Shock Cultural

Before I came to Argentina, I got advice on what to expect from a million sources, and most of it was the same. From the guidebooks: Be prepared to eat lots of red meat. Expect piropos. Dinner doesn't start until 9 pm at the earliest. From former study-abroad students: UBA is a glorious, disorganized mess. Everyone has a mullet. Argentine women are skinny as hell.

All of these things have proven to be true. But in addition, I've run into other things that no one mentioned, little quirks of Argentine culture that people take for granted here. Here they are, before I forget that they're not what I think of as normal.

Coins — A national change shortage has led everyone to hoard coins. The bondis, or buses, only accept coins, so people need them to get around, but there just aren't enough. (Daniel said he read in the Economist that the bus company is actually manufacturing the shortage so they can resell coins to shop owners at a markup.) At stores, cashiers will ask you for exact change, and when you don't have it they give you a dirty look before handing over the 50 precious centavos they owe you from your 2 peso note.

Air Conditioners — Most people have external air conditioning units on the fronts of their apartments. They drip onto the sidewalk, so for the first week or so I was here I thought it was constantly raining. Then Molly told me that the dogs in her host family pee off the balcony. Now I'm never sure if it's condensation from the air conditioning or dog urine dripping constantly in my hair.

Beer — Beer is served almost exclusively in one-liter bottles. It's possible to get it in a 330 ccl-size, but when you order it, the waiter always looks at you like you're a hopeless lightweight.

Coffee — There's no such thing as coffee on the run here. Everyone drinks it, all the time, but it's treated as a sit-down mini-meal, usually in the late afternoon, to tide you over to dinner at 9. Cafe, the standard drink, is actually what we think of as espresso. It comes in a doll-sized cup, always with a shot glass of seltzer water and some tiny cookies or a piece of a pastry. The few occasions I've managed to find that sell coffee in paper cups to go (at McDonald's and a few other chains), it's served on a tray, and you're clearly expected to drink it at the restaurant anyway.

Cell Phones — While it's possible here to get monthly or yearly plans like people have in the United States, another popular option is to just buy a cell phone and pay for minutes with prepaid phone cards in units of 10, 15, and 20 pesos. Since you can't get a monthly contract that lasts less than a year, I'm using the prepaid option. Phone calls are incredibly expensive — I don't know how expensive, exactly, but it's easy to run through a 20 peso card in three or four conversations — so everyone communicates by text messages. I sometimes send and recieve 20 or more text messages in a day. I have to really like someone (or really need to talk to them) before I actually call.

Kioscos — A kiosco is kind of like a cross between a 7-11, a CVS, and that car in the second Harry Potter book that's enchanted so that it can comfortably fit about 20 people and all their luggage. From the outside, they look like glorified vending machines, with a window facing the street where you can order a soda or buy a candy bar from the ones on display. (Some of the bigger ones also have a section inside with computers connected to the internet or a place to make photocopies.) But the person in the window has a magical ability to produce almost anything you ask for, from a $2 bottle of wine to toilet paper to prepaid cell phone cards to coffee. A friend told me about how she asked a man at a kiosco where she should go to buy blank CDs, only to have him pull one out from behind the counter.

There are a million other strange little things that I'm just beginning to accept as mundane, but these are the ones that came to mind. In a few hours, I'm getting on the bus to Uruguay, which doubtless will have even more unexpected customs to confound me.