It has been more than two weeks since the hedgehogs last posted. In the meantime, much has happened, and there are of course many stories to tell. For the moment it is enough to reveal that on April 21, they boarded a bus from Mendoza to Buenos Aires.

The 14-hour bus ride from Mendoza was really marred only by the disturbing reaction my body had to the cloudy tap water I’d been drinking there.

Now, if you ask me, my alimentary canal got itself a bit hysterical about the whole thing. Oh, I’m sure that it had a legitimate gripe: people keep telling me (now, of course, as opposed to the ever-preferable before) that drinking the water in Mendoza isn’t a good idea even for Argentinos. But the middle third of my body, in my humble opinion, simply got carried away with this whole thing. I am, frankly, rather surprised at this behavior. I’ve simply never thought of my digestive system as a drama queen before. But there you have it.

Anyway, there’s nothing to add a touch of adventure to a long bus ride, like having to run down the stairs to the bathroom every few minutes. But I digress.

We’re back in Buenos Aires now, so that Jessica can take Spanish classes and pass on to me everything that she learns (or so goes our plan). Each day, she has two hours of lessons (which she is loving), and then she spends the next two hours teaching me. In the meantime, I’ve somehow acquired a Spanish translation of Isaac Asminov’s Foundation, which I plan on spending the next several months laboriously translating back to English. Se llamaba Gaal Dornick y no era más que un campesino que nunca había visto Trántor…

We’ll be here for another week or two (maybe more) while she acquires enough Spanish to guide us through the next few months, and we’re also going make use of this period of relative stability to get a lot of work done on this site. Many stories to tell, we have.

In the meantime, we’re back in the now-familiar St. Nicholas hostel, in the very room we stayed for our first week here. Buenos Aires has come to feel a bit like home to us. It’s kind of funny how those things happen: we first noticed something like it when we pulled into Montevideo on the way back from Punta del Diablo. We hated Montevideo, but it was so comforting to see a bus station we recognized, to know where the bathrooms were without having to look for them, to know how to get to downtown without having to ask. So you can imagine what it feels like to return for a third time to Buenos Aires, a city we adore.

We know where all the major landmarks are, we know which places have the best empanadas, we know which internet cafés have the best rates. We know which streets are quieter to walk down, and are ready in advance for the sidewalks to be only about a yard wide. We know which parks are nice to have your lunch in, and which ones are a little seedy. We know that at night proprieters will lower large steel cages over their storefronts, but remain open and serve you through a tiny window. We know that if you save the receipt for that liter of cerveza (beer), you can get back a peso for returning the empty bottle. And we certainly know all the ins and outs of the always-welcoming St. Nicholas hostel.

When you’re on the road, these are the things that make you feel like you have a home.