Guapas can't wait

At the end of the day, I download my pictures from my camera onto my netbook.  I always think I'll have some very picturesque and representative photos of Buenos Aires to show.  But the truth is that once I've finished downloading, Buenos Aires looks decidedly gritty.  The photos also don't give any sense of how vital this place feels-- the hustle and bustle is combined with a sense of amusement and fun.

I had a very typical experience today-- or so I'm told.  I have all the time in the world to do each little errand, so I try to make every trip an opportunity to get to know the city better and to speak castellano (I've been kindly advised not to refer to it as Spanish and, for similar reasons, I know not to refer to the Falkland Islands as such).  I heard rumors of a shortage of peso notes.  I couldn't completely understand the stories in the newspapers but I think one of the peso printing machines was broken so the pesos were being made in Brazil and brought here.  I decided to head to Banco Nacional Argentina to exchange dollars before I got myself in a cashless pickle.  I had heard this bank had the best exchange rates.

I walked about 3.5 or 4 miles to the city center and found the aforementioned bank.  There were about 4 teller windows and 3 separate lines.  There were no signs or instructions.  One line had 20 or so people already queued.  I chose that line figuring that there was no way that doing something as simple as changing money would be assigned to anything less than the longest line.  A 70 year old-ish woman cut in front of me and then asked if I could hold her spot while she sat in the periphery instead of standing.  Far be it from me to be anything other than affable tourist.... until she asked if I could help her move an entire bench of cushioned seats into the line which zig-zagged through the bank.  I finally convinced her that I would hold her space if she just wanted to sit in the appointed waiting area.  No such luck.  She wanted to practice her English with me....  Then she started yelling at the tellers (there were 2 of them) asking if they couldn't move faster or find some more tellers to help.  This encouraged several other folks in the line to express their unhappiness with the bank employees.  The older lady kept pointing to me and asking the teller if he liked keeping this "guapa estaunidense" waiting.  Oh.  The horror.

It took 45 minutes for me to get to the front of the line.  The very sweet teller did not hold my new friend's comments against me and changed my money without further incident.  After handing me my receipt and my cash, he politely informed me that there was a whole "oficina de cambios" on the second floor where I could change my money without a wait.  After all, why would they keep the "guapas" like me waiting so long?  Wink.  Oh.  The double horror.

And for those of you who want more food pictures, I did not go out to eat today, so please enjoy these supermarket photos of some oddities:

                           Bags of yogurt.  Why, of course!!

                                  Hot dogs-- a national obsession

And finally, I hate to do this... it's a double rainbow which I saw my from balcony this evening:

And for those of you who don't know the reference, turn the volume WAY down and follow this link:

http://youtu.be/OQSNhk5ICTI

The great scientific count: 9