April 9, 2016

First weekend in Buenos Aires: Volunteering and Sightseeing

This is going to be a looooong posting. Not so much by text, but rather by photos.

The day started with our team participating in volunteer activities: At Fundación Si, we prepared Empanadas (I am using links to avoid the effort of explaining...) that will be given to homeless people. The Fundación people try to establish a bond to the homeless in order to see whether they can be helped out of their situation on the long run. To Janice, Rob, and myself, this sounded quite familiar - we were reminded a lot of what Puerta 18 does: Care for the kids and be interested in them also after they leave the place.

Here are some pictures of this event:

SAP team prepared for the empanada experience

Muhammad as "Chef de Cuisine"

Learning how to fold the empanadas

Carolina handing out lunch: Ñoquis
After our lunch at Fundación Si, a group of six - half of Los Buenos - decided to go for La Recoleta. Cecilia, who also participated in the volunteer activities, lives in that area and went together with us. She explained about the neighborhood and brought us to the world famous cemetery. We separated as a group, so everyone could look around independently - I took 250 pictures today, most of them at this magical place!

Before inviting you to look at some impressions from the cemetery, let me briefly write about the last place we visited today: The "El Ateneo" bookshop that is located in a former theatre. I do recommend reading the Wikipedia article (use the link at the beginning of this sentence) to learn more about it! Here are my impressions:

You could sit down and read in the loge.
View from above - this place was just so fascinating!

And now for the La Recoleta impressions - I will just add the picture, no descriptions provided, let the photos speak for themselves: