El Dinero

I took a picture recently of the new $100 peso, next to one of the old ones.

The new bill features Eva Perón, whom you probably equate with Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Evita", if you think of her at all.

I have no desire to get into what kind of a woman she was, or what role she played in Argentine history. I'd rather take a more pedestrian view of the new bill: What can I buy with it?

If you're my friend on facebook, you'll have already seen this link. We've known that inflation has been an ongoing problem here, and we knew we were spending more at the store, but we've never taken the time to figure out just how much more. This article breaks it down, showing what $100 pesos would buy three years ago compared to what you can get now.

2010

liter of milk 

1/2 kilo coffee

kilo of yerba (tea)

1/2 kilo of sugar

bread

package of pasta 

bottle of pop

cooking oil

1/2 kilo milanesa (meat)

a yogurt

bleach

4 roll package of toilet paper

2013

liter of milk

package of pasta

cooking oil

1/2 kilo milanesa (meat)

a yogurt

4 roll package of toilet paper

Half the items are missing from the second list: coffee, tea, sugar, bread, pop and bleach. 

Makes me wonder what $100 pesos will buy three years from now. 

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

"That was some good chocolate!"

Crazy Weather

Here it is mid-November and, as is typical, it's getting warmer and warmer. We've been holding off on the a.c. but there have been days we've been tempted to turn it on. Only the hope of cool nights has kept us from giving in to that temptation. Because it does usually cool off at night. It's been dropping into the low 60s and even into the high 50s some nights, and that makes for good sleeping. We open our windows wide at night, letting in the cool air, and then close them in the morning to keep the cool in/hot out. It works most of the time.

But two nights ago it didn't cool off very much. Yesterday it was in the low 70s by 9 a.m. and it got progressively hotter. And windier. I managed to get one load of laundry done. Twice. Because the first time I took the basket outside, set it down on the slab while I went in to put the cotton shirts in the dryer for a few minutes, and when I came back out, the wind had blown the basket over and the clothes were tumbling along the slab, picking up dirt as they went. So that load had to be rewashed, and then I was careful to hang onto the basket while I quickly hung things on the line. And let me tell you, that was no easy matter! The wind was whipping so hard it practically tore things right out of my hand as I pinned them on.

The wind was blowing pretty much sideways, as you can see.

We've been opening up about 9 p.m. It was 82 degrees inside at that point last night but when I opened the door to check, it didn't seem any cooler outside. I tuned into the local weather and discovered it was still 100 degrees! So it was after 10 p.m. before I opened the windows, and that was more for some of the breeze than hope of cooler air. With the ceiling fan in the bedroom it was barely bearable.

And then overnight a storm blew in from the south, bringing rain and hail -- lots of hail pounding on our metal roof at 5 a.m. -- and cooling things off. It was a pleasant 59 degrees at 6:30 a.m. We're supposed to have a few days of low 80s, but we'll see if that actually happens. Seems like the forecast is always on the low side (yesterday's forecast was for the low 90s and we passed that at a dead run) so I don't put much stock in it. But anything in the 80s is a welcome relief.

I'm so glad we put in air conditioning last summer. Pretty sure we'll make good use of it in the coming months. Painting the exterior should also help deflect the sun's rays rather than absorbing them, which is what the raw concrete does now.

I'm anxious to get started on that, but like everything else here, things just move slower and we haven't even had a chance to buy the sealer or paint yet. November seems to be a month for conferences and things. So far Ivan has been to a men's retreat, a missions conference, and now he's attending a Bible conference. He'll miss the last session of this conference on Sunday night because there's a 75th anniversary celebration at the church in Almafuerte where he spent some years as an MK.

Add in the regular responsibilities and commitments and there hasn't been a lot of extra time. But hopefully within the next few weeks I'll be able to tackle the painting and then we should see a marked difference in the interior temperature of the casita. Vamos a ver.

Sort of like Monday Meanderings, Only On Tuesday

Yesterday we went to Cordoba, with a rather long "to do" list.

It involved some shopping.

And some price comparison.

Getting lost was not on the list.

And yet we did it anyway.

You'd think that after five years we'd sorta have a better handle on where things are in the neighboring big city.

