Yesterday, my roommate Andrea asked if I'd like to go out with her 2 friends for a girls night.  I tried my hardest to ask where we'd go and what we we'd be doing, but all I heard was cerveza y bailando (beer and dancing).  And if you know me, it takes a lot for me to start dancing.  I thought what the hell.  I need to take this opportunity and seize the day. Do something out of my comfort level (not like we aren't already).

What started as excitement, quickly turned into a panic attack.  "tonight is going to be in Espanol SOLO", I was thinking to myself. Ahhhhhh. My Spanish at our apartment has been "so so" because they have been speaking very slow for us and there aren't any distractions (noises, more than one person talking at a time etc.)




When 8:30 rolled around, we headed out to go meet up with her friends.  This was the first time I'd used the bus system (Colectivo) since we arrived, so it was all new.  We jumped on a bus near our apartment in Palermo and got off at the Microcenter, a 20 minute ride.   When we arrived, she introduced me to her friends Vanessa and Audry and then I found out the night's celebration was Audry's birthday. 

The conversation during our walk to the to wherever we were going sounded like this to me. "a**ento r**na g**nos luz u****o.  D***es a**d c***ar a**** claro. U****n t****ar k****m ru****n excelente".  Just a sprinkling of words I knew. My comprehension was about 8%, which are horrible odds.  After a 15 minute walk, we arrived at the restaurant and I still had no idea what was going on.  The restaurant was a "Dinner and Tango" type restaurant called Los Tenos Tango Grill.  Luckily the tango part was a tango show not us dancing.




After looking at the menu for some time, I realized we weren't ordering single plates for ourselves.  We were sharing a meal of some kind. This is what arrived.



In my head, I'm thinking a) this is a lot of meat for four girls b) I have no idea what type of meat this is and c) what part of the animal I'm about to eat.  Then I thought to myself, "Elizabeth you can do this, just watch what they grab". I'm not a picky eater until it comes to meat on the bone. I know, I know, but I just can't get past the thought of gnawing the meat off the bone. At this point, I'm wondering "is this a stuffed intestine that I'm eating".  It felt like a contestant on Fear Factor, but without the possibility of winning $50,000.

Once dinner was over, we walked to the "Disco" (dance club), which we found to be closed until Feb 3rd for summer holiday. I was so relived to know that I wouldn't have to embarrass myself any more for the night.  I mean a girl can only take so much awkwardness for one evening.  We settled on an outside patio bar and had some drinks while we sat and talked.   When we started this night my comprehension was about 8%, but once I started getting a little buzz, my ratio increased to 9/91. I'll take the little victories.

All in all I had a fun with my new friend Andrea and all of her friends.  Although, at times, I did feel a little like Brittany Murphy from the movie Clueless.