My life up until now

It's been a while, so I thought I'd update everyone on some of my adventures. I went to Gualeguachu this weekend for Carneval, and boy did I have a time. I danced on a beach till 6 in the morning. I watched a parade that combined eastern religious symbols like massive buddhas with women dressed in thongs and postage stamps for bras.
I played a game of pool with a crazy guy named Federico. He was really good, but I turned in the pool game of my life, and was somehow up on him, until he decided that he got to have two turns in a row. He talked really fast in Spanish until I got exasperated and just let him have it. I regained the lead, but then he made up another rule about how you can only sink the 8-ball into the pocket in which you sank the last ball. After making that rule up he promptly scratched on the 8-ball. He didn't seem upset however, he just kept telling me that it was all about respect. I told him that I really respected him (I didn't, his rules were bullshit), but that was good enough for him.
But I really wanted to hip you guys to some stuff about life in Argentina. It's not a complete list but I wanna try and hit the main points.
-Beer costs 10 pesos for a liter bottle. That's about $3.50, and a liter here is like a 40.
-You order a coffee, for 7 pesos, and they give you sugar, milk, a plate of cookies, and a small glass of water. It's a small meal.
-Just like in NY, there are 4 ESPN channels here, except they all show soccer. When there's no soccer to show they show highlights of NBA games but only of teams that have an Argentine player. That means the Rockets and the Spurs.
-I have yet to meet someone who likes Christina Fernandez Kirchner. But I'm not sure if that's just because I'm only hanging out with rich people, or if she's really that unpopular.
-Everyone likes Obama here. We had a taxi driver last week who figured out we were American and then yelled "OBAMA, OBAMA." We messed with him and told him we voted for McCain, and he got pretty upset.
-There aren't any black people here. None. The word negro, as in black, actually refers to poor people, not skin color.
-I've seen some of the most appalling poverty here I've ever seen in my life. When you go out for a walk, and you see 4 year olds digging through a trash heap, it really makes you feel like shit. When you see little kids who don't get to have a childhood, and who instead are forced to wander around plazas at 5 in the morning trying to sell flowers, it's hard to think about all the great benefits of the IMF.
-There are no coins in this entire city. They are actually experiencing a moneda crisis. Yesterday, I ordered a coffee that was 6.25. Instead of giving me the change the cashier just rounded it down to 6 pesos, and gave me 4 back in bills. I was excited about that, but this morning when I woke up, I was 50 centavos short for the bus fare, which you can only pay in coins. Because of that discount at the coffee shop I couldn't take the bus, and had to take an 11 peso cab instead.
-All anyone eats here is beef. I've literally had days where I've had a hamburger for lunch, some sort of beef pie for dinner, and then a steak as a late night snack. We made the mistake of telling our mom that we like steak, and she's been making us something beef related every night. They're not a salad eating people, which I respect.
-They also like pasta, but if you get the cream sauce they'll give you this stuff that is basically straight cream. It's not good.
-The Argentines claim they don't speak Spanish, they speak Castellano. It's like Spanish but with crappy grammar and they made up a bunch of words and pronounce things funny.
-Traffic is insane. There are no lanes, but everyone just seems to manage somehow.
-Every chance they get Argentines will remind you that you are an American, and thus everything is very cheap for you. They don't mean to be rude, they just want you to know that while you're celebrating the 3.50:1 exchange rate they're not feeling it so much.
-They love to talk. Yesterday, meeting my friend outside of his building, we accidentally engaged his doorman in a 30 minute conversation. The conversation started with him warning us not to run because it would rain soon. It reached its crescendo when he took his shirt off to show us his scar from open heart surgery, and explain to us why it was good that we ran. It culminated with us reminding him that had we started 30 minutes before it probably wouldn't have rained but after this conversation we were definitely going to get caught in a downpour.
-It's a Catholic country, but Diego Maradona is God. ESPN 2 literally has a report every time he sneezes.

More when it comes to me,
Alex