St. Mark's and St. Andrew's Schools

BCS Argentina

Wednesday, August 7

St. Andrew’s School

Olivos neighborhood

Buenas Aires

Your singers are coming home with many new Argentinian acquaintances. From gauchos to choral directors to hotel staff, BCS singers are making friends. But the friendships they value most are with the other teens they meet at our school concerts. On Tuesday, we had a choral exchange with Colegio San Marcos, a bilingual Catholic school with children aged two to 18. Singers taught their new friends “Buenas Noches” and inspired them to try out the South African gumboot dance. St. Mark's students returned the musical favor with a really terrific version of Jericho. Then, over a lunch of empanadas, everyone exchanged emails and Instagram addresses with their new friends, asking many questions about favorite activities, vacations, and family customs. These conversations revealed that the teens have many things in common – ranging from horses to basketball to Mine Craft. St. Mark's students also inspired our singers to try out new words in Spanish and got them to promise to look for Alfajon cookies in their neighborhood Latino food store when they get home. If you want to impress your singer with your knowledge of Argentina, you could greet them upon their return with green Mate and these delicious little Alfajon galletas--and then sit back and let them tell you about their wonderful new friends at St. Mark’s School.

This morning brought yet another opportunity to meet Argentinian teens, this time at the posh St. Andrew’s School in the elite Olivos neighborhood. Greeted at the bus by guards who looked like our country’s Secret Security agents, complete with wire earpieces, we felt a little like Sasha and Malia Obama being escorted to school. These men ushered us down narrow brick sidewalks to the enclosed central plaza of the school. There, our singers performed first for the lower school and then for the high school, impressing each with African drumming, led by Kimani’s talking drum. While the girls were more respectful, the high school boys watched skeptically, laughing among themselves and jostling each other in a friendly way. As soon as Kimani took the stage with his talking drum, though, the boys fell silent, pulled in by the rhythms of ten BCS drummers in call and response with Kimani’s talking drum. I can imagine that the teens of St. Andrews will soon be asking for drumming lessons of their own.