ferias and a few of my favorite things

my favorite sunday tradition back at home (along with downing giant bowls of crispix and frolicking with bradshaw at the dog park) is biking to the farmer's market in town with my mom (miss you dogg!!). we always mooch off the free samples and i make sure to buy enough chocolate-covered almonds to last me the week. my mom also flirts on my behalf with a half-bearded, half-uruguayan vendor who we refer to as "pasta boy". grand ole times in moraga.

now, argentina doesn't have much in terms of the farmer's markets that i love so much. they don't have much in terms of fresh california-quality produce to begin with (think bananas and maybe the occasional grapefruit), but argentina makes up for it in a special way: artisan markets. nothing can permanently replace my beloved farmer's market, but the street fairs have undoubtedly become one of the highlights of my buenos aires weekends.

albeit a tourist trap, san telmo still ranks high as one of my favorites. not only because san telmo itself wins by far as my all-time favorite neighborhood of buenos aires, but because, out of all the ferias, san telmo is definitely the most ridiculous. the market stretches for blocks and blocks, starting at plaza de mayo and ending in plaza dorrego (more or less), where you can always top of the afternoon of strolling with some live tango music and dancing. when i arrived here in the winter, i bought my very porteño-esque leather cross-shoulder bag at one of the various leather stalls and have used it literally every day of my life since then.

last weekend, my friend thomas and i hiked out to the outskirts of the city, almost an hour bus ride from where we live for la feria de mataderos. grossly underrated and underhyped, this particular market was a sight for the eyes and provided a nice contrast from the tourist-replete san telmo one. lots of gaucho stuff!! the barrio of mataderos lies on the periphery of the city where there is more land and the las pampas countryside is even closer and the cowboy culture is pretty visibilewe wandered through the packed streets and were even lucky enough to find some FREE SAMPLES!!!!!! i felt right at home!!

 i searched and searched for my soul mate like i have on countless occasions, coming up empty handed yet again. the problem is that i have a very distinct image in my head of EXACTLY what i want: dark wood, simple adornment or extra design, and big enough so i don't have to refill the thing every five seconds. at one stall, i thought that maybe i had finally found my soul mate mate after many long and disappointing months. then thomas pointed out to me that it was DEFINITELY not a gourd, but rather a mortar and pestle duo to grind corn or mash god-knows-what. fail on sarah's part.

after that pathetic misunderstanding, we came across an awesome vendor selling leather journals and address books and ended up buying matching ones with maps of south america on them!!! mine had an extra touch of hot pink for the girliness in me. we both realized long ago that our semester in argentina will NOT our last time in south america, and so we bought the journals for future travel logging, when we are back in the neighborhood once again. since thomas and i are also the best traveling pair of all time, we are planning a tentative graduation trip of adventuring through other parts of south america we weren't able to visit on this south american stint. thus they will definitely come in handy for recording memories and insights!! writing this blog has made my journaling fall by the wayside on a big scale, but oh well. i'll be going back to my favorite daily activity when i return home!! i've loved working on these blog posts, but nothing can possibly beat scribbling away in my leather journal, under the covers of my bed in the middle of the night. miss that. the coolest part of our matching journals was when the craftsman whipped out his burning inscriber thing (engraver?? no idea how one might refer to that) and carved our names right into the leather!! i look forward to writing in the south american journal in the future, i know my latin american adventures won't be ending this december when i head home for break!!

we finished the great afternoon at an old café (1900!!) which had the most amazing looking medialunas ever. but they ran out by the time we got around to ordering some!! bummer. five peso cup of wine instead?? okay. me parece bien. the place had a great old-style argentine vibe that i loved. since we got shafted on the medialunas and there were very few food options in general, we strolled around outside until we found a random little shack selling choripán and chimchurri!!