Bienvenidos a Buenos Aires! (Saturday, March 15)

Well, we are here! It's been an exciting and kind of crazy first day. We'll have some photos and video up soon...still working on it. For now, here are some of the basics:

1. Travel was pretty easy. We left Salt Lake City and arrived in Dallas at 5:30 P.M. local time on Friday. Then we hopped on the "big bird" over to Buenos Aires...arriving at 9:30 A.M. local time. (Argentina is 4 hours ahead of Mountain Time).

2. The weather is beautiful this time of year. We took the bus from the airport to our hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, accompanied by our tour manager, Dario...our tour guide, Lorena...and our bus driver, Cesar.

3. We quickly went to the hotel to change. One of the local teams, Chacarritas, was staying there prior to one of their matches in the 2nd division of the men's professional league. They usually check into a hotel the night before the game to get prepare together.

4. We walked to nearby Avenida Florida, which has many shops and restaurants. It is very similar to the Fisherman's Wharf area of San Francisco or the 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica, California. I'm sure we'll have lots of chances to visit here. We had some lunch and got some money exchanged ($1 U.S. = 3 pesos argentinos).

5. We took the bus to watch a big men's professional match between San Lorenzo de Almargo (the home team) and Velez Sarsfield (the away team...currently in first place). The atmosphere was incredible as both teams' supporters sang and danced and chanted as the team's took the field. Unfortunately, the away fans got VERY rowdy behind the goal and were trying to break down the fence between them and the field. Apparently (and we don't have this confirmed yet)....one of the visiting fans had been murdered on the way to the game and they were very upset. The policia came out and used water among other things to try to calm them down. They had to cancel the game...so we missed some great action and were disappointed. We got to tour the stadium a bit after everyone cleared out...

6. We went to dinner at "Loco por Futbol" (Crazy for Soccer), a restaurant in the Recoleta area of Buenos Aires. Just got back to the hotel and it's late! We haven't slept in almost two days. So we are heading to bed. In the morning, we will be trained by the women's coach at the San Lorenzo club and then return downtown for a tour of Buenos Aires...

Stay tuned for more!