The Downturn

I've been asked a lot about how the economic downturn is effecting Argentina, and the truth is, so far we haven't seen much. What is of concern is the terrible drought we've had, resulting in the loss of many cattle and produce. As a country which depends almost completely on its own food production, as well as having crops as a major export, this is bad news. At the same time, the peso is losing value, making Argentina more affordable to Americans and helping with tourism. (This seems to be a particular niche with recently-laid-off bankers).

Despite this, the other day the president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner warned that Argentina will feel the effects of the global downturn, and that this year will be difficult.

However, Argentines still look at what's happening in the world from a detached stance. Economic crisis is part of their everyday experience. In 2001, they experienced what is still the worst economic crisis in modern history. Economic policy, inflation, and debt are daily headlines in the news, equally today as last year or the year before.

The IMF currently refuses to loan Argentina additional money, until they share how they calculate the highly doubted inflation rate of 8.8%. Independent figures show basic living expenses have an annual inflation rate of 14.3% while food is pegged at 15.5%. Other sources report inflation rates above 20%. (The U.S. has a rate of 4.2%)

And then the extras? Here's some changes I've seen in the last 3 months (all listed in pesos):

Local buses: $1.50-->$1.90

Gym membership: $50-->$65

Internet service: $60-->$85

Rent (apparently a lease doesn't guarantee anything): $550-->$600

1-hour Spanish/English lesson: $20-->$30

Health Insurance Premiums: Jan. 2008: $210, Aug. 2008: $274 (Another raise was scheduled to occur in December, however I'm not sure where that leaves the current premium.)

The price of produce seems to have increased by about 50% recently, however food prices are steadily climbing, year-round.

A quote from the BBC news sums up the attitude I've seen quite well, "We Argentines are used to economic crisis," says Cecilia Tornu. "We are used to an economy that goes up and then down, up and down. It will not be as hard for us as it is elsewhere in the world to survive this one."

Argetine culture vs. American culture

A friend sent me a link to the blog, Water and Soul, where Jason Bliss has highlighted some of the differences between the US and Argentine cultures...here are some of my favorites*:

Going out

• Only in Buenos Aires are there more people out in the streets at one o'clock in the morning than one o'clock in the afternoon.

• Waiters in Argentina don't give me dirty look when I just order tea at the café.

• Pedestrians never have the right of way. [Rights are determined by size. Whoever is biggest goes first.]

• Stop signs don't mean anything, or if they do, they simply mean just go.

• In the subways, people lay all kinds of trinkets on your lap hoping you'll buy it. And the crazy thing is, it works sometimes.

• Sometimes, when you walk on the sidewalk, the sidewalk moves along with you. [Although this phenomenon occurs in the US, too, notably in NYC.]

• People stare shamelessly and they don't feel bad about it when they do.
  
  

Doing Business

• Everything is a negotiation: buying a cell phone, managing to buy note cards in a store after describing them in 3 different ways, ordering croissants at the café.

• Shop owners are obsessed about washing the sidewalk.

• There's a kiosco that sells teen porn right in front of the colegio nacional, the national high school.
  
  

Style

• Even old women wear tight pants.

• Here, a nice suit = sexy. In the US, suit = business type.

• In America, men with long hair = surfer dude or rock star. Here it means soccer hero. Not only that, but I've seen men with long hear wearing head bands, which is culturally forbidden in the US.
  
  

Relating

• In America you have to pay to get groped by a bunch of people at once but in Buenos Aires you just have to ride the Subte.

• Instead of hanging out with friends or family for a few hours, people hang out for up to ten hours at a time, and even more miraculously, they don't get sick of each other.

• Loneliness + boredom is far worse for Argentines than being overstimulated, claustrophobic and stressed out.

• Americans like to give each other a notice of a few days when they go out together. Argentines call each other a couple hours before they go out.

• Americans freak out when their personal space gets violated. Argentines pull out their cell phones.

• Most Argentines that I've met up until now don't know how to tango but they can tell you about every individual part of a cow.

Cultural Miscellany:

• Argentines know how to enjoy their life and also how to slow things down.

• The TV plays a much smaller role in the daily lives of people.

