Kayaking in Tigre

Tigre…the city of many streams/rivers…the place with water taxis…and my Saturday’s destination. Even a good portion of my Liquid Bar family came along which was great because I finally didn’t travel alone. LOL!

With my phone’s earsplitting wakeup call, I was ready to go by 8 am. The plan was to have our group of six meet at the estacion lisandro de la torre to take the Mitre Tren to Tigre. With a travel time of about an hour and a cost of $1.80 pesos, I was able to experience my first commuter train ride.

1/2 Kilo of Helado...GONE!

During one of the many times watching YouTube videos at our cooking events, we’ve ran across this video for Fridays. As Rebecca Black would state, “It’s Friday, Friday…Gotta get down on Friday.” (If you haven’t seen it…check out the video because I can't believe it has 57 million views. It leaves you with an expression of, "Really?"LOL)

Living like a King

As a consequence of a great time last night, I was a little sluggish this morning.

Working on a blog post for the video productions company, I learned all there is to know about budgeting for a product explainer video. Did you know: it typically costs between $2,000 and $4,000 per finished minute for an explainer video? No? Well, now you do! LOL!

A Few of Many Work Conversations

While Iowa was experiencing heat index numbers in the 100s, I was working with the office windows open!

After a chilly start to the week, it looks like the end of the week will be flawless. With temperatures in the low 70s, sunny, and a slight breeze, Buenos Aires begins to tease me with a taste of the spring weather I will be missing.

Sweet Tooth...Eliminated!

Snoozing my alarm was not an option. I had to be at the office a little before 11am today because our other newbie, Shelly, was scheduled to start.

First on my list was to show her how to fill in the monthly batching document. I gave her guidelines and tips that would make the process easier. Being a visual learner myself, when I train others I train them visually as well. I walked her through the previous month's batching document so she could have a better grasp on what I was talking about. In every job I’ve had I always ended up training people; hopefully, it attests my communication abilities. LOL!

Yucca or YUCKa?

Devoting a little of my work time in the morning for finishing Saturday’s post, it was ready to be published. When you pack your days full, the time you have available to spend on other things (like your blog) dwindles away. However, I have yet to miss a day of blogging about my adventure, so I can’t stop now.

When Katie arrived, we talked about our weekends and then about business. I told her how someday I would enjoy operating my own company. (Hey, everyone can dream and have ambitions, right? LOL!) We then went into brainstorming ideas that would thrive in a small town. It was a great conversation because it’s a topic interesting to me.

Souvenir Shopping? Pssh...Fail!

It was another busy day in Buenos Aires, folks! There were two major items on my agenda; souvenir shopping and visiting the August Underground Market.

My day started off in front of the computer looking at Omnilineas.com mapping out the bus lines for my adventures. Today’s excursion involved making four bus connections; the most I’ve ever done in one day.

San Antonio de Areco...Rural Life!

Wow! A 5:45 am alarm; I haven’t heard one of those since I left Iowa.

Snoozing my alarm for 10 minutes, I finally pried myself out of bed. Luckily I packed my backpack last night or I would have surly forgot something; wait, I did…I still forgot my water bottle.

I made it to the Retiro bus station in perfect time because I had to spend a few minutes trying to find my bus. The Retiro bus station is huge, and I would say it has over 100 loading spots.

Two Newbies in the Office

Two new interns have arrived! We have Alex and Shelly both from the IES program, and both from the United States; Cincinnati and Pittsburg, respectfully. Hopefully, Dante’s constant passing of gas didn’t scare them away. It was hilarious.

Being Friday only has one thing in common with every other Friday…Weekly Roundup for the Democratic Republic of Congo client! This week’s events were mixed. At the beginning, you had the rescue of 80+ recruited child soldiers and by the end of the week you had the shelling of M23 controlled areas by the UN and DRC Army.

Miscellaneous Tasks at Work

Just like yesterday, we are in a very comfortable position when it comes to work assignments. With that said, I was able to convert a few hours of my morning to work on personal assignments.

The first non-work-related task I did was for the World Food Prize. I used my Skype account to make an international call to the charter service in Des Moines to verify what days we were on their schedule and how many buses they had assigned.

Boca Juniors or River Plate? Who?

It was Wednesday and we are making our way over the hump!

Nothing new or exciting happened at work today. It was the same routine just on a different day. We are sitting in good shape with everything in terms of blogs and SEO audits. I guess I did work on building up the video company’s social media audience on Twitter and Facebook.

Cooking For Eight

Can this streak of nice spring-like weather continue? We are on day four, and today made it into the low 70s; I was a happy man!

Once I arrived at the office, I immediately opened the windows in the marketing room. Finally, a day where we didn’t have to have the heaters on, but sadly I think that will change come Friday.

Tango Disappointment

Today started off with playing some Truco in bed on my phone, and boy was I on fire! I have to keep my skills sharpened, so I can teach the card game when I arrived back home. Playing for about an hour I rolled myself out of bed and opened the shades to let some sun shine in.

Peering through the glass I could just sense this was going to be another nice day, so I opened my balcony door to freshen the air in my studio. What a great way to eat breakfast, listening to a few birds over the city noise, I will take any sign of nature I can get!

Buenos Aires Natural Food Fair

Needing some extra resting time to recoup from the long day of walking in Colonia, I decided to sleep in until noon. It felt so good!

Today the weather was exceptionally nice; I would have to say upper 60s and not a cloud in the sky. This was the perfect weather to make a trip to the monthly Buenos Aires Natural Food Fair.

Arriving at the park I noticed it was packed. People were sprawled out everywhere soaking in the Vitamin D. Not to mention that the fair was also packed.

Colonia, Uruguay!

Getting back a little later than I expected from the night before, I decided it would be a good idea to set the alarm on my phone so I didn't miss the ferry to Uruguay.

I set the alarm one hour ahead of 11:30am because I was told to be there an hour early. For some reason when I looked at the ticket I thought it mentioned the ferry left at 11:30 instead of 12:30, so I panicked and thought I was going to miss the nonrefundable ferry ride. I was wrong and happened to be an hour and 15 minutes early; oh the joys of being lost in translation. LOL!

Empanadas Method #2: Baked

Today was Kelly’s last day at work because she landed an internship with The Argentina Independent and starts next week. As soon as she arrived we went out for lunch.

The place we ate at was called Boulangerie Cocu, which is a French Café nestled in the middle of Palermo Viejo. It was quite the place and very delicious; orange juice made from scratch, artisan breads, and a very French atmosphere. Even the staff was dressed in traditional French attire. Best of all, lunch was on Uplifted. LOL!

American Breakfast Night

My Thursday at work was rather sluggish. I completed a portfolio on Janet, which is a client of the video production company. Janet6 is their new product and it is a network infrastructure serving researchers and educations communities in the UK.

The rest of my day was made up of enhancing the Facebook and Twitter audience base for the same client. I thought working on Facebook and Twitter all-day would be fun, but after about three hours that thought was starting to blemish.

The Dreaded 130 Colevtivo

I can truly say….damn, what a day; more specifically, what an evening.

The day started off as any normal Wednesday would; a nice 30-40 min walk to work followed by the famous hump day news scan. Next up was an article for the video production client talking about why you should use a video for a new feature your business is introducing. As you can see, it was normal.

Mostacho's...in Des Moines?

Wow…temperature change! The brisk morning weather caused me to wear both my sweatshirt and jacket. However, this is still nothing compared to an Iowa winter so I will take.

After four days without coffee, I was finally able to brew some this morning because the office finally had power to outlets. The electrician discovered that cause of the constant circuit breakage could be one of two things: 1) a faulty outlet adapter in Anish’s office or 2) the fuse wasn’t powerful enough to handle all of the computers we had plugged in.

You Call that A Brownie?

As soon as I arrived to work I remembered the outlet problem wouldn’t be fixed until the afternoon. Too lazy to make my way back to my place, I worked from the bookstore/café place on Thames.

Proper etiquette when using a café mainly for their free internet is to order something from their menu. I ordered a $16 peso brownie topped with dulce de leche.  When the waiter delivered my brownie by setting it on the table, I just had to take a picture of it.

Lazy Sunday...Well Kind Of

Today started off a lot like Saturday; minus the movie. My day didn’t really start until the afternoon.

Making a quick lunch and reading up on some current events happening in the US, I was ready for the next part of my day.

First Taste of Prohibition

Watching a little TV on a Saturday morning from bed never hurts, so that’s exactly what I did. My Saturday was kicked off by watching Los Angeles de Charlie, aka Charlie’s Angles.

