Moving to Argentina meant I bring my things, but can you buy socks here? Yes and no.
Day Two - More about food.
Morning came and I ran to stand by the wall heater - I have net seen central heating or air conditioning since coming here. There has also been no snow though, so maybe there is a correlation.
Like a camping heater but on the wall.
The heater was on the wall under the window and the house was cold, fifty five degrees. I had gone from summer to winter in a day. I felt like I had been camping - woke up and put on layers before I could move about.
Susan told me that we have toast for breakfast. I was good with that. She opened a bag that could have been potato chips for all I knew. Out of the bag came mini bread that was hard as a rock and she put apricot jam on it. It was not warm, butter would not spread on it, and jam on dry cold toast was strange to me. Of course, I commented on how toast would look if we were in the U.S.A.
She pulled out a rusty apparatus and called it a toaster. This thing goes on the stove and makes toast if you watch it carefully. Otherwise it makes charcoal. We did try it the next day after I had bought some bread to toast, which is how I know.
Dinner
As I said before, the dollar and the local peso were of equal value when I arrived. Now this was before any Uber Eats, Glovo, or Pedidosya existed. Sue said, "Do you want chicken for dinner?" I was anxious to see what kind of cook she was, so I said, "Sure!"
She made a call and five minutes later, there was a bell and she went downstairs to get the food. It turns out there was a shop across the street that sells whole chickens, it looked like it was made on a rotisserie, along with a huge pile of fries - $3.00 was all we paid. I was shocked by the speed and value of the dinner plan.
That was a great surprise! The place only sold chicken and fries. No mashed potatoes or slaw. No corn or potato salad. When we went out to the store the next day, I saw the place. It had a grill made of angle iron about the size of a 4x8 sheet of plywood. When one chicken was taken off, another would be put in its place and they were able to supply the little town of Zarate with all the chicken and fries they wanted and the people that worked there would walk (or bike) the food to your door. Nice!
Shopping
I had only packed a couple pairs of socks when I came. Much of what I brought were things I could not buy here. I was heading out with Susan to buy some socks and maybe some jeans. I did not find either of those things at the place we went to. The socks they had there were something like $20 per pair and the jeans were of quality I would not buy. "Where are the Levis?" I asked. She replied, "We have this kind." and pointed to the ones I would never buy.
Knock-off Adidas socks.
Susan told me that I should not buy from those people but I begged to differ. I later learned that the socks they sell only make it through the wash twice or three times at best. My experience since then finds me unable to find reasonably priced socks of fair quality and Levis jeans were unheard of for the first twenty years here until a year ago. All those years, I relied on my family bringing jeans for me from the U.S.
Adjusting to a new culture was difficult at first, but I began to love the food and traditions here as time went on. I discovered food that was unparalleled in my home country - especially meat.
The sock sellers - aka those people - are people who did not finish school, most of them. They usually beg for hand outs and when they level up, they buy quantities of cheap goods and sell them for a little more for a profit. They do not pay taxes, selling off the grid like that, and they rarely take no for an answer. I did not see her point at first. Now that I see who they are and what they do, I still want to buy something so that their kids do not go without.
This is a nation of knock-off products. They are sold everywhere and people do not get arrested for making them or for selling them. The Spanish term for one of these products is - trucho. Sounds like a fish to me. That is actually the word for trout if you wanted to buy that type of fish.
I will be continuing to highlight the differences I had noticed and which are good, bad, or indifferent as I blog here on Hive. Thanks for stopping in to hear my thoughts.
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