Restaurants and Bathrooms

Even though I've been in Argentina for about 6 months by now, I spent almost all of my time in San Ignacio, and have now discovered that there are many common things I knew nothing about in other parts of the country.  It's kind of like if a foreigner spent 6 months in Smithfield, NC, and thought they knew what life was like in the US, and then went to Philadelphia, and realized that things can be quite different.  I never, not even once, went out to eat in San Ignacio, except for at the restaurant in the hostel.  I realized I had no idea what the norm for tipping might be in cities - in the hostel people didn't normally tip.  Mom and Dad kept asking me questions about family size, high school graduation rates, income and spending, and other things that I could only answer about San Ignacio, but that can be quite different elsewhere.

One thing that I think I normalized was the wide array in quality of public bathrooms, or bathrooms in public places (bus stations, buses, restaurants, museums, etc.)  One of the first days we set out to wander about I suggested to Mom and Dad and they might want to keep a wad of toilet paper on them at all times, because you never know if that's something you'll find in a bathroom here.  Dad was appalled.  (He was even more appalled when I told him that TP here goes in the trash instead of the toilet, as you may have read on his blog entry.)  You can never expect more than a toilet bowl that hopefully flushes and a sink.  If you have a toilet seat to go with that and some soap I'd call that a decent bathroom.  And throw in some TP, hand towels, and a recently emptied trash can and you have yourself a top quality bathroom, but don't get used to that because the next one will probably be much worse.  Whenever one of us went to the bathroom we'd always give a little summary to the others about the experience: "It was pretty good, no TP but there was soap, and it was clean.  You really have to pull the string hard to get it to flush though."

Restaurants here don't pre-prepare as much as in the US, so when you order food it generally takes much longer here.  Dad coined the phrase "I'm starting to feel like I'm in a restaurant" for whenever we had a wait a long time for something.  Last night we wandered around for a long, long time before finding someplace decent yet affordable to eat, and they brought out my food and mom's food way before dad's, and dad's ended up a little burned.  Today, my first meal without them, I stumbled upon a nice little restaurant in less than 5 minutes of looking, and my food was also ready in less than 5 minutes, and it was really tasty and cheaper than most of our other meals.  Mom and Dad might be back luck...

In Raleigh Anna always reminds me not to go out in the sun with a part in my hair because I always burn my scalp.  Unfortunately she wasn't in Tilcara with me, and now my scalp is burned, and it's going to peel and look like dandruff.  This is all your fault for not visiting me, Anna!!!