Sep 30, 2008
Hasta luego, San Telmo!
This morning we woke up early (well, early-ish) to get all packed up so we could move to our new apartment. Yes, that’s right. We must be big-city dwellers because today, we moved in a taxi cab. Surrounded by all our bags, we slugged through traffic across town to our new digs in Palermo, otherwise known as “the place where we spent all our money today.”
We’re calling today an “investment day” because we not only paid a huge wad of money to our new landlord (our rent for the next 2.5 months, in one lump sum), but I also joined a gym locally, which cost me a pretty penny, and we outfitted our apartment with wireless internet, which we’ve been without for the past three weeks and it is SO good to be back. A wireless router will not be cheap in a country that notoriously taxes the crap out of electronics that are imported (for example, Eric’s Macbook, if he bought it here, would cost him six times what he paid at home). Now that we’re broke (but all paid up through the end of this chapter of our time in Argentina), we’re ready to hunker down in our lighter, brighter and more spacious apartment and get some work done so we can pay for some of this stuff.
We read that we could go to a mega superstore called “Jumbo” and find things like peanut butter and hot sauce in the imported foods section, so we headed down there and it was quite overwhelming. We haven’t been in any big stores since we’ve been here (even the grocery stores are fairly small), so a gigantic mega-store was crazy. The “American Foods” section was borderline insulting. It was about four feet wide. It had the following things on the shelf: Crunch & Munch, Pringles, A-1 Steak Sauce, Chef Boyardee canned ravioli, Healthy Choice canned soup and a wide supply of Ramen. As if that’s what we eat. They didn’t even have peanut butter. So Eric found his hot sauce in the “Mexican foods” section, in which we chose to be offended on behalf of Mexicans everywhere (Taco shells, Old El Paso enchilada sauce and something literally called “Mexico Sauce”) and we got out of there. We may return, but we’ll see.
Trying to save money on food tonight, we got a take-and-bake pizza from the store. It was amazing. It had mozzerella cheese, then a full layer of onions. Sprinkled with oregano on top. So simple, and yet so brilliant. More from our new life in Palermo tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep without crazy loud buses zooming through on the street below all night long. Chau! (Emily, the resident Argentina expert, alerted me yesterday that I’ve been spelling this word wrong, or at least not the Argentine way.)
Glad you guys got all moved in! Keep the WAB quotes comming
Hi,
Looking for peanut butter in Buenos Aires for my mom and sister, since they fell in love with it when they used to live in the states with me, I found your blog, very, very interesting yeah that definitely sounds like the Argentina I know. Good luck with everything and it all sounds like fun and yeah expensive true!
One thing I noticed the term “argentine” sounds a little too uptight and very well “british” to us argentineans. It’s easier and kinder to the ear to use “argentinean” than “argentine” at least in the states among our friends that’s how use it.
Thanks
M.
Mariana,
I’m glad to hear that you are enjoying the blog. We actually found a reliable source of peanut butter even closer to our apartment in Palermo at the Disco supermarket on Salguero. They have an imported foods section that has both crunchy and regular peanut butter. Nice!
Take care,
Eric
Glad to see you’ve solved the peanut butter dilemma - for future reference I’ve found that it is is quite often to be seen amongst the middle eastern food sections a the supermarket (with the couscous and pistachios). There’s a big Carrefour not too far from where you seem to be living now (near the MALBA gallery) too, I used to go there quite a lot and get a big pile of food delivered but I’ve just about managed to wean myself off that habit now!
Hope you enjoy the rest of your stay - I got here just over a year ago and haven’t managed to leave yet… the joys of being a freelancer!