As I write this, I’m sitting on the balcony of my room at the Grand Pyramids Hotel in Cairo, Egypt. It’s about 65 degrees outside and it’s pretty pleasant. Before I start writing about Egypt, however, I wanted to do one last post about Buenos Aires. If I decide to do a post about the TEFL class that I took, it’ll be two last posts because that experience deserves a post all to itself. That can wait, though. My main concern with my dearth of entries on Argentina is that I am not going to have as much to look back on as I do in other countries because I was so busy and having too much fun to post regularly. So, for this final post, I think that I’m just going to set out observations in bullet point fashion in order to remind of these things later on. Then, I’ll move on to Egypt. Then, maybe, TEFL, but that can still wait.
- * People in Buenos Aires: For the most part the people were very friendly. The ones that I met in the TEFL class (this isn’t the TEFL post) were absolutely wonderful. The vast majority of the people I met spoke no or very little English, but most were very patient and helpful as long as I attempted my broken Spanish with them. I noticed some occasional anti-American sentiments directed toward me (since I didn’t really hide the fact that I am one) but probably not as much as I did in Europe, overall.
- * Grocery Stores: One of the things that I love to do when I go someplace new is to check out the grocery stores. After I moved into my second apartment, I went grocery shopping almost every day in BsAs. One thing I noticed was the entire aisle dedicated to various fruit cakes. I had heard that they love them some fruit cakes in Argentina, but I still have to attribute the volume on it being the Christmas season. Another thing I noticed was that milk, yogurt and other similarly liquefied items were sold in bags. This left me with two assumptions: 1) that it must be much cheaper to pack items in plastic bags than in plastic jugs (why else do it?), and 2) people must be cutting the corners of these items and refilling some container with milk (how else could you store it?). The big thing you notice, of course, is the prices. As long as you buy Argentine items, the prices are phenomenally low. Once you start buying imported (American) items, the prices become much closer to American prices, though still a little lower. One exception to the price rule is ramen, which I noticed was about 150% more expensive (50 cents a pack) than in the United States. I can’t explain.
- * Spanish-Speaking Bias: I actually thought this was funny. I went to a website to price a ferry trip from Argentina to Uruguay. The site was in Spanish, but I could make out most of it – or at least the price. I clicked on the “English” button, and the site was translated into English – and the price was translated into 20% more than it had been in Spanish. I place this piece of information in the “Good to Know” file.
- * Oh, there’s so much more . . . the people walking down the street walking twenty dogs at a time . . . the way every doorway in Buenos Aires seemed to have some guy standing in it; not always the same guy, but some guy . . . the way the chain of convenient stores boasting “open 25 hours” were often closed (as Steven Wright would say, “we are open 25 hours, but not in a row”) . . . the steak was so good . . . the bread was so bad . . . I heard that this spring was milder than normal, but the temperatures were so perfect in November and December, but it rained too much, which I also heard was not normal.
That’s it for now. I fear I may have waited too long to write this entry because I feel like there’s so much I’m forgetting, though I hope that much of it was covered in earlier posts. Of course, TEFL wasn’t , but that can still wait.
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