Acostumbrarse

Anne, Mark and the HBomb have been in Buenos Aires for a couple of months now, and they are starting to get used to the differences they have encountered.  Hbomb is still getting used to the differences in shoe sizes, but otherwise, he is fitting in nicely.

There are some things that Mark and Anne anticipated to be weird (e.g. toilets flushing the opposite direction?).  Those are easy to get used to.  Other things are like a throw back to the old days in the U.S.  For example, there is not a "no call" list here.  So Mark and Anne often get to respond to surveys and telemarketers - just like in the days of rotary phones and Family Ties.

One of the big differences that actually takes a little getting used to is the money in Argentina.  Argentina uses the peso.  The bills are pretty and come in difference colors.  There are at least three different 100 peso bills, Mark's favorite is the one with Eva Peron on one said and the Virgin Mary on the other (this kind of tells you how Argentina feels about Evita).  The 10 peso note has Gen. Belgrano on it, who is famous for creating the Argentine flag, among other things.

When Mark was an undergrad at Grinnell (about 200 years ago), one Argentine peso was worth exactly one dollar.  Argentina had a strategy of maintaining that 1 for 1 exchange rate with the dollar at that time.  The administrations in Argentina between then and now have abandoned this strategy and now, a peso is worth much less than a dollar.  Although the exchange rate changes daily and has other complications, to make the math easy, let's just say that one dollar is worth about 10 pesos.  The problem that Anne and Mark have encountered is that the 100 peso note is the largest bill in circulation in Argentina.  When they arrived, they did not have any banking privileges in Argentina, so everything had to be done in cash, and the biggest bill available was equivalent to a $10 bill.  That takes some getting used to.  Additionally, since people generally spend more than 100 pesos at a time for their purchases, many people carry only 100 peso notes.  As a result, most stores, taxis, coffee shops, etc run out of smaller bills for change.  Whenever Anne and Mark buy something with a 100 peso note, the cashier will ask if we have any "chicos" (little guys ~ smaller bills).  Smaller than a $10 bill?  No, not really.  And when the stores are desperate and run out of centavos (which are not worth much: if a peso is worth a dime, a centavo is worth 1/10th of a penny), they sometimes ask if we will accept candies in place of centavos for change.  Mark's answer?  I could get used to that.

But the real issue to which Anne, Mark and the HBomb need to adjust is the driving.  Mark has previously driven in foreign countries including Bulgaria, Italy and Morocco and had some challenging experiences doing so.  Argentina presents a whole different can of worms.  For example, this:

The part on the right is for the bike lane.  But why are the yellow and red lights on at the same time?  That's not some kind of malfunction or glitch, is it?  Nope.  It's more like drag racing.

When you're sitting at a red light, the yellow will come on to alert to waiting drivers that the green light is coming.  As if anyone did not know that the green was coming next.  Of course, this just means that everyone here punches the gas when the yellow light comes on and no one actually waits for the green.

So that's interesting, but not that hard to get used to.  Also, no right turn on red.  Weird, and slightly harder to get used to.  Also, apparently, if someone turns on their emergency flashers, head's up because they can pretty much do any crazy thing they want: stop in traffic, U-turn in front of on coming traffic, turn left in front of other lanes, it's all good.  

The two things that are they don't have here that I kind of miss, though, are lane integrity and the concept of right of way.  First, they do have lanes painted on the streets.  However, they are completely meaningless.  Drivers float in and out of them across the traffic with no signal and no notice.  Keep your head on a swivel, ladies and gentlemen.  Second, there is no concept of right of way, it is every driver for his or her self.  An example:

I especially like the guts of the person on the little moped as they cut through the left turning traffic.  Nice work.  And I should note that this is not an extreme or unique example of driving here, that's just how it is on the roads here.  But you get used to it.