Living like an Argentine

Yesterday was a jam packed day. I woke up at 8:00 in the morning and headed to the school to meet up with some other students. We went to La Boca (a neighborhood here) to see the famous colorful houses. It was fun as we strolled down the overly decorated touristy streets but wasn't something that took up much time. We headed down a few other streets filled with shops and markets which seemingly all sold the exact same things for the same price. Next we headed to the futbol (soccer) stadium. Quick Argentine soccer lesson - there are two big teams here La Boca Junior and River. La Boca Junior is the team of the working class which is why their stadium is in the center of La Boca. There are some pictures below. The stadium was very small for a soccer stadium but was still cool. Lastly we caught bus 29 which is known as the "public tour bus" as its route goes around all of the big sights - all for only 1 peso.
We got off of the bus at the Plaza de Mayo, I had already been there but everyone else had not. Next was La Catedral de Buenos Aires (the BA Cathedral) which there are some pictures of below. It was very interesting b/c on the inside it was just like any other huge, old Catholic cathedral but on the outside it was somewhat simple and looked very much like a replica of the Parthenon. Next was the Obelisk which sits at nearly the heart of the city and right in the middle of the 9 de Juilo - the huge 15 lane boulevard (yet again, pictures below). Next was lunch at a pizza place and making plans for that night. After lunch was a trip to the Museo Nacional de las Bellas Artes (National Fine Arts Museum). It was decent as far as museums go but not what I expected. The first floor, which was quite small, housed purely European art mainly from the Baroque period. The second floor, which was even smaller, housed modern art (they did have a Rothko, that made me happy) as well as Precolombian art (a room about the size of a high school classroom) and a decent size room of Argentine art from the classical periods to comtemporary art. The last room was what I expected - Argentine art in the National Museum. All together the museum only took about an hour.
After that I headed home, showered and took a short nap. We all met up again at 9 at the apartments some of the other students live in (the school owns an apartment buidling which is the other housing option). For dinner we went to a parrilla (the are about as Argentine as you can get - literally a place that grills meat very well at good prices). It was in San Telmo -on the border between San Telmo and Recoleta so still a good part of town- and was a place for the locals, at least it seemed so, and had amazing food. An example of prices here: I got a tenderloin steak, close to a filet as it was just a slice of the beef tenderloin, that was probably around 18oz (you don't choose a size here, only a cut) with fries (every steak comes with amazing french fries here) for 30 pesos which is just under $10. In the US this meal would have easily cost $35 b/c of the quality and cut of meat and of course because of its size. I'm not a huge steak eater, but this steak was absolutely amazing.
After dinner we headed back to the end of town we knew and stopped at a bar or two. At around 2 we decided to head to a club. At around 3 we arrived at El Museo, one of the biggest and most popular clubs here (also one that works with ECELA - my school). We had to wait in line of course but once we got in it was amazing. 4 floors and tons of people with a mixture of American 80's rock, 90's rock, disco, hip hop, salsa and Spanish rap. If you were to imagine your typical huge club scene in say any action movie set in Europe, this would be it. It was a lot of fun. I'm not sure what time the first people I was with left, but Alex -she's here from Texas- and I decided we wanted to stay longer. We ended up staying until they were about to close. After getting our coats and everything we left about 7 am. After that was the cab ride home which was fun as I told the driver I only had 20 pesos left (which is plenty to go where I needed) to make sure he wouldn't try to drive around aimlessly or take a longer route. However, because of a little traffic it did go over. He didn't really care, I just paid him the 20 pesos and he was fine (this mainly happended b/c I talked to them the whole time and we actually had a conversation he was interested in; that tends to happen here, if you talk to them about something they want to talk about the tend to turn off their meter and negociate a more general and vastly cheaper price). So I got home at around 7:30 and went to bed. I woke up around 4 and know I'm wirting this. That's pretty much everything, which is a ton of stuff in just a little under 24 hours. My wallet is also reflecting this as I have just enough Argentine pesos to get to school - I need to change money tomorrow.