Buenos Dias

We are amazed at how fast time goes while we are at the office.   We start at 9:00 a.m. and have an hour for lunch, then we are through at 4:00 p.m.    The Elders eat their lunch in the kitchen at the office.  They cook things there, or bring food from home.  Every Wednesday a lady from the ward cooks them food.  They stop at her house to pick it up and eat it at the office.  We choose to go home for lunch.  It is only a 5 minute walk and we enjoy getting some fresh air and relaxing a little at home.    But it seems that we barely get to work and it's time to go to lunch.  When we are on our own without our trainers, we are sure we won't be leaving at 4:00.  It will take us quite a bit longer to complete our work.  We are much slower than these computer literate young men that can whip through the screens.  Of course, they have been doing this job for several months.  We are a bit nervous to be left on our own.  We pray each day that we can do what is expected of us.  Each of our responsibilities is so involved and complicated.  It is quite overwhelming, to say the least. 

One of  my jobs (jk) is to take new missionaries to a Civil Registry to get something done of a legal nature in order to be in the country.  Our mission office moved right when we got here, so now the Civil Registry is a train ride away.   A couple of Elders and myself made the trip yesterday.  We met the other Elders that needed to go with us, but when we got to the place, they were on strike, so we didn't get to accomplish our task.  Now, there might not be time for us to go again before Elder Clegg is transferred.  So he explained what I was suppose to do, but not actually walking through the process makes me nervous.  If I have to make that train ride alone, find the missionaries at the other end, and then find the building, I might be able to do it, but it makes me want to throw up.   We are hoping that arrangements can be made to switch to the Civil Registry here in San Fernando, but that could take some time.  Nothing is done speedily here in Argentina.    We are still trying to find out who to pay our rent to.  We haven't paid for March yet.

  Another lovely picture of the wonderful sidewalks.  We are on our way to work.

This is an intersection up the street from our apartment.  Most of the streets are cobblestone.  Only some major streets are asphalt.  The traffic is crazy here.  There doesn't seem to be speed limits, and the cars just plow through, zipping in and out trying to get ahead of the next one.  Pedestrian certainly do not have the right of way.  We have to watch each way before stepping off the curb to cross a street.  We were gasping and flinching the first couple of days here as we were being driven around to the conferences.  Many times we were amazed we weren't in a wreck.   And there are a lot of muffler problems around here, probably due to bouncing around on these cobblestone roads.

One thing that is unique here is their security system.  This is a guard house.  Some are fancy, some plain.  They are found all over in the neighborhoods.  There must be a lot of theft and vandalism.   However, we haven't seen very many of them being occupied, but then maybe the guard is out walking the streets.  And all the major grocery stores, restaurants, pharmacies, etc. have security guards in their establishments.  

                     Graffiti is a major problem here.  It is everywhere!!!!