We learned that Tango is more than a dance, more than music– it is a language.

We knew that last Thursday night was going to be a long one, but it was completely worth it.

We began our night with a half-hour lesson filled with a lot of joyful mishaps and laughter. Of course, the number of women on this trip completely outnumbers the men. It is 2 to 6, so there were quite a few female couples, which made the night even more entertaining.

Most important lesson we learned: the partners in Tango must be one.

Our instructor, who was one of the stars of the show, told us you can tell if a couple is good based on how the sync of their movements. They speak to each other through music.

The man is to lead the woman and the woman can easily follow by feeling their partner’s shift in balance. That was the hardest part of the lesson to me… and also finding a way to move in a circle and not bump into everyone.

The tango lesson was another great way for us to live the Argentine culture and to actually be apart of it; instead of, observing it. We got to do a lot of that later.

After dinner and a whole lot of wine, a tango show began. Amazing does not even begin to describe the show.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the live music and the interaction of the dancers with the crowd. There were dancers dancing on the bar and they approached the stage from within the crowd. We all were a part of the story.

The story aspect is what I enjoyed the most. Each couple had their own dance, with their own pace, and the dances spoke for themselves, even though their was a screen with scene names.

The dinner was a traditional Argentine meal— BEEF, BEEF, and MORE BEEF (with some salad). Tango night was a night where we all were fully immersed in Argentine culture.

Nestled in the heart of the art district of Palermo, Rosana Simonassi creates her artwork from her second-story apartment.

“It’s interesting, but…amazing.”

Over her cup of matte tea, she used those to words to begin her description of the Buenos Aires art scene as friendly, great, and an essential aspect of the culture. It seems hidden, but yet it is visible in every aspect of the city from the politically-driven, territorial street art to the design on the boots of the ranch gauchos we had met earlier on that Tuesday.

I tuned in and out of her description because I was continuing to ponder over what was in my hands.

“A Series of A Thousand Deaths” was the title of a small booklet she handed us as we sat down in the living area of her apartment. Before I even saw the title or realized what was handed to me, I was striked by the blunt image on the front cover of a dead woman in the middle of a field.

As she spoke about her works over the honking and bustle of the streets outside her window, I was in deep thought over the meaning of these images.

From page to page, a dead woman was lying in the middle of something–from the side of a road in her hometown to the rooftop of her apartment building. The images had a cool tone and conveyed a sense of abandonment and disparity.

I finally asked why and in that moment is when she let us all see who she is as an artist.

The series was inspired by the death of her mother, which was two months before the birth of her first child. She was in a confused space, felt alone, and simultaneously, constantly presented with glamorized and over-sexualized images of woman in the media. Her series presents her sorrow, but also a social message of femininity.

I knew there was more behind the scenes, it was deep, and my respect for art became deeper than before.

On our second day in Salta, we took a bus tour of the Andes Mountains and got to experience multiple climates in a short amount of time. On the side of the Andes that the city of Salta resides, the climate is humid and very rainy, while on the other side of the mountains there is a desert climate. Millions of years ago, the area where the Andes Mountains would be was covered with the ocean until earthquakes resulted in the Andes. Then the ocean somehow drained from the area and left pools of salt water at the foot of the mountains. However, due to the mountains’ altitude, they prevented moist winds from blowing over them, resulting in the salt-water pools evaporating over time, leaving the Salinas salt flats.

     On our first few stops, the weather was cold, cloudy, and humid and there was a dense layer of fog/clouds surrounding the mountains that we could see. The views we had of the mountains there were beautiful and I liked how due to the altitude, they actually seemed to reach the clouds. As we continued to drive to the other side of the mountains, the sky was suddenly blue and the sun shone. It almost felt like we had driven to a different country completely.

For the remainder of the drive our views remained the same, but they were still unbelievable. When we made it to the Salt flats in Salinas, the views were almost more breathtaking. The ground looked like it was covered in snow but it was actually a thick layer of salt left behind by the ocean millions of years ago. I think this was my favorite stop on the tour because I loved the contrast the white salt brought to the mountain views in the background. Overall, this was by far my favorite day of the trip to Buenos Aires. I love the culture of this country, but the views we saw on the bus tour are hard to beat.