Because we are filming our first episodes of La Comida Aborigen this Wednesday, August 6, Rodrigo, María Eugenia and I spent all day shopping for ingredients for the shoot in a remote mercado (market) just outside Buenos Aires that I will call little Bolivia, although there is also a strong Peruvian presence. Let's just call it the little Andes!

Lilian, Valeria (the language instructor, not the actress) and I went to a new staging of the Moliere play "The Learned Women" (Las Mujeres Sabias in Spanish, Les Femmes savantes in French.) last night at teatro San Martín on avenida Corrientes.  

What a great outing! The staging, the acting and even the music were simply brilliant. We were in the front row of the balcony, on the rail, with a panoramic view of the stage, the audience and the orchestra.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon before re turning to Bs As with Diego (aka, Parker) and then at Parker's suggestion, I met with Natalio, who worked with Parker at his new production company, Transparente. What great people, and their company, which is housed in a beautifully restored Victorian style building, is doing a lot of interesting and innovative work.

They just signed a deal with Canal 10, the leading station in Montevideo, for a new family program that Parker created using an animated frog named Ana la Rana (Ana the Frog). He worked with a leading child psychologist to create entertaining stories that subtly emphasize the importance of the family unit based on the psychiatrist's research into the things that cause problems in this area. The show will air during the time period when families are most likely to be watching TV together, and the stories are scripted to be entertaining and educational at both the child and adult level.

It is Wednesday, and I have been in Montevideo, Uruguay since Saturday. I return to Bs As tonight. If I had known how delightful and interesting this country was going to be, I would have visited sooner.

Only a three hour ferry ride across the Atlantic estuary of the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires, Montevideo is in many ways a step back in time, and it is wonderful because of this. Buenos Aires seems absolutely intense by comparison. The phrase one hears over and over when Montevideo is mentioned in conversation is "muy tranquilo", and it is true. Seemingly everyone, even bicyclists, carries a thermos of maté throughout the day, and the unhurried pace is incredibly appealing. Here, one has time to think, and conversations tend to reflect that thoughtfulness in unexpected ways.