Warning: Do not, I repeat DO NOT, rely on the free map phone app from NavFree when in Argentina.

I think whoever programmed this country for NavFree is a sick, demented individual who likes to send people on wild goose chases and takes joy in their misadventures.

Thankfully we are (kinda) still laughing about the two-hour journey through parts of the city we've never been (and hope to never go again). I mean, seriously, you could drive around the perimeter of the city several times in two hours, but we couldn't get out of one puny pie-sliced portion of it?

We managed to knock off most (but not all) of the items on the "to do" list, but were absolutely done in by the time we made it home. Like practically crawling-into-the-house done in. We'd forgotten how exhausting a day in the big city can be... And that's without getting lost. I think it might be a while before I want to go back.

We were both really tempted to give up entirely on the list at about 5 p.m., but pushed on for purely selfish reasons. Because there was one item that was not optional: buy coffee beans. I will economize in a lot of areas, but coffee beans is not one of them. Waking up to a really good cup of coffee is an indulgence we have become quite accustomed to, and would rather not do without. The best beans I've found in Argentina cannot be bought in our city, but thankfully can be purchased in Cordoba. So you'd better believe we made the extra effort and drove across town again in order to buy those beans.

We've been shopping around for mattresses, for the house in Sta Rosa. To say we've experienced sticker shock would be an understatement. Prices were high before, but inflation has pushed them up to what we consider the ridiculous. We've been to three stores in Carlos Paz and to a store as well as a mattress factory in Cordoba. In the end we're buying locally. While the factory gave us a pretty good price, it wasn't that much lower than one of the stores here in town. We pay a little more here, but avoid the cost of transporting the mattresses from Cordoba, as well as the hassle (which in our opinion is worth something too).

Prices, in general, have gone up 30-50% in the past six months. I find that staggering. How does the average Argentine get by?! Even with a fairly decent exchange rate on our dollars, we're still paying more for things than we did six months ago. It's a little scary to contemplate inflation continuing at this rate.

I've mentioned my love for doing laundry before. Today I'm in my element, cranking out load after load. The only thing is, it's so windy I can't dry our shirts on the line like I usually do. I've come up with a strategy to avoid having to iron (something I hate worse than cleaning toilets), that includes popping them into the dryer for 10 minutes, putting them on hangers and then clipping the hangers on the line (prevents all those little pinch marks you typically get from the clothespins). But with the wind whipping around at over 20 mph, that strategy won't fly. Well, actually it causes the shirts to fly -- right off the line and onto the ground -- so instead I'm hanging them on the shower rod in the bathroom after their 10-minute stint in the dryer. But everything else is going on the line, and it's kinda fun to look out the kitchen window and watch things go sideways in the wind.

I'm making zapallitos rellenos for lunch, but not really following the Argentine recipe. Instead of filling them with ham, eggs, scooped out squash, onions, bread crumbs and milk, I'm doing more of a stuffed pepper-type filling with rice, onions, garlic, mushrooms, and tomatoes. Julio and Magdalena stopped by, and this is more along the lines of what she might do as a vegetarian. They were on their way to the vegetable store to pick up supplies so one of their granddaughters could make lunch. I hear homemade french fries is on the menu. Yum!

Have you ever had tennis elbow? I did once about 15-20 years ago and now I have it again. It's been six weeks and it's not getting any better. Do you think it could be because I'm still using that arm like normal? But the pain level is getting to where I might need to re-think that strategy.

I spent a fun 20 minutes wrapping Christmas presents this morning. One of our co-workers has small children and while we were in the states I picked up a few toys to give them for Christmas. We don't do much at Christmas now that we're empty nesters AND 6000 miles from family. But I did want to make sure and have something for the little ones.

I'm also planning to pull out the Christmas tree and all the trimmings and take them to Sta Rosa this year. The men are having a retreat there in early December and I thought it would be fun to decorate beforehand so they could enjoy it. And it will be nice to have it all decorated when we go out later that month for a few days. In spite of not doing much in the way of gifts, I do love to decorate for the holidays!

Lunch is almost ready, and the final load is ready to hang on the line. So this meandering must come to an end.