Inevitably it was time for lunch after the movie, so I made my way to my favorite panaderia and grabbed a few facturas. I can’t disclose how many I purchased, but they went great with my mate.

Hipodromo de Palermo

Today marked the end of another work week, and that means my time in Argentina continues to dwindle away.

Being the first one to the office has both advantages and disadvantages, but today I experienced one of the disadvantages. The breaker for the outlets was switched off again, but this time I couldn’t make it stay on. Without internet I can’t do my job, so I decided to find a café and email the rest of the Uplifted team to tell them the situation.

The Power of One Email

What a day. Those three simple words can sum up everything about today. With surprises coming from all sorts of directions, how could I remain sane?

The day started off with a surprise run-in with Marcelo on Fitz Roy in Palermo. However, that wasn’t the strange part; it was who he was with. Marcelo was with Michael Day…a guy from the United States….from Iowa…from Des Moines. I’m now a believer in the “we live in a small world” concept. LOL!

Updates From Home

I’m starting to hope I didn’t get my co-workers sick with the bug I had a few weeks ago because it was miserable. I mention this because today, both Nora and Katie were sick and working from home leaving me the only one at the office until Kelly came in at 1:30 pm.

After finishing the hump day news scan, I was going to start on the Uplifted blog regarding analytic web tools, but I got sidetracked by a Google Hangout session with Aunt Pat. Even though it was cut short with a poor connection, I still got some updates about the garden and the sparse sweet corn patch.

Hablo Espanol, No Ingles

I finally got to Skype with the gang at 2716 Grand, my former office mates! It was refreshing to get an update from them on how things were going in Iowa. The updates they provided were refreshing to hear and ranged from sad to humorous.

Skyping with them made it feel as if I never left; especially when my former boss came into where they were Skyping and chewed them out for not having anyone at the front to welcome clients. Hearing their scolding reassured me that nothing has changed since my departure. (Sorry for getting you guys in trouble, but it gave me a great morning laugh. LOL!)

Two Turns Into One So Easily

Work started as soon as I walked through the door. Ever since we started our new SEO service, business has been getting pushed back. As a result, we didn’t complete August’s batching by last Friday leaving some leftover blogs to write. I assume by now you know what I did today.

After finishing the portfolio I didn’t finish on Friday, I jumped right into a blog about user-generated videos, and why they are important for a company to encourage their fans to produce them. Once completed it was followed up by another portfolio article.

Sunday Discoveries

Besides another morning walk through the park, this Sunday was treated as a day of rest.

Even though it was only about an hour walk, I still ended up seeing new places and things. For instance, I ran across something my mom would have loved to see. It was a two story working carousel complete with music and all. I have seen many carousels, but never have I seen one that was a double-decked. Here’s a photo just for you, Mom. LOL!

Concert Numero Dos!

Having all the intentions to have a lazy Saturday, it didn’t turn out that way.

After I woke up, I decided to listen to some music to start the day off right. After about 30 mins, I was energized and ready to do what I always do on Saturdays…walk around the neighborhood. This little activity kept me occupied for about 3 hours.

I walked through the park and people watched. I saw people doing yoga, making out, playing soccer and cricket, and even practicing medieval sword fighting. Trust me…if you like to observe all sorts of things…walk through the parks of Buenos Aires. LOL! (Except I think it is this way in a lot of the big cities.)

Horacio Lavandera in Concert! Free!

Friday...it just rolls off the tongue!

This week was a bit more action packed than others because we were hurrying to get the August batching done and prepping for Rachael’s three week vacation in The States starting Wednesday of next week.

Since it was Friday, I started off with the weekly round-up for the Democratic Republic of Congo client. Reading news pertaining to the DRC is always a great way to start your Friday; simply depressing.

What's Cooking, Good Lookings #2

The day started off much colder than yesterday; I’m talking about 20-30 degrees cooler. Still having a cough from last week's cold, I decided it would be a good idea to take the bus to work. (Keep in mind this would be the first time in 61 days I would have used public transportation to get to or from work.)

You will never guess who I ran into on the 10 am bus this morning…Angelina Jolie! LOL! Actually, it was co-worker Rachael; either way it was awesome running into someone you know in a city this big.