La Vida Argentina

We have another national holiday today, which means no school, which means we decided to go out last night to one of the biggest, best clubs in the city. It was a blast.

Looking out over the masses:

RJ is coming through Buenos Aires tomorrow, but only for a few hours, on his way much farther south. Check out his blog at some point if you get a chance, I'm sure he will put up pictures, and his trip sounds incredible. He'll be spending a few days among the glaciers, and then hiking in the mountains for 4 or 5 days. I'm really jealous.

The whole continent has the week off for Easter, so I want to do something. I may end up heading to the beach with a couple friends from here and some Argentine girls, or maybe with some Ole Miss students who are studying all around Argentina and Uruguay. We'll figure that out soon.

Our friend from Harvard yesterday had a pretty cool story. A Harvard student that he knows, or knows of, at least, was studying in Mexico and couldn't get access to some of the sources she needed for her paper, or thesis, or whatever she was working on. Anyways, long story short, one of the professors, the head of the department, I believe, made a few calls, and one day her phone rang -- the Mexican president was on the line, and apparently offered to do whatever he could to help her get the information she needed. Bad ass.

The TV is on right now, and there was a commerical that reminded me of something interesting down here. I don't know if this is subsidized by the government or not, but I assume it is: grocery stores, and a lot of other places, offer good discounts to people who pay with credit cards. I think this is because, and I think I've already mentioned this, there isn't really enough money in circulation, but increasing the money supply would increase inflation, which is already way too high. And which the government lies about.

I have an eccentric Economics teacher who worked for World Bank, who told us, more or less, "Come on man, you don't have to be an economist to realize that if you spend 20 percent more at the grocery store every month to be the same thing, the inflation rate isn't at normal levels, like the government is saying."

Approval for the current administration is falling fast, and there are talks about going against the constitutionally-set election procedures to make the election earlier in the year, before it's completely unwinnable. Or something like that, honestly I haven't followed this as closely as I should have, but it's still interesting.

That's all for now folks, take care.