"She's Totally Faking It..."

These little things seem to come with everything you order at our hotel. Seriously. You order an espresso and there is a complimentary buffet of things trailing behind it. This obviously isn't the cheapest option available to us but Ryan and I were talking about how they managed to make any money here. The place is crawling with employees. For example, today the hotel had a function and moved breakfast to the terrace. They had an employee waiting at the elevator to inform people that breakfast had been moved. That was her job for the entire morning. Telling people that breakfast had been moved. Things started clearing up when we started talking to a local about minimum wage and what salary people make here. About $300/month. We went to a grocery store to check out if we could find any bizarre food items and to check prices to get an idea of how the economy was doing. Things are cheaper but not in comparison to their wages. It was shocking.

Buuuut... we forgot all about that when we saw this:
A liter of Stella Artois for $1! Wow. Good thing I lost all of that weight before this trip so that I don't have to feel guilty about putting on a few pounds before I get home (as an aside, does anyone know if they are taking applications for the TV show 'Intervention'... booze or weight, I'm not fussy).

Last night we went to a Tango show at the Faena Hotel (It's a Philippe Starck hotel for those of you that are into design). It was a fantastic experience though it almost resulted in a spat. Just to give you an idea of where we were, here is a picture of the stage and the dancers. The pictures I am posting aren't great. I have amazing pictures of the dancers but I want to watermark them before I put them online:
It was one of those dinner/show deals and the dancing was spectacular. The food... um, pretty good but that's not really the reason you go to one of these performances. Anyway, the spat has a bit of a history. Ryan and I went to see Celine Dion's show in Las Vegas. He follows her like as if she is the embodiment of Christ. I am here nor there when it comes to her. During the show I mentioned that there is no way she could sing the entire show live. As much as I hated to admit it (annoying twitches or not) her voice was spot on for two hours. What Ryan didn't tell me is that by me saying that, it ruined the show for him. He spent the rest of his time scrutinizing the movement of her lips, etc. for the two shows after that (yes people, I hang my head in shame. He saw it 5 times). He assures me there was no lip-syncing involved (call 9-1-1... he has a gun to my head right now). Well... the dancers at this show did 'their thing' to a 'live' band. Having played piano most of my life, I watched the pianist. He sure was wailing on those keys but none of them seemed to be going down. Lame. After that, I started questioning everything that could be questioned. The dancing... well, that was amazing, but there was singing. In my perfectly clear sense of mind, I kept slurring how fake everything was (I was either on my second or fourteenth glass of wine, I can't be sure). Ryzee wasn't appreciating my comments and truth be told, I was regretting the fact I had said anything. In our front row seats, as the singer walked by, Ryan was eyeing their mouths within a foot... and damned if they weren't singing live. I'm not used to being wrong. Anyway, I managed to quell the storm before it got out of hand. It was easy really... I just had to shut my mouth and admit I was wrong.

Today we met up with four friends of ours from Vancouver for lunch at our hotel. Mike and Marc decided to move here indefinitely (black shirt, white shirt) and work online because they're fabulous and that's what fabulous people do. Paul and Claire rented an apartment here for a month to celebrate her 50th birthday (she's the one in the front of the picture that looks 30).

Anyway, there is more to tell you but it's 9:00 p.m. and we're going to be late for our dinner reservation. In my next post, I'll tell you about the 40th birthday present I bought for my boy. Bye for now!

Oh... and we're off to Patagonia tomorrow... a three hour flight south of Buenos Aires... land of glaciers and ice trekking. If we don't post, it's because we're in the sticks (a South American version of Comox or Swift Current).