• Argentines don't treat their dogs like people

• I've heard more 80's music since I've arrived than I did in all of my life as a 80's child.

• Sometimes in the morning, we hear the sound of a horse trotting down our street. [This happens frequently in La Plata, at all hours.]

• Argentina is a nightmare for control freaks, which is probably why I like it. Everything and everyone is late. But since you know that ahead of time, you're never super-upset or super-offended when the Subte stalls at Callao for ten minutes, or when you waitress ignores you at Baraka Café for 40 minutes. In America, entitlement turns us into monsters. We get mad when the subway is 8 minutes late, or when the waiter forgets our water. We get belligerent when we don't get what we think we deserve, which is pretty much everything.

*Note: these are all copied, my comments are added in brackets, the rest is written by Jason Bliss.

Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay

I was recently telling a coworker, who grew up in el campo (the sticks), about how Argentina seems to have a lot fewer rules and regulations than the U.S. No one thinks twice about drinking alcohol in public, traffic is virtually unregulated, you start a gym membership by paying the month's fees, not by signing a 15-page waiver. He disagreed, having moved from the country to the city, he felt there were a lot of regulations. We finally agreed that there's a lot of regulations, but a) in the U.S. there's more, and b) in Argentina, they're not exactly enforced/logical. Of course, not being logical makes them hard to enforce. Case in point:

There are thousands of expats living in Buenos Aires. Visa regulations make it very difficult and expensive to obtain a visa to live in Argentina, so the majority (myself included) enter the country on a 90-day visitor's visa, and plan to leave the country every 90 days, then re-enter (typically the same day, the ferry tickets cost about $150 pesos) to restart our 90-day count. An alternative is to pay $100 pesos ($30 dollars) to extend your visa an additional 90 days, then leave the country. (Uruguay is a short boat ride from Buenos Aires and the convenient option for leaving.)

While this is inconvenient and awkward, it is a system that works most the time. The issue comes up if you overstay your 90 day window. Being a relatively open country, which loves tourism, Argentina has a fairly simple solution for this. On your exit, you fill out a form stating you overstayed, pay a $50 peso fine, and go on your way. (Police rarely or never ask for identification, and if they do, they're more concerned with your name and identifying information than your entry stamp dates.)

Hmmm...so, you have the choice to make a trip out of the country every 90 days (or pay an extension)...or just wait until you're ready to leave and only pay $50 pesos? Staying for a year legally could cost you $500 pesos and hours of travel/bureaucratic time, or just $50 pesos (10%!) for an illegal stay. ¡Bienvenido a Argentina!

So far, I've looked forward to my required exits—first, I had never been to Colonia (the Uruguayan border town on the other side of the La Plata River), then I had summer vacation, and wanted to go see the Uruguayan beaches of Punta del Diablo. This last time, another friend had never been to Uruguay and wanted to come, so we returned to Colonia, continuing my Argentina stay in the legally clear zone. Next time...???

My friend, Martín on the Buquebus ferry, as we head to Colonia.

Welcome to the city of Colonia (old city gates).

Colonial architecture. Very similar to what we saw in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, colorful and square.

The original Portuguese street, cobbled with stones in 1745.

There were signs posted to refrain from leaving flowers in the church in order to preserve its austerity. Additional plaques referred to the desert-like nature of the church, and Jesus' time in the desert. This side of Catholicism was new to me.

Martín, the old city walls, with the La Plata River in the background. The river is an unsavory rusty color due to its high mineral content, not pollution.

More colonial architecture

And you can't have a vacation (even if it only lasts a day) without a trip to la playa.

Dia de San Patricio!

St. Patrick's Day (known in Argentina as Dia de Cerveza) got a little bit out of control...
We started with beer in the plaza and festive cookies. (Most store-bought cookies here are made from beef fat, so I couldn't partake.)
...Followed by toasting in the local brew-pub, Antares.
...And ending with goofy pictures. (Okay, I look goofy, she looks gorgeous--how does it always happen that way?!)

Grantwriting with FSD

Ah, remember that grant I was working on several months ago? Hoping to get funding for a Celebrating Families! spinoff in Argentina? Well, I finally submitted it to FSD. The process is meant to be equally educational as helpful, so it's a little different than typical grant proposals to foundations.

It's submitted through our local site team, and must be based around sustainability. I had this part made, as education is typically considered very sustainable. However, I'm weak at selling my ideas, so this part took a lot of effort. (I spent the entire month of January writing my proposal—a request for just $500.)

Once the grant is submitted, your project may be fully funded, partially funded, a re-write may be requested, or it may be rejected. If the evaluating committee feels some piece of the project is a poor use of funds, they'll choose not to fund that portion. If they think the idea is promising, but they're not 100% sold on certain aspects, they can request a re-write, to clarify those aspects.

In regards to my project, a re-write was requested. I'd under-emphasized a few aspects of the project, such as the universal nature of the themes (showing the project could translate across cultures) and the fact that it had been replicated by other cultures (especially Hispanic populations) successfully.

It takes at least a week for the committee to respond to any submission, so I found the request for a re-write a little frustrating. I waited a week to get the re-write request, another week to find out what needed to be re-written, and then submitted it a few days later, where I'm still waiting for a final answer.

The grant proposal was also a lot of work, for just $500 (dollars), honestly, the hardest I've ever worked for so little money. (Although it comes close to the summer I spent baby-sitting full-time for $2/hour.)

So, the project has been delayed, and I've been killing a lot of time at work, waiting...

Follow-up with the MDs

Have I mentioned that I live with two doctors? While I'm not totally clear on the different steps involved in becoming an MD, one roommate has completed medical school, and has a test to pass before it's official (then she'll start a program for her specialization), the other is “in school,” but has a caseload at a local hospital.

So, when I came home with my swollen eye, they were both very interested. I ran into Jylena first, immediately after returning from the doctor. She wanted to know what he said, what he'd told me to do, what medication he gave me, (which she then kindly translated from it's pharmaceutical name to common language—it had an antibiotic and cortisone), and recommended I apply heat through warming a spoon on the stove, then putting it to my eye. (The doctor had recommended a standard hot compress.)

She was skeptical about the medication, “he told you to put it in your eye? Really?” But let me go after insisting I apply heat regularly.

Ingrid wasn't so passive. (She typically isn't.) “Jenn!” She called me when she heard me enter the house later. “Jylena says you have an orzuelo. And the doctor gave you eye drops?!” In her adamant professional opinion, the eye drops were useless. She'd treated patients with styes before, and would never give them eye drops. An antibiotic cream could be used, but NOT drops. Ibuprofen and heat were her recommendations, and an oral antibiotic later, if necessary. “Look into it on the internet,” she encouraged me, “that's what you do. Eye drops don't make any sense.”

I already had, and she was right. I thought eye drops still made sense, but they didn't seem to be the conventional treatment.

Which put me in an awkward place...I trusted the eye specialist I'd seen, but...she had her points. And I lived with her! I'd have to see her everyday. (Plus, if I had any problems, she was way more accessible than he was.) Luckily, it's a minor issue, and did bring my attention to the fact that I have free medical treatment down the hall if I ever need it.

Anyone need a prescription?

Plagued!

It's been a while since I updated, and I have a bunch of stuff in the works, but the last couple weeks have dealt me a handful of (thankfully minor) medical issues which have left me a bit grumpy.

I'll spare you the visual aids (feel free to google, if you like that kind of stuff), but it goes something like this...

Tinea Versicolor--you know that rare skin condition Michael Jackson has? Well, this is similar, but curable. Right now, I just have a bunch of white dots (the size of pencil erasers) on my chest and back...the fun cure? Coat yourself in Selsun Blue (or a generic Argentine anti-dandruff shampoo), wait 20 minutes, rinse. Repeat for two weeks. Wait 2 months, and hopefully the spots will be gone...

Stye--I woke up a couple days ago with my left eye a bit swollen, and pretty painful. The next day, it was even bigger and more painful. I went to the doctor. It was about $30 for the doctor's visit and eye drops, things should be clearing up...

Fun stuff. I'll be back with more news when I'm feeling a bit prettier...