The third week was a continuation of essentially trying to live a normal life. Every day during the week included the gym, Spanish lessons for me, work for Larry, basic chores and provisioning, and then out for dinners in the evenings. It was incredibly rainy on Monday, and many places around here simply are not water tight. It’s clearly changing to autumn here. Leaves are colorful and rapidly falling, temperature is fluctuating, sometimes as low as high 50s and sometimes as high as 80, but mostly it hovers around a comfortable 73 degrees.

The biggest event outside our normal M-F routine was that we had the opportunity to go see the Boca Juniors play for their spot in the football championship playoff. That was Tuesday, and it was such an incredible experience. The fans are exquisitely passionate. They literally rock the stadium with their jumping and singing. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced, and in many ways felt absolutely opposite of say, a Bayern Munich game. Where Bayern feels civilized to the point of almost tame in its enthusiasm (I offer as supporting evidence the call and response at Bayern matches of “Danke…Bitte” as just one example). I won’t even begin to share what the Boca crowd was chanting to the refs after some unpopular calls, but I will say my language lessons that evening were…interesting.

The weekend of our third week gave us the time to play tourists. We spent a glorious Saturday in Uruguay, where I delighted in more stamps in my passport. It was a lovely day wandering the cobblestone streets and walking along the waterfront. We had a delightfully relaxed and casual lunch and then made our way to the pier to watch the sunset over the water. It was a very relaxed day. Once we arrived back in Buenos Aires we had 10:45 dinner reservations. I can hear your incredulity, 10:45 pm?!?! and believe me, I share it. It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore. Between the late dinners and the mate drinking, I feel positively local. On Sunday Larry and I took advantage of the lingering nice weather before the incoming rain. We walked and walked and walked through some of the beautiful green spaces here in Buenos Aires. We visited the Japanese Gardens, the rose garden, the poet’s garden, and cut through several other parks. We made our way to an Armenian restaurant that was outstanding. There we finally found delicious ground coffee for sale. It was pricy, but compared to what we’ve been drinking so far in home, it was worth every dime. We watched/listened to the playoff game of Boca Juniors against their arch rivals River Plate. It’s safe to say the folks here are passionate about their football.

We now turn our attention to our last week here in this great city. I’ve opted to stop Spanish lessons for this week. I felt like I’ve been drinking from a firehose with all the Spanish lessons I’ve been taking, and not really giving myself any time to absorb the information. I know that I process things very slowly; this week will give me a chance to practice in the real world and study at my own pace. This week I will play tourist and try to see the things remaining on my list. There’s simply never enough time to do the things we want to do.