Friday has been crazy productive. I met with this shirt maker named Leo Romano at Chabad, and at first chose out 3 shirts, for 45 pesos a pop.

Bear in mind in most of the stores, they would go for 80, but since I met him at his home where he works, it was no big deal. Afterwards, we went to an awesome kosher deli in the barrio El Once, which is full of Jewish people. Afer he bought some fabric, we went over to a clothing manufacturer, and I bought 2 suits for 160 pesos (one greenish with pinstripes, one a mettalic silvery color), one for 200 (dark blue with purple pinstripes), and a blazer for 150 pesos (light tan with square striping every 2 inches). I was able to get them for half of what they would be going for in the stores. All things considered, 220 bucks is an amazing deal for what I got. Here's a pic of Leo, on the left, at the suit store:


If you guys like, I've got connections with Leo now, and his shirts are worth 70 US bucks easy. Considering that shipping would be about 25 bucks for 3 shirts, costing 70 bucks in total, It's an awesome deal.

Tonight I have a private lesson with Andres Amarilla and his dance partner, so we'll see how that goes.

Here are a bunch of pictures from the Thursday night Channuka party:

Wendsday I had a private class with Gabriel and a young argentine lady named Melissa who is learning with us.





Here are pics on the street prior to my lesson.























Gabriel's concepts are so overarching, they effect everything that I do. For example, the first part of the class was concentrating on skin. Perhaps you can imagine what your body would be like if instead of muscles and bones, the skin was a containing structure for some kind of fluid. If your skin moved and you couldn't articulate your body so precisely, how would you move? What would it be like to be full of sand instead? Or mercury? The whole point is to use the body entirely, but to have an energy representative of some musical passage. Gabriel also worked on breathing concepts with musicality, which really effect everything.














Afterwards, I went to go buy a cake at a confiteria about two blocks away. I am flabbergasted at the prices here, it was 11 pesos for a dulce de leche cake, with nuts on the side, hard chocolate on the top, and layered flaky breading with dulce de leche in between some layers. Not only would such a cake cost at least 25 bucks in the US, the interchange of cash makes it like $3.50.

Wendsday, I danced at Villa Malcolm where I acted as interpreter for Gabi's group class. Following it was a practica, shown below.














Afterwards I went to La Viruta, where I saw Samantha, and a couple of friends:


This picture below is probably going to be the one I use for my ad which Vlad is going to make:
One thing I noticed, and it happens fairly frequently for me, is that I discover new patterns of movement or new tricks, fairly randomly. My whole point in taking tons of private lessons is to be able to dance fundamentally well, so that I will be able to discover things on my own. I think that's one of the points of tango, that our mistakes become discoveries, and that if we're present, we can discover new things constantly. In so many ways, the dance mirrors life. If we aren't fundamentally sound (to be 94 for example, look it up on google) then nothing works, if we have a strong base, everything is possible.

Tuesday was rather interesting, I went to pick up a pair of shoes for Tera (since they had suede put on the bottoms) and to send my mom a pair via the mail that just got suede put on them.
I decided to look around, and nearby was esquina Carlos Gardel (shown below).



Off to the side, I found an antique shop. Here's what I picked out:

An antique painted fan
A maroon pair of women's gloves from the 1950's. A white pair of women's dress gloves from the 70's
A 1920s or earlier straw hat used by tangueros
A french surgery kit from the 50s perhaps
A replated silver serving dish from Argentina
A silver plated bronze fruit bowl, from England
A french voltmeter, with large face, from the 50s or earlier
A leather cased shoe maintenence kit
A french pen kit, 50s probably

At another store nearby, I got:
An orignal Carlos Gardel picture with music on the back
10 original RCA recording of D'arienzo
An Austrian sauce server, silver plated

The entire lot cost me about 600 pesos perhaps less (200 bucks).

The proprietor had a painting which looked a LOT like tigers that my aunt on my father's side used to paint, so here's a pic: