The evolution of an Argentine protest.

As we were finishing up dinner we heard something brewing in the plaza below our building. We're staying on one of the upper floors in a building which would be Cordoba's equivalent to being in the middle of Time Square NYC.

This was a small group beating some drums and disrupting traffic in the main intersection. Around 7:30 p.m...

About fifteen minutes or so later.

This is probably about an hour later, and they succeeded in closing off the street. Alessandra and Anthony have been out on the balcony watching the whole time.

It's now 10:30 and they're still going strong. It's too bad our internet connection is so slow here because I have a few good videos of this. There were some loud chants and fireworks at one point. They were setting off the fireworks down in the middle of the street, and they were going off at around eye level for us, just dozens of feet away. I'll get those videos added in here when I can.

Cordoba

So far our stay in Cordoba has been a bit disappointing. The location of our apartment is great, and the apartment itself is pretty nice, except for the kitchen, which, unfortunately for us, is the focal point when you have three small food gobblers. The supermarket down the street is very small compared to the nice one we had very close by in Buenos Aires, and the contents of the store are terrible in comparison. We pretty much prepare all of our meals ourselves because eating out is just too inconvenient with the kids so these circumstances are making things a bit rough here. 

I really wasn't able to find enough food for us to make dinner last night so we ate out, which ended up being pretty decent considering it was in the food court of the mall across the street from us. Then we were out exploring today around lunch time and ended up eating out again, which was just okay.

Our outing this morning and afternoon wasn't the best either, the parks here don't compare to Buenos Aires either. We may have to hit the road sooner than later to head north to Tucuman.

I was able to put together a decent dinner tonight with a few things I got at the market. At least the kids liked it. What started toward the end of our dinner ended up being the highlight of our day, which I'll cover in the next entry.

Road Trip

We started our road trip on Monday. The destination is Cafayate, which is about 1000 northwest of Buenos Aires; we're headed up there to the harvest festival (it's the end of summer here). It was a bit crazy getting out of Buenos Aires and on the road. We over packed- just a little, and even after stashing a few of our bags in a couple of different places in Buenos Aires our car ended up almost bursting at the seams once the five of us and all of our luggage (and the kid's Striders) were crammed into the car. 

Anyway, our original plan was to drive to Cordoba (6 hours away) the first day; but there was no way that was going to happen since we didn't get on the road until almost noon. We ended up staying in a small town along the route to Cordoba called Marcos Juarez, where we found a surprisingly nice little hotel considering it was a small farming town in the middle of nowhere.

We arrived in Cordoba at around 1:00 on Tuesday, and we'll be staying here for at least three nights. Here are a few pictures from the last couple of days:

Our triple single bed room in Marcos Juarez.

Anthony was tired! We were all asleep before 9:30. By far the earliest night of our time here.

From the balcony of our apartment in the center of Cordoba.

Cash is king in Argentina

This should get us through the next few weeks- hopefully!

This is a great example of denial:

At least Zimbabwe acknowledged their problems!

Play and eat- that's about it!

We're here!

We're beginning our third full day here; just finishing up breakfast- at 11:30 a.m... Alessandra and Anthony got to sleep just before 11:00 p.m. (we think), and woke up around 10:00. Which is when Erika and I got up (although Erika was up several times during the night with Gianluca, who's teething).

Living in the middle of a city with 3 million people is a bit different than our sleepy San Carlos lifestyle, but so far so good. It's been hard finding time for blog updates, and we haven't had much time for picture taking, but we'll get it going pretty soon. We just wanted to do a quick entry to let you all know that we're here, we're in the process of getting adapted, and we're doing just fine.

He're are a few pictures from along the way so far. More to follow!

Alessandra and Anthony in the airport in Miami at around 5:45 a.m. after they slept for a couple of hours on the flight from SFO. They fell back asleep in a booth in a restaurant where we had breakfast about 2 hours later. It was heartbreaking having to wake them up and telling them that we had to go get on another plane.

Anthony claimed the only pack n' play so we had to improvise. This will be Gianluca's sleeping quarters for the foreseeable future.

Preparing for Takeoff

We're out of our house, packed, heading down to Argentina- and we're