial worries and work worries started to settle in. By Wednesday night, I had ended up in some sort of mental break down. No fun. My poor (wonderful) roommates bore the brunt of it. Much wine was consumed by all.

Then yesterday, I had one of those days that made me remember why I'm here. Just one of those great, lovely days. Sure, a lot of my problems still exist (work! broken phone! no money! ugh!) and I need to deal with that, but not yesterday. Easter Sunday was a great day, despite its total lack of anything remotely related to Easter.

My roommate Andrea has a friend in town, Yasmine, and the three of us started off our day by sitting at the café across the street drinking coffee on the street. Coffee and company were good, and things were looking up. Sundays in San Telmo are the best (as long as you can handle it), as it is the day of the feria when all the antiques dealers, artisans/ artists, and street musicians come out to play. We spent the afternoon walking up Defensa (the main drag, just a couple blocks from my house) and checking out all the interesting art and music, just having good clean fun.

Some of the highlights of the antiques market:



One of my favorite bands that plays on Sundays, a tango group featuring lots of hot accordion players: ;-)



In girly news, I also finally broke down and bought myself the bag I've been obsessing over for a week, as a little shopping therapy for myself. Oooh it's so cute! And as if that wasn't great enough, then my friend Charlotte met up with us, and we all went to enjoy a big fat choripan (chorizo sandwich with chimichurri and provenzal). YUM! [nom nom nom]

We spent a long time watching an amazing street artist paint live portraits of famous musicians (here with Amy Winehouse) to music, all with his hands and some splattering techniques. He's so entertaining to watch! I always see this guy around, and love his work.



As the day grew later, we ended up with some litros of cerveza on the sidewalk, planted in front of an amazing cumbia band playing their hearts out. We watched the dancers, wiggled a bit ourselves, enjoyed the cervezas and each other's company, and just appreciated the music, and being in a place where moments like that exist. Really, as I sat there am looked out into the crowd of happy people dancing, talking, and enjoying the music, I looked at the gorgeous cobble stoned street and the lovely colonial buildings around me surrounded by balconies covered in flowers, and I thought to myself, "this is why I came here." The stress of the week melted away right then, even if just for a moment.

On the way home, we walked by a man selling gorgeous Bugambilia flowers (called Santa Rita in Spanish) out of the back of his bicycle, and I had to have one. I ran after him, and Andrea and I both bought a couple for our balconies.



They make all the difference! Our balconies are now vibrant with lovely white, purple, and pink flowers. Plus, they look great alongside my other happy little plants, Flor and Máximo Junior.





Then to top off the whole evening, my other roommate Julie, who is French, and a friend of her's also from France, made us delicious crepes! We had some with ham and cheese, others with tuna, and then tons with nutella, dulce de leche, jams, and even one I insisted on making with peanut butter and chocolate. Oh man, what a dinner!

And now, I'm ready to begin a new week. I start a new job tomorrow, one I trained for last week, but officially begin tomorrow. I have a lot of work ahead of me and a lot of business to take care of. But... one step at a time.