Signs of Spring

It's still strange to say that Spring is finally here when we should be feeling a slight chill in the air and putting out fall decorations, but we live in the Southern hemisphere with  opposite seasons, so Spring it is. 

Porteños are absolute sun-worshippers; at the first signs of warm-ish weather, everyone is out in their chairs soaking it up. Who cares that the depleting hole in the ozone layer is directly above Argentina, bronzed skin is absolutely worth it.

The First Day of Spring is sort of like a Senior Skip Day in Buenos Aires. Students from all over the city started arriving at the main parks in Palermo by late morning (the city even closed off some main roads in anticipation of the teen-invasion) and enjoyed concerts and activities with their friends.

The crosswalks hosted a steady stream of high school kids all day.

To celebrate, we took Teague to a kid's mock-city called Republica de los Niños, about an hour outside of the city. It had life-sized buildings with kid-sized details inside, a Kid's Rights plaza, a bank, a judicial building and an income tax office, where they taught Teague how to take bribes.  

  Teague and Sean broke out the shorts and flip flops for this occasion. #obviousgringos

The park also had acres of playgrounds and bike trails, but Teague was drawn to their sketchy carnival like a moth to a flame.

The outer space ride. Almost Disney quality, this one.

 Remember those old school spinning playground contraptions? They're everywhere here. I was tempted to do a time-lapse photo capture of the injuries it caused in the 10 minutes Teague was on it. Not pretty.

                                      The kid-sized traffic school. So much fun.