I am running on four hours of sleep since 36 hours ago, but the fresh air of the River Plate recharged my spirit enough to crank this little ditty out before catching a siesta in a bit, then we're off to a tango show, likely to get home around 1AM.
Gathering students in Washington Dulles Int'l yesterday went fine until a giant storm rolled in somewhere between D.C. and Chicago, resulting in a late flight that ultimately meant our last inbound student would hit the tarmac at Dulles exactly 4 minutes after the departure time of our flight to BsAs last night at 9:45PM. We sent Liv to try to snag this girl off the plane and run her to our gate while I stalled, which I feel I did extraordinarily well despite, ultimately, not succeeding in the connection. The twenty minutes between 9:40 and 10PM I faked being constipated in the bathroom, losing my boarding pass, being an unruly/disobedient passenger constantly walking back up the jetway, and ultimately begging in front of a full plane to the point that I handed my cell phone to the First Captain of the flight and he spoke with the airline employees at the gate, which had already been sealed from the plane. Liv and the student were literally at the gate, and I was literally inside the plane's main door, and I did manage to sneak a little sympathy from the pilot, but it turns out Liv's bag had already been unloaded as a missed flight, and the pilot could not violate the TSA regulation. Thus, the two gals will fly tomorrow. Our flight was otherwise uneventful, despite departing twelve minutes late due to my dramatics. I managed to squeak three hours of snooze before touching down in BsAs, at which point we were snatched immediately to our hotel in downtown, then to an italian lunch joint (imagine that) and a three-hour bus tour of the city that brought us through the Recoleta cemetery, the "caminito" in the Boca barrio (the colorful buildings), and ultimately through the Plaza de Mayo (see photo of our director, Eduardo, in front of the cathedral that contains the remains of Argentina's liberator San Martin) and past the Riachuelo river (pic with colleague Gustavo, native of Villa Carlos Paz, where we'll be in a week)...
abrazos,
Nate
