Meat Me in Buenos Aires

Meat scares me. After seven years of vegetarianism, and now a few years slowly becoming carnivorous, I've barely become comfortable with meat in the boneless, skinless form you find it in back home. Here, it's a whole new ballgame. It's not uncommon to see a splayed-open, headless animal roasting in a shop window. Meat occurs not as part of a dish, but is served in glistening, heaping piles. And no part of the animal is wasted.
Today, a group of my classmates and I lunched together. We wanted to go to a very authentic place, and we certainly found one. Thankfully, the first place we went to was too small to host our group of eight. I didn't actually set foot in the place, but was assaulted by the wall of meat-scented air just in front of the doorway.
They sent us to a place a few doors down, and even phone ahead for us.
When we got the menu (the ONE menu in the restaurant), I was looking for the safest-sounding thing I could find. I only knew a few of the terms, such as chorizo. It didn't matter anyway, as by then we'd decided to split two of the platters of assorted meat. I figured it's be perfect, because then I could actually see what things were, and I'd know what to eat.
We also decided to split a couple of bottles of wine.
When the meat arrived, I still couldn't figure out what to eat. I tried a bite of some sausage, even though I dislike sausage, because it seemed the safest. Most of the food was beyond my bravery. Blood sausage, pig intestine, something's liver, and some meat that was beef, but very, very chewy. They brought the food in stages. Thankfully, the last one was some chicken, and I did grab a few bites of that, but it was only a small piece, and the rest of the squeamish ones were hungry, too.
Since I hadn't eaten much, two glasses of wine hit me hard. They had the same effect upon Helena, a classmate of mine from England. She's a spunky, fun girl with fantastic curly hair. We were both quite giggly on the way back to class.
I had no idea how I was going to handle sitting through another few hours of lessons. Thankfully, Tuesday afternoons we have time to work on our lesson plans, because I was quite sleepy once I digested the wine.
Bri met me after class, and we went to Avenida Florida, a pedestrian mall. We saw some tango, and I bought a jacket. Then I had some nice, safe corn flakes for dinner.