A quick reflection about our 10 favorite things about our life in Buenos Aires right now (in no particular order):

1. Dogs: We’ve told you about this before – they’re everywhere.  It’s a little strange that they don’t seem to have the slightest interest in talking to us or being pet by us, but just seeing them makes us happy.
2. Empanadas:  This is one of our greatest discoveries here.  At first, we’d stop into one of the dozen empanada shops in our neighborhood and wait while they got our order ready.  Now, we’ve evolved to become professional empanada-orderers, calling in our order for delivery (in Spanish – go us!!) and having them delivered to our front door 30 minutes later.  It’s become one of our favorite (and cheapest) meals – we eat this for dinner at least 2x week.
3. Learning Spanish: When we came, Ryan hadn’t spoken his high school Spanish in years, and the only Spanish Jen knew was from menus in Mexican restaurants (and they don’t really even have Mexican food here).  We’re not exactly fluent now, but we’ve come along way (reference the note about ordering in Spanish above . . . seriously, we’re really proud of that one, and no, it doesn’t matter that we had to ask for a script from our Spanish teachers).  Sitting in a cafe and reading the local newspaper this morning was gratifying.  We didn’t understand everything, but being able to understand anything at all felt like quite an achievement.  Then we went to a Spanish movie in the afternoon . . . and were promptly reminded that we still have a long way to go!
4. Walking places: Buenos Aires is a beautiful city with amazing architecture and a plethora of parks.  We love not only being able to walk to our school and most other places we go, but also just going for walks in general with no particular destination.  Especially now as it’s turning to fall, the air is crisp and clean and it’s invigorating to get out and walk around this beautiful city.
5. Carne: The steak here is unbelievable, unbelievably cheap and available everywhere.  When is the last time you paid $12 for the best steak you’ve every had?  We ate red meat maybe once a month in the US; we eat it at least once a day here.  Yum.
6. Vino: It’s good, it’s cheap and if you know us, you know we like to drink it.  Looking forward to getting out to Mendoza (the main wine region) sometime soon . . .
7. Being able to take a half-empty bottle of wine home from restaurants: This is the best rule ever.  Apparently, it’s tacky to ask for your leftover food to go, but if you ask for your leftover wine, they’ll whisk it away, wrap it up for you and off you go.  Too bad it’s illegal to take an open container in the US . . .
8. Argentine culture of appreciation for the good things in life: You may have noticed that a lot of our favorite things involve food and drink – turns out that’s something the locals here really value too.  On top of that, they value beauty (made clear in the architecture, the many parks, and of course the well-groomed dogs), family and relationships – witness the closing of shops for the afternoon siesta and the fact that you can’t get coffee to-go.  The culture here seems to have a better set of life priorities than in the US, and despite the crazy ups and downs they’ve lived through over the last century (govt, economy, etc.), the Argentines set a great example of how to appreciate all the wonderful things in life.
9. The people: We don’t know a lot of them yet, but those that we do know are incredibly gracious and welcoming.  We can’t wait until we can speak intelligently enough that they’ll actually want to talk to us too!
10. Having time to spend with each other:  Cheezy, we know.  But hey, we’re newlyweds, and it’s wonderful to be able to have so much time to do nothing other than just enjoy life together.  It’s pretty amazing that after essentially 24-hours a day for 3 months straight, with virtually no other friends to spend time with (note #9 above), we still enjoy spending each day together.