Damn ......is that the time?

Hola Bloggers,

I am very hungover today due to a late night .....well more like an early morning. What's a girl supposed to do? Its not my fault that the clubs never shut and its not my fault that a Mojito costs one pound 80 pence. With these two factors in mind you might be able to understand why I didn't get home until 7am this morning. Comically, my host was in the kitchen preparing my breakfast (thinking I was in bed) when I came in through the door. She just said "welcome to Buenos Aires" when I said I'd been out partying and the she asked if I still wanted my breakfast. I declined and headed straigt for my bed. Needless to say, I wagged school today. So, I've gone from Grade A student to school drop out in the space of 24 hours! Oh well.

I've just spent the afternoon sunbathing in the botancial gardens near my house. This is my usual spot for sunbathing. Its very pretty and there is a large strip of grass in the sun where you usually find about 6 different people dotted around in bikinis or shorts .....so I've become one of the regulars. The most interesting thing about the gardens is that there is an incomprehensible number of cats there. If you had taken an acid trip sufficiently recently enough as to make "Flashbacks" a possibility, you would surely doubt the reality of the appearance of so many cats. However, I can assure that I am not halucinating an that there really are thousands of the buggers. They must be wild (obvioulsy) but they seem very friendly and they go and sit on whoever's lap, sarong, paper that will allow them to. Some people seem to attract whole gangs of them (what is the collective noun for cats? ......maybe a pride, no? ).

I'v decided that its cheaper here than Brasil. I kept being told in Brasil that it would be the same, but its not. This is just another one of the completely false things that people tell you about countries that they have probably never even been to. Here in Buenos Aires the internet generally costs 20 pence an hour, but in Brasil it was more like a pound an hour. Economists amongst you might be thinking that this is not a good example as it doesn't show the price of something in the usual hypothectical shopping basket commonly used to compare standards of living. I say this because this thought hsa just gone through my mind. The differntial could be on account of a more sophistcated IT industry. However, using food and drink as an example, last night (before the club with the far too tasty and resaonably priced Mojitos) I ate and drank in a restaurant with my friends from the language school and the bill came to 6 pounds per person. By the look of the time stamp on some of my photos, we were still there at 1.30 am and we had arrived at 8.30. We were constantly drinking bottles of wine and eating big plates of tapas .......so 6 pounds is pretty good going! In Brasil, in an equialently trendy restaurant in equivalent area in Rio, 6 pounds would get you all your food and one alcoholic drink ........but not the amount that we downed last night. Also I find that ice creams (like Magnums and the like) generally cost a bout 20 pence here and they were about 40 pence in Rio. I will continue my investigations. I won't continue to report back on each one of my findings because I am sure you don't require such information on a day to day basis in England. However, these are the sorts of things that I ma thinking about whilst wandering around alone out here. Upstairs for thinking, downstairs for dancing.

I love Buenos Aires. That has already been decided ....and I have only been here 5 days. Like all love affairs, I'm sure the day will come when I take the object of my affections for granted ......but for now, in this honeymoon period, I love Buenos Aires.

S xx